YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

MARTIN LUTHER
HIS LIFE AND WOEK.

MARTIN LUTHER

HIS LITE AND "WOEK

BY

PETER BAYNE, LL.D.

Vol. II.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.

1887.
[all eights reserved.]

CONTENTS. gnok VIII.
THE CALL TO GERMANY.— 1519-1520.

CHAPTEE I. PAGE
Widening the Beeach with Rome . . . . .3
CHAPTER II.
WOEES AND WOEDS OF PEACE AND WAE  10
CHAPTEE III.
Distinguished Coeeespondents  18
CHAPTEE IV.
Caelstadt and Melanchthon— The Agitation Deepening
— Laueentius Valla  26
CHAPTEE V.
The Trumpet-call to ^Geemant  36
CHAPTEE VI.
The Bull  61

CONTENTS. gook IX.
THE DIET OF WORMS.— 1521.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Situation — Luthbe's Position as a Peophet-Rbfoemee 72
CHAPTEE- II.
The Young Empeeoe — A New Legate — Rome Opens the
Attack in the Diet — Aleandeo's Geeat Speech . 81
CHAPTEE UI.
At Wittenbbeg — Luthbe Weites to Staupitz — The Diet
in Prospect— The Joubney .... .90
CHAPTER IV.
Befoee the Empeeoe .... ... 103
CHAPTER V.
The Dbpaetuee . .... . H8
CHAPTEE VT.
In the Foeest  . 128

inok X.
THE WARTBTJRG.— 1521.
CHAPTER I.
Among the Bieds  jog
CHAPTEE II.
Satanic Annoyances  _ -j^o

CONTENTS. vii

CHAPTEE III. PAGE
"Pecca Fortiter "—Luther in the Hunting Field . 153

CHAPTEE IV.
The Widening Aeea of Lutheb's Influence — Geneeal
Sympathy with Rbfoemation — " Audendum Est " . 165
CHAPTEE V.
Cleeical Celibacy and Aueiculae Confession . . . 169
CHAPTEE VI.
Monasticism .  178
CHAPTER VII.
The Mass . .  .187
CHAPTER VIII.
Rebuking a Caedinal  189
CHAPTER IX.
A Run to Wittenberg  203
CHAPTER X.
New Testament Translation  . 208
CHAPTER XI.
A Glimpse of Pope and Emperoe .... ¦ 212
CHAPTER XII.
Spieitual Anaechy — A Cry for Luther .... 215

viii ' CONTENTS. '
§00fc XI.
THE PEASANTS' WAR.— 1521-1525.

CHAPTEE I. PAGE
The Flight to Wittenberg .... • 223
CHAPTER II.
Luther Peeaching Down Anabchy  ' 229
CHAPTEE III.
The Lull  -240
CHAPTER IV.
Pope Adrian  244
CHAPTER V.
HUTTEN AND SlCKINGEN  253
CHAPTER VI.
Coming Troubles  259
CHAPTEE VII.
Carlstadt's Eccentricities . . . . . . ." 266
CHAPTEE VIII.
Signs of Deeper Division — More of Caelstadt . . . 274
CHAPTER IX.
Thomas Munzeb  *. 279
CHAPTEE X.
The Inheritance of the Saints  291
CHAPTEE XI.
The Revolt  299
CHAPTEE XII.
The Death of Frederick  gng

CHAPTER XIII.
MiJNZBE Goes Down ....

3L0

Light at Last

CONTENTS. is
§0ok XII.
KATIE.— 1525.

CHAPTEE I. PMB
 321

CHAPTEE II.
The Ethics of Maeeiage ... . .338
CHAPTER III.
Better Days for Luther  345

§0ok XIII.
THE NEW ERA.

CHAPTEE I.
Retrospect — Bible t. Pope — Letter to Staupitz— Anti
christ v.  353
CHAPTER II.
Settling Pastors and Rebuking a King . . 368
CHAPTEE ITI.
Pope by Divine Right  376
CHAPTEE IV.
A Busy Pontiff  . . 386
CHAPTEE V.
Congregational Worship  399
CHAPTER VI.
Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs . . 408

CONTENTS.

CHAPTEE VII. PAGE
Luther and Erasmus ... . **x
CHAPTEE VIII.
Boees  ¦ ... 434

§0ok XIV.
POPE CLEMENT AND POPE LUTHER— 1524-1534.

CHAPTEE I.
On the Stage of Histoey — Battle of Pavia — Sack of
Rome — Fiest Diet of Spiees . . . . 445
CHAPTEE II.
Luthee at Home — Katie's Guaedianship— Dogmatic Petri
faction — Correspondence — Letter to Maby Queen of
Hungaby  . 455
CHAPTEE III.
Luther and Elector John — The New Saxon Chuech —
National Chubches  467
CHAPTEE IV.
The Histobic Stage again— Chables and Clement Making
it Up — Second Diet of Spibes — Peotestants . . 477
CHAPTEE V.
The Mabbubg Confeeence — Luther and Zwingli 487

CHAPTEE VI.
The Wittenbebg Pope

499

CHAPTEE VII.
Clement's Hopes and Wishes— Luthee's Fatheb's Illness
—The Staet foe Cobueg  m.

CONTENTS. xi
CHAPTEE VIII. page
Cobueg— Crows and Theologians . . . . 517
CHAPTEE IX.
Lutheb's Hopes of Chables  527
CHAPTER X.
The Diet of Augsbueg .... ... 535

§ook XV.
THE END.— 1534-1546.

CHAPTER I.
Contareni's Mission  ... 551
CHAPTER II.
Philip of Hesse's Two Wives ... . 560
CHAPTER III.
Magdalene's Death and Luther's  565

Mook VIII.
THE CALL TO GERMANY.
1519—20.

Maeti^ Luthee.
THE CALL TO GERMANY.

CHAPTEE I.
WIDENING THE BREACH WITH ROME.
Doctor Eck and his Leipzig admirers believed, with
complacent confidence, that the Wittenberg monk had
been disposed of.
" Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg
The murmur of the world."
Scholastic pedants and theological reactionaries have
perhaps as often failed to discern the main currents of
tendency as village rustics. Luther for his part, though
not in the slightest degree conscious of having been
worsted, did not boast of victory over Eck, but looked
upon the disputation as having been a waste of time.
So he told Spalatin in a letter of some length in which,
on regaining the quietude of his Wittenberg cell, he
reviewed the affair. His adversaries, he said, had been
under the influence of vainglory, and had clamoured
rather than argued. He stood by the results of those
years of patient and profound research during which he
b2

4 MARTIN LUTHER.
and his friends, instead of grazing the skin like Eck,.
had penetrated to the bone.*
The verdict of the Leipzig wiseacres, though endorsed
extensively enough by priestly conclaves and University
senates, was reversed by the public opinion of Europe.
Luther, and not Eck, proved to have spoken the word
that the world was listening for. Few cared to note the
details of the argumentative conflict ; but Europe beheld
in Eck the champion of Papal authority and tradition,
and in Luther the advocate of freedom and the Bible.
More distinctly than before, Luther was made con
spicuous as the uplifter of a banner against Eome.
European society had for many years been becoming
alienated from, and suspicious of, the Roman Church.
That vague, half-defined, latent sense of weariness with
one order of things and longing for another, which
works below the social surface, and is the mightiest of
forces in preparing the way for revolution, was in league
with Luther. In these circumstances, the counsel of
Ahitophel for the Papacy would have been to impose
upon its friends a policy of silence.
Luther's experiences in Leipzig had the effect of
impelling him into more thorough-going opposition to
the Pope than he had yet felt to be among his duties.
That stage of transition in his reforming career during
which it ceased to be practicable for him to work as a
reformer within the Roman Church and became one of
his fixed ideas that it was his duty to assail Babylon
from without, may be placed in those months which
* De Wette, 149.

WIDENING TEE BREACH WITH ROME. 5
intervened between his debate with Eck and the pub
lication of his Address to the Nobles and People of
Germany. Harsh and sweeping words of condemna
tion he had previously spoken of the Pope ; but they
were like sparks from flint, sudden and fleeting, that
almost startled himself. On quitting Leipzig in
1519 he had no doubt that Antichrist lurked in the
Roman Curia, but he had not ceased to hold that it was
possible to drag out the canker-worm and save the
flower. He was in a mood, however, of exasperation,
distrust, and scorn, in relation to everything Papal.
His mind was overshadowed by the idea that the para
phernalia of religion, the forms, pomps, ceremonies,
officialisms of the Church as an institution, the scenic
apparatus and externals of ecclesiasticism, had made the
truth of God of none effect. An irony grim and
sardonic, a sarcasm sharp and bitter, expressed the sad
and angry sternness of his mood.
We have this to the life in the letter in which he
dedicates to Carlstadt and another of his Wittenberg col
leagues the first edition of his commentary on St. Paul's
Epistle to the Galatians.* The piece itself bears no
date, but as Luther announces, on the 3rd of September,
1519, to Lange, of Erfurth, that the printing of the
commentary has been finished on that day, we cannot
err in placing the composition of the dedication in close
proximity to this point of time.
The reader knows with what passionate reverence
Luther regarded the Epistle to the Galatians. Com-
* De Wette, 157.

6 MARTIN LUTHER.
pared with the truths enshrined in it — the truth of
the equal sonship of Gentile and Jew in the spiritual
Israel of God — the truth of salvation by grace through
faith — all questions of mere ecclesiastical order, mere
assignment of ecclesiastical offices, appeared to him in
finitely small. Yet the lesson which was dinned into
his ears by those who put themselves forward as the
men of light and leading for Christendom — the Cajetans
at Augsburg and the Ecks at Leipzig — seemed to be,
that the one thing grand enough and important enough
to claim consideration from Christians was the power
and glory of the Papal See. No matter what went on
in the background, if only the black reality was veiled
behind Papistical ceremony and ecclesiastical show. The
subalterns of the hierarchy might revel in a tyranny of
their own over the flock; the sacred name of Christ
might be invoked to shield the foulest iniquity, to ex
tinguish Christ's very name ; the Church might be laid
waste by the Church's own authority ; and yet, if the
external forms of homage to Rome were kept up, the
duty expected from observers was nothing but respectful
silence. While leaving the great ones of the theological and
ecclesiastical world, therefore, to sacrifice in the groves,
or to cut themselves with knives in honour of their Baal,
Luther had, he says, betaken himself to a task befitting
his insignificance, to the study, to wit, of one of the
smallest of authors, whose very name testified to his
littleness — Paul,* the Apostle. So far was Paul from
* A play upon the meaning of the Greek word.

WIDENING THE BREACH WITH ROME. 7
being a chief Apostle, or supreme Pontiff, that he calls
himself the least of the Apostles ; and, further illustrating
his littleness, says that he adjudges himself to know
nothing but Christ, nor even Christ in all capacities, but
Christ crucified, Christ at His lowliest. Of course, St.
Paul was not ignorant of those other matters, so great
and mighty, and, first of all, of the power of the Roman
Church and the 'majesty of her decrees ; only he con
sidered these themes as far above him, in his clownish
rudeness and lack of learning. Mighty theologians were
alone worthy to treat of themes like these ! He, Luther,
hoped that his own effort might have some success,
seeing that it was restricted to mere nothings, to the
power of Christ, for example, which in us withstands the
gates of hell, and to the privileges of the heavenly
Church, the Church which has its seat neither in Rome
nor in Jerusalem, which seeks Christ neither in one
locality nor in another, but in all places worships the
Father in spirit and in truth. Why should those grand
theological personages be moved by trifles like these,
lying, as they did, outside their exalted sphere ? He
might hope, therefore, to go about his work in safety,
" confining himself to matters befitting the smallness of
his cell."*Irony of this order is, so far as I know, unique in
literature. Perhaps there are tones of it in Isaiah and
elsewhere in the Bible. But Luther soon changes his
* " Res cellulcB mece parvitale dignas," obviously the right reading of
" res cellulas meaparvitate dignas." Such negligent uniutelligibilities are
more frequent than they ought to be in the De Wette Letters.

8 MARTIN LUTHER,
tone, and states plainly what is the footing on which he'
proposes to stand with regard to this grand ecclesiastical
power that will not let him alone. He professes to hold
the Roman Pontiff and his decretals in high honour — in
honour higher than that which he bestows on any other,
with the single exception of Christ. He will not set
the Vicar above the Vicar's Lord. The Lord's word he
will prefer to the Vicar's word, and he will apply the
Lord's word as a test and touchstone to the Vicar's
words. " I hold the Vicar to be subject to this irrefrag
able rule of the Apostle's, Prove all things, hold fast
what is good. From this yoke, I say, I will suffer no
man to extract his neck, be it in the name of Mother
Church or of Sovereign Church." The necessity of a
written rule has, he urges, become more pressing and
manifest from the clash of modern opinions, the dif
ferences of Councils, the assumption by individuals of
arbitrary power to overrule laws, and the wild confusion
that has been the result. " It is clearer than light "
that many of the decretals are alien to the sense of the
Gospel. What then ? " The very necessity of the case
compels us to have recourse to that most solid Rpck
of Divine Scripture ; and to beware how we pin our
faith to those, be they who they may, who, beyond the
authority ofthe Bible, speak, determine, or act."
He then takes and breaks like butterflies on his
wheel the Church theories of Cajetan and Silvester,
There has, evidently to his mind, been too much
seeking for, and depending on, terrestrial guidance
in the Church. "As if Christ had lied when He

WIDENING THE BREACH WITH ROME. 9
promised to be with us always, even unto the end of
the world.''
The thought of Cajetan recalls Augsburg and the
Papal briefs by which the Cardinal had tried to play
the potentate in Germany. Luther's patriotism blazes
up the moment the extortion of the hierarchy, and the
contempt with which his countrymen are regarded by
the Italians, present themselves to his mind. Those
fine gentlemen look on the Germans as fools, blockheads,
barbarians, beasts ; and laugh at the incredible patience
with which they allow themselves to be stripped of their
skins for the advantage of the Romans. With immense
delight he finds that the German princes, assembled in
Diet at Augsburg, have fixed upon that distinction
between the Roman Church and the Roman Curia
which, he believes, or at least hopes, will do yeoman's
service to the good cause. He, too, cheered by the beau
tiful example of those lay theologians of the Diet, will
distinguish by all possible height, breadth, and length,
between the Roman Church and the Roman Curia. In
the one he will recognise "the mother and queen of
Churches, the spouse of Christ, the daughter of God."
In the other he beholds evils beyond expression in words
or in tears. " By no means, then, is it lawful to resist
the Roman Church : but to resist the Roman Curia
would be a greater work of piety for kings, princes, and
all men, than to resist the Turks themselves."

CHAPTER II.
WORKS AND WORDS OF PEACE AND WAR.
It has been said that the general result of the Leipzig
disputation was favourable to the reforming party ; but
none the less is it true that the reactionary opposition
to Luther, of which the first great surge rose and broke
in Leipzig in the summer of 1519, did not lapse for
a day into a state of suspended animation. He was the
mark for a host of assailants, and lived in an atmo
sphere and element of battle.
Of all these it will be wise to say Bequiescant. Better
for us to note how, amid a " tempest of engagements,"
he finds time to attend to the minutest matters affecting
the happiness of any human being who seeks his aid.
Once he is appealed to by a forlorn baker who wants
to practise his art in Wittenberg, but is objected to by
the town guild of bakers, on the ground that his father
once kept a bath. " Tarn religiosa est nobilitas opificum,"
comments Luther : " so religiously sensitive is your
working man to the dignity of his order ! " He passed
on the request to Spalatin, to be brought to the
ear of Frederick, and we may hope that the applicant
baked loaves henceforward in Wittenberg without being-

WORKS AND WORDS OF PEACE AND WAR. 11
too poignantly affected by the arched eyebrows and
patrician sneers of his brother bakers.
It proved, doubtless, a relief, a pleasant diversion, for
him under those circumstances, to compose a little
treatise of a consolatory nature for the use of his dear
master the Prince, who had been ill. He writes it in
Latin, the grand old language still coming to his pen
most readily, as I infer; but he sends it to Spalatin
to be done into German before reaching Frederick's
hand. It is one of the most characteristic and
admired performances of Luther. Welling up from
the heart, it reveals to us how much more congenial
it would have been for him, escaping from the burning,
blinding sand of the controversial fray, to sit in the
shade with such gentle friends as Frederick and Spa-
latin, and meditate on the goodness of the heavenly
Father. There is a simplicity Sjlmost childlike, a
formal symmetry, primitive and quaint, in the de
sign of the treatise. Luther ranges under seven
heads the woes from which the Divine mercy is a
shield, and under seven heads the positive benefits
and gifts which the Divine bounty confers. The sum
of both is Fourteen, which word, in Greek, Tessara-
decas, he fixes on as the title of the piece. Compared
with much in the elaborate literature of consolation
which has since been produced, so skilfully modulated
to all the tones of sorrow, Luther's performance has
a Bunyan-like plainness and bareness. But it was
new to Frederick ; and as he was ill and heavy-laden,
his life of late having been one of much wear and

12 MARTIN LUTHER.
worry, he appreciated it deeply, and derived much com
fort from it and the affection it attested.
In all things it is towards simplicity and the
naked essence of things that our Doctor leans. Spa-
latin — who is as good as a Boswell for us in cross-
examining his friend — has been asking him what are
the appropriate methods and observances to be followed
in public celebration of the passion of Christ.* He
takes occasion to deliver an opinion on ceremonies in
general as connected with Divine worship. It is to
him, he says, in the highest degree distressing to per
ceive that ceremonies are wont to render people
" wonderfully hard, arid, difficult, and flatly inept, so far
as the substance and vigour of spiritual affection are
concerned. Trusting that all is well because they have
muttered over a multitude of words and filled up a
space of hours, the worshippers go along securely,
rarely stung to repentance, more rarely fervid, most
rarely of all penetrating to a knowledge of their own
true character."
He counsels variety, and prefers short services to
monotonous, humdrum persistence. Into this letter he
throws a word or two about Carlstadt which show how
vividly present to him at all moments were the interests
of his friends. " They tell me that Carlstadt has been
writing to you rather wildly. Mind you deal gently with
the man. He has been sore tried by the bragging of
those Eckian and other wind-bags." This is a Martin
* This is what I infer from the context to have been implied in Spala-
tin's inquiry de initituendce passionis meditatione. — De Wette 154.

WORKS AND WORDS OF PEACE AND WAR. 13
whom tempests of occupation and hosts of assailants
will not drive from his composure, or cause to forget his
friends. On the 3rd of October he writes a memorable
letter to Staupitz, from whom he seems to have just
received one. Within the hour of writing he has had,
he says, a letter from two Bohemian priests of Prague,
along with one of the books of .John Huss. They
exhort him to constancy and patience, declaring that
what he preaches is the pure theology. Next he refers
to Melanchthon, and, as usual, the theme fires him with
enthusiasm, and with self -forgetting pride in his friend
he says that Philip's answer to Eck and Company is
plainly a miracle. " If such is Christ's pleasure, Philip
will be worth many Martins. He will prove the most
puissant of all foes to the devil and scholastic theology.
He has seen through their trifles, and known the Rock
of Christ. Therefore he is puissant and will prevail."
He tells Staupitz that he has been hearing not only
from Bohemia, but from the other side of Europe. Letters
have come to hand (to whom addressed he does not say)
from Gaul, in which Erasmus is stated to have said, " I
fear his honesty will be the death of Martin." The
Bishop of Brandenburgh, on the other hand, has been
evincing unlimited hatred and fury against him. Never,
said the Bishop, would his head rest softly on his pillow
until he had cast Martin into the fire as-1— suiting the
action to the word — he " threw this faggot."
Having glanced thus freely in his letter at many
things, bright and dark, Luther now suddenly pauses,

14 MARTIN LUTHER.
waives the whole miscellany aside, and throws his
heart into a new subject. A gush of tender and
warm reminiscence of the far past floods his soul, and
looking into Staupitz's eyes, he exclaims, " Enough
now of others : what do you want to know about
me ? You leave me too much to myself. This
day, like a child weaned of its mother, I was in- ,
finitely sad about you." Then follow words which,
to Staupitz who could recall hours of most con
fidential talk in the seclusion of the cell, hours of
self-accusing penitence on Martin's part, might be per
fectly luminous ; but for us are not without mystery.
Those versed in the experiences of a spiritual life will
best understand how, almost at one and the same
moment, Luther could call on Staupitz to acknowledge
the reality of the saving work of Divine grace within
him, and also confess his own shortcoming, his lack
of faith, his failure to live up to his ideal, and there
fore his poignant distress. The words, in barest
literalism of translation, I will give ; the reader shall
interpret them for himself. "I beseech you, praise
the Lord in me, sinner as I am. I hate this worst
of lives. I think with horror of death. I am void
of faith. Other gifts abound; but Christ knows how
thoroughly I do not desire them unless I can be doing
His service."*
But he is not going to forget that a letter is a
* Obsecro te, Dominium laudes in me etiam peccatore : vitam odi pessi-
mam, mortem horreo, et fide vacuus sum, aliis donis •plenus, qux scit
Christus quam non desiderem, nisi ei serviam.1 — De Wette, 162.

WORKS AND WORDS OF PEACE AND WAR. 15
letter, or to lose the lightness of his touch in the
solemnity of the confessional. He recurs to everyday
topics. The Franciscans of his neighbourhood, he
tells Staupitz, have been holding a chapter to dispute
on the stigmata of Saint Francis and the glory of
their Order. Such has been their felicity, that those
who formerly venerated the Saint and respected the
Order begin now to have doubts as to the reality of
the stigmata of the former and as to the flourishing
condition of the latter. It was ill-will, he hints, to
himself that had set them disputing, a rumour having
got abroad that he had preached against the stigmata.
Pity, he says, that they should make themselves ridi
culous for nothing !
He cannot persist, however, in his effort to be cheer
ful. The thought of estrangement between himself and
his beloved master forces itself back. " Last night," he
cries, " I had a dream of you. You made as if you would
depart from me, and I wept and grieved most bitterly.
But you held out your hand to me, and bade me be still,
for you would return to me. And sure enough the
dream has been fulfilled this day. But now farewell,
and pray for me the most wretched of men- (me
miserrimo)." Some serious estrangement had unquestionably
taken place between the teacher and the disciple. The
vehemence of Luther, his vituperative fierceness, his
prompt pugnacity, his apparent determination to go all
lengths, and to be startled back by no mutterings of re
volutionary storm, had filled Staupitz with alarm. Nor

16 MARTIN LUTHER.
was the good Vicar alone in these sentiments. Very tar
from it. Frederick, Spalatin, Melanchthon, found some
thing questionable in Martin's impetuosity and harsh
ness. No wise and gentle-minded man could view
with approbation the unbridled fury that made him
give Eck the lie direct. His friends all round, as he
often hints, lecture him on his turbulence. His own
feeling on the point is not uniform. As we read and
re-read his letters, we observe that his mood varies,
but varies always in a manner illustrating the sincerity
of his nature, the genuineness and the prophet-like
fervour and intensity of his inspiration, and the noble
modesty which underlies his frank and undisguised
consciousness of mental power. At times he is contrite.
So many good people must have reason in their
censures. Has he not himself prescribed to others the
duty of combining tenderness of consideration for weak
or erring souls with peremptory insistence upon truth ?
At such moments he is ready to assign himself but a
rough and preparatory function in the cause of
Christ. He will be the pioneer who fells the trees and
breaks the clods, and opens the way for Philip. His
accomplished and moderate successor will lay out the
plan of the new garden of the Lord, and bring flower
and fruit to perfection. Thus he hangs his head in un
affected self-accusings. But there are times  nor are
they unfrequent — when, uttering the deepest conviction
of his soul, he betrays another mood and employs a
different language. A sense of the infinite importance
of the truth fires his imagination ; the duty laid upon

WORKS AND WORDS OF PEACE AND WAR. 17
him to offer to all the world the pure and vitalising
waters of salvation, in which his own soul has washed and
been made clean, urges him with imperious force ; the
conviction that the Gospel is being made of none effect
by those who arrogate to themselves the privileges and
powers of the Church of Christ agitates him ; and he
cries out not only " Woe is me if I hold my peace! " but
" Woe is me if I do not speak in tones of thunder! " He
will not sheathe the sword of Christ in softness of speech.
He bids his friends remember that truth searches, divides,
destroys, offends, admits no truce with falsehood, no
compromise with deadly error. As the prophetic heat
glows within him he alleges more and more loudly that
he does well to be angry ; that moderation is in some
cases wicked; that, whatever else may be laid to his
charge", he trusts and prays that he will never be guilty
of being tame, reserved, or lukewarm in proclaiming the
truth and in defying and denouncing its adversaries.
The defiant and leonine Luther, the Luther who,
like the horse in Job, scents the battle from afar and
the snorting of whose nostrils is terrible, always triumphs
over the meek and lamblike Luther. How much prettier
had it been otherwise ! Yes ; and where then had been
the Reformation ?

CHAPTER III.
DISTINGUISHED CORRESPONDENTS.
We saw that the Augsburg session of the Imperial Diet,
in 1518, was memorable in relation to European history,
not from its infinite talk and intrigue on the approach^
ing election to the Imperial throne, but because it had
furnished an opportunity to Frederick of Saxony for
getting Luther's citation to Rome to . take his trial for
heresy so far modified as to sanction his being tried in
Germany. Maximilian, the reigning Emperor, had set
his heart on being succeeded by his grandson, Charles,
and could not venture to disoblige the most influential
of the Electors. From a motive directly the reverse of
Maximilian's, to wit, in order to frustrate the election of
Charles, Pope Leo had also been desirous of ingratiating
himself with Frederick. The grand aim of Leo, as an
Italian prince, was to maintain a balance of power
among the princes of Italy ; and since Charles, in
virtue of his Neapolitan sovereignty, was an Italian
prince as well as King of Spain and the Indies, Leo
felt that the addition of the Imperial dignity would give
him a perilous ascendancy. The Pope was studiously
civil, therefore, to Frederick, and had for some time been
dangling before his eyes the Golden Rose, a bauble

DISTINGUISHED CORRESPONDENTS. 19
made precious to simple souls by Papal consecration, and
bestowed at stated intervals upon such prominent per
sonages as the Pope might delight to honour. Frederick,
accordingly, between an Emperor all smiles on this hand
and a compliant Pope on that, had no difficulty in carry
ing his point in favour of Luther.
The year 1519 was not quite a month old when all
the anxieties and schemings of weak, well-meaning
Maximilian came to an end. But the schemings of
other people, instead of being terminated by his death,
went on with augmented vivacity. Seldom in the
history of Europe has there been a period of greater
diplomatic activity than that which intervened between
the death of Maximilian in January and the Imperial
election in June, 1519. As Maximilian and his con
cerns melt like a dissolving view from the historical
horizon, a number of new figures, conspicuous among
them a group of young kings, dawn into a brightness
of visibility that has not yet quite faded away. Charles,
the likeliest candidate for the vacant throne, was but a
stripling — born at Ghent in the first year of the cen
tury. His most formidable antagonist, Francis, the
young King of the French, ambitious, adventurous,
and vain, was destined to be Charles's rival during
many a year of fitful sunshine and of frequently recur
rent storm. Henry of England, Eighth of the name,
also young, but without the modesty becoming young
men, effulgent in fields of gold and the like, where he
and Francis posed and swaggered to the admiration of
innocent mankind, made show of entering the lists as a

20 MARTIN LUTHER.
candidate, but had not the ghost of a chance. The
decision lay with Frederick. The guardian of Luther
might himself have ascended the Imperial throne, such
was the confidence reposed in him by his brother
electors ; but he too well knew the inadequacy of his
Saxon resources for coping with Imperial requirements
to accept the proffered honour. He in effect it was,
however, who put the sceptre into the hand of Charles.
Horse-loads of treasure were tendered him in reward for
his choice, but he waived it all aside, sternly forbidding
even his retinue to accept a ducat. On the 28th of June,
at the Diet of Frankfort, Charles was elected Emperor.
History knows him as Charles V., and Robertson has
made him the subject of one of the masterpieces of
historical literature.
On the 15th of January, 1520, Luther addressed to
the new Kaiser a letter. It is not intrinsically memor
able, but deserves some notice as marking the point
when the man who played the most important part in
the spiritual history of the sixteenth century first made
appeal to the man who is most conspicuous in its secular
and military annals.
Beginning with conventional expressions of un
limited self-depreciation, he soon rises to his natural
style. Insignificant, he says, as he personally may be,
his cause has entry into the Court of Heaven, and
cannot be deemed unworthy to be brought before any
earthly potentate. He had issued, he proceeds certain
little books, which had brought upon him a tempest of
hatred and anger. He had thought himself safe for two

DISTINGUISHED CORRESPONDENTS. 21
reasons : first, because, though earnestly desiring to lie
hid in his corner, he had been forced by the incitements
and wiles of others to write ; and, secondly, because the
testimony of his conscience, and the opinion of the best
judges, had been his warrant that his sole object was to
spread abroad Christian truth, divested of superstitious
opinions. Nearly three years had now gone by, during
which he had been exposed to endless fury, contumely,
danger. Vainly had he asked pardon, offered to be
silent, proposed terms of peace, entreated to be taught
a more excellent way. One fate alone was prepared for
him — to be extinguished along with the Gospel he
taught. Having tried all other expedients to no profit, he
had at length bethought him of following the example
of Athanasius and invoking the Imperial majesty; if
perchance, by its means, Christ might help His own
cause. Bending as a suppliant before the Most Serene
Charles, he entreats him to take under his protection,
not Luther, but the cause of truth, for the sake of which
alone he has been appointed to bear the Imperial sword.
Luther asks to be shielded no longer than until he
has either vanquished, or has been vanquished, in argu
ment. " I would not be defended if I am found to be
impious and heretical. One thing I ask — that neither
truth nor falsehood may be condemned unheard and
unrefuted." To this letter Charles is not known to
have vouchsafed any answer whatever. He was, be
it remembered, not yet twenty-one, and his hands
were full.

22 MARTIN LUTHER.
It is pleasant to note that Luther has occasion about
this time to chronicle a piece of genuine friendliness on
the part of Erasmus. The sovereign of letters has been
writing to the high and mighty Cardinal- Archbishop
Albert in his favour. The letter had not got into print,
but Luther refers to it in terms which suggest that he
had seen it. Some people, he says, have been handing
about a thrice excellent letter of Erasmus to the Prince-
Archbishop Albert, in which a cordial solicitude is
manifested on behalf of Luther. Erasmus defends him
with superlative skill, yet with a dexterity so fine — so
characteristic ofthe genius of the man — that you might
think he was after nothing in the world less than a
purposed vindication of him.* Had Erasmus wanted to
ingratiate himself with Albert he would have adopted
a very different tone of allusion to Luther.
Reverting to the letter to the Emperor Charles, we
may associate with it two others written by Luther
about the same time. They, as well as the Imperial
letter, may be described as letters of conciliation ;
and it is more than probable that he was influenced
to write them by Frederick, who was perpetually in
tent upon ending the disturbance by quiet methods.f
The recipients of the letters in question were none
others than Archbishop Albert and the Bishop of Merse-
burg. The first had been the patron of Tetzell; the
second had exerted himself with spasmodic vehemence

* Egregie me tutatur, Ua tamen ut nihil minus quam me tutari
videatur, sicut solet pro dexteritate sua. — De Wette, 193.
f De Wette, 194.

DISTINGUISHED CORRESPONDENTS. 23
to thwart Luther in the matter of the Leipzig dis
putation ; but Frederick anxiously hoped, or fondly
believed, that they were not hostile to Luther's main
contention ; and Luther himself had not yet made up his
mind that they could not be won over to the party of re
formation. At all events he consented to address them.
In his letter to Albert he makes not the most dis
tant allusion to Tetzell or Indulgences. His triumph in
that instance had been so complete that the day had
gone by when it was necessary to strike new blows at
the traffic in pardons for sin. Luther tacitly assumes
that what he had done in the Tetzell business entitled
him to the gratitude and confidence of the Prince-
Archbishop. He speaks as one who has been, and
means to be, loyal and dutiful, and part of whose duty
it is to disabuse, to the best of his power, the mind of
Albert of any false and mischievous impressions it may
have derived respecting him from blundering rumoUr or
from lying malice. One thing he desires with touching
earnestness — a simple thing, the most reasonable thing
in the world, indispensable, too, if any real and sym
pathetic understanding is to be attained to between
the men, and yet. unspeakably difficult — that Albert will
read what he, Luther, has written. Is it not pathetic ?
Passionately convinced that the truth he proclaims is
God's medicine for the dying soul of man — fired by the
thought that if Albert, and the like of Albert, would
but awake from their somnolent apathy, or pause amid
their puerile frivolities, and once give ear to the glad
tidings of the grace of God, they could not but repent

24 MARTIN LUTHER.
and be healed — he implores the Cardinal to give him a
hearing. All who have candidly read his writings
without perversely insinuating into them a sense not
their own, have, he says, approved of them. He is sure
that if his real position were ascertained it would be
found to involve no heresy.
To the Bishop of Merseburg he writes to the same
effect, partly even in the same terms ; but lays perhaps
more stress upon the sincerity of his belief that his doc
trine is the very truth of God, and upon the necessity
laid on him to preach it. With the Bishop, as with the
Archbishop, he pathetically pleads for a first-hand
reading of his books. On two delicate questions, the
giving of the cup to the laity, and the nature of the
Papal authority, he hints that his deviation from the
received opinion turns upon names rather than upon
things. The letters were forwarded to Spalatin, and Spalatin
sent them on to their respective destinations. Within
the month both were answered ; and, to a considerable
extent, the answers resembled each other. The Arch
bishop ingenuously confesses that he has not read, that
he has, in fact, hardly looked at, Luther's books. He
does not deny that much may be in a state to admit of
improvement ; but lauds gentle methods, deprecates dis
putation about free-will and the like, as leading to strife
and a capricious variety of opinion, and thinks that it
will uselessly unsettle the common people to suggest
innovations in the way of dispensing the sacrament.
The Bishop speaks rather more sharply. He has

DISTINGUISHED CORRESPONDENTS. 25
evidently read some, at least, of Luther's books, for he
frankly avows his inability to see what good these
" hastily thrown off and violent " performances can do.
He advises Luther to leave off " scolding and scorning,
schelten und schmdhen, and take to publishing books that
will edify."* * Walch, XV.

CHAPTER IV.
CARLSTADT AND MELANCHTHON  THE AGITATION
DEEPENING  LAURENTIUS VALLA.
In these same weeks — of February, 1520 — we find
Spalatin urging Luther, in the interest of Frederick, who
dearly prizes his devotional books, and wishes he would
write nothing else, to push on with his exegetical lec
tures and get ready his commentaries on the Psalms and
the Gospel of St. Matthew. He replies by a reference
to the overwhelming flood of his occupations. " True," he
says, " I am quick of hand and of ready memory. What
I write flows from me without effort. Yet I cannot
possibly overtake what I have to do. How men who
are slower than I am can manage is to me a mystery."
Do not the words bring us curiously near the Doctor, as
he writes in his cell in the chilly sunlight of Witten
berg, on that February day, four hundred years ago ?
Ever since the Leipzig disputation Eck has been
busying himself with opposition to Luther. He flits
away to Rome and rouses the populace of the city into
riotous protest against the listless indifference with
which their rulers seem to regard the revolt of Germany
from the Holy See. He exerts himself at Ingoldstadt
to have Luther's books publicly burnt, but even here, the

THE AGITATION DEEPENING. 27
seat of his fame, he was baffled when on the point of
success, and iratus discessit, chuckles Martin — marched
off in a rage. There is another way, indirect but not
less real or annoying, in which Luther suffers from Eck.
Carlstadt takes up the cudgels in his defence, and acquits
himself so discreditably that Luther cannot but feel
that the performance injures both himself and the cause.
On the title page, for example, of one of Carlstadt's
controversial pieces, appears an inscription beginning,
" Against that most brutal ass," etc. The " crude heat
of mind " thus betrayed distresses Luther, and he asks
Spalatin to stop Carlstadt if he can. But he adds, with
humorous perception, that it may prove a ticklish busi
ness. Carlstadt bristles up if Luther hints a fault or
hesitates dislike, and Spalatin is admonished not to let
him know that Luther has been invoking aid against
him. For Carlstadt is homo infirmatus suspicionibus, a
man who cannot walk straight or stably, but gropes
about moonstruck by suspicions. A fine, graphic touch
in pen-portraiture ! In fact, Carlstadt gives promise
of being an affliction to his friends. A man peppery,
impulsive, unstable ; a lover of extremes ; with ten
dencies to affectation and extravagance allying him
to our superfine nineteenth century rather than to
the sixteenth. Of quick parts, of great activity, but
no weight ; egotistically incapable of self-measure
ment, petulantly irritated at seeing other men take
precedence of him. Carlstadt, not Martin Luther —
this, in his inmost heart, he tried to believe — ought to
head processions, whether entering Leipzig or leading

28 MARTIN LUTHER.
mankind in general. He has had one fall; and bids
fair, on Lord Beaconsfield's principle that adventures,
are to the adventurous, to have ups and downs in the
course of his life.
But if Carlstadt is teasing and conceited, Martin
finds relief in Melanchthon. It is a fancy, yet some
thing also of a fact, that in these two men he had
reflections, and to some extent monitory reflections, of
himself. The irascibility, the dogmatism, the vitupera
tive fierceness, the tendency to call opponents asses
and other undignified beasts, which were Luther's
own besetting sins, were seen in glaring exaggeration
in Carlstadt. In Melanchthon, on the other hand, he
beheld as firm a faith as his own, but it glowed
through a beautiful irradiation of reason, gentleness,
and sympathy. Carlstadt was Luther's deterrent ex
ample. Melanchthon was his realised ideal.
It is delightful to observe how, amid his tumult of
war and work, he ceases not to exercise a paternal
guardianship over Philip. A great scheme is now
beginning to loom in the distance for the benefit and
behoof of the boylike scholar and theologian — no less
than to get him a wife ! Luther owns to Spalatin that
he has expressed the wish that Philip should be mated,
but is not without fear that it will be difficult to find a
woman suited to his scholarly ways. Shrewd Martin
has noted that mishap in wedlock follows great geniuses
almost like a fate.
But the agitation of his mind in the strife on which
he has embarked with the Papacy is all this time

THE AGITATION DEEPENING. 29
deepening. The hopes — not very confident — in which
he may have indulged when writing to Albert of
Magdeburg, and to the Bishop of Merseburg, give
place to darker anticipations. He foresees a " new
and great conflagration," but sternly hails it as indis
pensable. " Who can resist the counsel of God ? "
He warns Spalatin against interfering. " Leave the
affair, I beg, to go according to its own impelling forces ;
God alone is in the business. We are caught up and
hurried along. We are driven rather than drive."* A
few days later, still in the month of February, he writes
in the same spirit, but with specific indication of terrible
thoughts that have been dawning on him. In one of the
latest Episcopal attacks — the inhibition which the Bishop
of Meissen thought fit to issue — he detects what hitherto
he has not expressly laid to the charge of Rome or her
bishops, to wit, false doctrine of a deadly kind. " This,"
he wrote, " is blasphemy." The Bishop, he says, pro
pounds heresy that cuts into the heart of the Gospel of
Christ. If this be indeed so — if the Papal authorities
actually stick to this — 'he will make no more offers of
peace to them. " I will not suffer damned error to be
pronounced in lieu of the Gospel of God even by the
universal angel choirs of heaven, how much less then
by the idols of one little earthly Church. "f In another
tremendous letter, written about the same time, he
abandons wholly the apologetic tone he has previously
adopted, and assumes that of grave rebuke. It is not
he whom those people are • attacking, it is the truth
* De Wette, 221. t De Wette, 202.

30 MARTIN LUTHER.
of God, "and do you bid me not even bark against
such wolves ? " He will accept exile— he will endure
any hardship— but he will not be silent. "I adjure
you," he cries, " if your heart is right in regard to the
Gospel, think not that it can be maintained without
tumult, scandal, sedition. Out of a sword you will not
make a feather, out of war you will not make peace..
The Word of God is a sword, it is war, it is ruin, it is
scandal, it is loss, it is poison, it is (as Amos saith)
as a bear in the way, a leopard in the wood, and thus
it meets the sons of Ephraim." After all, however, ;
he as good as owns that he has been too vehement;
" I do not deny that I am more vehement than I
should be," adding naively, " and since they know this,
they ought not to irritate the dog."*
We are still in February, 1520 — one of the most
critical months of his life — when he makes an an
nouncement which assists us more, perhaps, than any
other of his utterances to date with precision his rup
ture with the Papacy. " I have in my hands," he
says, " by the civility of Dominic Schleusner, Lauren-
tius Valla's refutation of the Donation of Constantine^
edited by Hutten. Deus bone! what obfuscation or
what iniquity on the part of the Romans ! And — a
thing to be wondered at in the judgment of God —
that the falsification should have remained in force for
so many ages, that among the decretals should have
been recorded lies so foul, crass, and impudent ! And
— to let no possible monster of monstrosity be wanting
* De Wette, 203.

THE AGITATION DEEPENING. 31
— that they should have taken the place of articles of
faith ! So agonised am I, that I have almost ceased to
doubt that the Pope is the very Antichrist whom the
world, in its common opinion, looks for : so perfectly do
all things which he lives, does, speaks, and determines,
suit the character." *
It is possible — especially in familiar and con
fidential correspondence — for the same words to be
used on different occasions with intensely different
significance. The suggestion, we recollect, that the
Pope was Antichrist flashed across Luther's brain long
since, and was mentioned in a letter to Spalatin. But
then it was merely one of those flickering streamers of
suggestion that glitter for a moment ; passing meteors
on the firmament of the mind, that vanish utterly, and
leave the stellar lights of belief steadfast as of old.
Luther now writes in deliberate and deadliest earnest ;
and a heart-searching pang shudders through him as he
writes. Angor, I am agonised. I have a sense of
strangling nightmare anguish, as the haggard convic
tion wrestles me down.
It will be war, then, between him and the Papacy,
war to the knife. Two days after writing this letter to
Spalatin, he announces to the same correspondent that
Eck has gone to Rome to raise against him all the
powers of the abyss — impetraturus contra me abyssos
abyssorum. On the 29th of February he has received the answer
of the Bishop of Merseburg, and touches on it slightly to
* De Wette, 204.

32 MARTIN LUTHER.
Spalatin. It does not, on the whole, displease him. All
very well, he thinks, for the Bishop, in his dignified
quietude and safety, to tell him not to gird at the Roman
Pontiff. " As if, to be sure, it were a pleasant thing
for me to be tossed with tempests, and as if I should
not like better to lead my life in peace ! " Then he
glances off in the direction of the Prince-Archbishop,
whose answer to his letter has not yet reached him.
Albert, it seems, is beginning to launch out audaciously,
and to be almost tyrannical in his energy. On one point,
however, Luther cordially approves of his proceedings.
He has been taking measures to curtail beggary ;
primarily, as it would seem, the beggary associated
with monasticism. On that matter Luther delivers
an opinion which anticipates in a remarkable manner
the result of maturest thought and ripest experience in
succeeding times. " For my part, so far as in me is,
I should vehemently like to see this whole system of
mendicity done away with. This, indeed, is one of
those articles in which Eck makes me out to be, and
boastfully proclaims me, a heretic. I detest this foulest
of all means of obtaining a livelihood, and should prefer
this day to learn a trade (artificiuni) by which I might
keep myself, than to live so any longer ; and in this
heresy I shall die, let Eck say what he likes." Among
the healthy and authoritative instincts that fortify this
man, an instinct of invincible sympathy with industry
is not the least. Frank, full, outspoken hostility to
nonsense, including sentimental nonsense, has been half
the battle of Protestantism.

THE AGITATION DEEPENING. 33
Somewhat doubtfully there falls within this month
a letter to Spalatin which informs us that, while
prosecuting under the guidance of Laurentius Valla
his inquiry into the origin of Roman authority, he has
been proceeding also with his researches into the so-
called heresies of Huss. And the result has been to
him in this case as startling and lamentable as in
that. Suddenly the man whom he had classed among
the heretics and pests of the world becomes exalted
for him to a place among the martyrs standing
round the throne of God. He warns Spalatin once
more against trusting too fondly to peaceful methods.
Christ, he says, fought the fight to the shedding of
His own blood, and so, after Him, have the martyrs
contended. " Without knowing it," he cries, " I have
taught and held all the views of John Huss. So has
John Staupitz. In a word, we are all unconscious
Hussites. And, to crown the matter, Paul and
Augustine are Hussites to the letter." The effect on
him personally is that same shuddering bewilder
ment which he experienced when the horror of Papal
fraud and the express identification of Antichrist broke
upon him. " I know not, for stupor, what to think,
when I see the judgments of God so terrible among
men that Gospel truth, publicly burnt a hundred years
ago, is held for damned."
It is unnecessary to accumulate details or to multiply
quotations. The grand fact, which every reader must
be able ere now to realise with more or less vividness
for himself, is that the whole atmosphere around
d

34 MARTIN LUTHER.
Martin Luther1 is, in these months, becoming electric.
His friends apprehend plots ; nay, preternatural plots.
We hear of a certain mysterious doctor of medicine,
who possesses magical powers ; for the age of science is
not yet, and even the shrewdest intelligences are in
fluenced by fancies that would not now delude a child.
The magical powers are to be used against Luther.
The ancient association between sorcery and medicine
had not yet been broken, and this dark medicus was
said to have the power of making himself invisible and
thus approaching a detested heretic to shed poison into
his cup or the like.* It does not appear that Luther,
constitutionally dauntless, took any precautions to
shield himself from this species of danger ; but such
was his suspicion of the wiles of Rome that we find
him, in the course of the summer, actually charging
Spalatin to see to it that Frederick should not be
removed by poison.
Meanwhile the crowd of his assailants grows in
number, and his fervour against the Papacy becomes
hotter in proportion to the fury of its defenders.
Warnings, remonstrances, rebukes, are addressed to him
on this hand and on that, but he rebukes his rebukers,
and boldly asserts that the occasion is one on which
tempest and overturning are in place. " It is no new
thing, no thing of to-day, if the world is perturbed
by the Word of God. Herod and all Jerusalem with
him were troubled by the mere hearing that Christ
had been born : why should not the earth be moved
* De Wette, 221.

THE AGITATION DEEPENING. 35
and the sun be darkened when the tidings are that
Christ is dead?"
At last, when the midsummer month has crossed
the threshold and one would like to think of roses, we
learn that he has been engaged upon a new work of a
polemical nature, and that it will shortly appear in
the form of an address to the Emperor Charles and the
nobles and people of Germany, on the tyranny and
wickedness of the Roman Curia. This item of intelli
gence communicated to Spalatin early in June, 1520,
with several others that need not detain us, shows that
the heat long seething in the mountain's breast has
rent its way, and that the fire-volleying has begun.

d2

CHAPTER V.
THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY.
The publication, in the summer of 1520, of Luther's
Address to the Emperor, Nobles, and People of Ger
many must be characterised as an event ; nay, as
one of the most memorable events in the modern his
tory of Europe. Weighed in the scales of reason, its
importance would overbalance that of many a famous
battle — Fontenoy, Leuthen, Austerlitz, or Waterloo.
Images of battle, in fact, crowd upon the mind as we
contemplate this astonishing performance. The im
pression it makes is like that of the thunder and flash
of a thousand great guns. Or the words of Luther
may be figured as a host, pouring from the woods and
plains of Germany, and hurling back across the Alps
the invading legions of Rome. Never did the great
Heerde, the huge, half-disciplined herd or host of German
warriors, descend upon Italy with more impetuous fury
than this torrent of fiery language on the amazed and
panic-stricken janissaries of Rome. In the tumultuary
hosts of old Germany you would in vain have looked for
the regular movements of the parade ground. Their
power lay in their momentum, in the fierce enthusiasm
with which they were imbued, in the shock of their

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 37
onward rush. So it is with this Address of Luther's.
Liable to countless exceptions of a literary nature,
coarse, violent, irregular, laughing to scorn the re
quirements of academic propriety, it is consummately
adapted to achieve the purpose for which it was
designed — the repulse and rejection of Italian influence
from Germany. All the Teuton rage against Rome,
pent-up for centuries, is here set free. The wail of
disappointed, disenchanted peoples swells suddenly into
a roar like that of the autumn blasts. It is not
an amiable performance. Hurricanes are not amiable
things. But hurricane-work can be done only by hurri
canes. The question is, whether the hurricane is wanted.
All that was unreasonable, unsympathetic, impatient,
choleric, one-sided, coarse, in Luther, as well as the
corresponding elements in Protestantism, are typified,
represented, prefigured, in this tempest of words.
" The time for holding one's peace is past, and the
time to speak has come," says Luther, in the few sen
tences of dedication to his friend Amsdorff, with which
he prefaces the Address. The clergy are sunk in
slumberous unconcern ; it is to the laity he makes his
appeal. He will be thought presumptuous, arrogant ;
he, an insignificant monk, tutoring the Kaiser and the
nobles of Germany. He will be told that he is a fool.
So be it ! He will be court fool in the halls of the
German nobles; only he will speak, as court fools have
been known to do, truth and sense of which wiser men
decline to be the spokesmen. Fool as he may be, he is a
sworn Doctor of Holy Writ, and will prove his fidelity

38 MARTIN LUTHER.
to his oath. " Be God my help to forget my own honour
and to remember His alone ! "
Turning from the dedication to the Address itself,
we find that in the outset he is comparatively calm.
He restrains his fire, though you feel that his heart is
burning within him. The universal sense of calamity and
depression, heavy upon all lands, heaviest of all upon
Germany, is, he says, moving everyone to cry aloud to
Heaven. A noble youth* has been given them for
Kaiser, and the fact is as a dayspring of hope to many
hearts. But the imperative condition of improvement
is that trust be placed in God alone. To the absence of
this trust he imputes the failures of other times. Because
they leant on an arm of flesh were the German Kaisers,
Frederick the First and Frederick the Second, flung
miserably beneath the feet of the Popes. Because
Germany, France, and Venice trusted in themselves,
they were worsted by that blood-sucker, Pope Julius
the Second. The greater the material force, the more
ruinous is the disaster, unless all be done in humility
and the fear of God.
The Ramparts of the Papacy.
The powers of Rome, he proceeds, have entrenched
themselves behind three rampart- walls. Against all
attack, these are their defence. From behind these
they sally forth to dominate and desolate Christendom.
To lay these three in the dust is the condition of
possible reform.
* Ein junges edles Blut, a young, noble blood; the phrase, expressive
and touching in German, has no counterpart in English. '

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 39
The first is the claim of the Pope and his priestly
myrmidons to a superiority over the body of Christians
— the sacredness of a priestly class. The second is the
claim of the Pope to interpret Scripture and rule in its
name — Papal infallibility. The third is the claim of the
Pope to initiate all proceedings with a view to reform —
sole Papal right to call a General Council.
By the help of God Martin will cast down these
three walls of Babylon.
First, the inviolable sacredness of the clerical and
priestly class — let a word be spoken on that ! It
has been feigned that Pope, Bishops, Priests, Con
vent-people, constitute a Spiritual Estate ; Princes,
Gentlemen, Mechanics, Agriculturists, a Worldly Estate.
Sheer human invention, putting a false gloss upon
God's truth ! All Christians are a Spiritual Estate.
There is no difference between them but that of office.
One body, many members. So St. Paul teaches the
Corinthians. One baptism, one promise of salvation,
one faith, make of Christians one spiritual people. A
royal priesthood, a priestly kingship, are assigned by St.
Peter to all Christians alike. Ten brethren, all of the
blood royal, elect one to exercise sovereignty — that is
the sole tenable basis of Popehood. A little company of
Christians are cast upon a desolate island and forced
to settle there. No Bishop, no Priest, is among them*
Let them choose one of their number, and set him
apart to be Bishop and Priest. He will have as much
power, to the last iota, to preach, to pronounce absolu
tion, to baptise, to dispense the Eucharist, as could be

40 MARTIN LUTHER.
given him by all the Popes and Bishops that ever
breathed. In this way, in early Christian ages, were
Bishops and Priests chosen by the people and sanc
tioned by other Bishops, without the fuss and
sumptuosity now in vogue. Such Bishops were Augus
tine, Ambrose, Cyprian. This, of course, does not imply
that every man may give himself out as Priest or
Bishop. The right is common — the Christian people
are to say who shall exercise the right. But the in
delibility of the priestly character is a mere fancy. And
since the Christian layman, from Kaiser to cobbler, is
also a member of Christ's body, his shoe-making or law
making function is consecrated, and he is bound to
perform his duties for the benefit alike of priest and
people. As the Christian shoe-maker is bound to pro
vide sound shoes for the priest, so the Christian king or
magistrate is bound, if the priest is a thief or a robber,
to punish him. Privilege of clergy — a whole land
placed under interdict because a priest has been killed —
must take itself off. The life of a Christian ploughman
is as sacred as the life of a Priest or Bishop.
The next Popish rampart is the usurped right to
interpret Scripture with sole and infallible authority.
No shadow of evidence for such a pretension can be
derived from Scripture. True, the keys are committed
to St. Peter and to the rest of the Apostles. But the
power of the keys has reference to discipline alone, not
to the laying down of truth. St. Peter could unques
tionably err, since St. Paul justly rebuked him. No
Christian can divest himself of responsibility, and place

THE TRUMPET CALL TO GERMANY. 41
his conscience in the hand of Priest or Pontiff. Every
one is to quit himself like a man — pressing towards
truth and fighting down error. An honest reader, con
sulting his Bible, can be impeached by no power below
the sun.
If the first two walls are prostrate, the third cannot
long be maintained. A Pope who is a wrong-doer
cannot be called to account unless the power of calling
a Council can be exercised otherwise than by the
Roman See. The Apostolic Council, mentioned in the
fifteenth chapter of Acts, was called, not by St. Peter,
but by the Apostles and Elders generally. The most
distinguished of all Councils, the Council of Nice, was
called by the Emperor Constantine, and was not even
sanctioned by the Bishop of Rome. To call the Church
together, for judgment or for advice, is one of the uni
versal rights of Christians. It belongs, in specific cases,
to him who is most vividly alive to the evils which the
Council is required to deal with. It may fitly be
exercised by the Prince or Magistrate.
Work for a Council.
The sheltering walls being thus laid low — the ground
being cleared for a General Council — what is the work
that it ought to undertake ? It ought to break up and
recast, or utterly destroy, that disgraceful, devilish
regime of the Romans which lies hard upon German
souls. It will have to take in hand, first of all, that
ghastly pomp and haughtiness by which he who
calls himself Vicar of Christ and successor of St.

42 MARTIN LUTHER,
Peter has become more worldly than the world itself.
His crown must, forsooth, be threefold, while a single
crown contents the highest secular monarchs. It will
have to curtail, in the second place, the number of
Cardinals, fattening at Rome on the spoils of Christian
nations. The Pope can now make them thirty or
forty in a batch, and bestow upon them the best
livings in Germany. One gets the fine Monkberg
at Bamberg, another the bishopric of Wurtzburg,
one this, one that, till churches stand empty and
towns are waste; and all through the activity of
Christ's representative and the shepherd of Christ's
sheep ! Tbe blockheads of Germany have got to put
up with this as they best can. It will have to over
haul, in the third place, the Papal Court generally,
insisting upon sweeping measures of retrenchment.
Officials by the thousand — officials almost without
number — consume the immense income which is drawn
on various pretexts from Germany; Ages ago the
German Emperor and Princes granted the Pope the
annates, that is to say, one half of the first, year's
income of all vacated livings. Sums were perpetually
being demanded under colour of defending Christen- ,
dom against the Turks. More was obtained by the
sale of Indulgences. Thus were the simple Germans
treated as born fools. Not a stiver went to harm the
Turks — all was poured into the bag at Rome, the bag
that has no bottom. They lied, they cheated ; they
made stipulations of which they never thought of
observing one iota. And all was done in the sacred

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 43
names of Christ and of St. Peter! From ravening
wolves like these, the Princes and Bishops of Germany
were bound to preserve the people. The annates, having
been scandalously abused, should be withdrawn, either
by Imperial decree or by the common law of the nation
that has been so pitifully fleeced and flayed. If the
Pope has been made a tool of by others, he must
be strengthened against these ; if he is himself the
oppressor, he is to be resisted as a tyrant and a wolf.
If the Turks must be quelled, let the Germans be trusted
to quell them. In Germany there are soldiers enough
to be had ; let the money be kept there till it is applied
to its purpose, and not sent to Rome to be worse than
wasted. Robbers and tricksters, armed with unnumbered
wiles, these Romans bring all into one huge current
moving towards the insatiable maw of the Pope. It
were no wonder if God rained brimstone and hell-fire
upon Rome and sank it in the abyss like Sodom and
Gomorrha of old. If we hang thieves and behead rob
bers, why should we give free scope to that Roman
avarice which is the greatest thief and robber ever seen
upon earth, or likely to be seen ?
No payment, then, of annates ! Also no tolerance
of those Roman devices — those Papal shifts and quibbles
— commendams, reservations, exemptions, et hoc genus
omne — by which all Church affairs of the simple Germans
are drawn towards Rome, there to be arranged in pure
subservience to the demands of Roman .greed, and for
behoof of Papal courtiers ! When the Papal courtier
deputed to Germany appears with his parchments, his

44 MARTIN LUTHER.
seals, his bans, his briefs, he is to be advised to take
himself off again, and with promptitude ; or, if he likes
better, to spring into the Rhine, and give himself and
his documents a cold bath. Under the auspices of
avarice, of intrigue, of Papal favouritism, ecclesiastics
were appointed who proved to be mere ciphers and
phantasms, devoid both of learning and of worth. All
efficiency of discipline, all vigour of local government
in the Church, vanished under the influence of this
Romish centralisation, dependent upon avarice. False
freedom — freedom to do wrong — prevailed, and the Pope
showed himself the protector of licence, the patron of
immorality, in short, the Man of Sin foretold by the
Apostle. Therefore let the appointment of Bishops,
Abbots, and other ecclesiastics, be managed at home, in
accordance with the wise and honoured injunction of
the Council of Nice. Let no application be made to
Rome in connection with the affair — no dignifying sanc
tion, no far-fetched ceremony or pageant, or fuss of
any kind, no robe or pallium, be asked for or accepted.
If recourse must be had to the Pope, let it be only in
cases of such importance and difficulty that the Bishops
and Archbishops of Germany declare themselves incapable
of deciding. And let the rule be absolute that no secular
question shall be taken by appeal to Rome.
The personal pretensions of the Pope — his assump
tion of superiority in pomp and place to Kings and
Kaisers — must be abated. These are in repulsive con
trast to the lowliness of Christ, in glaring contravention
of Christ's inculcation of brotherly equality and absolute

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 45
prohibition of lordship. It is diabolical pride and vanity
in the Pope to give his feet for Emperors to kiss, or
that he, poor malodorous sinner,* should not take the
sacrament like other people, but should have it ex
tended to him on a golden rod by a Cardinal. Who has
empowered the Pope to display such monstrous arrogan-
cies ? Was it Christ, who said, " The princes of this
world exercise lordship, but do ye not likewise " ?
Papal Pretences.
One's soul is vexed by the shameless, gross, non
sensical lies that are told and taught in the canon law.
Falsehoods invented by the devil are made the basis of
ordinances to enthral Christendom. Such was that un
precedented He of the Donation of Constantine. It
must have been by especial judgment of God that so
many intelligent people have let themselves be persuaded
into an acceptance of such falsehoods. So gross are
they, so clumsy, that one should think a drunken clown
might produce lies more clever and adroit.
Pilgrimages to Rome ought to be discouraged.
There might not be much harm in them, but there was
less of good. The first time, says the proverb, a man
goes to Rome in search of a knave ; the second time, he
finds him ; the third time, he walks him home under
his own hat. But people are now so smart that they com
press the three experiences into a single visit ; and make
such an impression on their return that their friends
* Armer stinlzender Sunder. Oh, Doctor ! where are your manners ?

46 MARTIN LUTHER.
wish they had never seen the Holy City. And it were
well to put some check upon the building of beggar-
convents. No good is done, no good will ever be done,
by so much running and roving about the land. Let
there be amalgamation of Orders, curtailment of num
bers, regular subsistence, abatement of beggary. The
preaching and confessing of the monks, fruitful of brawls.
and vexation between them and the clergy, might be
abridged. It is easy to perceive that the Holy Roman
See augments the army of preaching friars for its own
purposes. A hold is thus kept upon the multitude,'
and the reforming tendencies of Priests and Bishops are
curbed. Away also with oaths and vows ! Association
if you please, but let its law be the spontaneity of Chris
tian freedom ! Celibacy of the Clergy.
The yoke of celibacy must be broken from the neck
of the priesthood. By the appointment of Christ and
His Apostles every town should have its Pastor or Bishop
— these words being synonymous — and to each of these
it is permitted to have a wife. The Roman See, putting
its own model in the place of the simple pattern of Apos
tolic Christianity, forbade Parish Priests to marry. By
so doing it fulfilled a prophecy, in which the said sub
stitution was imputed to the devil. " There shall arise
teachers, who will bring in devil's doctrine, forbidding to
marry." Thence have arisen woe and lamentation, passing
the power of man to tell. The Greek Church drew itself
off from the innovation. In the West ensued division,
sin, shame, vexation without end. What to do ? Look

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 47
the fact, as it stands, in the face. For the future, let
marriage be as free and honourable for clergy as for
laity. For the present, let the Parish Priest, sincerely
Christian, who has been in everything but name the
faithful mate of a faithful and loving woman, cast off
all sense of shame and fling all weight from his con
science, taking to himself the name of husband, and
giving her the name of wife. The two are assuredly, in
the sight of God, married. Say the Pope what he may,
they break no law, spiritual or temporal. For the
orderliness, the thrift, the comfort of a woman in the
house, what man could more conspicuously have need
than the Pastor ? Is he then, with approbation of the
Pope, to have a woman to keep his house, but not to be
his wife ? It is the worst, the most cruel, of all possible
arrangements. It is an attempt to serve God by out
raging nature. It is to put straw side by side with
fire and to forbid flame. The Pope has no more right
to forbid marriage under those circumstances than to
forbid eating and drinking. No man can be bound to
obey such a law. But on the Pope is heaped the guilt
of all those sins which such tyrannous ordinances have
produced — of all the souls that through them have been
lost — of all the consciences that through them have
been bewildered and tormented.
Mechanical Prayers and Church Festivals.
There must be an overhauling and cutting down of
ecclesiastical celebrations, and the singing or saying of
masses for departed souls. The heart of the matter in

48 MARTIN LUTHER.
these celebrations is to get gold or to indulge in eating
and drinking. Prayers mumbled over for money — •
prayers dealt out by tale and time — are not likely to be
potent with God. " Oh, my dear Christian friends, God
lays stress not on praying much but on praying well.
Nay, he expressly condemns long and many prayers
(Matt, vi.)."
All festival days ought to be abolished, and Sunday
alone declared to be the day of worship. If the festivals
of our Lady and of the great Saints are to continue,
they may be assigned to particular Sundays. Or if
celebrated on other days, they ought to be confined to
morning mass, the body of the day being set free for
labour. What with gluttony, play, idleness, and all
manner of sins, the holy-days have been desecrated, and
the work-days have become sacred. . In fasting, too, the
law of Christian liberty is to be asserted. Gentle and
delicate souls are not to be made wretched with conscien
tious scruples. Nor is a sickly and squeamish terror in
respect of priest-made sins to be permitted to enervate
the conscience. People are capable of fancying them
selves greater sinners for taking as much bread and
butter as they want than for lying, swearing, or in
continence. Miracle-Shrines.
The miracle-pilgrimages to chapels and extemporised
field-churches — Wilsnack, Sternberg, Treves, Grimmen-
thal, Regensburg — ought to be peremptorily put down.
Oh, what an account will those Bishops have to render
who sanction such devil's- mummery, and reap from

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 49
it gain ! It is the devil that promotes such busi
ness, with a view to strengthen avarice, to encourage
false and factitious belief, to draw the people from
parish churches, to increase tippling and immorality, to
waste money and labour, and to lead the multitude by
the nose. It boots not that miracles are wrought in
those places. The devil can work wonders, as Christ
has told us (Matt. xxiv.). Were there no other token
that these things are not from God, this would be proof
enough — that the crowds, raging along without reason,
troop like cattle towards the shrines. This cannot be
from God. Besides, He has given us no command con
cerning it ; and what rests on no Divine command, and
yet pushes itself forward more importunately than
duties expressly enjoined by God, must be of the devil.
The whole affair is a sign of gross unbelief among the
people. Everyone busies himself about getting up
pilgrimages, instead of looking to soundness of faith and
purity of manners. The leaders of the people are as
the people — blind leading the blind. If the pilgrimages
fall off, the Saints are cried up — not for the sake of
honouring them, but with a view to concourse and
the spending of money.
Who ga-ve authority to the Pope to set up Saints ?
Who tells him whether they are true saints or are not ?
Are there not sins enough upon earth, without tempting
God by erecting shrines to Mammon under cover of the
blessed Saints ? In the parish church you may have
baptism, sacraments, Gospel-preaching, and the fellow
ship of your neighbours ; and what more could all the

50 MARTIN LUTHER.
Saints in heaven give you ? Neither Angel nor Pope
can afford you so much as God has provided for you in
your parish church. But, in truth, the Pope allures you
from the Divine gifts, which you have for nothing, to
his own gifts, which you must pay for, and which are
worth nothing. For gold he gives you lead, for meat
leanness, for a full purse an empty bag,* for honey wax,
for substance words, for spirit letter. You see it with
your eyes, and yet will not take note of it. Trust
yourself to the Pope's parchments and seals for convey
ance to heaven, the chariot will break, and you will go
down, not in God's name.
Papal Dispensations. Antichrist.
Then there are the Papal dispensations — the permis
sions, sold for money, to tamper with conscience — the
unbinding of oaths and vows — the violation of truth
and faith. Were there no other proof that the Pope is
Antichrist, this adulterating of virtue in its very foun
tains would be evidence enough. Do you hear me,
Pope ! — not the all-holiest but the all-sinfullest ! — may
God in heaven overturn thy chair and sink it in the
abyss of hell ! Who has given thee power to exalt
thyself over thy God, to annul and reverse His com
mands ? By what right dost thou instruct all Chris
tians, and especially the German nation, a people of
noble strain, renowned in all histories as faithful and
true, to become faithless, perjured, treacherous, villain
ous, false ¦? God has bidden us keep oath and troth
* Fell urn's Fleisch, Schnur um den Beutel.

THE TRUMPET-GALL TO GERMANY. 51
even to foes, and thou presumest to set the command
aside. In thy heretical Antichristian decretals thou
claimest the right to set this command aside. Through
thy throat and by thy pen Satan lies as he never lied
before. You do violence to Scripture according to your
arbitrary will. Ah, Christ, my Lord, look down, pro
claim the day of judgment, and harry this devil's nest at
Rome ! Here sits the man of whom St. Paul has said
that he would exalt himself above Thee, sitting in Thy
Church as a god, the man of sin and son of perdition.
The Israelites, though ensnared into taking an oath to
the Gibeonites, yet observed that oath. But Ladis-
laus, King of Poland and Hungary, having been pre
vailed upon by the emissaries of the Pope to break his
oath to the Turks, was by them defeated and slain
along with a great number of his people. The pious
Kaiser Sigismund never saw good day after he let him
self be persuaded, at the Council of Constance, to
violate the safe-conduct he had granted to Huss and
Jerome. Who can tell the woe produced by the Popes
tearing up, in their devilish audacity, oaths and engage
ments between princes ? The judgment-day is, I hope,
at the door ; things cannot reach a worse pass than the
Romish See has brought them to. God's commands it
casts down ; Papal commands it sets up. If he is
not Antichrist, pray tell me who Antichrist is.
Heretics and Death by Fire.
The time has come for seriously taking up the
question of the Bohemians and speaking the truth
e 2

,52 MARTIN LUTHER.
about it, with a view to putting an end to the vile
recrimination, hatred, and envy that exist on both sides.
John Huss and Jerome of Prague, in the teeth of all
Christian, Papal, and Imperial safe-conducts, were burnt.
Whatever our opinion of these men may be, no defence
can be offered for this proceeding, and the Bohemians
are not to be blamed but commended for resenting it.
God has commanded that pledged faith shall be un
broken, and the command must be obeyed, though the
world should sink. To a heretic — to the devil himself
- — a sworn promise is not to be turned into a lie. Nor
is fire the instrument with which to treat heresy.
Heretics ought to be refuted from Scripture, as they
used to be by^the early Fathers, not extinguished in fire.
Were the fire-method the right one with heretics, then
would hangmen be our most learned Doctors, and we
might lay aside our studies, leaving it to those who
have physical force to bring heretics to the stake. As
for the Bohemians, they ought to be dealt with in a
spirit of gentleness, patience, and forbearance. Christ
Himself had to converse long with His disciples, and
bear with their want of faith, before teaching them to
believe in His resurrection.
University Beform and Aristotle.
The Universities want a sharp and thorough reform.
I must speak out, be offended who may. Under the
auspices of the Papacy the Universities have become
nurseries of sin and error. The blind heathen master,
Aristotle, is their presiding genius, rather than Christ.

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 53
Let his books, Physica, Metaphysica, De Animd, Fthica,
be discarded. Have we not Holy Writ to richly in
struct us in things of which Aristotle had not the
faintest surmise ? The dead heathen has overcome and
obstructed the Books of the living God to such an
extent that when I consider the lamentable result I
feel that the spirit of evil must have introduced the
study of him. His book of ethics is flatly opposed to
God's grace and Christian virtue, and yet it is reckoned
one of his best. Away with such books from all
Christian hands !
Let no one tell me that I run down what I know
nothing about. I know well, dear friend, what I say.
Aristotle is as familiar to me as to you and the like of
you. I have read him with more understanding than
Scotus or St. Thomas ; that I can, without self-praise,
affirm, and, if necessary, prove. I am not alarmed by
the fact that so much high intellect has been at work on
him for hundreds of years. It is plain as day that in
the world and in the Universities, errors not a few have
maintained their vitality for hundreds of years. I
should not object to the use of the logic, rhetoric, and
poetics, of Aristotle, only striking off the enormous mass
of gloss and commentary. Besides these there ought
to be the languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, mathe
matics, and history. Above all things, in Universities
and in schools, Scripture ought to be read. It is the
Christian's vineyard, in which he ought always to be at
work. There are too many theological books, and it
will be necessary to apply to them stringent rules of

54 MARTIN LUTHER.
selection. Not much reading, but good reading of good
matter, is the secret of learning. Would to God, also,
that every town had a girls' school in which, for an
hour daily, girls should hear the Gospel' read. The
schools instituted formerly in monasteries and nun
neries, as by St. Agnes and other Saints, were excel
lently in accordance with the intent of Christianity;
but the school work has been superseded by mere singing
and prayer. Economical Matters.
Enough now of spiritual concerns. We shall glance
briefly at things economical. A universal, spontaneous
resolution and decree of the nation is wanted to dis
courage that wastefulness and costliness in dress whereby
so many people of rank and wealth have been reduced
to poverty. God has given us, as He has given to
other lands, abundance of wool, hair, flax, and all that
an honest nation wants, in its various orders, for respect
able clothing. What cause, then, have we to waste
huge masses of treasure on silk, satin, cloth of gold, and
the like foreign productions ? Everyone tries to out
shine his neighbour ; pride and envy increase ; and
misery ensues. On the same ground is sumptuous
excess in food — spicery and foreign dainties — by
which money is drawn from German lands, to be
condemned. By God's grace there is produced for
us in our own country as much meat and drink, and
of as rare and excellent quality, as any land can
boast of.

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 55
Agriculture v. Trade.
I shall perhaps be called a fool proposing impossi
bilities and pulling down the great trading interest.
Well, I find no instance in history in which sound
morals followed in the wake of trade. It was for this
reason that God placed His people Israel away from
the line of sea-coast, and did not encourage them to be
shop-keepers. And in very truth we must contrive to curb the
Fuggers and such colossally rich concerns. How is it
possible that things should be well in the sight of God
or man if, within the allotted span of human life, such
mountains of gold, such royal estates, can be heaped
up ? I am not versed in arithmetic ; but this I abso
lutely cannot understand — how from a hundred gulden
one can reap twenty every year, nay, can make the coin
double itself. It is not done from corn or cattle, for
the wealth of the ground cannot be multiplied by human
wit but depends upon the kind appointment of God.
I commend the problem to the knowing ones of this
world. This, however, I know, that it were a far
goodlier business to extend agriculture and check trade.
They are on the right track who work the land and
seek a living there. To us and to all speaks Holy Writ
in the book of Adam : " Cursed is the land for thy
sake ; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ;
and in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."
There is still much land that has not been broken up
and subjected to culture.

56 MARTIN LUTHER.
Gorging and Guzzling.
It follows from our gorging and guzzling that we
Germans have an evil report in other lands. Preaching
has no power over those things, so mightily have they
got the upper hand. The loss of wealth were of slight
consequence, but hideous vices and crimes — murder,
adultery, theft, blasphemy — follow. The sword of the
magistrate may do something to stay the evil ; other
wise will the judgment-day, as Christ says, be upon us
like a thief in the night, while we eat and drink, buy
and sell, marry and give in marriage. Things are
reaching such a pass that I verily believe the judgment-
day is at the door, little as people think of such a thing.
The Social Evil.
Is it not lamentable that houses of ill fame should
have to be tolerated in our towns ? Among a popula
tion that has been washed in Christ's baptismal fountain,
does the same necessity reign as in the old pagan
cities? The alternative evils of households desolated
by shame, marriage unions broken up by adultery — are
they indeed to be contended with in no other way?
May not one dare to hope something from the govern
ing class ? Could they but learn what a terrible thing
it is to sit in the place of authority and yet to do no
royal work ! What boots it although, in personal cha
racter, a nobleman is as devout as St. Peter, if he does
not diligently apply . himself to help those under his
station? If only the governing classes {die Obrigkeit)

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 57
were to lay their heads together to devise some method
of bringing young people together in marriage, so that
everyone might hope to enter the marriage state, it
would be an immense help to good resolutions, an im
mense encouragement to fight off temptations. At
present young men rush to be parsons and monks,
ninety-nine in every hundred of them impelled by
despair of making a livelihood sufficient to keep a wife.
They take their fling by way of preliminary, sowing
their wild oats, or rather, to speak the truth, sowing
wild oats of vice and passion in their own breasts.
I find the proverb true that despair makes the majority
of monks and parsons. I earnestly advise that neither
man nor woman should take vows of celibacy before
thirty years of age. And where your object is a bit of
bread, I entreat of you to avoid entering the monastic
state. If you have not faith enough to trust God for
temporal things, you will find that much less does your
faith fit you to cope with the duties of a spiritual call
ing. Ah, it is unbelief and lack of trust in God that
ruins everything, and brings in the woe and lamentation
that abound in every rank. Young people have none
to look after them. Social anarchy reigns, and the
governing classes are as good as nothing at all ; whereas
the care of youth ought to be the most honourable
and earnest concern of Pope, Bishops, Nobles, and
Councils. They would rule far and wide, and yet
shrink from doing any one useful thing. Oh, how
rare, on this account, will be the sight of a magnate
or governor in heaven, though he should build God a

58 MARTIN LUTHER.
hundred churches and bring all the dead out of their
graves ! Closing Words.
That will do for this time. I shall be told that I
have pitched my note too high, that I have struck at
some things too sharply. I cannot help it. It is laid
upon me to speak. I shall brave the world's anger
rather than God's. They can but take my life. Again
and again I have offered peace to my opponents ; but I
perceive that God has, through them, compelled me
always to open my mouth wider than before, and, since
they scorn moderation, to give them something to speak,
bark, shriek, and write about. Let them come on, if they
want more. I have another shot in the locker for Rome.
If I fire it, the sound will not fail to be heard ! You
know, friend Rome, what I mean, don't you ?
God grant us all a Christian understanding, and to
the Christian Nobility of the German nation especially
a right spiritual courage, to do their best for the poor
Church !
Such — in so far as an abstract, severely abbreviated
and inevitably enfeebled, may do justice to its main
drift and its salient features — was this epoch-making
address. No piece by Luther is more marked by what
was always a characteristic of his work — breadth. It
seems hewn with mallet and chisel out of rock, rather
than written with pen. The effect was instantaneous.
Four thousand copies were printed early in August, and
before the end of the month a second edition was called

THE TRUMPET-CALL TO GERMANY. 59
for. Acclamations of assent and applause rang out
from the great Teutonic kindred as from one magnificent
orchestra, and we shall not greatly err if we date from
this time the commencement of that sovereignty over
the hearts and minds of his countrymen which was so
long held by Luther. Ulrich von Hutten, Sickingen,
and other gallant knights, bade him stand firm, and
offered to encircle him with their swords.
He was not, however, without his sorrows. Some
of his best friends, including Spalatin, Lange, and
Staupitz, remonstrated sharply against his violence.
He appeals to the example of St. Paul and the Prophets,
but he is not without self-reproachful qualms, and is
sometimes heavy of heart. " I am almost conquered by
weariness,'' he writes to Spalatin. " I can see little fruit
of gratitude to God resulting from my efforts. Perhaps
the fault is wholly mine." Noble Martin ! He could
wish, he says, " if it pleased God," to be discharged from
preaching and teaching. Modest hero ! Not for the like
of him is rest. Well loved of God they may be, but they
are not those loved ones for whom His gift is sleep.
One bright glimpse of comfort he had, on which, did
space permit, it might be pleasant to linger — the mar
riage of Melanchthon. As is often the way with men
who pre-eminently want wives, and are eminently
fitted to make wives happy, the gentle Grecian, buried
in his books, and, as Luther says, corporis incuriosissimus,
utterly negligent of his bodily wants, had no mind to
matrimony. His friends conspired to make a married
man of him. Luther was in the scheme, though he

60 MARTIN LUTHER.
declined to accept the dread responsibility of choosing
the woman. In November of this year, 1520, the
ceremony was performed. " My parents and sisters,"
wrote Luther to Spalatin, " honoured the nuptials of
Philip with their presence, along with most honourable
and learned persons."

CHAPTER VI.
THE BULL.
Need we wonder, when we consider Luther's activity,
from the promulgation of the Theses to the issue of the
Address to the Germans, that the opposition to him in
Rome now reached a climax ? If the Pope had any
weapon in his armoury that could be used against such
a man, the time, unless he meant to descend from his
throne and be for ever fallen, had come for using it.
Eck had exerted himself strenuously in Rome. The
multitude in the Holy City had seconded his endeavours.
The cardinals had become awake to the perils of the
situation. Even fine gentleman Leo had shaken off his
supineness. A Bull was in training.
The reader must, however, be frankly informed that
he has not yet heard of more than a part of Luther's
belligerent operations against the Papacy. The Address
to the Germans, tremendous as it was, had reference
mainly to externals. But Luther produced also, at this
period, a number of treatises and sermons on matters of
an internal and vital kind, matters which no mere
adjustment of pecuniary claims, or removal of practical
abuses, could seriously affect. In these he dealt with
the grounds on which the See of Rome based her

62 MARTIN LUTHER.
pretensions to supremacy in Christendom. T/te Baby
lonian Captivity of the Church contains enough to fill a
small volume. The name is as usual an inspiration —
an inspiration of genius intensely in sympathy with
the time. Nor does much require to be added to the
name in order to convey a fair conception of the work.
Luther takes up in succession the sacraments of the
Church, and attempts to point out their true nature
and to prove the unrighteous subjection of them, by the
Papal tyranny, aided by the scholastic philosophy, to
its own purposes.
In another tract, in name and form a sermon, he
treats of The Freedom of a Christian Man. Again the
title is a watchword — a blazon to inscribe on the banner
of a cause. And the piece is very noble, very charac
teristic. Martin Luther lives and speaks in its every
sentence. It is comparatively exempt from the tone
and terms of personal controversy — an immense ad
vantage ; for the coarseness and fierceness of Luther's
manner in dealing with personal antagonists are, once
for all, deplorable. The exultant confidence and joy in
God, and in the Word of God, with which it overflows,
are like the foam of a torrent in sunlight. To us, after
four hundred years of Bible reading and preaching, the
luxuriance of its Scriptural quotations may be somewhat
faded ; but for readers of that age it had upon it the
bloom of spring forests. Beyond any man then alive,
Martin was "learned in the Scriptures." The Bible
was for him the inspiration of Christ embodied in lan
guage. The reader must be cold indeed if he does not

THE BULL. 63
experience a sympathetic warmth in listening to the
accents of reverent enthusiasm in which Luther speaks
of his Bible and his Christ. "The soul," he cries,
"has no other thing either in heaven or on earth,
in which to live, to worship, to be free, to be Christian,
except the Holy Gospel, the Word of God, preached by
Christ, as Himself says (John xi. 25), 'I am the Life and
the Resurrection ; he who believes in Me shall live for
ever.' Again (xiv. 6), ' I am the Way, the Truth, and
the Life.' Again (Matt. iv. 4), ' Man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God.' We can be certain, therefore, that
the soul can dispense with all else except the Word of
God, and that without the Word of God nothing will
help her. Having the Word, however, she wants no
more, but finds in the Word enough, and more than
enough, food, joy, peace, light, art, righteousness, truth,
wisdom, freedom, and all good."
His portrait of the free Christian man, as he strikes
it out and leaves it fronting the ages, with God's sun
light on its face, is not without grandeur. The Christian
is a priest-like king and a king-like priest. Through
his kingship he has power over the universe of nature ;
through his priesthood he has power with God. And
this inheritance, belonging to the entire Christian people
—to every Christian layman — had been metamorphosed
into bondage to a hierarchical corporation, with its feet
on the necks of the laity ! Taking from laymen their
Christian birthright of equality, the Roman manipulators
of the Gospel had taken from them everything. " There-

64 MARTIN LUTHER.
with is taken away the whole intelligence of Christian
grace, freedom, faith, and all that we have from Christ';
and Christ Himself. Instead, we have received man-
made law and works, and have wholly become bond
slaves of the most useless people upon earth."
The month of September had not ended when
Luther heard that his arch-enemy, Eck, had returned
from Rome armed with the Bull. Early in October he
got sight of the document. His mind was promptly
made up concerning it. Perceiving it to be at variance
with the doctrine of omnipotent grace, he affirmed that
it condemned Christ, and that if it prevailed the faith
of the Church would be cancelled. He was grieved but
not despondent. " I rejoice with all my heart that I
am exposed to injuries for the best of causes. I am
unworthy of vexation so sacred. I am now much more
at liberty, being at length quite certain that the Pope
is Antichrist, and that the manifest seat of Satan has
been found."
Of this world-famous Bull — the best known that
ever was issued — it is necessary to say but a few words.
It opens with elaborate solemnity. God and the angels,
the Apostles Peter and Paul, and the saints, are formally
invoked to defend the Church against the assaults of the
heretic. Forty-one propositions, representative of
Luther's views, are separately proscribed. Some of
these— the most important in Luther's eyes — are neither
more nor less than common-places of the Augustinian
scheme of theology, stated with that bluntness and
bareness by which Luther was apt to startle his hearers..

THE BULL. 65
Knowing that Pelagianism had been expressly con
demned by Pope Innocent I. as a heresy, Luther was
aware that in the propositions in question he was more
true to Catholic theology than the authors of the Bull.
He had never since his conversion deviated for an hour
from the line of absolute consistency in maintaining
that complete self-renunciation, unreserved surrender to
God, renewal of the soul by faith in Christ — God every
thing, man nothing — were the essentials of salvation.
Another set of propositions, included as heretical in
the list of forty-one, had relation to the powers and
privileges of the Roman Church. With these, again,
are naturally connected views of the sacraments and of
the priesthood. It is a heresy, says the Bull, to deny
that the Church of Rome has been appointed by Christ
to take precedence of all other churches till the end of
time, in virtue of His gift to St. Peter. .It is a heresy
to say that absolution can be pronounced by laymen as
well as by clergymen. It is a heresy to say that a Pope
has ever been in error. And so forth.
But there is one of these Lutheran propositions,
branded in this Papal Bull as heretical, which possesses
for the modern world an interest clearly transcending
that which attaches to the theological or ecclesiastical
propositions. The thirty-third heresy of Luther is as
follows : " To burn heretics is against the will of the Holy
Ghost." For twelve hundred years — ever since Chris
tianity attained to decisive ascendancy in the Roman
Empire — it had been the law of Church and State that
the heretic should die by fire. The repeal of this law

66 MARTIN LUTHER.
was the charter of intellectual and moral freedom for
mankind. The infallible Church inscribed the proposal
to repeal it on the roll of Luther's infamies ; and those
who esteem him a mighty servant of God and of man,
a prince among the benefactors of his kind, need ask
no more than that this fact be remembered in his
praise. Eck, glorying in his Bull, found that opinion in
Germany had undergone a vast change since he en
gaged in controversial duel with Luther at Leipzig.
Instead of being greeted with applause in the scene
of his former ovation he was received with freezing
silence by the learned, and with hootings by the crowd.
The students of the University, who a year before
could scarcely be restrained by armed men, in dining
chambers, from mixing the blood of the Wittenberg
students with their sauerkraut, now raged so fiercely
against Eck as to put him in panic for his life. They
tore from him a number of copies of the Bull and flung
them into the river. Afraid to put up in any hostelry
of the town, he betook himself for shelter to the
Dominican convent, where Tetzell had lurked a year
before. It will be a ticklish business for Eck to find
men in Germany to help him to execute the mandate
of the Bull upon Martin Luther.
For Luther's part, he is more profoundly agitated
with scorn and anger than he has ever been. He calls
the Bull Satanic, and says that he is excruciated with a
sense of its malignity. "What Satan, from the be
ginning of the world, ever spoke so impudently against

THE BULL. 67
God ? But what shall I say ? The magnitude of this
Bull's most horrible blasphemies overcomes me. I am
thoroughly persuaded that the day of judgment is on
the threshold. The kingdom of Antichrist begins to
be finished." *
One part of the judgment pronounced against Luther
by the Bull was that his works should be burnt. This
item in the sentence he resolves to execute against the
Bull itself. Accordingly — thus he writes, in calm his
torical style, to Spalatin — "In the year 1520, on the
tenth of December, at the ninth hour, were burnt, at
Wittenberg, at the east gate, near the sacred cross, all
the books of the Pope : the Decree, the Decretals, the
Extravagant of Clement VI., and the latest Bull of
Leo X."
* De Wette, 268.

/2

Book IX.
THE DIET OF WORMS.
1521.

THE DIET OF WORMS.

CHAPTER I.
THE SITUATION  LUTHER's POSITION AS A PROPHET-
REFORMER.
In few words, with historical precision and lucidity —
like Julius Csesar giving account of one of his battles
— Luther announced to Spalatin the burning of the
Pope's Bull. As the blue smoke-wreath rose into
the wintry air on that December day it symbolised
much. Luther, as he looked at it, thought, perhaps, of
the pillar of cloud by day which had signalled onward
the Israel of God in their desert- journey. Three short
years before, who so weak as Martin Luther ! A penni
less monk in his cell, with three fingers, a grey-goose
quill, and the grace of God Almighty — such was his
record. In the might of faith, obeying a voice which
he, like Abraham, Moses, David, and Paul before him,
believed to be authentically Divine, he smote at a gross
and impudent iniquity. And now he publicly defies
and denounces the spiritual potentate of the West, the
Pope, who not only is himself a prince, but by the

72 MARTIN LUTHER.
authoritative tradition of a thousand years can com
mand, for the suppression of heresy, the swords of all
European kings. "Monk Martin has become a potentate,
nay, one of the foremost potentates of Christendom.
In the history of the world there certainly had not
been at that time, and it may be questioned whether
there has been at this time, any such instance of the
suasive energy of spiritual ideas. All those who have
accurate knowledge on the subject will admit that the
first spread of Christianity was a slow and gradual
process compared with the awakening of Europe by the
preaching and writing of Luther. From the Golden
Horn to the Irish Sea men had heard of Monk Martin,
and of the uprising against the Papacy. In quick
succession, blaze after blaze, the lightnings had flashed
from his brain — -sermons, theses, pamphlets, books,
letters — each setting fire to some great heap of dry
ecclesiastical rubbish, or striking down some pinnacle,
laying low some buttress, of the regnant system. True,
the world was ready for him ; true, the fuel-heaps were
dry ; but without the flash — nay, the marvellous suc
cession of flashes — they would not have caught fire.
Alone he did it ! Yes — though he had heroic pre
decessors, though he had ardent and effective fellow-
workers — this may with substantial truth be said.
Wickliffe, Huss, Savonarola, Erasmus, Hutten — honour
to them all ! Had they not done good work Luther
might have toiled in vain. But " the many fail, the
one succeeds." The one has some peculiarity of faculty,
some uniqueness of quality, which makes him the

THE PROPHET-REFORMER. 73
miracle-worker. No scholar is a prophet — no Erasmus
inspires a revolution. Huss and Savonarola lacked in
different ways the Saxon's breadth of common-sense.
Enough. The rarest combination of capacities met in
this man — resulting in one transcendent capacity to
assail the Papacy. Democratic turbulence, old German
love of battle, these were undeniably present in him,
but they couched side by side with an ingrained and
invincible respect for kaisers, kings, noblemen, magis
trates, all persons vested with lawful authority. Among
these had long been included the Pope and other digni
taries of the Church ; but he now firmly believed that
the Pope was Antichrist, and viewed all Church digni
taries with misgiving.
He was not now the man he had been at the time of
the Leipzig disputation. A clear addition had been
made to his programme of reform — an addition so great
as to modify, we might almost say to transform, his entire
polemical scheme. His opposition to Rome had until
that time been indirect, inferential, negative. Now he
believed that the Papacy was a usurpation which on its
own account ought to be overthrown. He held that
the Church of Rome had arrogated to herself such lord
ship among the churches as was alien to the spirit and
intents of Christ. He deemed himself bound to pro
claim that the Pope was Antichrist. Nay, more, he
was persuaded that Councils had fallen into error, and
had put to death by fire true children of God. All the
authority which he had formerly accorded to Church,
Pope, or Council, he now accorded to Holy Writ.

74 MARTIN LUTHER.
But we must carefully remember that, though the
area of his conflict had widened and he now called the
nations of Christendom to internecine strife with Rome,
he was scrupulously averse to the introduction of
physical force into the Lord's battle. Never for a
moment did he forget the spirituality of Christian
dynamics. He detected at a glance the element of evil
and peril involved in the sword-clashing of such men as
Sickingen and Hutten. When the latter, exulting in
the Address to the Germans, and furious at the Bull,
wrote to Martin in the Cambyses vein of literal mili
tancy, he met with no encouragement. Luther's letter
to Hutten is lost, but we have what he wrote on the
occasion to Spalatin. " I will not fight the Gospel fight
with force and carnage — I have told the man so in black
and white. By the Word has the world been con
quered. By the Word has the Church been preserved.
By the Word will her breaches be repaired. And
Antichrist, as he began without hand, so he will perish
without hand, by the Word alone." *
Immersed in Bible study — more familiar perhaps
with Scriptural phraseology than any man of his cen
tury — Luther speaks here and elsewhere in the manner
of a Hebrew prophet. The reader must note this well.
It was with him no mere affectation. He seriously and
in perfect calmness of mind believed himself to have a
prophetic mission. No super titious fancies, indeed,
clouded his robust intelligence, nor did it ever occur to
him to announce, as certified by miracle or prophetic
* De Wette, 283.

THE PROPHET-REFORMER. 75
vision, anything for which he could not produce war
rant from Scripture. But he believed that God had
specially opened his mind to apprehend the Word, and
had expressly commissioned him to prophesy against the
modern Babylon. It was not in. vanity or conceit that
he entertained this belief. He pointed out that pro
phets had constantly, in the ancient times of inspiration,
been chosen from among the poor and lowly, from
among peasants and mechanics. His inferiority in
respect of natural gifts or of culture to Melanchthon
and others he was prompt and sincere in acknowledging.
But when God made choice of him to call the Church to
reformation, an authority had, he held, been bestowed
upon him to which all souls loyal to the truth were
bound to defer ; an authority in virtue of which he
could without arrogance claim extraordinary considera
tion from men as learned as Philip, as eloquent as
Erasmus, and as highly placed as Pope and Emperor.
And it is an incontrovertible fact, singular as it may
seem to us, not only that his personal friends, those
who were nearest to him and knew him best — men so
able and instructed as Melanchthon and Spalatin — were
prepared to recognise the justice and reasonableness of
his claim, but that it had great influence on his contem
poraries generally, including his opponents.
Let us not, in the insolence of modern sciolism,
mock at all this. It was not nearly so unscientific as
some may imagine it. We still recognise the prophetic
claim in all provinces except the religious — the authority,
to wit, of a certain untaught, unteachable, unaccount-

76 MARTIN LUTHER.
able insight. In sculpture, painting, poetry, even in
science, we do so. Professor Huxley would, I have no
doubt, acknowledge that in one glance of the eye of a
man of scientific genius, a Darwin, a Forbes, a Faraday,
there might be more of authoritative revealing than
would result from the searching and study of a man
of no scientific genius, though continued for a lifetime.
Viewed scientifically, the position of Luther's friends
and followers, in believing him possessed of a certain
transcendency of insight in the religious province, cor
responded, mutatis mutandis, to this opinion which I
venture to attribute to Professor Huxley.
Even, however, if we set down the prophetic
power of Luther as a fancy, not the less must we, if
we would make ourselves at home in the sixteenth
century, recognise the belief in it as a factor in his
tory, a force in affairs. The persuasion, in its various
degrees of strength, from a mere admission of possi
bility up to impassioned confidence, that Luther was
a man of God empowered to speak to his generation,
not only pervaded the mass of his followers, already in
the end of 1520 an enormous multitude, but had a potent
influence upon those who resisted him. In part — in
great part — this persuasion was due to his personal cha
racter. That moral radiancy — that pure disinterested
ness and elevation — which men have revered and trusted
in all ages, down to that of Garibaldi and Gordon, en
circled Luther. The sentiment of Europe, a sentiment
diffused in the courts of princes and penetrating to the
inner chambers of the Vatican itself, was to the effect

THE PROPHET-REFORMER. 77
that, if one went to inquire of God, a more authentic
message from Him might be had through this blameless
monk, this preacher of righteousness, than by the lips
of lordly cardinals, or of Leo spurred and booted for the
chase. The early engravings of Luther testify, by the
halo round his head, or the white dove of the Spirit
breathing inspiration into him, to the moral radiancy
and the authoritative consecration wherewith he was
invested in the eyes of his contemporaries.
These considerations bear expressly on Luther's ap
pearance at Worms. Unless we appreciate the purport
of his claim to an authority substantially similar to that
exercised by the prophets of the Hebrew dispensation,
we may be constrained to regard as simply preposterous
his general attitude and contention, at the time when
the Emperor and Princes of Germany, assembled in
Diet at Worms, summoned him before them. Look
at the case. He had assailed the Pope in terms of
unparalleled violence. He had publicly burnt the in
strument in which the supreme ecclesiastical power in
Christendom accused him of heresy. If there was such
a thing as Church law in Europe — if the jurisdiction
of the Roman Pontiff was part of the general European
system — he had thus, without question, put himself
'within the grasp of legal authority. But he disallowed
all such authority and yet claimed to be tried. His
proposal, vaguely indicated rather than enunciated, was
that a committee of pious and learned men should be
named to be his judges. Even upon these, however, he
imposed the condition of judging solely by Scripture,

78 MARTIN LUTHER.
and of convincing him that their application of Scrip
ture was sound. In one word he practically required
that the machinery in use for trying heresy in Europe
should be set aside in his favour. " Scripture," he said
in effect, "is the law of heresy for Christendom. Con
vince me out of Scripture, or by irresistible reasons, that
my doctrines are heretical. Then, and only then, I
will recant them." Under no ordinary circumstances
could any man, with show of reason or form of right,
demand that the whole system of public law in Europe
should be put aside for his sake. But the case, though
unique, is not preposterous when we understand him to
say by implication : " The Spirit of God has spoken to
my soul, enabling me rightly to interpret Scripture."
In fact, he claimed to unseat the Pope and to reform the
Church by light from heaven, the ray being transmitted
from the throne of God to his mind, and falling upon
the Bible page. Had the Divine right and the in
fallible wisdom of the Papal See been accepted in the
Europe of Leo the Tenth, as they were accepted in the
Europe of Hildebrand, such a plea would have been
considered blasphemous presumption. But times were
changed ; faith in the Papacy had been shaken to the
foundation. That one man, a simple monk, should
have a right to rebuke and assail the Pope in the name
of God and upon the authority of Scripture was indeed
startling, but was no longer incredible.
In December, 1520, Frederick instructed Spalatin to
learn from Luther how he was minded on the subject of
the approaching Diet. If he were called to appear

THE PROPHET-REFORMER. 79
before it, would he comply ? He answered at once, and
with decision. Yes, he would appear ; if too ill to go
otherwise, he would be carried thither. In the voice of
his Kaiser, bidding him come, he would recognise the
voice of God. Were they to slay him — as was likely
enough, he said, since it was not to teach him that they
sent for him — he must commit the matter to his Divine
Father. " There still lives One who preserved the three
children in the furnace of the Babylonian king." If it
were God's will that he should die, what was his death
compared with that of the Lord Jesus ? In this cause
danger was not to be taken account of. Having begun
the good fight, he was bound not to leave the Gospel to
be a laughing-stock to the ungodly — he was bound to
shed his blood for the truth he had taught. " That our
cowardly baseness and disgrace, and the boastful scorn
of the adversary, should be - the issue, may the merciful
Christ avert ! " So much for himself. More sincere,
more manly words were never written. He will, if need
be, seal his testimony with his blood — more he cannot
do. But he is in no such mood of hysterical exultation
as could make him oblivious to considerations, nob of a
personal but of a patriotic and loyal nature, which might
render it a duty for him to guard his life, unless it were
plainly necessary for him to offer it up. It is not his
part, he says, to decide whether his life or - his death
would most effectually serve the Gospel, but it is
for him to pray that the empire of Charles, in its
beginnings, be not stained with his blood. " I should
rather," he cries, " as I have often said, perish by the

80 MARTIN LUTHER.
hands of the Romans alone, than that he and his were
drawn into the affair. You know what misery followed
the Emperor Sigismund after the slaughter of Huss.
From that day nothing went well with him. He died
without a male heir. The son of his daughter, after
wards Ladislaus, perished. His wife became an infamy
of queens." *
As evincing the practical character of his religion,
and showing how calm, composed, and healthful was
his personal life amid the tremendous agitations of his
public career, we note that in the letter he wrote to
Spalatin next after the preceding he urges his friend to
plead with Frederick in favour of the people of Kem-
berg, who were oppressed by taxes, and had petitioned,
through their Senate, for relief. " Know for certain,"
he adds, " that you serve God and do His will in the
most essentially religious, manner — -propriissimd religione
— if you accomplish anything in this matter, or get the
Prince to do anything." f In the same letter he inti
mates that he has brought the affair of a poor widow to
a successful issue. At the very time when his wrestle
with the Papacy was reaching its climax he perceived
with clearest apprehension that the quintessence of
religion lay in pleading for Christ's sake the cause of
the over-taxed poor and the heavy-laden widow.
* De Wette, 277, t De Wette, 278.

CHAPTER II.
THE YOUNG EMPEROR  A NEW LEGATE — ROME OPENS THE
ATTACK IN THE DIET — ALEANDRO's GREAT SPEECH.
Charles V., when the princes of Germany were troop
ing together in obedience to his summons to meet him
in Diet at Worms, might have been pronounced by a
hasty observer one of the pets of fortune. Destiny had
seemed to lay plans in his favour before his birth,* pre
paring for him one of the most magnificent empires that
had ever affected the imagination of mankind. His
European dominions were more extensive than had
been reigned over by any monarch since Charle
magne ; and in addition to a European empire compris
ing the fairest portions of Italy, the Netherlands, and
Germany, besides the whole of Spain, he could claim the
glories of a new world, that lay like a vision of dawn
on the far Atlantic. And yet, when the stripling
Kaiser, triumphing over every rival, was crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1520, an eye keen enough to pene
trate the veil of the future might have foreseen that
he would have his share in the calamities and heart-
eating cares of life. His empire was splendid but
* Robertson, Charles V.
3

82 MARTIN LUTHER.
heterogeneous. Spain had no sympathy with Italy ;
Germany had no community with either. His chief
rival for the Imperial dignity, the King of France, had
become his determined foe ; in the Pope he could see
but a questionable friend ; and to the north of the Alps
men seemed about to turn the world upside down in
the name of reformation.
Not without human nobleness — not devoid even of
kingly attributes — Charles was yet not quite the man
that Europe wanted for Emperor of Germany in the days
of Luther. His word was sacred — no priest, no Pope,
could wheedle him into lying. He sincerely purposed the
public good, and aimed to do his duty as the first poten
tate in the world. A far more solid man than Francis I.,
and morally sounder than the Popes, his contemporaries,
he stands well among the crowned personages of his cen
tury. But he failed in those positive and transcendent
qualities of genius that might have fitted him to be
Luther's friend and fellow-worker. Tenacious of pur
pose, he was emotionally cold; no fervour, no impas
sioned glow, irradiated the meditative melancholy of his
features. If, moreover, he was born heir of a magni
ficent realm, he inherited also certain maladies of the
soul that might entitle him to the pity of healthy pea
sants. Such, indeed, could not well have been lacking
to the child of Philip the handsome and Joanna the
monomaniac. The languid eye, expressive of listless
resignation and ineffective benevolence, is in keeping, in
Charles's portraits, with the well-meaning but indeter
minate mouth, the protruded lower lip of meditative

THE YOUNG EMPEROR. 83
obstinacy and sadness. No small sense of justice and of
duty — considerable sagacity and slow sureness of judg
ment in affairs — may be allowed to Charles ; but the
part of German Kaiser in the sixteenth century was
beyond him. That Charles should have been Kaiser,
and Martin Luther monk, is one of those facts which
the Panglosses of philosophy and theology will have
some difficulty in fitting into their theories of pre-
established harmony in the best of all possible worlds.
Had they but changed places what a different world it
might have been !
Charles's up-bringing had been of the Spanish-
Catholic type, the confessor always at his ear. Erasmus,
who visited his court in Flanders, saw so many cowled
heads about, perceived so strong an element of priest-
liness on all hands, that he intimated to his friends the
damping of his hopes that much good would result
to Germany through the instrumentality of the new
Kaiser. The Diet of Worms, at which Charles and Luther
met, began its sittings early in 1521. Pope Leo, now
alarmed and angry, had been bestirring himself. In the
autumn of 1520 a new Legate had been made choice
of to deal specially with the case of the Wittenberg
rebel. Girolamo Aleandro, librarian of the Vatican, was
one of the likeliest men that could have been found for
the enterprise. Learned in Greek and Hebrew, and
an eloquent Latinist, he was also versed in affairs and
possessed of great energy. No charge could be
brought against him of being dead to the aspiration

84 MARTIN LUTHER.
and advancing ardour of the age, for he had pushed
his researches into Chaldaic and Arabic, and had been
the intimate friend and co-worker of Erasmus.* He
was now about forty years of age.
The line taken by the envoy was clear and busi
ness-like, and he commenced operations before the
meeting of the Diet. Luther, he represented to the
Emperor, was, on any showing, a heretic. If the
authority of the See of Rome was supreme, this, of
course, followed ; for he called the Pope Antichrist, and
proclaimed as God's truth scores of propositions which
the Pope's Bull branded as heresies. If, on the
other hand, General Councils were supreme in the
Church, the case of Luther was equally desperate ; for
he expressly declared that the Council of Constance, in
condemning Huss and Jerome to the flames, had
murdered as heretics men who might have been crowned
as- saints. The question, therefore, was whether one
man, Martin Luther, should set himself above Pope and
Council alike — beyond the jurisdiction of any tribunal
known to Christendom.
All this could be easily apprehended by Charles, and
to apprehend it was, in his circumstances, and with his
views, almost equivalent to making up his mind against
Luther. The young Kaiser had an ample sense of his
own dignity, and conceived it to be bound up with the
stability of the Holy See and the permanence of that form
of faith and worship which he had received from his an
cestors. He acceded, accordingly, to Aleandro's proposal
* Roscoe, Leo X.

THE YOUNG EMPEROR. 85
that Luther's writings should be forthwith committed, in
the Netherlands, to the fire. This took place. The inci
dent proved, however, favourable to Luther rather than
the reverse; for it at once provoked an expression of
surprise on the part of Frederick of Saxony.
It was well for Luther — well also for the progress
of spiritual civilisation in Europe— that Frederick was
at this period his counsellor and guardian. Frederick
often found his Doctor hard to control ; and Luther, for
his part, valuing freedom more than life, and sensitively
afraid of compromising his sovereign prince, was at times
on the point of taking flight for Bohemia or some other
land where he might be as free as an eagle dallying with
the storm. But with Spalatin to smooth down diffi
culties, on this hand and on that, the Prince and the
Reformer continued to work together for good. Urged
by Aleandro and a host of priests and friars, Charles
might have refused Luther an audience, and dealt with
him as condemned already, had not Frederick represented
the unfairness of such a course, and tried to open
Charles's eyes, if not to the soundness of Luther's teach
ing, at least to the importance of the place he occupied
in the admiration and affection of the Germans.
The most dangerous of the tactics adopted by the
Papal party in the initial period of the Diet were those
which had it for their object to wean Frederick from
his trust in Luther, and induce him to become a con
senting party to the policy, in religious affairs, of
Charles and Leo. Glapio, the confessor of the Kaiser,
a man whose words were softer than butter, and who

86 MARTIN LUTHER.
may indeed, like Miltitz, have been more or less friendly
in his intents, approached Frederick, through his Chan
cellor Briick, with the studied representation that, in
order to save and utilise the good, admitted to be insig
nificant neither in quantity nor in quality, in Luther's
writings — in order, for example, that all Christian people
might have the benefit of Martin's sweet and reasonable
elucidations of the Psalms and other parts of Scripture —
it was infinitely to be wished that he might clear himself
from the imputation of being a blind and furious assail
ant of the sole ecclesiastical authority acknowledged in
Western Europe for fifteen hundred years. Frederick
did not forbid conference between Briick and Glapio,
but refused to confer with Glapio personally on the
subject of Luther. Can we blame him for drawing the
line at the confessor ? A perfectly intrepid Frederick,
conscious of superlative insight and practised in con
troversial word-fence, might have felt that, in obedience
to the rule, audi alteram partem, he ought to hear
Glapio. But Frederick was no Hercules of intellect,
no subtle and quick logician. His faith in Martin lay
deeper than logic. His unfaith in Rome rested also on
deeper grounds than he could logically set forth. He
therefore drew the line at the confessor.
There is something touching in the fact that Charles,
for all his Spanish entourage, for all his constitutional
predisposition to regard a man whom priests called a
heretic as an obvious incarnation of the devil, was un
questionably more or less haunted, at this period, by
the notion that Luther might possibly, even though he

THE YOUNG EMPEROR. 87
attacked Rome, have truth to speak from God. Charles
knew that Erasmus, though always with that unfathom
able smile of his which never gave whole assent to any
thing, had adopted a tone favourable to Martin. He
now found that Frederick of Saxony, whom he knew to
be religious, wise, and superior to all unworthy aims,
believed the credentials of the Wittenberg Doctor to
attest his authority as a man of God more authentically
than all the archives of the Vatican evinced the infalli
bility of the Pope. Accordingly when Aleandro, soon
after the opening of the Diet, obtained permission to
make a speech against Luther, Charles pressed it upon
him that if he would prevail, he must prove the monk
not only an enemy of Rome but a preacher of doctrines
at variance with Christian truth.
Aleandro was equal to the occasion. Maimbourg,
the able and judicious, because not intemperate, advocate
of the Papacy against the Reformers, tells us that he
spoke for three hours, and the summary of the oration
which Maimbourg inserts in his narrative demon
strates that it was admirably adapted to secure those
ends for which Aleandro had come to Worms. As we
consider its successive positions, we cannot fail to be
struck by the maturity of the argument against Re
formation principles which it presents. Romanists
and quasi-Romanists have at this hour substantially no
addition to make to the indictment which the Papal
Legate presented to the Diet of Worms. Whether
Maimbourg, golden-mouthed Jesuit, painted up the
original, I shall not decide.

88 MARTIN LUTHER.
Aleandro opened the attack in form by quoting from
Luther's books which he produced. They contained
evidence, he submitted, that the sect which this heretic
aimed at founding rejected and subverted all authority,
and involved Church and State in a common destruction.
The Divine right of the successor of St. Peter to be a
judge of controversy Luther denied ; the jurisdiction of
General Councils he equally called in question. There
being, therefore, in existence no authoritative definition
of the sense of Scripture, its determination was left to
the inventive caprice of every private person, and there
would be as many religions as heads. From the spectacle
of universal anarchy thus conjured up Aleandro turned
to consider the doctrinal teaching of Luther. Like Eck
at Leipzig, he charged him with an extravagant anti-
Pelagianism which, rushing to the opposite extreme,
destroyed the liberty of man, made moral evil and moral
good alike impossible, threw open the gate to unbridled
licentiousness, and provided for all crimes the plausible
defence, nay the legitimate apology, that the doing of
them could not be helped. By this heresiarch, in the
next place, the validity of all the sacraments of the new
dispensation was annihilated, for he denied that grace
was by them conferred. He gave to all Christians the
power of absolution. Under pretext of Christian free
dom, most vilely understood, he released Christians from
all control. He made light of vows solemnly under
taken, alleging that they constituted no obligation. In
fine, he threw the whole world into the wildest confu
sion, shattering the laws and casting down the hierarchy.

THE YOUNG EMPEROR. 89
In the Church he allowed no subordination, no obedience.
For princes he had no respect. The majesty of God
himself he impeached, for if his heretical tongue spoke
truth, God commands us to perform impossibilities.*
Having reached his climax, Aleandro appealed to
the Diet whether an evil so malignant, so menacing,
so appalling, ought not to be encountered at once by an
Imperial edict enjoining all ranks to execrate, and to
assist in stamping out, the detestable heresy ?
The effect of the oration was great. It is not too
much to say that, in substantials, Aleandro carried his
point. The sentiment of the Diet was against Luther.
The members firmly resisted the attempts of his friends
to obtain for him an opportunity to expound and defend
his views. The Romanists were determined that there
should be no repetition of the controversial experiences
of Augsburg and of Leipzig. One thing, and but one,
the advocates of reformation were able, after protracted
contention, to obtain — that Luther should be asked to
declare, in presence of the Diet, whether he was indeed
the author of the books published in his name, and, if
so, whether he would or would not retract the views
expressed in them. He was to be permitted to plead in
person — guilty or not guilty; explanation and defence
were denied him. This was hard upon Luther ; nor is
it possible to reconcile the decision of the Diet with
justice. Aleandro had been heard; every principle of
equity and of law required that Luther should be heard
also. * Maimbourg, in Seckendorf .

CHAPTER III.
AT WITTENBERG  LUTHEE WRITES TO STAUPITZ — THE DIET
IN PROSPECT  THE JOURNEY.
While the narrow old streets of Worms are bright
with the glitter of equipages, loud with the jingling
tread of armed retainers — while Aleandro's admired
exordium and thrilling peroration ring in the ears of
the Kaiser, princes, and nobles of Germany — what is
going forward in the cell of the Augustine convent at
Wittenberg, where sits or kneels the man who has
caused all this commotion ?
Luther, in those weeks, was the subject of profound
agitation, but he possessed his soul in patience. He
conceived of himself as tossed with tempests on a raging
sea ; but his faith in God was steadfast, and Christ was
with him in the ship. Never had his conviction of the
righteousness of his cause been more clear and strong.
In the second week of February, at the very time when
foes and friends were wrestling for him at Worms, he
writes to Staupitz.* The pupil has now become the
teacher. The Samuel, shall we say, once so pale-faced
and deferential, plays the part of admonishing prophet
* De Wette, 292.

AT WITTENBERG. 91
to Eli, right-hearted but infirm of purpose. Luther has
heard that Staupitz has been addressed, in tones of
reprimand and appeal, by Pope Leo. He has reason to
believe also — or strongly to suspect — that Staupitz in
his answer has gone too far in the way of concession.
Should that be so he would have him recall it. " If
Christ loves you, He will make you revoke this writing,
for in that last Bull of theirs everything is condemned
that you have either taught or tasted of the mercy
of God." Having touched severely upon the favour
evinced by Staupitz for the idea that the Pope, whom
he sees raving and raging in hostile fury against the
word of grace, should be judge in the cause, Martin
goes on to say that this is not a time to crouch abashed
and fearful, but a time to cry aloud, seeing that the
Lord Christ is " condemned, cast out, and blasphemed."
" By how much you exhort me to humbleness, by so
much do I exhort you to a proud fortitude — superbiam."
This, he avers, is specifically a time for confessing
Christ before men ; and he expresses the solemn deter
mination that, God helping him, he will not be ashamed
of his Lord. " Let me be found chargeable with pride,
with avarice, with adultery, with murder, with setting
myself up as a rival Pope, with any vices and with all :
only let me not, in the hour when my Lord suffers, be
found guilty of an impious silence."
He fears that Staupitz wavers between two —
" Christ and the Pope." Between these the strife is
irreconcilable. " Our part be it to pray that the Lord
Jesus may destroy, with the spirit of His mouth, and

92 MARTIN LUTHER.
destroy quickly, this son of perdition. But if you do
not wish to follow with me, let me go alone and be slain
: — rapi. By the grace of Christ I shall not refrain from
proclaiming to this portent of iniquity its own porten
tous iniquities — portento huic sua portenta."
This memorable letter is one of a host of proofs
that at the date of the Diet of Worms an arrangement
between the Papacy and Luther had become impossible.
Not only to preach the truth, but to tear down the hier
archical canopy that had veiled the heavens, is now for
him an imperative duty. He has ceased to distinguish
between Leo's person and office, simply characterising
him as a " wolf." Meanwhile his activity is varied and
enormous. In a corner of this same letter to Staupitz
he says that he keeps three presses going.
One item there is, in the list of occurrences during
those weeks, that does not surprise us, and that ministers
to a virile satisfaction — his discontinuance of monkish
observances. He mentions the fact to friend Lange of
Erfurth in a letter dated nearly a month later than this
tremendous one to Staupitz. His tone to Lange is
sternly cheerful, although the tale of his labours almost
staggers belief. A hydra-host of enemies are upon
him, some German, some Italian, some Dutch. The
proverb, Ne Hercules quidem contra duos, will not, he
says, suit him, for he has to do battle not with two
but with ten. And his polemical warfare is the least
of his exertions. He preaches and teaches, in pulpit
and professor's desk. He is writing on the Psalms*
He is writing on the New Testament. " But I have

AT WITTENBERG. 93
been discharged from obedience to my Order, and am
excommunicated by the Bull : and I rejoice that it is
so, and embrace the opportunity of ridding myself of
everything in monkery except the garb and the cell."
And so, once and for ever, Martin Luther puts from
him, with all its apparatus of hours and rosaries and
regulations, the monkish method of dividing and dis
posing of time. No more set prayers, uttered at set
hours ; no more working out of salvation by mindless
iteration of pious phrases. Time and energy are thus
left free for clearing the world's atmosphere of the
ecclesiastical cobwebs that have barred the sunlight for
a thousand years ; and Martin dares to think that such
work is worship — worship more pleasing to the Infinite
Mind than the most devout mumbling of regulation
prayers. He scans, from his Wittenberg cell, the general
field of Germany, noting how the conflict, now every
where begun, between Popism and Reformation pro
ceeds. The Bishop of Meissen, the Bishop of Merse-
burg ("most proud, most covetous, in his ostentatious
humility ") are fiercely in favour of the old order, and
have burnt " waggon-loads " of his writings. Under
other auspices the Bull, placarded in public places, gets
smitten with filth or torn down, or is taken forcibly
from officials and flung into the nearest river. Young
Germany, especially the young Germany of culture as
represented by the University students, goes vehemently
for reform.Now that the Diet is sitting at Worms, and

94 MARTIN LUTHER.
Aleandro pleading eloquently for the Pope and
against Luther, it occurs to some stripling of light and
leading among the Wittenberg undergraduates, some
Hamlet or Horatio of the period, that the occasion might
be suitable for an anti-Papal demonstration. Chiefly
in the nature of high jinks, but with a spice of earnest
ness in the affair, was this feat of the reforming Hamlet
and his fellow-students. On an appropriate vehicle,
aloft and costumed in befitting pomp, they placed a
figure representing the Pope. Around, at due dis
tance, were ranged the Cardinals. The vehicle was
drawn about the town, not without noise, laughter, and
bacchanal tumult, and landed in the market place.
There, ejected or projected from their car, the play-act
ing Pope Leo and his Cardinals were driven off into
different parts of the town by undergraduate throngs,
and hunted with loud laughter and horse-play. Doctor
Luther loved a joke, and did not pretend to be
scandalised by the rioting of these bold bacchanals.
" The enemy of Christ," he said, " deserves to be thus
turned into derision, he who has made a mock of the
greatest Kings, nay of Christ."
Practical in all his instincts, Luther had an admir
ably clear and comprehensive idea of ways and means.
He admitted the ministry of jest, the use of man's
faculty of humour, into the service of truth, taking care
only that it should not be usurped or simulated by
ribald and godless scorn. Cranach's woodcuts, sym
bolically illustrating the antithesis between Christ and
Antichrist, he at this time signed with his name. Such

AT WITTENBERG. 95
things, he felt, might have a good effect, especially with
laymen.* His own most congenial occupations were such
as kept him close to Scripture, annotating the Psalms,
following the harmonies of Gospel and Epistle, or
beating out the music of that most ancient of
Christian hymns which expresses the wonder and the
chastened joy of Mary in being destined to become
the mother of her Lord. Among the last things he
did before departing for Worms was to write a dedi
cation of his treatise on the Gospel narratives to the
Elector, and a dedication of his exposition of the
Magnificat to Duke Johann Frederick, nephew of the
reigning Prince.
For utmost precision in defining his position when
it still rested with him to take flight from Germany or
to leave for Worms, we must glance into his letters to
Spalatin and to Frederick, both bearing date March
19, 1521.f In these he deals with the explicit question
whether he will recant or will not, and whether, if the
alternative of recantation is death, he will still obey a
summons to Worms. He has evidently, as we perceive
in previous letters, been keeping himself accurately
informed of what was being done at the Diet. The cir
cumspective glance of a great general in the field, the
vigilant alertness and lucidity of a great lawyer in
keeping together the threads of a case, were more
in the way of our Doctor than the sanctimonious
heedlessness to facts which one is apt to associate
* De Wette, 300. f De Wette, 301—302.

96 MARTIN LUTHER.
with the religious character. Both to Spalatin and to
Frederick he writes with energetic brevity. He has
received, he tells Spalatin, the articles he may expect
to be called on to recant. "Be you quite sure," he
says, "that I shall recant nothing." If he is sum
moned to Worms to recant simpliciter, he will refuse to
go. Recantation, if executed at all, could be done at
Wittenberg as well as at Worms. But if called upon
to die, obey the summons he will, since it is that of
his Kaiser. His adversaries, he is perfectly sure, will
not be quieted till they have his blood. To Frederick
he writes less peremptorily, and with studious respect,
as becomes a subject to his Prince, but with equal
decision on the main points.
Here, at last, on Tuesday, the 26th of March, is
the Imperial herald, Caspar Sturm, bearing the Imperial
mandate to summon him to Worms. The Emperor
grants a safe-conduct for the journey, and the difficulty
as to recantation is taken out of the way, Luther not
being required, at the present stage of the business, to
give a pledge on the subject. On the 2nd of April,
in a travelling waggon furnished by the Wittenberg
authorities, roofed in against sun and rain, with Caspar
Sturm riding before, and town and gown wishing him
God-speed, he takes the road. In the waggon there
went also three others. Though he had cast off alle-
giance to the convent, he had no objection to benefit
by the kindly rule that every monk should be attended
in travelling by a brother of his Order. In addition to
this companion, Petsensteiner by name, there rode with

AT WITTENBERG. 97
him, by way of volunteer escort, Peter Swaven, a young
Pomeranian nobleman, then studying at Wittenberg,
and Amsdorf, his colleague in the University and ardent
fellow- worker in the cause of reform.
And so he proceeds, with dignified celerity but no
haste, through towns and districts which have long been
familiar to him, and where his name is now a sound that
stirs the blood. Once more, while the woods are being
fledged with the first delicate splendour of gold-green
leafage, he moves along the roads which he took on his
old journey to Heidelberg. Then he went on foot,
and though he met with eager welcome from a few
sympathising friends, there was little more than an
audible whisper of him as he moved along. His course
is now the progress of a nation's hero and favourite.
Charles himself, when he made his first visit to Germany
as Kaiser, did not excite so lively an interest. Not only
did the populace receive Luther with acclamations, but
cities and universities, undeterred by fear of offending
Pope or Kaiser, bestowed honour upon him. At Leipzig
the magistrates sent to him the present of wine usually
bestowed upon illustrious strangers. At Naumburg a
priest, well-disposed to his cause, brought him a portrait
of Savonarola, and finding that he was not abashed by
the omen, but put from him all terrors as temptations
of Satan, bade him go forward and plant his foot firmly
on the truth of God. At Erfurth, the scene of his
University studies, of his spiritual new birth and initia
tion into the office of a reformer, he was received with
extraordinary enthusiasm. The Erfurth students had
A

98 MARTIN LUTHER.
signified their minds concerning the Papal Bull by tossing
it into the river. Crotus, a front-rank figure among the
German Humanists, had recently been chosen Rector of
the University. Between him and Luther there was
old acquaintance, and if he did not enter fully into
Martin's spiritual aims and motives, he vehemently
sympathised with the Wittenberg movement as part of
a comprehensive effort to break from Germany the yoke
of foreign ecclesiastics and to assert the freedom of
intellect. He now, at the head of forty horsemen,
members of the University, met Luther near the town.
In the welcoming party rode Eoban Hess, a Humanist
poet of great distinction, who subsequently described
the journey to Worms in Latin verse.
The processioning and saluting of his entry into
Erfurth were succeeded, on the following day, Sunday,
the 7th of April, by his very earnest preaching in the
Augustinian convent. He discoursed on the subject to
which, for him, all Scripture led up, the salvation
wrought by God, not by man, the salvation by which
man is transfigured in the light of God, the salvation
by grace through faith. An immense audience hung
upon his lips as he pressed this Christian message upon
them with a fervent earnestness which Eoban Hess
compares to that of Demosthenes or St. Paul. When
his fervour had reached its climax, and the excitement
of the audience was intense, a noise was heard in the
gallery, and the impression ran from seat to seat that
the structure was giving way. Panic began to spread,
and a fatal rush to the doors seemed on the point

AT WITTENBERG. 99
of taking place, when Luther paused and told the people
not to be afraid. There was, he said, no danger. It
was merely Satan attempting to obstruct him in preach
ing the truth ; he knew the wiles of the enemy. Con
fidence was thus restored, and he proceeded with his
sermon. The incident, otherwise insignificant, calls our atten
tion to a marked trait in the spiritual physiognomy of
Luther. His conception of the evil power was sin
gularly vivid, realistic, and personal. From his infancy
he had thought of Satan as a malignant and subtle per
sonality, commander of the dark natural forces that
prey upon man, whose were the frost that shrivelled
the buds in spring, the blight and mildew that dimmed
the glory of summer, the rain that belied the promise
of harvest, the desolating energies of plague, pestilence,
and famine. That the power of good, the power of
God, is infinitely superior to the power of evil, Luther
would have held it blasphemy to deny. But evil im
personated in a living, scheming Satan was for him not
one whit less credible than evil embodied in a cruel and
treacherous man. It was part of the marvellous system
of existing things that bad men and a Satanic spirit
should alike wage war with God. Wonderful indeed
it was that the Highest should permit a fiend to vex
and thwart a minister of Christ ; but intrinsically not
more wonderful than that he should permit men to
engage in similar operations. The practical point for
Luther was that the soldier of righteousness was called
upon in both cases to defend himself; that the Satanic
h 2

100 MARTIN LUTHER.
adversary was as really alive as Emser, or Eck, or Duke
George, and much more formidable.
From Erfurth he passed on to Gotha and Eisenach.
Here he was overtaken by illness almost serious enough to
arrest his progress. Bending next to the south he paused
in Frankfort, whence he wrote some lines to Spalatin,
then at Worms, which are among the few indubitably
historical notes of a journey that has accumulated around
itself an efflorescence of fable. " We are coming, my
Spalatin, though Satan has done his best to stop me by
more than one form of malady. The whole way from
Eisenach I have been ill, and I am ill yet, in a way
I have never known before. I understand also that
Charles has issued a mandate to strike terror into
me. But Christ lives; and we will enter Worms
though all the gates of hell and powers of the air
say No." *
Luther's body might be ailing, but his mind was
clear and calm. In all the multitude, from the Kaiser
and the princes down to street mobs, interested in his
journey, there was no one so completely master of the
position as himself. While friends and foes wavered in
their intentions and vacillated in their proceedings, now
advising one thing, now another, now wishing him in
Worms, now urging him not to enter the city, he
never hesitated for a moment, or deviated by a hair's-
breadth from the path he had marked out for him
self. To those who warned him that his life was in
danger he answered that, "if there were as many
* De Wette, 309.

AT WITTENBERG, 101
devils in Worms as tiles on the houses, he would enter."
From the men of moderation and conciliation he turned
away with peremptory resolution. He knew that there
could be no alliance, no truce, between him and the
Papacy. On the 16th of April he entered Worms.
He had been fourteen days on the journey. From
Elbe to Rhine, from Wittenberg to Worms, through
the very centre of the German lands, he had come, by
Leipzig, Naumburg, Weimar, Erfurth, Gotha, Eisenach,
Berka, Hersfeld, Griinberg, Friedberg, Frankfort, Oppen-
heim. Escorted by the Imperial herald, accompanied
by the earnest expectations, aspirations, fears, hopes of
the great German kindred, confident that Satan had his
eye on him, but still more certain that God was on his
side, he had pressed on. He preached to vast congrega
tions, he listened to cheering and to warning voices, he
laid his hands on the heads of children to bless them,
he met with cordial sympathy from at least one Bishop,
Von Bibrach, the evangelical souls'-overseer of Wiirz-
burg, and was hailed by a woman, in extreme old age,
with wishes of God-speed. The stern, woe-struck face
of the martyr Savonarola, held up with its melancholy
glance as a portent to warn him back, had not turned
him from his path. At moments cast down and crying
to God from the depths of his despondency, at other
times exalted to the seventh heaven of exultant faith,
always in fundamentally earnest mood, he nevertheless
wore no air of anxiety, nor could the physical languor
which, from Eisenach onwards, bore hard upon him,
quench the vital gaiety of his spirit.

102 MARTIN LUTHER.
Even on this journey, to the scandal of Cochlceus,
he had known how to take his ease in his inn, to share
in innocent merriment, and even to contribute his mite
to the entertainment in form of a tune on his flute. But
in the foundations of his nature he was earnest as
life and death. Healthy-minded, in no delirious or
fanatical excitement, or arrogance of self-exhibiting
vanity, but as a prophet of God, empowered to rebuke
the rulers of the Church, he came.

CHAPTER IV.
BEFORE THE EMPEROR.
On Tuesday, in the third week of April, at about ten
in the morning, seated in the covered waggon which the
Wittenberg municipals had provided for him, and pre
ceded by the Imperial herald, Luther entered Worms.
Many riders, among them the most ardent of the
young German nobility, had galloped out to meet him,
and as he approached the gates he was the centre of a
cavalcade of a hundred horsemen. When, from the top
of the cathedral, the horn of the watchman announced
his entrance, thousands rushed to see him. He put up
at the hotel or hospital of the Knights of St. John.
As he alighted, the glittering of his eyes caught the
attention of the crowd. Aleandro, in writing to the
Papal Court, made mention of the circumstance. The
heresiarch's eyes sparkled, he said, like a demon's. At
the hotel of the Knights of St. John, or in its imme
diate vicinity, lodged Philip von Feilitsch and the
Elector Frederick. He was therefore in the midst of
friends. In the remaining part of the day, and until
deep in the night, many persons of distinction visited
him. The Diet, now in session at Worms, was connected
in a vaguely representative manner with an institution

104 MARTIN LUTHER.
somewhat difficult to define, and which in great part
was but magni nominis umbra, the Holy Roman Empire.
Though the name was derived from Rome, the sub
stance, in so far as it had substance, was mainly German.
The Romans never conquered Germany, but the gran
deur, the order, and the power of the imperial system
made an infinite impression on the Teutonic imagina
tion. When the material framework of the empire was
shattered, the Germans felt the spell of Rome's spiritual
ascendancy, accepted the religion that Rome had ac
cepted, and deemed no pageantry of empire so august as
that of a Roman Emperor. When Charlemagne assumed,
at the hand of the Pope, the Roman purple and the
diadem of Constantine, the European centre of physical
force had shifted from the banks of the Tiber to those
of the Rhine, the Seine, the Loire ; but the centre of
spiritual force, the fountain-head of religion and of
learning, continued in Rome. An alliance was cemented
between the Popes and the Kaisers ; and those warrior
Teutons who had never bowed to Pagan Rome looked
with reverent awe upon the Holy Roman Empire.*
To avert schism in the Church, and to lend force and
dignity to the State, by promoting the reign of justice
and truth in both, was the lofty ideal of the new league.
Charlemagne and Barbarossa may be credited with
cherishing this lofty aim ; and a few of the Popes were
worthy of such allies. But most of the Holy Roman
Emperors were failures ; and the canker of subtle im
morality soon struck its roots into the heart of the
* The Holy Roman Empire. By J. Bryce, D.C.L.

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. 105
Papacy. From a very early period, the integrity of
this grand alliance between the power spiritual and the
power temporal had been vitiated on the Papal side by
deliberate fraud. One principle at deadly variance with
the teaching of Christ was incorporated in the Imperial
constitution — that God's truth is to be defended by the
sword. To put heretics to death was the first of Imperial
duties. When the Papacy, in its indictment against
Luther, specified as one of his appalling errors the
opinion that heretics ought not to be punished with
death, it signalised a point in which, as we have already
seen, he had dared to controvert all that the associate
powers of law and gospel had taught and practised in
Europe since the days of Constantine.
Luther had been too intensely occupied as a theo
logian and preacher to render it possible for him to be
fully informed as a politician, or to see his way through
the labyrinths of state intrigue ; but he had the eye of
a supremely able man for the realities in whose presence
he stood. Disencumbered of antiquarian theory, he
saw in the Diet of the Empire an authentically repre
sentative gathering of the great German brotherhood.
From Austria in the east to Nassau in the west, the
princes, nobles, great civic magistrates, and leading
ecclesiastics of Deutschland were there. Luther did not
fully understand the motives that might guide Pope
Leo in his balancings between French King and German
Kaiser, but his mind was entirely made up that the day
had gone by when the German nations ought to remain
in spiritual tutelage to Italy. Next to his zeal for the

106 MARTIN LUTHER.
Gospel of grace, no feeling glowed within him so vehe
mently as his German patriotism, in protest against the
domineering insolence of the South.
" God will be with me ! " were the first words he
uttered on descending from his waggon. Once in
Worms — having manifested his confidence in the Im
perial safe-conduct, and turned neither to the right nor
to the left until he had obeyed the citation — he intimated
to Glapio that he had no objection to enter into confer
ence with him. The confessor replied that there would
now be no use in an interview. By way of announcing
further that he had come in no spirit of mutinous dis
content with the services and usages of the Church, he
went next morning, in his clerical capacity, to the sick
bed of John von Minkwitz, heard his confession, and
administered to him the sacrament. At an early hour
of the day Ulrich von Pappenheim, hereditary marshal
of the Empire, cited him to appear, on that same after
noon, before the Diet.
The news of the summons flew through the town,
and when the hour arrived the streets were thronged
with eager multitudes. Ulrich von Pappenheim and
Caspar Sturm, who arrived to conduct him to the Diet,
felt themselves compelled to seek privacy by passing
through the gardens of the Knights of St. John and
penetrating to the Diet by back streets. They were
but partially able, however, to evade the rush of the
crowd, which clambered to the house-roofs, with inten
tions the reverse of diabolical, to catch a glimpse of
Doctor Luther.

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. 107
On one thing the Papal party, and Charles under
their influence, were inflexibly determined, namely, that
the accused should not have a full, free, and fair hearing.
This had been accorded to Aleandro, but even his
splendid oration, and the unquestionably great impres
sion produced by it, could not man their hearts to a
frank encounter with the monk of Wittenberg. This
was what Luther solemnly demanded ; this was what,
in the name of truth, which is no Pope's perquisite, no
Kaiser's property, he, in the loyalty of his heart to
God, to humanity, to his German kindred, unspeakably
yearned for. " Hear me out ; answer me frankly ; then
burn me like Huss, if you will ! " Such was, in effect,
his cry. It was exactly what they would not assent to.
Clearly, however, in sealing his lips, his Papal adver
saries paid him a weighty compliment. Melanchthon,
who had assisted him at Leipzig, was no longer present.
He stood alone. The Kaiser had at command all the
theological learning and dialectical skill of the Papacy.
Aleandro was not only a brilliant but a judicious and
prevailing orator. But his adversaries shrank from the
encounter. The Achilles voice, which had been ringing
in the air for three years, chilled every heart in the
Papal Troy. Their plan was to insist that he ought to
be treated as condemned already. The Holy Father had
pronounced him a pestilent heretic. His books had
been condemned to the fire. All the world knew that
he had written the books. Let that knowledge be put
in legal form into the possession of the Diet. Let him
then be asked whether he will recant. If he replies in

108 MARTIN LUTHER.
the affirmative he will disappoint the expectations of
the people, he will lose the trust of his friends, he will
become une quantite negligeable. If he refuses to recant
he will stand formally convicted as a heretic. Such was
the scheme of Aleandro and his associates — Ahitophel
could not have devised a wiser.
Introduced into the Diet by the marshal and the
herald, Luther was first of all admonished to answer
the questions addressed to him, but to say no more.
John Eck — not our old friend of the Leipzig dis
putation, but a functionary of the Diet — next called
upon him to answer two questions : whether the books
which lay exposed before the Diet had been written by
him, and whether he was prepared to recant them. The
vigilant lawyer whom Frederick had instructed to keep
an eye on the Doctor's interests, insisted that the titles of
the books should be read aloud. Luther acknowledged,
sans phrase, that they were his. His reply to the
second question was a request for time for consideration.
The question, he said, bore upon faith and the salvation
of the soul, and upon the Word of God, supreme in
heaven and on earth. In these circumstances it was
presumptuous to say anything without deep reflection.
Were he to dispose of the question on the spur of the
moment he might easily say more or less than truth
required, and, in the one way or the other, fail to con
fess Christ before men, and so incur the penalty of not
being confessed by Him before His Father in heaven.
He, therefore, humbly begged for time, lest he should
dishonour the Word of God or injure his own soul.

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. 109
There was in this no flinching, no surrender ; but
his conduct is wholly inconsistent with the hypothesis
that he faced the Diet in an impetuously arrogant and
foolhardy manner. His physical powers, his nervous
system, seem to have somewhat collapsed in the sudden
blaze of Imperial and princely presence, and in the con
sciousness — terrible to the boldest heart — of standing
alone against power so overwhelming. There is credible
testimony that he spoke with bated breath, in a kind of
amazed bewilderment. The impression which he made
upon Charles was not favourable. " That is not the man
who would ever make a heretic of me," said the Kaiser.
He emphasised his disparagement of Luther's personal
appearance by expressing a conviction that he could not
be the author of the books attributed to him.
After brief conference, the Kaiser and Diet resolved
to grant the request for time. A few of the more fiery
zealots of the Popish party wished to end the matter at
once, but they were overruled. John Eck announced
to Luther that Charles, in the plenitude of his gracious-
ness, granted him one day for consideration. He was
then to give his answer, but not in the form of a
written dissertation ; it must be by word of mouth.
And so, under escort of herald and marshal, he with
drew to his place of abode. The streets were thronged,
and there were signs of storm in the movements of the
crowd. Some stout and valiant men, of knightly order,
seeing him in charge of the officials of the Diet,
whispered, " What is this, Doctor ? Are they taking
you to prison ? Are they to make a murdering matter

110 MARTIN LUTHER.
of it ? If so, we shall sell our lives for yours." " And
they would have done it, too," said Luther, referring to
the circumstance many years afterwards. But a word
and a smile quieted these ardent friends. He reached
the hotel of the Knights of St. John in safety.
He would rest for a few minutes, probably take
some refreshment; what we know for certain is,
that he promptly took pen in hand and wrote one of
those brief notes which were characteristic of the
man. It still survives, and is a light-point which
enables us to realise his state of mind at this critical
moment. He had already formed the personal acquaint
ance, in Worms, of a brother of John Cuspinian, of
Vienna, Imperial councillor and librarian, which brother
had trumpeted the. praises of Cuspinian, and doubtless
proclaimed his friendliness to Luther's cause. On this
hint he writes : " My knowledge of your kindness, most
celebrated Cuspinian, lightly moves me to write you
from the midst of the tumult raging round me, having
before now wished, from the celebrity of your name, to
become familiarly known to you. Put me down, there
fore, in the list of your personal acquaintances, in order
that I may have experimental proof of the justice of
those praises which your brother has sung so loudly.
" Within the hour I have stood before the Roman
Csesar and his brother, and been interrogated as to my
willingness to recant my books. I replied that the
books were mine ; but as for recantation, that I would
answer on the morrow, so much of time having been
asked and granted for deliberation. But, on the second

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. Ill
time of asking, I will, if Christ is propitious to me,
revoke not one syllable." *
At four o'clock on the 18th of April he was again in
the ante-room of the Diet. Here, with what seems
studied disrespect, he was kept waiting for two hours
amid bustling throngs. At about six in the evening he
was admitted. The Diet was very full. John Eck
now put the question as to recantation in a form which,
if Luther had been disposed either to evasion or com
promise, would have made such a course smooth for
him. " Are you prepared to adhere to all that is con
tained in the books you have admitted to be yours, or is
there anything you would recall ? "
Markedly respectful to the Diet — going so far, even,
as to bend the knee slightly — Luther spoke in clear and
loud voice, making himself heard in every part of the
hall. The Frankfort ambassador, who is our authority
for his flutter on the former day, has recorded that he.
now spoke with unwavering intrepidity.
In his books he distinguished three classes. The
first comprised those of a devotional, non- controversial
kind. Of them nothing required to be said. They were
admitted to be sound and profitable. The second con
sisted of those which were pointed against the Papacy,
as injurious to the souls, and as consuming the tem
poral possessions, of men. Experience and universal
complaint demonstrated that there was much to be
advanced on this head. If he repudiated his attacks
upon such evils, he would do his best to promote them,
* De Wette, 310.

112 MARTIN LUTHER.
especially when he was known to recant under the
authority of the Kaiser and of the whole Roman
Empire. " Oh, Heavens ! " he cried, " what an in
famous cloak should I, in that case, be for wickedness
and tyranny ! " The third division of his books was
occupied with answers to persons who had undertaken
to defend the Romish tyranny, and to subvert the
gospel of salvation which he had taught. These, he
owned, were defaced by an excess of vehemence. He
made no claim to be a saint. But neither could he
recant these writings, for in so doing he might seem to
withdraw censure from the bad principles and the false
arguments they refuted.
Quoting the words of Christ, " If I have spoken
evil, bear witness of the evil," he begged that he might
have his mistakes pointed out to him. Let the Kaiser,
the princes, or whoever was capable, convince him from
the writings of the prophets and apostles that he was
wrong, and he should be willing not only to recant his
books but to cast them into the fire. That danger,
division, uproar, might arise from the proclamation of
his doctrines, he could not deny. He had been reminded
of the fact on the previous day, and he had earnestly
considered it. But he was not daunted. Rather was
he stimulated and gladdened by the prospect this opened
up, such having always been the course of the Word of
God. "I am not come," Christ had said, "to bring
peace, but a sword, to set a man against his father, and
a daughter against her mother." It was for the Diet,
pondering the wonderful and terrible judgments of God,

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. 113
to beware of adopting measures which, for the sake of
peace, might proscribe truth, and thus open the flood
gates to a deluge of intolerable evils. It was for the
Diet to see to it that calamity was not thus brought
upon the reign of the young and noble Charles, upon
whom, next to God, hung their hopes. He concluded
with a word or two of modest apology for addressing
exhortation to so distinguished an audience. His duty
to his country constrained him.
Framed though it was in accordance with the ex
ternals of respect and courtesy, this answer not unna
turally produced upon the Emperor and his counsellors
an impression of impatience, irritation, and surprise.
Luther seemed to speak as if he were the impeaching
and rebuking party. After some deliberation with the
princes, Charles gave fresh instructions to Eck, who again
addressed himself to the monk, now in a tone of reprimand.
Luther had spoken, said Eck, presumptuously and irrele
vantly, instead of giving a precise answer to a definite
question. His opinions having already been condemned
when held by the heretic Huss, he possessed no right to
have them submitted to further investigation. It was for
him to acknowledge that God could not have left the
Church to fall into error for so many centuries. If
everyone who gainsaid the decisions of Church and
Council was to be argumentatively silenced, what end
could there be of disputation, what certitude could be
attained by Christian men? Let him but repudiate
those of his views which the Council of Constance had
condemned, and the Kaiser might deal tenderly with

114 MARTIN LUTHER.
the others ; whereas, if he persisted in his errors, even
those parts of his books which were unto edification
would be made of none effect. A plain reply, " without
teeth or horns," was demanded. Would he or would he
not recant those obnoxious articles ?
The critical moment had arrived ; the question put
by the spokesman of the Diet was decisive. A golden
bridge was laid down by it for Luther ; a flowery path
of distinction and emolument was practically offered
him. To realise his situation we must vividly appre
hend the slightness of the concession he was required to
make. Eck, at Leipzig, be it recollected, had declared
his willingness to accept, to all lengths and breadths,
the doctrine of the omnipotence of grace, and to abjure,
with all emphasis, the Pelagian theory of human merit.
Of Glapio, Aleandro, and Charles himself, it may be
confidently stated that they had no mind to refuse
toleration to Luther's high Augustinian doctrine. In
point of fact, the Council of Trent itself, though its
object was to check the Reformation, left this point in
obscurity, and it was fiercely debated, within the Church
of Rome, in succeeding times, between Jansenists and
Molinists. All would be forgiven Luther, and recog
nition would be vouchsafed to his genius and reforming
zeal — for it were grossly unjust to Charles and his
advisers to deny them the credit of honestly desiring
reformation — if he would but make the amende honor
able to the Pope, disown the peccant utterances which
connected him with Huss and Wickliffe, and bow to
the authority of the Roman See.

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. 115
Why should he not ? This was the question which,
for two hours, with smiles and frowns, menace tempered
by invitation, blandishment cunningly involved with
reprimand, the counsellors of Charles and the official
spokesman of the Diet continued to press upon Luther.
Imagination, working on somewhat scanty materials,
can dimly body forth the scene, held, not unwarrantably,
to be the greatest in modern history. In presence of his
Kaiser, whom he loved and honoured, and seeing near
Charles his own sovereign, Prince Frederick, whom he
knew to yearn inexpressibly for conciliation and an end
of these dissensions, Luther could not but feel the stress
of the temptation to yield. One word of submission from
his lips — one look in his eyes of amiable and obsequious
acquiescence in the plans of Charles — one whisper of
confession that he had spoken unadvisedly of the Pope
— would have made the Emperor his patron, and the
Papal Nuncio his friend. Duke George, his inveterate
opponent, and Joachim, Elector of Brandenburgh, who
was obstinately hostile, would, at worst, have gloomed
sullenly in the background. The Prince-Archbishop,
the bland and pompous Albert, would have been eloquent
in praise. Frederick, with perhaps the least little touch
of misgiving, would have been kind and glad. Luther
was deeply agitated. In the glare of the torches we
can see the beads of sweat gather on his brow. But
no subtlety of plausible self-deception — no adroit hocus-
pocus of the intellect, obliterating the line between truth
and falsehood, between life and death, and teaching
conscience to equivocate — moved him from his stead-
i 2

116 MARTIN LUTHER.
fastness. In the first place, he profoundly distrusted
the professions of the Papal party on the subject of
omnipotent, sovereign grace. In the second place, he
was unalterably convinced that, apart from all doctrinal
considerations, the yoke of the Papacy ought to be
broken from the neck of Christendom. He had abso
lutely no doubt that the claim of the Roman See to de
clare the meaning of Scripture, and to exercise dominion
over the human spirit, was contrary to the purpose of
Christ, and of deadly influence upon mankind. He knew
also that Councils had erred. To say, therefore, that
there is upon earth any person, Church, tribunal, court,
or conclave which can infallibly define truth, was to lie.
Accordingly his declinature to recant was comprehen
sive : " Unless I am refuted by the testimony of Holy
Writ, or by clear and manifest grounds and reasons,
unless the Scriptures I have adduced are proved to be
irrelevant, and my conscience is thus placed in harmony
with the Word of God, I can and will recant nothing.
For it is neither safe nor well - advised to do aught
against conscience. Here I stand. I can no other.
God be my help ! "
There has been much dispute as to the precise words
used by Luther on this occasion, dispute as futile and
foolish as that of the pedants who debate whether, in
ordering the decisive charge at Waterloo, the Duke of
Wellington, uttered the words, " Up, guards, and at
them ! " The essential and unquestionable fact is that
Luther refused to recant, and declined the j urisdiction
of the Pope, setting his face as a flint against the most

BEFORE THE EMPEROR. 117
insinuating and plausible offers of compromise. " I am
ready to die," he in effect said. " Kill me if you dare.
I shall carry my appeal to the court of God ; but I can
own the authority of no earthly power to dictate law to
conscience." Had he said .ess than this, he might have
been the means of inaugurating a period of much theo
logical disputation within the Church of Rome, and of
pruning various abuses in worship and discipline. But
he would not have broken the chains of Christendom,
or started the magnificent procession of the Protestant
nations, and introduced a new era of mental activity,
industrial energy, political expansion, and universal
progress.

CHAPTER V.
THE DEPARTURE.
" It is past ! It is past!" * said Luther, in heart- wrung
accents, clasping his hands and raising them above his
head, when he entered his hotel. Spalatin and other
friends soon came in to congratulate him. A servant
entered with a silver tankard of Eimbeck beer, which
old Duke Eric of Brunswick, observing his fatigue, had
sent him, having himself first tasted the contents.
Luther drank, and said : " As Duke Eric has remem
bered me this day, may the Lord Christ remember him
in his last hour." Tradition adds that Duke Eric,
when he came to die, bethought him of the words, and
those about his bed read from the Gospel : " Whosoever
shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of
cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say
unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward."
Frederick was not ill-pleased with the appearance
that had been made by his Doctor, and Charles mur
mured some acknowledgment that the monk had ac
quitted himself with courage and steadfastness. But the
hold which Aleandro and the Papal party had obtained
on the Imperial mind was not shaken. Next day, in a
* " Ich bin durch ! Ich bin durch ! "

THE DEPARTURE. 119
message to the Diet, written with his own hand, Charles
announced his decision.
His ancestors — emperors, kings, archdukes, and the
rest — had all, he said, from cradle to grave, been loyal
to the Roman See. In the steps of those illustrious
fathers it was his part to tread. The decrees of the holy
Council of Constance, and of other Councils, he was
determined to maintain. A solitary monk presumed to
raise his judgment against that of unanimous Christen
dom. He, Charles, was prepared to sacrifice empire,
friends, body, soul, rather than let this evil spread.
Yesterday the obstinate reply of Martin Luther had
been heard by the Diet. Too much delay — it pained
the Imperial heart to think of it — had occurred already
in proceeding against him. He was now to return to
his home according to the tenor of the safe-conduct,
not preaching by the way. Thereafter he was to be
dealt with as a manifest heretic. In all this, Charles
invoked the support of the members of the Diet, as
beseemed good and faithful Christians.
On Friday, the 19th of April, the Imperial message
was delivered to the Diet. It was not received with
the acclamations which Charles and the Nuncio may
have hoped for. The Germans did not quite like the
high-pacing, autocratic demeanour of their young
Kaiser. Still less, one can well understand, would they
be charmed by the smirking satisfaction of Glapio and
the beaming approval of Aleandro. There Were a few
Germans, no doubt, who would have outdone Charles
himself in hostility to Luther. Joachim of Branden-

120 MARTIN LUTHER.
burgh, and Duke George, would have dealt with him as
the Council of Constance dealt with Huss. But even
these were not disposed to see Germany made a pastur
ing ground for Italian ecclesiastics. George in particular
was clamorous on the subject of German grievances.
And the general sentiment of the Diet was overwhelm
ingly opposed to the ultra- Papists. Even Aleandro and
Glapio did not deceive themselves so far as to suppose
that complete victory was within their grasp. A large
party, including all moderate men, with Frederick of
Saxony, Lewis of the Palatinate, and the boyish Philip
of Hesse, in its foremost ranks, and with which Arch
bishop Albert was content to act, pleaded the cause of
Luther both in the Diet and in the immediate circle of
the Emperor. Charles was with difficulty prevailed upon
to modify the terms of his safe-conduct in such manner
as would leave three clear days for further negotiations.
With immense labour, with true German patience,
with a skill which the Doctor, a veteran disputant, could
and did appreciate, the worthy Princes tried to persuade
him to make submission to the Pope and the Emperor.
They called to their aid the most persuasive Popish theo
logian discoverable — one Wehe ; Luther witnessed to his
extreme skill as a dialectical pleader, declaring that the
Goliath of the Leipzig disputation was not worthy to
hold a candle to him. In pitched argumentative battle,
in warm post-prandial colloquy, day after day, now on
this tack, now on that, the Papists and the moderate
reformers exhausted invention in attempts to make
Luther yield. Why endeavour to trace their manoeuvres,

THE DEPARTURE. 121
or name the alternations of their strategy and tactics ?
He remained immovable.
All the world has admired his intrepidity in stand
ing firm in the presence of Charles. The lucidity of
his intellect, the soundness of his judgment, and the
firmness of his resolution, receive further illustration
from his declinature of all compromise when those well-
meaning friends of his urged it upon him. At the end
of their endeavours, they were precisely at the point at
which they had begun. He would not recant. They
dared not undertake to refute him. They would not
give him up to the Pope. He believed himself com
missioned by God to preach salvation by grace and to
denounce Antichrist. In that work he would persevere —
to do less, he was absolutely sure, would be the death,
the eternal death, of his soul. He had virtually told
the Emperor and the Diet that it was their duty to
co-operate with him in his work. Short of this, the
course he advised them to pursue — the best under the
circumstances — was to treat his enterprise as Gamaliel
had advised the Jews to treat that of the Apostles.
" If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to
nought ; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it."
The days of grace being expired, he was finally
commanded to quit Worms under the safe-conduct, the
Emperor reserving it to himself to adopt such measures
against him as became a maintainer of the Catholic
faith. Luther did not complain of the way in which he
had been treated. " Be it so," he exclaimed, on hearing
the command to depart ; " Blessed be the name of the

122 MARTIN LUTHER.
Lord ! I have desired nothing but a reformation of
the Church in accordance with Holy Writ. Compatibly
with this, I would bear anything for his Imperial
Majesty and the Empire — life, death, fame, infamy, gain,
loss; but the Word of God must not be bound. I
must assert my freedom to own and proclaim it, without
reservation. I most humbly commend me, and declare
my submission, to his Imperial Majesty and the States
of the Empire." On the 26th of April, at ten in the
morning, escorted by horsemen and gazed upon by
crowds, as when he had entered, he left Worms.
Two days later, he makes some brief pause at
Frankfort. Here, with two strokes of his pen, in a
letter to his friend Lucas Cranach, he gives an abstract
of his experiences at the Diet. " ' Are these books yours? '
'Yes.' 'Will you recant them?' 'No.' 'Then be off!'"*
Luther understood historical perspective !
We have two other letters from his pen written on
the same day but dated from Friedberg, the one in
Latin to Charles, the other in German to the electors,
princes, and estates of the Empire. In both he ex
presses himself in terms of grateful acknowledgment for
the treatment he had received at the Diet, and reite
rates a profession of his willingness to submit in all
senses which will leave unimpaired his prior submission
to the Word of God. " This, being above all things,
ought, as Paul teaches, to be itself in the highest possible
degree free and devoid of trammels." With a touch of
penetrating insight he points out that, if God's Word
* De Wette, 311.

THE DEPARTURE. 123
be supreme, it is no true exercise of the virtues of
humility and obedience to submit to those who enjoin
infraction of its authority. "It is never left to the
choice of man to subject himself to the danger of break
ing the Divine Law, to what extent soever the great
ness, the multitude, the learning, the sanctity, of those
who urge this subjection upon him may transcend and
overbalance his own powers.'' How marvellously com
plete, how exquisitely apt and pointed, is this defence,
by anticipation, of what has so often been deemed the
towering pride and insolent presumption of Protestants
in declining to submit to impositions, regal, ecclesias
tical, or Parliamentary, which restrained their liberty to
obey the Word of God !
With seer-like earnestness, not untempered by affec
tion and loyalty, he sets forth to Charles his conception
ofthe intensely personal nature ofthe relations between
man and his Maker. We owe more to God than we
can owe to man, the interests involved in the one case
being but temporal, in the other eternal. We may take
the spoiling of our goods with patience — we may even
(the Kaiser must have been dull if he did not find this
suggested by Luther's words) give our bodies to be
burnt — so much may be due from subject to sovereign,
so far may one go without sin. " But in relation to the
Word of God and his own eternal weal, God does not
permit man to incur peril out of deference to man. To
Himself, and to Himself alone, He means all men and all
things to be in the last resort subjected, inasmuch as He
alone has the glory of truth, and is the truth, but every

124 MARTIN LUTHER.
man a liar, as Paul, in the third of Romans, most excel
lently discourses. Nor is that strange (nee id injuria),
for it is in this faith and submission that essential
(vera) adoration of God consists, as St. Augustine in his
Enchiridion teaches." * His letter to the Diet, though
not a literal translation into German of the letter to the
Emperor, is entirely coincident with it in sentiment, and
closely resembles it in expression. In both letters he
professes the utmost willingness to submit his doctrines
and his books to judges above suspicion, erudite, free,
as well laymen as ecclesiastics, and to " sustain and
accept " their decision, reserving only his appeal to the
Word of God.
What he says to Charles of that essential worship
which it is idolatry to offer to any creature, casts a
significant light on his view of faith — bringing out its
unity. For Luther, faith, the organ of apprehension
between man and God, itself the work of God and turn
ing all work of man from mechanical effort into living
growth, had many applications to one result. His
torically, it was the believing ear, Divinely opened, in
the case of Abraham, of Moses, of Isaiah, of Paul, of
Augustine, of himself, to the Voice of the Eternal.
Rationally, it was the basis of all doctrinal system, and
the key — better than learning or logical acuteness — to
the records in which, by means of inspiration, the utter
ances of the Voice had been enshrined. He affirmed
also that it afforded the ultimate ground of appeal in
the exercise of discipline by the Church. We are not
* De Wette, 312.

THE DEPARTURE. 125
to suppose him so ignorant and inexperienced as to
imagine that any tribunal, court, committee, conclave,
or even company of friends met to judge a friend, can
be justly required to convince the person judged. The
model of Christian discipline, as presented in the Epistle
to Titus — the " speaking away," after first and second
admonition, of the " heretic " — a model expressly ac
cepted by Luther, does not involve the convincing of
the accused. What Luther meant was that, if he was
to submit to the judgment of Kaiser, Pope, or Diet, in
the sense of owning it just, he must be convinced from
Scripture ; otherwise he would indeed, without hesita
tion, lay down his life, but would also, as has been said,
carry his appeal to the throne of God. From the nature
of the law which both parties accepted, this was a car
dinal point. A temporal code could be referred to
the King who issued it, to the Legislature that com
posed it ; but the law of God was spiritual, and the
Court of ultimate appeal against sentences pronounced
by its authority was in heaven. The judge, therefore,
or tribunal, that sentenced the heretic, acted under the
consciousness that a writ of error might be entered in
heaven's chancery, and the condemned heretic be pro
nounced a martyr : hence the curious rule of the In
quisition that no heretic should be put to death till he
confessed his heresy. Luther denied that he wras a
heretic. He alleged that he spoke the one, simple,
eternal truth, which the schoolmen had obscured, which
the Papacy had betrayed. He was mighty in the Scrip
tures, mightier than the plausible Aleandro, mightier

126 MARTIN LUTHER.
than all the Doctors of Cologne, of Louvain, of Paris.
Even Pope Leo, though now cordially detesting him,
would have much preferred hushing up his affair to
burning him. The princes and estates of Germany,
with the exception of a furious zealot here and there,
dared not see the smoke of his burning ascend to
heaven in appeal against his executioners. The smoke
from the pyre of Huss was now dimly suspected by
many to have been no acceptable incense, but to have
rolled back on Sigismund and on Germany in wrath
and calamity.
Luther was, on the whole, favourably impressed by
Charles. The solidity and integrity; the sincere though
unenthusiastic wish to do the just and right thing, ac
cording to his light ; the slow, ruminant, but not incon
siderable ability, of the young Emperor, commended
him to the loyal Doctor. Taciturn, meditative, doing
nothing on impulse, proceeding always with a staid and
chastened dignity, he interested Luther by the contrast
presented to himself. " He speaks less," said Martin,
whose talk was an ever-flowing river, " in a year than I
do in a day."
Frederick of Saxony, constitutionally fond of peace,
and worn out physically by the strain of the Diet,
though staunch to Luther, was devoutly anxious that
his volcanic energies should be sealed up for a time. Not
improbably a few confidential words, a few significant
glances, passed between the Kaiser and the Elector on the
subject of the irrepressible Doctor. Charles and Frederick
had a good deal in common. Both were thoughtful

THE DEPARTURE. 127
i
and taciturn ; both were sagacious, both in their way
religious ; both came trailing clouds of mediaeval haze
into the wide-awake sixteenth century ; both fell short
of the intensity, intrepidity, faith, hope, and velocity of
genius. " Really, your Electoral Highness, we must do
something to moderate this alarming swell in the public
mind. Unless you can get your wild man quieted, I
shall be obliged to let him feel my hand in a way you
may dislike." Frederick would not take such a speech
from Charles in bad part. The phenomenon of the
prophet-monk had dazzled and terrified him by its light
ning-splendour. He distrusted himself too profoundly
to be able to trust Luther wholly. He had indeed
bowed his head in reverence when Luther appealed to
the Word of God, and he recoiled in startled horror from
the thought that if God indeed spake by the Doctor,
he, Frederick, should leave him to perish. Accordingly,
before Martin took his departure, the Elector and a
few others of those friends who had most strenuously
promoted his interest, represented to him the absolute
necessity of some constraint being put upon his freedom.
He was sharply annoyed by the idea ; felt that he would
prefer to fall a victim at once to the frenzied hostility of
Duke George and the zealots; but felt also that he
could not treat with disrespect the advice of these good
souls.* When, therefore, after writing to the Emperor
and the Diet from Friedberg, he proceeded on his
journey, he was prepared for adventures.
* Letter to Cranach. De Wette, 311.

CHAPTER VI.
IN the forest.
Luther's appearance at Worms had not tended to
lower him in the estimation of his countrymen. As he
proceeded on his homeward way, he received almost
princely honours. On the 13th of April, on approach
ing Hirschfeld, in the territory of the Landgrave
Philip of Hesse, he was met by the Chancellor and
Treasurer of the Prince Abbot of the place, accompanied
by a large military escort. Nearer to the town the
Abbot himself, at the head of a cavalcade of knights,
made his appearance. Within the gates, the Senate
awaited him. The party were sumptuously entertained
by the Abbot, who left his own bed that it might be
occupied by Luther. Next morning this bold prelate
insisted that his guest should preach. Luther at first
resisted the proposal, urging that the Abbot might draw
down on himself the vengeance of his superiors, and re
calling the injunction to forbear from preaching which
Charles had imposed when permitting him to depart
under shelter of the safe-conduct. The consideration
of his own danger had no effect upon the Abbot ; and
Luther explained what looked too like the breach of an
engagement on his part, by saying that he had not con
sented to the binding of the Word of God.

IN THE FOREST. 129
From Hirschfeld he went on to Eisenach. Here
again he preached, but now under formal notarial
protest by the incumbent of the church, who, however,
humbly excused himself on the plea of necessity.
Luther was conscious that he might be accused of
breaking his word, and in a letter to Albert, Count of
Mansfeld,* we have his reply to the anticipated charge.
" They bound me," he wrote to Count Albert, in allusion
to what took place at Worms, " not to preach or write
on the way. I said : ' I will do the whole pleasure of
the Kaiser, but I will leave the Word of God un
bound.' " The reservation, having been openly made,
afforded adequate defence.
At Eisenach the Luther party broke up. Some of
the friends who had accompanied him so far bade
him farewell, and proceeded onwards in the direction
of Wittenberg. He himself, with Amsdorf and the
Augustinian brother who had been with him all along,
turned southward to Mohra, penetrating the skirt of the
Thuringian wood in the neighbourhood of Eisenach, and
reaching the moorland hamlet in and around which
clustered the Luther kindred. In the deep seclusion
and rusticity of Mohra he passed one whole day in
friendly converse with his relatives, a thing in which, we
may be sure, he took great delight after the agitations of
the last three weeks. Of his intercourse with his uncles
and cousins on this occasion we have no details, but we
need not doubt that he bestowed upon one or two of
them whom he could trust, such information respecting
* De Wette, 315.
j

130 MARTIN LUTHER.
the sequel as should enable them, without being too
precise, to allay by judicious hints and nods any anxiety
that might arise touching the fate of their kinsman.
On Saturday, the 4th of May, he once more set his
face towards Wittenberg, moving eastward through the
Thuringian forest. A few of his nearest relatives gave
him convoy for some way, but as the grey tower of
Altenstein Castle began to be seen by glimpses through
the trees, they took their leave. In the waggon which
the Wittenberg town-counsellors had provided for him,
with Amsdorf and the Augustinian brother, Petsensteiner,
by his side, he once more fared onwards. A look of
somewhat unusual consciousness, with nervous alertness
and searching glances into every woodland glen and
shadowed hollow bordering their path, might have been
detected in Amsdorf, and Luther fidgeted probably
beyond his wont; but the driver was not less listless
than on other days, and the simple friar feared no evil.
Suddenly, when they were approaching the crag of
Altenstein, and the ruins of Glisbach church were near
at hand, five horsemen, two of them wearing masks,
flashed into sight and barred their way. Petsensteiner,
obedient to the instinct of self-preservation, leaped from
the waggon and made off through the wood, not looking
behind him but pushing on for Waltershausen, which he
reached on foot in the evening. The waggoner was
flung roughly upon the earth, Amsdorf was overpowered,
and Luther was seized. Some buffets appear to have
been administered to the driver as he lay on the ground,
but one trusts that they did not involve more than

IN THE FOREST. 131
pantomime discomfort. The object of the assailants
plainly was Luther. He was hurried some way into
the wood and mounted on a horse that stood ready to
receive him. Amsdorf .and the waggoner were then
released, and permitted to pursue their journey.
The horsemen galloped off with Luther, after
first disguising him in knightly habiliments, into the
depths of the forest. After many doublings and
windings, in the course of which, being thoroughly
tired, he stopped to rest beside a fountain that still
bears his name, they led him, at about eleven at night,
to the castle of the Wartburg, placed on its lofty rock
above the town of Eisenach. The masked leaders of the
armed men who effected his seizure were Burkhard von
Hund, of Altenstein, and John von Berlepsch, governor
of the Wartburg. The business, first and last, had
been managed with singular felicity, Luther's prelimi
nary visit to his relations being admirably fitted to
obviate extremities of alarm and anger among the
people. A whisper that it was the Papists who were
baffled could thus be put into circulation without dis
closure of his place of retreat. Aleandro felt that he had
been outgeneralled. " It is the Saxon fox ! " he signalled
to Rome, perceiving in the affair the wary hand of
Frederick. Luther had been well served by his friends.
And the Elector — with a prophet and a Pope upon his
hands, not to mention an Emperor — was perhaps not
much more comforted by the thought that Luther was
safe, than by the hope that he would at last, for some
time, leave off thundering.
;2

Book X.

THE WARTBURG.

1521.

THE WARTBURG.

CHAPTER I.
AMONG THE BIRDS.
Rest, then, at last. The long slow climb, zigzag by
zigzag, up the Wartburg, lofty and steep, in the dark
night, is at an end, and the panting horses stand at the
gate of the castle. The honest knight, Berlepsch, who
holds the place for Frederick, helps his prisoner, whom
he treats with all honour and tenderness, to dismount,
leads him up the stone steps, and conducts him to his
room. It is low and of small compass ; a tenant farmer
in our days would think it a poor sitting-room ; but for
Luther, accustomed to the narrowness of a cell, it was
perfectly commodious. Prayer was a perpetual habit of
his, and we may be sure that, before casting himself on
his bed, he roused all his faculties into vivid wakeful
ness to pour out his soul in fervent communion with
God. We may trust that thereafter sleep, profound
and dreamless, descended swiftly upon him, and con
tinued to hold him enthralled until the May morning
had flooded with light the slopes and crags of the
Wartburg.

136 MARTIN LUTHER.
He would feel it strange but not unpleasant when he
awoke. He knew well where he was. The touch of
the sunlight would recall to him the sweetest hours of
his boyhood. The Wartburg stands in a region which,
beyond all others, was clothed in bright hues for his
imagination and heart. Eisenach, clustered at the foot
of the Wartburg, was his " dear town," where first he
had known the charm of cultured intercourse, and where
first his eye had been struck by the beauty of landscape.
When he threw open the lattice and looked through
his little window, he saw, below the castle battlements,
fringing the ledges of precipitous crags and shadowy
chasms, the loveliest green and golden luxuriance of
foliage stooping into the valley, while on the opposite
side were wooded hills, and beyond these, bounding
the horizon, the faint blue of distant mountains. If
there was a spot in all Germany which Martin would
have fixed upon as the scene of an indispensable intern
ment, it was here.
Behold him, then, transformed. The monkish habili
ments have been swept into the background ; his beard
and hair are permitted to grow as nature wills. In
knightly costume, with sword on thigh, adopting the
alias of Squire George, he adjusts himself to his new
situation. Here, in the profound stillness, he can
ponder the situation, reviewing his own past and present,
sending his thoughts to Wittenberg and Rome, and
considering what the hours will bring. His age —
thirty-seven — is one at which the dynamic energy of
man is at its utmost ; and he has now, with deliberate

AMONG THE BIRDS. 137
purpose and inexpugnable resolution, announced to the
Kaiser and Princes of Germany, and through them to
the' world, that he will not recede a foot's breadth in his
battle with the Papacy, refusing to acknowledge its
jurisdiction and arraigning it as a usurping, tyrannical
power from which all Christians ought to appeal to the
Word of God. He is not without the tools of his
trade, the enginery with which, insignificant as it looks,
his spirit can act on the spirits of men. Pen, ink, and
paper are not forbidden him. He has a stout oaken
chair, a sufficient table, a footstool curiously enough
consisting of a vertebra, transformed into rock, of some
" dragon of the prime."
His first letter is to the man whom, of all others, he
most deeply loves and most highly reveres, Melanchthon.
It is dated the 12th of May. " What are you about,
all this time, my Philip ? Are you praying for me that
this fine adventure of mine, which I reluctantly assented
to, may be to the glory of God ? I should much like
to know how the thing pleases you. I had my fears
that I might seem to be deserting in the hour of battle ;
and yet there was no way to resist those people, with
their wishes and their advices. I desire nothing more
heartily than to engage in a throttling grapple with
the furious adversaries.
" Sitting here, I place before my eyes, all day, the
face of the Church, and those words of the eighty-eighth
Psalm occur to me : Hast thou made all men in vain ?
My God ! What a horrible spectacle of the Divine
wrath is that abominable reign of the Roman Anti-

138 MARTIN LUTHER.
christ ! I detest my own hardness in that I am not
wholly melted into tears, not shedding fountains of
tears, for the slain of my people. And there is none to
arise and hold God (surgat et teneat Deum), or oppose
himself as a wall for the house of Israel, in this the
latest day of His wrath. O kingdom of the Pope,
worthy of the end and dregs of the ages ! God pity us !
" Wherefore be thou, in the meantime, instant in the
ministry of the Word. Strengthen the walls and the
turrets of Jerusalem until the enemy are upon thee.
Recognise thy call and thy gifts. I pray for thee
as for none other — unice — if my prayer (as I do not
doubt) avail aught. Pray for me in turn, and let us
jointly bear this burden. We alone hitherto stand in
the line of battle ; they will seek your life after mine." *
He has had a letter, he proceeds to say, from
Spalatin, who tells him that a fierce edict is on the
anvil against him ; but he betrays no symptom of fear.
His spirit bears up bravely. His station on the Wart
burg he describes as " in the region of the birds," a
little touch, occurring as he drops the pen, which stands
for a good deal. He was not the man to anticipate
Rousseau in the cultivation of the sentimental pic
turesque ; but he loved nature and the open air ; had an
ear for the birds, and an eye for the clouds. This was
the lyric element in his mind, which found exercise also
in his flute-playing, and which no earnestness of spirit
or intensity of occupation could extinguish.
Having begun to write, he dashes off a few lines for
* De Wette, 316.

AMONG THE BIRDS. 139
Amsdorf,* and a few more for Agricola,f an ardent
theological ally. He bids Amsdorf tell him what
took place after he — Luther — was snatched from him
on their journey, and in particular what he heard or
saw at Erfurth. This inquiry about Erfurth shows
that Luther was becoming keenly interested in the
progress of the Gospel there, and possibly that he
had thought of the town as a resort in the event
of his quitting Wittenberg. He dates, this time, " in
the region of the air." The birds and the bright
blue of the May sky, with white cloudlets sailing in
it, evidently haunt his mind. In the letter to Agri-
cola he says that he is a prisoner of an enigmatic
kind, sitting there both willingly and unwillingly —
willingly, because God appoints it ; unwillingly, be
cause he would choose rather to stand up for the
Word in public, but has not been found worthy to do
so. "Bestow my salutation," he proceeds, "on your
family and your wife. The Lord grant that she may
have a happy delivery ! " After signing his name
he throws in a postscript : " Give one of the enclosed
gold pieces to your recently born daughter, and the
other to the child-bearing mother, in order that she
may take wine and have an abundant supply of milk."
It may be doubted whether the whole range of the
biography of world-historical men affords a more ex
pressive instance of kindness and fellow-feeling than
this. While the world lasts, St. Paul's prescription of
wine to Timothy will furnish proof that the great apostle
* De Wette, 317. t De. Wette, 318.

140 MARTIN LUTHER:
had a gentle nature. Luther, fiercer even than St. Paul
in the controversial arena, penetrates in his tenderness
to the most pathetic wants, not only of man but of
woman. On the fourteenth of the month, in a letter to
Spalatin,* he refers to stirring news from Erfurth.
One Severian, a notorious Papist of the place, had
publicly and offensively excluded Master Draco from
the choir, dragging him out by his dress. The reason
assigned had been that Draco, having taken part in
the festive reception of Luther into the town, was
practically excommunicated. Whereupon the Erfurth
students, fraternising with the town apprentices, rose
against the priests, and assaulted their dwellings by
night. Worse things are apprehended, the priests being
in evil odour, the Senate trying to face both ways. The
time may perhaps be at hand, suggests Luther, when
the prophetic proverb assigning to Erfurth in Germany
the part played by Prague in Bohemia will be fulfilled.
Prague had been the scene of the labours of Huss and
Jerome. After applying to himself a phrase of hasty con
tempt, as if he were a lazy do-nothing, he gives details
which prove him to have been very far from idle. He
is reading the Greek and Hebrew Bible, writing a
sermon in German on the liberty of auricular confession,
and proposing to engage in other labours. He is so
changed, he says, in his knightly vestments, and with his
beard sprouting, that Spalatin would not know him.
* De Wette, 319.

AMONG THE BIRDS. 141
Sensible of the joy of being in full Christian freedom,
he would, nevertheless, have preferred, had God willed
it, to meet death by preaching openly in defiance of the
obdurate zealot of Dresden.* It may be noted that,
while sending salutations to " the court " generally, he
has no special message for Frederick. It is not by any
means with effusive gratitude that he reflects upon the
care with which the Elector has provided for his safety.
The tone of his letters to Melanchthon is always
cordial, and they reveal his state of mind — reflect,
indeed, every varying colour of his moods — with the
verisimilitude of perfect confidence, perfect friend
ship. At one moment he is cast down — oppressed with
a sense of the Divine anger — ready to believe that God
has forsaken the cause, and that no adults but only
infants will be saved in this evil generation. He says
that he wishes no one to be solicitous about him. Per
sonally he is well off, but his mind is heavy, his spirit
bowed. In view of the glory of the Word, and the
mutual confirmation of himself and others, he would
" rather lie burning upon live coals than thus, in a state
of semi-animation," drag on existence. But a consoling
thought occurs to him. Who knows but Christ may
promote His own cause by these events ? So often had
they talked of the faith and the hope with which clouded
providences ought to be regarded; and now when a
thing had fallen out, not by their disposing but by God's,
could they not for once trust the soundness of their own
doctrine ? " What if I perish ? The Gospel will nowise
* Duke George.

142 MARTIN LUTHER.
perish. In evangelical matters you, Philip, now excel
me, and, like Elisha, succeed Elias with double spirit,
which may the Lord Jesus graciously impart to thee ! "
And so, from the pit of despondency, he rises quickly
into the region of hope and joy. " Be not cast down,
therefore, but sing the song of the Lord in the night.
I too will sing in concert. Let our only care be for
the Word." He refuses to believe that, since his depar
ture, they have been straying at Wittenberg " without
a pastor." This were of all tidings the saddest and
bitterest. But while Melanchthon, Amsdorf, and
others were there, they could not be without pastors.
" Say not such things, lest God be angry, and we be
found ungrateful. 0 how I wash that all churches, at
least all collegiate churches, were provided with one
quarter of the ministerial power you possess ! Offer up
thanks to God for having illuminated you." He ends
the letter in a jocular tone, specifying a number of
persons who are to be greeted in his name, including
" the whole church in your house," with express excep
tion of " fat Flemmichen," who is to have a letter to
himself. And the address is in his brightest lyric manner :
" Among the birds singing sweetly in the branches, and
praising God day and night with all their strength."*
* De Wette, 321.

CHAPTER II.

SATANIC ANNOYANCES.

Echoes from the outer world found their way to
Luther in his solitude, and he could not but be inter
ested by the eager concern on his account manifested
by the great body of the people throughout Germany.
Some ardent Papist, he tells Spalatin, had written to
the Cardinal of Mayence that, now they had their
wish in putting Luther out of sight, it seemed likely,
such was the commotion among the multitude, that
they would be forced to light a candle and set about
finding him again. In terms of counsel and en
couragement he wrote to Franz von Sickingen : " Once
I saw an insolent smoke-wreath that took upon itself
to quench the sun, but the smoke vanished ; the sun
shone on."
The edict by which he was placed under the ban of
the Empire, and exposed as a mark to be struck at by
all men loyal to the Kaiser and the Church, had now
been issued. It appeared on the twenty-eighth of May,
but bore date the eighth of the month. Historically
the document imports the joining of hands between
the Emperor and the Pope, to arrange things according
to their will throughout Germany and Europe. Leo —

144 MARTIN LUTHER.
Prince first, Pope second — had made up his mind that
more was to be had, for the present, by allying himself
with Charles than with his rival Francis. Charles, for
his part, though he was probably not without some
under-current of surmise that the truth might be on
the side of Luther, had not the courage and originality
requisite to give this surmise the force of a strong
man's doubt. It was so difficult to discover whether
Luther was supremely and imperatively right ; and there
was so much, on the head and front of it, to be said for
Leo ! If not in himself, then in his office, the Pope was
one main pillar of respectability and fixed order in
Europe. To prune abuses — to remove a glaring sole
cism here and there — to promote in a conventionally
respectable way the general welfare — were objects of
sincere purpose and endeavour to Charles. But the
reformation of the Church by bringing to bear upon it
the hot blast of Divine Truth was quite beyond the
scope and compass of his ideas. Luther, hobnobbing
with Aleandro, discussing with Cardinals and Arch
bishops this and that plausible proposal for mending
matters, would have experienced his courteous con
sideration. To Frederick, to the good Archbishop of
Treves, to honest Spalatin, to devout and dainty Stau
pitz, to all well-meaning mediocre souls, this appeared
to be the right way of proceeding. But Luther knew
that at the basis of such conference must lie a
tacit agreement that the authority of the Pope, the
divine right of the Papacy, should remain unimpaired,
unchallenged ; and to this he never could consent.

SATANIC ANNOYANCES. 145
Charles made his choice. He declared for Leo and
against Luther. The Pope let the Emperor have his
own way with the Inquisition in Spain ; and the Em
peror hurled the Ban of the Empire against Luther.
Well disposed as he was towards Charles, and not for
getting that he had been the prey of evil counsellors,
Luther was stern in his condemnation of this pro
ceeding. " It is nothing strange to me," he said, some
six weeks later, "that Charles is struck by wars. Pro
sperity he will never have ; the impiety of others will
be visited upon him ; because, unhappy young man,
he repudiated truth to its face at Worms, in defer
ence to evil counsellors. Germany too will be involved
in his calamity, for it consented to the impiety. But
the Lord will know His own." *
It was a terrible aggravation of the suffering in
flicted upon Luther by his enforced seclusion in the
Wartburg, that he underwent agonising pains from
dyspepsia. The new mode of life disagreed with him.
As a monk, he had fared in the simplest, meagrest
manner. A herring and a little bread sufficed him for
days. The rough abundance of a knight's table was
for him luxury. At Wittenberg his life had been
full of movement and bodily exercise, his constant
preaching and lecturing, had there been nothing else,
involving powerful action of lung and limb. In the
Wartburg his occupations were sedentary. The result
was distressing and dangerous dyspepsia, with paroxysms
of pain, and collateral effects of sleeplessness and nervous
* De Wette, 328.
t

146 MARTIN LUTHER.
irritation. He bore his anguish with exemplary patience,
never murmuring or desponding, but acknowledging, with
pious gratitude, that the chastisement was in mercy.
The contrast he presents to his far less grievously tor
mented admirer, Mr. Carlyle, in conquering his agonies
and turning them to spiritual uses, is much to the dis
advantage of the Chelsea sage.
After a few weeks he procured some alleviation of
his disorder. Helpful Spalatin sent him pills that
were of service, and the good knight of the Wartburg
not only permitted him to preach to himself and a
select few on high days,* but trusted him to wander
in the woods, with one attendant, in search of wild
strawberries. To the season of strawberries succeeded,
in its order, the season of nuts ; and there were always
the rustling woods, the joyful birds, the sailing clouds,
things endlessly interesting to Martin ; and deep down
in the valley, in the hottest summer day, the moss
was amber-bright with dripping waters, and the air cool
with leafy shade. He speaks of the kindness of his
host, and was evidently, with his cordial, shrewd,
familiar ways, a general favourite.
Let us not, however, suppose him to have been a
saunterer except at rare intervals. He had nothing to
do, in the sense that, if he had chosen to be idle, no
one held him to work ; but his self-appointed tasks kept
him strenuously busy — otiosissimus et negotiosissimus,
as he describes himself. He pushes on with his Greek
and Hebrew, and writes " without intermission." He
* Matthesius.

SATANIC ANNOYANCES. 147
had been engaged upon the Magnificat when summoned
to Worms ; he ordered the manuscript to be forwarded
from Wittenberg, and promptly finished it. He com
posed a controversial treatise in reply to an adversary of
the name of Latomus. Of exegetical and homiletical
labours there was always enough on hand. And his
studies were gradually converging towards a transla
tion of the Greek Testament.
It would have been his happiness to expatiate in
the Bible books. He grudged every moment given to
controversy. But he was the most pugnacious of men ;
and out of controversy he could not and would not keep.
Fiercely confident that his enemies were the enemies of
God, he thought that it would be a sin if he were not
angry. Emser, of Dresden, had withstood him at an
early date, and was a prominent figure in that group
Of his enemies which clustered round Duke George.
Emser, accordingly, was for him a God-forsaken re
probate, who had committed the sin against the Holy
Ghost, and could no longer, be lawfully prayed for.
In a painful letter to Amsdorf, he assures the latter
that the devil speaks in Emser as from a vase in
which he sits as in his own proper vessel.* All his
friends thought him too violent ; and, as we have seen,
he sometimes admitted as much.
But the horrors of controversy increased his delight
in escaping from it to those writings which he felt to
be full of that inspiration which throbbed in his own
breast — the inspiration of entire submission to God,
* De Wette, 327, and in other letters.
k 2

148 MARTIN LUTHER.
entire acceptance of God's terms, entire immersion
of the human in the Divine. Not that he thought the
strife inimical to study, incompatible with edification.
On the contrary, he held that it deepened his apprecia
tion of Scripture. In conflict with men and devils, in
labyrinthine wanderings through the dark places of his
own heart, he found this advantage — it is his own tes
timony as delivered in the afternoon of life — that such
experiences gave him new light in reading the Bible.
His theology, he said, had not been learned all at once,
but had been attained to after many an hour of struggle
and search. In temptation, in tribulation, he had seen
into the inner meaning of Scripture. The rabble of
fanatics and sectarians had never known what it
was to have their faith fought over with that grand
controversialist the devil — den rechten Widersprecher,
nehmlich den Teufel. That was a teacher to put a man
through his facings. He, for his part, had had the
Pope, the universities, the devil, to hunt him into those
Bible fastnesses from which he might defy them. " If
we have no devil to fight it out with, we become mere
speculative theologians, who keep speculating, and going
round and round with their notions and their reason, in
the direction of nowhere, speculating as to whether it
should be on this tack or on that other, as was much
the way also with the maundering monks in their
cloisters."* Whatever Martin had to complain of on the Wart
burg, it was not of a short supply of devil's-drill, to
* Tischreden. Fdrstemann, vol. xxii., p. 76 ; slightly paraphrased.

SATANIC ANNOYANCES. 149
keep him straight in his theology. All the world has
heard of his satanic buffetings in those months — his
throwing the inkpot at the devil, and the like. This
particular incident is indeed a myth. Luther makes
no mention of the occurrence in his letters, and sajrs
nothing of it in any one of the numerous conversa
tions on the subject of the devil which survive in
the Table Talk. Matthesius gives no hint of it. It is,
therefore, not literally authentic. But no better in
stance exists of a sound, vital, historical myth, a myth
that is more expressively veracious than any one fact,
because it is the embodied spirit of a thousand. If
we should say that Luther's consistent and con
tinual attitude towards Satan during his stay in the
Wartburg was that of a man who, being confronted
by the devil in actual presence, started up defiant and
flung his inkstand at the spectre, the dramatic vividness
of our statement would not misrepresent or exaggerate
the truth. Luther indeed threw his inkstand at the
devil; only he threw it, not once and one day, but
every day, and all day long, during his abode in the
Wartburg. Readers must not suppose, however, that the devil
fills a very considerable space in these letters. He
had things of so much greater importance with which
to concern himself, that he treats his personal vexa
tions and worries from Satan as matters to be left in
the background. This need not surprise us, for it is in
conformity with one of his main instructions as to deal
ing with Satan, namely, to treat him with contempt.

150 MARTIN LUTHER.
He is a proud and sensitive though mean and malig
nant spirit, Luther says, and nothing irks him more
than to make light of his pretensions and to mock at
his mockeries of God. There are illustrations of the
proper contempt with which devout men and women
have treated Satan, given by Luther in the Table
Talk, which would considerably astonish polite society,
if that work were given to English readers with the
completeness desiderated, in his innocence, by Mr.
Froude. Luther himself told the devil to hold his
tongue in quite untranslatable Billingsgate. More
frequently his tone is that of ironical banter. But there
is grim earnestness in his jocularity ; and the drift and
central current of his contention is that his accuser is
a defamer of God and an enemy of man.
The meanness of satanic majesty accords well with
the character of those annoyances by which Luther, in
the Table Talk, describes himself as having been per
secuted by the devil in the Wartburg. Two samples of
these will suffice.
He had been presented with a sack of hazel-nuts, of
which he ate some and locked away the remainder in a
chest. At night, having extinguished the candle and
laid himself on his bed, he became aware of an immense
commotion being made among the nuts. They seemed to
be flung at the rafters overhead, and rattled about him
as he lay on his couch. Nevertheless he fell asleep.
Presently he was awakened by a loud noise outside
the door, as if scores of dishes were being flung down
stairs. He knew that the entrance below was guarded

SATANIC ANNOYANCES. 151
with bolts and chains of iron, and that no human being
could be there. He rose, and went to see what was the
matter. All was silent. The entrance to the stairs was
secure. He now perceived that it was Satan, and, in
pursuance of his usual method of contempt, exclaimed,
" Oh, it is you ! Well, who cares ?" Having then com
mended himself to Christ, he returned to bed and slept
undisturbed until morning. In our second instance, it
was not Luther himself, but one who took a particular
interest in him, that was visited by Satan. The secret
of his presence in the Wartburg had been kept from
the wife of John von Berlepsch, his host. At the
time of his arrival she was not staying at the castle ;
but the rumour that Dr. Luther was her husband's
prisoner-guest reached her, and she manifested an irre
sistible curiosity to see him. They were forced to turn
Luther out of his room to accommodate her, and she
occupied his bed. During the night such a noise and
disturbance arose in her chamber that it seemed to be
peopled by a thousand devils.*
It is no extravagant hypothesis that some persons
about the Wartburg in 1521 may have had reasons of
their own for wishing to make the place too hot for
Martin Luther. That the governor's wife was sub
jected to the same kind of nightly annoyance as the
Doctor may possibly mean that the eye of a lady, as
well as that of an austere prophet, was unpleasant for
some inmates of the Wartburg. It has been said that
be was a favourite, and ostensibly he was so ; but, as a
* Tischreden. Forstemann, xxii. 37.

152 MARTIN LUTHER.
heretic and a furious assailant of the Pope, many hated
him bitterly.
That Luther, more even than the majority of his
educated contemporaries, had superstitious views as to
the devil, admits of no question. But his doctrine
on the subject did not practically vitiate his ethical
scheme, or prejudice his work as a reformer. The
essence of his teaching was joy — joy in God ; through
grace the world was to be filled with Divine light.
All sadness, all pain, all depression were, with him,
alien to the nature of Christian salvation. Against the
glorious outstreaming of this joy from the throne of
God the darkness contended — the darkness of sin and
of death, night against day. The darkness — name it, ac
count for it, characterise it, as we may — is there. Luther
called it devil. It is no great matter what he called
it. The great matter is to recognise the celestial nature
of the light of pure and holy joy — that is, of perfectly
healthful joy — which the diabolic night opposed. All
bright, glad, wholesome things ranged themselves, to the
eye of Luther, under the Lord of Life — Christ ; all beauty,
all music, all truth, all righteousness, all lovingkind
ness. Melancholy, on the other hand, disease, tempest,
famine, falsehood, injustice, cruelty, trooped after the
banner of Satan, the murky flag of hell. For Luther
the Gospel of salvation was the sublimest, and at the
same time the most efficient, exemplification afforded in
the universe of the radiancy of light. True, he could
not have silenced the metaphysical or logical objector
who undertook the part of devil's advocate. Strictly

SATANIC ANNOYANCES. 153
speaking, Satan exercised no free agency. He was
merely, as Luther phrased it, God's "hangman," or
the scavenger — the refuse-burner — of the universe.
Luther most carefully added that God gave the devil
no direct orders — only permitted his evil courses.
Still, the advocatus diaboli might perplexingly argue
that it was hard to pay the hangman, after his
services became superfluous, in the way in which
Luther never doubted, though the more child-hearted
Origen did, that Satan was to be everlastingly paid.
But metaphysicians and logicians were no great
authorities in Luther's estimation ; and sensible people
have very generally made up their minds to agree with
him in dispensing with an all-round explanation of sin's
punishment, either in man or in devil. The fact of
that punishment was, with him, the grand point. More
practically important is the further concession which
one is compelled to make, that modern science, speaking
in the name of nature, would draw the line between the
vivifying light and the killing darkness — the line be
tween Divine work and devil's work — in a way con
siderably different from Luther's. Science cannot admit
that one spirit sends the tempest, and another the fair
weather. Science has been God's minister in sweeping
superstition from the world; Luther's work was to
sweep it from the Church. God's horses pull against
each other a good deal, but they bring the chariot on.
If science had not, in Luther's time, done very great
things for religion, he recognised its capacity to do such
in the future. " Vehemently, and by the whole breadth

154 MARTIN LUTHER.
of the heavens, do they," he said, " err, who think philo
sophy and the knowledge of nature useless to theology."*
Metaphysics apart, it is a cheerful faith that " all sad
ness or evil comes from the devil, not from God."
Somewhat strange, is it not — considering that Luther
said this — that Protestantism should, in the succeeding
age, have become so grimly Puritanic ? The devil,
thought Luther, fled from the sound of his flute ;
and it was perhaps from lack of the flute — from neglect
of melody and music — that the devil of sombreness
gained footing in the seventeenth century.
* De Wette, 345.

CHAPTER III.
" PECCA FORTITER "  LUTHER IN THE HUNTING FIELD.
Luther's disappearance was the occasion, to his group of
friends and of associates in the Gospel cause at Witten
berg, of surprise, distress, and consternation. Melanch
thon, in particular, lifted up his voice in lamentation,
like Elisha when he saw Elijah rapt away in a chariot
of fire : " My father, my father ! " When it became
known that the lost leader was not dead, but in se
clusion, his heart revived ; but the news which soon
arrived that Luther's health had given way plunged
him anew into anxiety. " Oh ! " he exclaimed, in a
letter to Spalatin, " that I could sell my insignificant
life for his. Earth contains nothing more Divine than
he." *
But the praises addressed to him by Melanchthon
found no response in the breast of Luther. His mood
was one of sternest self-reproach and deepest contrition.
He describes himself as " sitting insensate and hard, at
his ease, praying little — oh, the shame ! — instead of
groaning for the Church of God." He uses expres
sions which, unless we have regard to their theological
* Quoted by Kostlin in his larger work.

!S6 MARTIN LUTHER.
interpretation, may startle us much, and which, even if
we make allowance for theological symbolism, may con
tinue to startle us a little. " I," he writes, " who
ought to burn with spiritual fervour, burn with unholy
passion — carne, libidine, sluggishness, idleness, somno
lence."* There is not a shadow of reason, known to
me, for refusing to believe that these terms refer entirely
to sins of the spirit, and evince the intensity of Luther's
sense of failure and imperfection when he looked into
the white radiancy of his ideal.
In another letter, f he launched, or is commonly
believed to have launched, into a series of expressions
respecting grace and sin which, more perhaps than any
words he ever wrote, have been made a handle against him
by his enemies, and have perplexed his friends. Let us
read them. " If you are a preacher of grace, preach not
a fictitious grace, but a true grace. If it is a true grace,
let it deal with J true, not fictitious sin. God does not
save fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin bravely —
pecca fortiter ; but still more bravely believe and rejoice
in Christ, who is conqueror of sin, of death, and of the
world. Sin is a necessity so long as we are in our
present state. This life is not the habitation of right
eousness, but we, says Peter, look for new heavens and
a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. It is
enough that we have known, through the riches of glory,
the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.
From Him sin will not separate us, although a thousand
* De Wette, 326. f De Wette, 332.
J Ferto — literally, bear or carry.

"PECCA FORTITER." 157
thousand times in one day we commit fornication or
murder. Do you think that it is a small price that
has been paid, a small redemption that has been made,
for our sins by so great and such a Lamb ? Pray
bravely, for you are the bravest of sinners."
The impression conveyed by these sentences is that
they embody that vilest of all heresies, offensive
alike to the rationalist and to the Christian, which
represents the death of Christ as having purchased
liberty to sin. Unquestionably the objection was very
early taken to the preaching of Luther that, in the
vehemence of its insistence upon faith, it placed morals
in jeopardy. But no other passage is known to me,
in letter, treatise, or sermon, in which he used such
language as we have here. And it is certain that
many years after the period of which we now treat, he
threw the whole intensity of his nature into a contro
versial conflict with Antinomian heresy. Agricola, who
as yet was one of his most trusted and efficient fellow-
workers, became ultimately an advocate of the extra
vagant fallacy that the power of grace is illustrated
by saving the soul while it continues in sin, and irre
spectively of its sinning. Such at least was Luther's
conception of Agricola's position, and against no tenet
of the Papists did he inveigh more sharply. We
shall find in the sequel that some of the utterances
of Agricola to which Luther specifically objected closely
resembled parts of the extract just given. If therefore
it means what it seems to mean, and if it really was
written by Luther, the remark appropriate and sufficient

158 MARTIN LUTHER.
to the occasion seems to be that it proves him to have
temporarily wandered into a fen or quagmire of heresy
which he afterwards regarded as pestilential. But was
he really its author ? The fact may, I think, be doubted.
There is, indeed, the difficulty of showing how it came
to be tacked to a letter of his to Melanchthon, which
was found in Spalatin's library. But a conjecture may
be ventured upon as to how this could have taken
place. It was one of the contentions in which Agricola
and his adherents obstinately persisted that Luther had
himself taught the doctrine which he now condemned
them for teaching. It would have been a simple matter
for a fanatical Antinomian, with a gift for imitating
hands, and a conscience obtuse enough to sanction a
pious fraud, to insert the passage where it was dis
covered. Spalatin's collection of Luther's letters was
too large to make it possible for him to have an exact
recollection of what had been written in each of them,
nor would he be likely to subject a bundle of letters,
lent supposably to an acquaintance, to severe inspection
on their being returned to him. It is of some import
ance that while the date, 1521, is particularly given in
the passage, there is no note of place. In an immense
majority of cases the letters from the Wartburg have
some word at the end which reminds one of Luther's
whereabouts. They are dated " from the region of the
birds," "the mountain," "the wilderness," "my Patmos,"
and very often " my hermitage." In the present in
stance there is the year 1521, to which time a forger
would be very likely to assign the words, but not an

"PECCA FORTITER." 159
allusion to the Wartburg. This circumstance is not
decisive, for Luther's practice is not uniform ; but it
adds to the plausibility of the conjecture which, on
general grounds, I somewhat dubiously put forward.
That there is a Lutheran look about the sentences I do
not deny ; but it strikes me as the look rather of a
clever imitation than of an original.
A third course is open to us in the treatment
of this celebrated passage. We may view it from the
standpoint of technical theology, recollecting, as we
shall have no difficulty in doing if we have read
Macaulay's remarks on John Bunyan, that theological
sin does not always imply criminality, irreligion, or
vice. We may ask whether it is indeed A.ntinomian.
The reader has heard Luther himself bewailing, in terms
of unaffected shame and regret, the presence in his
heart of such evil passions as would merely, if brave
sinning is right for a Christian, afford illustration of
the omnipotence of grace. These words were written
indubitably from the Wartburg. How they can be
reconciled with any Antinomianism which grants a
truce to evil I cannot imagine. But it is not so in
conceivable that the terms of the suspected passage may
be reconciled with a theological interpretation which
leaves the sacredness of morality unimpaired. They are
addressed to an expert in theology. Melanchthon was
in no danger of missing the technical sense of Luther's
words which purged them from any taint of Antino
mian relationship. Happily also the elevation of
Melanchthon's character, the spiritual nature of his

160 MARTIN LUTHER.
ambitions, activities, enjoyments, the unimpeached spot-
lesshess of his life, render it perfectly certain that, if
Luther applied to him, in the ordinary sense, the expres
sion fortissimus peccator, he perpetrated an absurdity. In
one sense only could it be said that Melanchthon was
the chief of sinners, namely, that he, more than others,
realised and felt the presence of sin, thus exalting the
Saviour. " Pecca fortiter; lay the accent keenly upon
sin, in order that you may more intensely embrace the
righteousness of God, offered to the Christian -in its
stead." This is what Melanchthon might understand
Luther to mean. " Abhor yourself — blacken yourself
with the stain of horrible crimes, of which you shudder
to think — for thus alone can you estimate the infinite
preciousness of that ransom by which such sins — a
whole world of them — were cancelled on the cross of
Christ." In this sense, Melanchthon was a sinner,
St. Paul was a sinner, Luther was a sinner ; the chief
sinner was the chief saint. In calling Melanchthon
fortissimus peccator, Luther accordingly intended to imply
that Melanchthon was the most accomplished in the
faith of all the men he knew. It is but another way of
putting it to say that, in proportion as the sinner
intensified his sin, he divested himself of self, and threw
open his soul to be filled with God. Luther conceived
the religion of Papists to be a systematic working out
of their own righteousness, and setting up of their own
wisdom, against the righteousness and wisdom of God.
The child of grace, on the other hand, renounced him
self — looked upon his own righteousness as vileness, his

"PECCA FORTITER." 161
own wisdom as folly ; and into the heart thus prepared
the King of Glory entered. " Christ reigns, and let
Him reign, in us His own sinners and fools, while Satan
rages in his own wise and righteous ones." * Some
may hold that this is mysticism ; some that the ab
negation of self, and the occupation of the vacated soul
by God, are illusive ; but the mysticism and illusion, if
such they be, pervade the Epistles of St. Paul.
From these mysterious profundities and altitudes it
is not unpleasant to return to every- day life. Of the
strawberry gatherings we hear little, but are at liberty
to imagine more. By degrees the good knight — Luther's
entertainer- — saw fit to let him roam hither and thither
on horseback with one alert and trustworthy attendant.
That was a great point, involving exercise of body and
recreation of mind both in high perfection. Now also
he can preach to a castle audience twice, at least,
per week. Under these auspices his health improved,
and Satan became less intrusive.
When summer waned, and sportsmen began to think
of ground and feathered game, he was taken out, as
he tells Spalatin, to have a look at hunting — "that
pungent-sweet delight of heroes," as he ironically calls
it. It did not particularly charm him. " We took two
hares, and a few wretched little chicks of partridges
— worthy employment, no doubt, for men who have
nothing to do. Even there, among the nets and the
dogs, I continued my theologising ; and for me the sad
* Ipse regnat, et regnet, in nobis peccatoribus et stultis suis, dum Satan
furit in sapientibus etjustis suis. De Wette, 327.

162 MARTIN LUTHER.
mystery of the whole affair quite balanced the pleasure.
For what does it symbolise, unless it be the devil, with
his snares and impious masterful dogs — to wit, bishops
and theologians — hunting [souls as the sportsmen hunt]
those harmless little beasts. Too truly had my heart
foreboded this most melancholy mystery of simple and
faithful souls. And a specially atrocious illustration of
the mystery followed. I had contrived to save a little
hare alive, and had folded it up in my tunic. I then
went away for some short time. Meanwhile the dogs
snuffed it out, broke its leg, throttled it, killed it. And
thus, to be sure, do the Pope and Satan, in their fury,
destroy souls that have been rescued, nothing hindered
by my pains." * Simple-hearted, good-hearted Martin !
But he is too severe on the Pope.
* De Wette, 335.

CHAPTER IV.
THE WIDENING AREA OF LUTHER'S INFLUENCE  GENERAL
SYMPATHY WITH REFORMATION  " AUDENDUM EST."
It is, however, in the outgoing of a man's energy, in
the results it produces in the world around him, that
his power is best represented ; and from contemplative
inspection, or curious analysis, of Luther's spiritual
personality, we must turn to the indubitably authentic
exhibition he makes of himself in swaying the tides and
currents of thought in his time.
Pope Leo, when he heard of Luther's being placed
under the ban of the Diet, and forced even by his friends
to escape into concealment, may very well have thought
that the danger was past, and that he might safely
exult in the magnificence of the prospect which the
cordiality of his relations with the emperor opened
before him. But, in point of fact, the war which had
been proclaimed by Luther against Rome took a new
departure from the time of his condemnation at Worms
and his disappearance into the Wartburg. It was
during the months of his stay in the Wartburg that he
developed his attack upon the external system of the
Papal Church — upon those institutions and practices to
which its defence had been mainly entrusted, and in
/ 2

164 MARTIN LUTHER.
, which its spirit had been embodied. This year is
marked, in the history of European civilisation, as that
in which Martin Luther opened his batteries upon
clerical celibacy, monastic vows, auricular confession,
and private masses.
The fermentation produced throughout Germany,
and indeed throughout Europe, by the Lutheran move
ment had become immense. This we must not for one
moment forget. Unhappily, it is difficult to realise with
imaginative and vital adequacy the state of men's minds
at such periods of intellectual, and still more of emo
tional, crisis. The men have passed away ; the external
features of the time have vanished like the fabric of a
vision. How can we see the light that flashed from the
living eyes, and understand all that was signified to
them by incidents and events ? And yet it is evident
that unless we succeed to some extent in this, we know
the past only as a procession of dead men, or of phan
tom figures projected on a wall by a magic lantern. All
Gibbon's grand qualities as an historian are neutralised
because he never feels with the people he depicts, nor
enables us to do so.
Before Luther faced Charles at Worms, his writings
had penetrated to Stockholm on the one hand, and to
Madrid on the other, and were conned with avidity in
Vienna and in London. The courtiers of our Henry read
them; and the monarch himself, most arrogant, most
conceited, most self-adoring of mortals, looked into them,
thought them sadly heretical, and considered whether
he might not take the pen into his own invincible

WIDENING AREA OF LUTHER'S INFLUENCE. 165
hand with a view to their refutation. Charles had
not yet left Worms, and Luther had just sat down to
write his first letters from the Wartburg, when Lord
Chancellor Wolsey, by royal command, and with due
pomp, circumstance, and fanfaronade, superintended the
burning of Martin's books in St. Paul's Churchyard. Very
imposing the pageant was, no doubt. " We have made
an end of them I " the sublime Lord Chancellor and his
sublimer master may have thought as the smoke of the
volumes rose into the air. But in the workshops, in
the farm-houses, even in the manor-houses, of Eng
land, there were thousands whom Wickliffe had pre
pared to welcome the advent of Luther.
It was, however, on the European mainland, and
above all in Germany itself, that the excitement was
most intense. It showed itself in countless forms and
places, in street and in mart, in convent and in hostelry,
in the castle of the knight and in university hall, in
cathedral close, in kingly palace. That strange power
of sympathy, so invisible, so potent, which carries
masses of men onward as by an irresistible impulse,
was on the side of Luther. Everyone who was on a
level with his time glowed, or affected to glow, with
reforming enthusiasm. The Humanist coxcomb who
laughed at priests, and quoted Erasmus ; the college
lad who tripped briskly along the street with his Bible
under his arm; the swashbuckler knight who shouted
for freedom and Germany against Rome ; the peasant
who cherished a grudge of long standing against his
lord, — all felt that if they did not march with Luther,

166 MARTIN LUTHER.
they were behind their age. The social sneer, the
dreaded laugh, were with him and against the Pope.
Such was the swell in men's minds — the sympathetic
thrill and fermentation of the time — invisible as
air, and yet constituting the essential fact of the
situation. It was for action rather than for speculation that
Luther was disposed when he began to exercise, from
the Wartburg, the functions of anti-Papal prophet and
apostle. His ardent desire was that the Gospel should
be preached in his absence as vehemently as while he was
present, or more so. At Wittenberg, indeed, as he told
Melanchthon, they were well supplied with teachers of
the truth — so well that he thought of going to
Erfurt or Cologne, as fields where the lack of labourers
was more urgent. " We are not to take thought of
ourselves," he says, striking as usual the most generous
and Christian note suggested by the occasion, " but of
our brothers dispersed abroad, lest perchance we live for
ourselves, that is to say for the Devil, and not for
Christ."* A word worth thinking of in London and
New York, at a time when the competition for popular
preachers is nearly as severe, and pecuniary, as the com
petition for opera stars !
In this same letter we have a hint that the Witten
berg men were pushing on in their anti- Papal campaign
with a vivacity which alarmed Frederick. They had an
nounced their intention to hold a public disputation on the
subject of auricular confession, and had been prohibited
* De Wette, 331.

WIDENING AREA OF LUTHER'S INFLUENCE. 167
by the Elector. Luther professes himself marvellously
displeased with this interference, and strongly advises
that the like should not be submitted to. They ought
to anticipate and baffle the Court, as he had done.
" The half would not have been effected if I had hung
upon the counsel of the Court." * He intimates that
he will expostulate with Spalatin on the matter of the
disputation. He is as good as his word. Spalatin gets
a sound rating. " I am displeased," he says, in the
tone of a kiiight rebuking a page, " that the disputation
on confession has been forbidden. It would have been
a useful example against the ferocity of the Papists,
teaching them how little the Wittenbergians were
terror-struck by my absence." f
Spalatin deserves condolence. He has a hard task
— hopelessly hard. Frederick, frail in body, weary in
mind, yearns inexpressibly for peace. Luther pants for
battle. Spalatin loves both, honours both, would fain
do the bidding of both ; but cannot. So he does his
best, leaning now to this hand, now to that, between-
the impetuous reformer and the slowly dying Prince.
Nature happily has fitted the man for his place, giving
him a blissful wrappage of superior insensibility.
He seems capable of taking any amount of pungent
lecturing without offence. There must have been a
curious felicity in the make of him somewhere, for,
though a phlegmatic person, he was profoundly es
teemed, unalterably loved, by the most impassioned of
all Germans, Martin Luther. Spalatin gets frequent
* De Wette, 326. f De Wette, 328.

168 MARTIN LUTHER.
admonition from his fierce friend — admonition to
decision and courage. Luther would shred away with
one sweep of his sword what Spalatin and his master
wanted to keep pruning at for years. The best way,
Martin counsels, in relation to the wide question
of ecclesiastical authority, would be to cancel the
universal code of Pontifical law in Saxony. " For
audacity is a necessity, if we prepare any great and
salutary change — Audendum enim est, si quid magnum
et salutare paramus." * A phrase that rings well in
the grand Roman tongue, and bears unmistakably the
mark of Luther ! * De Wette, 331.

CHAPTER V.
CLERICAL CELIBACY AND AURICULAR CONFESSION.
The pace in fact is too strong for Frederick and for
Spalatin; but there were men in Wittenberg and in
Germany for whom it was hardly quick enough. Carl
stadt was becoming obstreperous. Wiser men than he
might have lost their heads in that heated atmosphere.
Pastors were rising up and claiming those natural
liberties of which they had allowed themselves to be
defrauded. The Bishop of Kemberg, for example,
Feldkireh by name, has in these days cast off the yoke
of celibacy, and taken to himself a wife. The question
of clerical celibacy presents itself full-face to the leaders
of the movement, claiming decisive settlement and
prompt. It is better to seek Luther's view in his letters than
in his theological treatises. In the letters we have the
germs that are merely developed in the treatises — the
nuggets that are beaten out into gold-leaf. And it is a
remark in which readers, if they have learned anything
of Luther from the preceding pages, will concur, that
it is as a man of aggressive ideas, practical instincts,
and intense personal conviction, that he is chiefly to
be valued. As a man he towers above the general

170 MARTIN LUTHER.
procession of theologians ; and his power as a man de
pended on the burning glance with which he pene
trated to principles, and the importunate and colossal
energy with which he urged those principles into practice.
The vital germ of his opinion on clerical celibacy is
to be found in a letter to Melanchthon of the 1st of
August in this Wartburg summer. As usual, he has
sought light in Scripture, and for him the very quintes
sence of Scripture, or, as he expresses it, the " voice of
the Divine Majesty," is in the utterances of St. Paul.
In his first letter to Timothy, St. Paul describes the pro
hibition of marriage to Christian ministers as a piece of
malignant officiousness, perpetrated by certain persons
who had given ear to " seducing spirits and doctrines
of devils." These dealers in devils' doctrine are more
particularly characterised as " forbidding to marry, and
commanding to abstain from meats which God hath
created to be received with thanksgiving." The
language of St. Paul is generally strong ; and in its
strength on this occasion, as well as in the style in
which the whole matter is handled — the angry em
phasis with which the error is pinned to the ground,
the lucidity with which the opposing truth is enunciated
— We have the authentic stroke of the Pauline mallet.
By temperament and disposition, bating somewhat,
perhaps, on account of the vein of melancholy in his
constitution, few men could have been better fitted than
Luther to sympathise with St. Paul's religious appre
ciation of nature's good things, and to share his pious
enthusiasm in enjoying them. To nothing in the

CLERICAL CELIBACY AND AURICULAR CONFESSION. 171
character of Luther has the consciousness of unanimous
Germany and mankind given more explicit testimony
than to his geniality. But his own experience of natural
enjoyments had been limited in the extreme ; and the
deep shadow of monasticism, cancelling the sunlight of
the soul, and silencing its singing birds, had enveloped
him in his youth. From that shadow he had not, even
at the Wartburg, completely emerged ; but the dawn
had come, the sunbeams were abroad, the broken masses
of cloud were in retreat before the glad wind of morning.
His mind had now reached that stage in spiritual evolu
tion at which he could respond, on this test question of
the right religious use of nature's bounties, to the in
spiration of St. Paul. He could understand the prin
ciple which governed the Pauline treatment of the
subject — to wit, the moralising potency of natural joys
when accepted with thankfulness from the Divine
Father. Every passion, in its healthy action, forms
part of the natural dynamics of virtue. To make a
man all that he can be as a natural man is the next
best thing to awakening him to his transcendent
capabilities as the participant of a Divine life. To ex
terminate natural passion is, therefore, the maxim of
deservedly discredited schools of morality. To regulate
natural passion, to cause it to chasten its fiery impulses
in obedience to health and the social idea, is the rule of
sound moralists. But if all that healthfully replenishes
the fountains of life is in league with virtue — if the
thrill of passion is the touch of God's finger, reminding
us of His kindness — then the general principle will hold

172 MARTIN LUTHER.
good with special emphasis in relation to that passion of
passions which bids a man leave his father and his
mother and cleave unto his wife. Universal history
attests that marriage is practically the main factor in
civilisation. Marriage and religion are among the chief
differentiating marks of man as a species. No ideal of
terrestrial society at once so rational, so practical, so
human, so Divine, can be named, as that which con
ceives it as an aggregate — say, rather, a living and har
monious unity — of happy homes.
These things being so, can we think without amaze
ment of the fact that, century after century, the Roman
Catholic Church imposed upon its clergy the yoke of
celibacy? It looks at first sight like a pointed re
versal of Divine injunctions — a literal saying, by God,
" This shall be," and, by the Church, " This shall not
be." The opening chapters of the Bible describe God
as with His own tongue pronouncing it " not good for
man to be alone," and with His own hand bringing
man a woman to be his wife. The Church of Rome,
since the days of Hildebrand, has said, " It is good for
every pastor to put God's gift from him and be
alone." And, from his own point of view, Hilde
brand was right. He was a bold, honest, thoroughgoing
ecclesiastic. His conception of marriage suited his idea
of the Church and of the clergy. If the Church is a
corporation furnished with mystic sacramental powers
to save men; if the clergyman is a janissary of the
Church, armed with this extra-natural power in virtue
of his office — then celibacy will have strong arguments

CLERICAL CELIBACY AND AURICULAR CONFESSION. 173
to commend it. . Caesar would not have liked the soldiers
of his tenth legion to be married men. He did not want
them to be mindful that they had a place in human
society, but to have a vivid consciousness of forming
part of his army. If Hildebrand believed that the
Church alone could impart saving grace — if he regarded
the clergy as priests who offered sacrifice daily for the
sins of the people — then he could conscientiously decide
that those arrangements which cut away the priesthood
from family life, and enabled them to devote their whole
energy to the offering of sacrifice, were supremely ex
cellent. But if the Church is viewed as simply the living and
harmonious unity of the churches ; if the churches
consist of Christian friends and brothers ; and if neither
Church nor churches sacramentally confer salvation,
but exercise a purely spiritual influence, then the
question of celibacy wears a new aspect. If Christ's
aim was not to construct a corporation, but to inspire
society and consecrate life, to fulfil nature's law while
exalting it, to introduce no unearthly type of virtue,
to bestow no arbitrary privileges or powers upon
a sacerdotal class, but to turn common things into
channels of grace, to make all Christians kings and
priests, and to foster that robust virtue which includes
whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report — then clerical celibacy may
be a stupendous mistake.

174 MARTIN LUTHER.
The Christian clergyman, on these principles, which
are the principles of Luther, familiar to every reader of
his books and letters, is simply the Christian layman,
furnished forth spiritually in such completeness that he
may be an example to the flock ; the officer of the
Church, solemnly set apart as such, in whom the powers
common to all members of the Church are conspicuously
present. If he is a Christian minister, corresponding to
the ideal of Paul and of Luther, he will be an example
in the home as well as in the pulpit, and will exercise
social influence every day of his life. It is not con
ceivable that, if this is the true theory of the clergyman,
he should be meant to be outside society, not inside and
acquainted with its inner currents. If- he is grafted
into Christian society, it is not possible that he should
be forbidden to marry. Luther's view does not abolish
the minister in abolishing the priest, but merely requires
that his qualifications shall be neither mystical nor
hierarchical, but practical, personal, real, social.
Had Luther done no other thing than bring to
an end, in all Protestant communities, the institution of
clerical celibacy, he would be entitled to a lofty place on
the illustrious roll of human benefactors. Under his
auspices the clergyman, the Christian minister, instead
of being expelled from . society, or feared and detested
in society, has in Protestant lands become one of its
most esteemed ornaments, one of its most welcome
guests. It is no vain boast that Protestant parsonages
and manses exert a more Christian influence on the
homes of a nation than Popish cathedrals. In the

CLERICAL CELIBACY AND AURICULAR CONFESSION. 175
pastor's wife there has been a reduplication — often more
than a reduplication — of the good and gracious in
fluences of the pastor, she and her daughters being
angels of mercy in the habitations of the poor.
Our Martin — the fact must be almost as often
mentioned with qualified praise, or even with modi
fied censure, as with enthusiastic applause — advanced
to his decisions by lion-springs rather than by gradual
creeping. Taking up his parable against clerical
celibacy, he denounced it without hesitation and
without reserve. " That devil's prohibition, mani
festly condemned in words Divine," away with it !
Even if men covenanted themselves out of marriage
when they took- orders, they are now, having discovered
that the covenant was with death and hell, bound to
break it. " For God neither deceives nor lies when He
says that this prohibition is of the devil. If then the
devil put his strength into the contract, it ought not
to be treated as binding by Christian men, having been
made under the influence of impious error against God,
error reproved and condemned, for He expressly says
that the authors of the prohibition are spirits of error."*
Accordingly, wherever the banner of Luther is raised
against the banner of the Pope, it amounts to a
proclamation that priests and bishops are to marry.
The principle that the Christian has a right to
expect from his clergyman just what he has a right
to expect from brother laymen, only in a heightened
degree, throws a flood of light on the question of
* De Welte, 332.

176 MARTIN LUTHER.
confession. Luther had been accustomed to the confes
sional all his life. He had not found it irksome ; he
had not complained of it as unfavourable to his spiritual
life. In his tendency to excess of self-accusation, in his
shuddering fear of God, and in his hours of brooding
melancholy, the words of a confessor had exercised
a cheering influence upon his mind. In the Bible
words, " Confess your faults one to another," he
found the injunction laid upon Christians not only
to ask forgiveness of each other, but to be on a
footing of confidence, of sympathy, of reciprocal con
fession, with reference to sins committed against God.
In this respect, as in all others, the clergyman was to
be a more fully equipped and practised layman, on
confidential terms with the members of his flock,
and able to counsel them in their spiritual troubles.
Luther held that it was a special advantage for the dis
consolate brother to have the sincerity of his confession
attested, the reality of his repentance affirmed, and the
validity of Divine absolution reverently guaranteed, by
one who, as pastor of the Church, spoke, presumably,
the Church's verdict. Thus regarded, the practice of
confession might, he held, be one of the purest,
sweetest, most comforting and enlightening exercises of
Christian fellowship and friendship.
But let confession be pinched and perverted into
auricular confession, and above all let the clergyman be
transformed into a celibate priest, the janissary of a
Papal institution — would not the whole affair then be
changed ? Even with no claim, no pretext, to personal

latners. _dhc tne spiritual aaviser comes very ciose, ana
is proportionately dangerous. Celibate priests, sympa
thising with wives in their spiritual sorrows and sigh
ing with them over their secret sins, piously stealing
away the affections of daughters and delicately entering
into the distress with which they bewail the hard
hearts of their fathers and brothers, are intolerable,
and justly intolerable, to family men.

m

CHAPTER VI.
MONASTICISM.
"Priests and bishops are to marry ! " It is a thought
to set hearts leaping, to stimulate brains to exultant
activity, to awaken in ten thousand breasts a sense
of emancipation. Onward hurries the movement, with
deepening force of passion, but not without solemnity,
as in the rhythm of a national procession or a great
religious dance, earth and air vibrating to its agitation,
Once more men thrill in response to the hopes ex
pressed in those two mighty words — joy and liberty.
Of the first of these Luther proclaimed himself the
herald by insisting upon the sanctity of marriage for
all alike. We are brought into more immediate pre
sence of the second, the promise and hope of liberty,
by the emergence of the question of monastic vows.
There had naturally been vast agitation in convents,
infinite debate between the votaries of medisevalism
and the adherents of Luther. On the whole the
monks and nuns had approved themselves the faithful
body-guard of the Pope ; but a minority, considerable
in numbers and influence, were disposed to break their
bonds. Luther, excommunicated by the Pope, and
formally released by his superiors from his monastic
obligations, might well have been excused if he had

MONASTICISM. 179-
gone full sail, without laborious weighing of reasons,
into denunciation of monasticism. But he did not
permit himself to be hurried blindly on. He patiently
worked out the problem, starting from principles and
proceeding to their application.
Vows taken under compulsion are, to begin with,
a manifest outrage on the freedom of man and of
Christian, and ipso facto null and void. Away with
them ! But " this also is a part of the evangelical
freedom — that we can impose vows and laws upon our
selves." A most important and quite incontestable
reservation. Liberty involves the right to curtail our
liberty. But the Christian can use it only under cer
tain conditions. The vow must not be inconsistent
with life in grace ; must not be taken in a legal and
servile sense. Such a vow is " anathema." And every
one who undertakes monastic vows as a means of
salvation, as a way of meritoriously commending him
self to God, has taken a vow of this deadly kind.
" Since, then, the common crowd of those who swear
monastic vows do so in this mind, it is evident that
their vows are impious, sacrilegious, contrary to the
Gospel, and utterly to be rescinded and branded with
a curse." Abraham vowed his first-born to God, in
spired to do so, and acting freely and in grace. Ma-
nasseh, imitating Abraham, but imitating him not in
the freedom of Divine and gracious impulse but in
the servitude of his own will, vowed to sacrifice his
son to God through the idol Moloch. Such a vow was
impious and sacrilegious.
m 2

180 MARTIN LUTHER.
Luther proceeds to offer an opinion, interesting not
only on theological grounds, but as an illustration of the
naivete and utter openness of his nature, as to the
ethical value of his own assumption of monastic vows.
Did he vow freely, calmly, and wisely, as to the living
God, as he admits Abraham and St. Bernard to have
done, or did he vow to an idol of his own heart ? He
confesses that if he had known all that was required to
constitute a legitimate Christian vow, he would never
have become a monk. But he cannot recall the facts
with sufficient clearness to pronounce decisively as to
the tightness or wrongness of his act, and has his mis
givings as to its blamelessness. " I am uncertain re
specting my state of mind when I vowed. I was rapt
along rather than led. Such was the will of God. I
have my fears that my vow was impious and sacri
legious." *
Towards the end of the letter, he relaxes in the
austerity of his tone, puts the case of his being himself
"free and no longer a monk," and jestingly asks Me
lanchthon whether he is matching him with a wife, thus
taking revenge on him for having, as their friends say,
provided Philip with one. " But I shall finely take
care," he adds, " that you will not succeed in doing any
thing of the sort." Writing to Spalatin, a few weeks
before this time, he had made a similar disavowal of any
intention of availing himself of the liberty which he
asked for others. "Bone Deus!" he exclaimed, apropos
of some obstreperously liberal publications of Carlstadt,
* De Wette, 336.

MONASTICISM. 181
" are our Wittenbergians going to give wives even to
monks ? But they will not manage to foist a wife upon
me ! " Hitherto his mind, so much akin to Dr. New
man's in its intense realisation of the idea of God, had
resembled Newman's also in presenting a blind side to
the captivation of woman. But in the depths of his
nature there were qualities enabling him to appreciate
the best blessings of home ; and before the year is out
we find him confessing that in his view " marriage, even
in extreme poverty, is paradise."
Paradise or purgatory, there is as yet no glimpse,
even the most distant, of marriage for him. With
his usual energy he has prepared a treatise on the
subject of monastic vows, and sends it on along
with the letter to Melanchthon. And by way of
preface to it he composes a letter to old John Luther,
who, pursuing his sure-footed, open-eyed, intelligent
course of life in Mansfeld Valley, had not been put
beside himself by these developments of his son. A
fund of sturdiest, soundest Protestantism had, we know,
been latent all along in John ; and it is surprising
how much of Martin's innovations had consisted in
mere giving of expression to the paternal principles. He
now, casting his eye over fifteen years of monastic ex
perience, owns the wisdom and the piety which had
characterised his father's conduct on the occasion of his
entering the convent. He had then told his father
that " a terrible appearance from heaven " called him to
take the vow. Thereupon his father had answered,
"God grant that it was not a deceit and diabolical

182 MARTIN LUTHER.
illusion." The word penetrated at once to the founda
tions of Martin's soul, but he strove against it, and for
the time prevailed. " Have you never heard " — this also
his father said — " that a son should obey his parents ? "
Again he was shaken ; but again he hardened his heart,
falling back for support on his peculiar holiness and the
thought that the father was to be looked down on from
the heights of ecclesiastical sanctity as a mere layman.
The Galahad of two-and-twenty had contrived to satisfy
himself that he stood on a higher moral level than his
father. He now, more firmly than when he wrote to
Spalatin, decides against himself. He had not been in a
spiritual state befitting the monastic life. Apart from
terror, he would not have become a monk ; without the
lightning-flash he would not "heartily and willingly"
have taken the vows.
But God had brought good out of his " error and
sin." Had he never entered a convent, this shattering
of the towers of Babylon that was in progress might
never have taken place. " Look," he says to his father,
" would you not rather have lost a hundred sons than
not have seen this great good brought out of evil ?
It seems to me that from my youth Satan has been
foreseeing the defeat he now suffers. For this reason,
in order to destroy or to obstruct me, he has raved
and raged against me with such opulence of invention
that I have often reflected with amazement whether it
was not upon me alone, among all men, that he con
centrated his attacks." This notion of his having mono
polised the activity of the devil during all these years

MONASTICISM. 183
will move a smile in modern times ; but it was a very
earnest thought for Martin Luther.
He proceeds to inform his father that now he is
entirely of his mind — ready to show him full obedience
in rending himself from his monkish vows. And though
he does not enter on a formal or detailed examination
of monastic institutions, he touches upon some essential
points regarding them. Monasticism, with the Papacy
and all the imposing array of mediaeval theology at its
back, he impugns on the ground that it has dispropor
tionately exalted the ethical value of the virgin state.
He denies that the "chastity" to which the monk
devotes himself deserves, distinctively, that name. The
word, he contends, rightly denotes faithfulness in the
married state. Chastity in the unmarried man or woman
is taken for granted in Scripture, as a thing which all
moral persons are presumed to possess without registra
tion of vows. The want of it is a sin ; the presence of
it is no virtue ; the so-called virtue that arises from the
vow to decline wedlock is artificial, and usurps a name
which belongs to faithfulness in the wife and in the
husband. Wilful bachelorhood and old-maidhood are,
by the Papistical eulogists of monks and nuns, " dressed
in the stolen plumes that ought to adorn married
chastity, and thus made into decoys for men and women,
to the peril of their souls' salvation."
What a potency and grandeur of practical sense
reside in this man ! What a transformation, or boule-
versement, he effects in all mediaeval ideas ! Down with
the fantastic, woe-begone, white-faced chastity of nuns

184 MARTIN LUTHER.
and monks! Up with the chastity of ardent youth
and blooming girl, of loving husband and honest
wife ! Down with the filmy, dream-nurtured, moon-
gazing chastity of Egyptian hermits and Oriental
ascetics, and up with the chastity that strengthens the
loins of industry, lightens the sternest toil in furrow,
mine, and workshop with songs of love, and guards the
gates of home ! Down with sickly sanctimoniousness
and all its apparatus, all its panegyric ! How it falls
and collapses, as before the sweep of a colossal arm ! —
pageantry of pretty, plausible, sentimental, sickly moon
shine, enough to veil the skies ! Let us have virtue
that will stand the wear and tear of earth, before we
tie up men and women with vows to emulate the angels
of heaven. In his robust sympathy with married chastity,
Luther restored the virtue to its proper place, its native
function. It was no longer an artificial virtue, enjoin
ing and consecrating arbitrary and often unnatural
isolation, puffing men and women up with the notion
that they were too bright and good for human nature's
daily food, but a home-bred, sinewy virtue, guarding
whether in the married or the unmarried, the highest
and most human passion — love — from degradation.
This does not imply that single life is forbidden, or is
branded with necessary inferiority. Men and women
there may be who are not adapted for marriage, and
capable of living happily and usefully, either alone
or in free and frank association with each other. But
let not the assumption by these, and much less the

MONASTICISM. 185
assumption by others whom nature may intend for mar
riage, of celibate vows, usurp and monopolise the name
of chastity, claiming a transcendent, a celestial value, to
which the chastity of marrying and married people has no
pretence. This, as our Martin, with his usual fiery touch
on essentials, reminds his father, is precisely what the
Papists had done. " They presume that God esteems
the chastity of abnegation of marriage as highly as they,
on man's authority, esteem it. Accordingly, they dis
pense freely enough with what is sanctioned by God's
command ; but the vow of chastity, which is forbidden
by God, and often undertaken against the will and
authority of parents, they do not, with their dispen
sations, touch." These words seem to shut us up to
the conclusion that Luther now believed the lifelong
monastic vow to be positively forbidden to Christians.
There is a limit, he thinks, to our liberty to defraud
ourselves of liberty; and Christ does not choose that
His servants shall work in chains. Something might
perhaps be said on the other side ; but practical wisdom
will not be startled by this uncompromising prohibition
of an indelible vow, by which one binds himself to
renounce what, even if unsuited to him at the time,
may, for all he knows, become suitable to him before he
dies, and is in itself a supreme bounty of nature and
God.

CHAPTER VII.
THE MASS.
Having hurled down clerical celibacy and monkish vows,
Luther turned upon the mass. It also, in this memor
able summer of 1521, he relinquished. "Never again,"
he wrote to Melanchthon on the 1st of August, " to all
eternity, will I celebrate a private mass." The privacy
he sees to be obviously and diametrically opposed to the
idea of what, from the patent facts of its institution by
Christ, was a social ordinance. But the mass itself — the
offering up, by a preternaturally qualified priest, of a
sacrifice for sin — was irreconcilable with the unique
ness of the self-sacrifice of Christ, consummated on Cal
vary. In no instance — not in that of clerical celibacy, not
in that of monastic vows — did the system of the Roman
Church place itself in contrast so sharply to the system
of the Apostolic Church, reflected in the New Testa
ment, as in connection with the mass. If the Apostolic
Church had been like the Mediaeval Church, the Acts
of the Apostles would have told, in every third sentence,
of the performance of the " Eucharistic Sacrifice " by
Peter or James, by Paul or John, by Silas or Barnabas.
In the Church of Rome the mass cannot be celebrated

THE MASS. 187
without a priest ; in no instance in which the com
munion of believers in the body and blood of Christ is
described in the New Testament — and St. Paul expressly
states to the Corinthians all that he seems to think
essential to the ordinance — does any mention occur of a
sacrificing priest, or even, except when Christ Himself
instituted the supper, of an officiating minister.
Having ascertained what he believed to be the truth
on the subject, Luther did not hesitate to write upon it,
and to push forward, on this vital point, his general
assault on the Roman line. Towards the end of the
year he writes to the Augustine monks of Wittenberg,
his old friends and brothers, sending them his treatise,
and praising them for their abandonment of the mass.
He recognises the difficulty of their position, the
subtlety and the strength of the temptations they have
to withstand. They will give offence not only to indif
ferent worldlings, but to " pious, prudent, holy, and wise
persons." They will be accused of godless audacity in
upsetting old, honoured, quasi-sacred customs. The
storm-winds will blow around them ; the waters will
rise and rage. They are to stand still and unmoved.
" If ye are on the rock, the winds will howl and waters
beat in vain ; if ye are on the sand, a quick fall will be
yours. *
He tells them that he too knows what it is to have
searchings of heart and scruples of conscience in doing
the work of a prophet and a reformer. " I feel daily how
hard it is to lay aside the weight of a reluctant
* De Wette, 350.

188 MARTIN LUTHER.
conscience, dragging the chain of man-made ordinances.
Oh, with what trouble and toil, even when firmly based
on Holy Writ, have I been able to justify myself to my
own conscience ! I alone, forsooth, was rising up
against the Pope, proclaiming him Antichrist, his
bishops apostles of Antichrist, his high schools houses
of ill-fame ! How often has my heart throbbed wildly
in my breast ; how often have I felt the pang ; how
often has the penetrating, self-urged argument returned !
— ' You, then, alone are wise ? All other people wander
in error, and have wandered from time immemorial?
Suppose that you too happened to be wrong, that you
were leading all these masses of people into error ; that
you were heaping on yourself the guilt of their ever
lasting damnation ? ' And so it went on until Christ,
with His own sure Word, strengthened and stablished
me, hushed the throbbing of my heart, and set it against
this argument of the Papists as a bank of stone against
the waves, scorning their rage and storm."
So feels a spiritual hero !

CHAPTER VIII.
REBUKING A CARDINAL.
A mere list of Luther's treatises, letters, commentaries,
translations, executed in the Wartburg, would fill pages.
His letters to eminent persons, eminent in station or
distinguished for gifts, would furnish materials for a
long essay. It is possible here to do no more than
touch with extreme brevity on a very few of the num
ber. Let these be his letter to Count Albert of Mansfeld ;
his letter, or, in substance, his two letters to Albert
of Mayence and Hohenzollern, Cardinal, Archbishop,
and Electoral Prince ; and his letters to Spalatin, chaplain
and confidential councillor to Frederick of Saxony.
As our Martin, in all his experiences of renown, or
of danger, remained firmly knit by ties of affection to
his father's house in Mansfeld valley, so he never
wavered in the faithfulness of his allegiance, and the
tenderness of his regard for the castle and the family
on Mansfeld crag. The ancient house of Mansfeld had
its representatives at Worms when Luther faced Ale
andro and Charles ; and we cannot err in supposing
that Count Hoyer and his two brothers, whose names
appear in the list of the assembled leaders of Deutsch-
land, were in the throng of stout knights and nobles who

190 MARTIN LUTHER.
clamoured for something like fair play on his behalf.
Albert, the youngest of the Mansfeld counts, we know
to have been a fervent ally of Luther's. The letter
addressed to him " from the wilderness " of the Wart
burg, though pointed in its personal references, forms
also the preface to an exposition of the Epistles and
Gospels, which was published in Wittenberg in 1522,
and which formed part — a solacing and delightful part,
we may be very sure — of Luther's many-sided activity
during the summer of 1521.
He touches, with a solemn delicacy, on Albert's
position as the youngest of the brothers. Christ also
sprang from a youngest son, Joash, the infant life
snatched from the murderous rage of Athaliah. He
suggests a meaning for Christ's words, spoken with
reference to John the Baptist, which, though ingenious
almost to the pitch of fancifulness, is highly characteristic
of Luther, and certainly is not alien from the manner
and spirit of Christ. Among those that are born of
women, said Christ, none greater had arisen than John
the Baptist ; " but the least in the Kingdom of heaven "
was greater than he. By " the least in the Kingdom of
heaven " was meant, according to Luther, Christ Him
self. " The least of all is none other than Christ. No one
has been brought so low as He ; no one has made him
self so little as Christ ; therefore He alone dares to say,
' Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.' This
can no saint ever presume to say. The mastership in
humility and gentleness not one of them can claim.
They are all scholars under the one Master. St.

REBUKING A CARDINAL. 191
Paul, accordingly, when he says to the Corinthians,
' Follow after me,' introduces promptly the right
Master, adding ' as I follow Christ.' It is not Paul,
but Christ in Paul, and Paul in Christ, that he sets up
as an example." The inmost essence — the soul's soul —
of Luther's Christianity lies in this identification of the
believer with Christ. Not in the sense that the believer
is incapable of sin, or does not actually sin, or that a
righteousness of his own is produced in him which he
can present to God as the purchase-money of salvation,
but in the sense that the immortal life in him — the
inextinguishable particle — is Christ. Were I not per
suaded that Luther held the soul to be naturally im
mortal, I should find it hard to distinguish his doctrine
on. this point from that of immortality conditional upon
union with Christ, which has in the last twenty years
been so widely diffused under the eloquent and earnest
advocacy of Mr. Edward White. In the rest of the
letter he refers, as is common with him at this time, to
the probability of his being burnt by the Papists ; and
tells the count that he too may have to " bite a little
smoke " on Luther's account. " What they call shame
is honour; what they call honour is shame. Those
who are kindling the faggots deserve the fire ; and
those who are burnt are worthy of, and will in the last
day possess, seats of judgment."
A man who with the clearest conviction believed
that Antichrist wore the triple crown of the Pope, and
that he was himself in daily peril of being brought by
the said Antichrist to the stake, was not likely to be

192 MARTIN LUTHER.
serene in mood or measured in phrase when engaged in
conflict with the familiar friends and allies of the Pope.
And if there was anything which incited Luther to
more than even his wonted passion and paroxysm in
attack, it was the idea that his adversary played a double
game, or fought behind a mask. Constitutionally open
and intrepid, he hated double courses with an inborn
and instinctive antipathy. Judge then of the tumult
which raged within him when he heard it whispered
that Prince- Archbishop Albert, whom he knew to have
been mixed up with the Tetzell business, was at his
pranks again. One of the pastors who had gladdened
Luther's heart by openly taking a wife had been flung
into prison by the Cardinal. Luther, it must be owned,
had a vein of suspicion in his disposition, and was not
indulgent in his judgments of men ; he had heard that
Albert, whose ostentatious, thriftless ways made him
sorely impecunious, had stooped to feed his exchequer
with fees paid by parish priests for permission to keep
concubines ; he doubtless believed that the imputations
on the Cardinal's own morals were not without foun
dation. And now, after the torch of reformation had
been shaken for years in Germany, the report reached
him that Albert was actually again countenancing the
sale of Indulgences in Halle, the town of his resid
ence. Luther was greatly moved. " I will not be
restrained," he wrote to Spalatin on the 7th of
October, " from publicly and privately inveighing
against the false god of Mayence, with his evil house
(lupanari) of Halle." Spalatin had been expostulating

REBUKING A CARDINAL. 193
against the threatened attack on Albert, as his manner
was. What is more extraordinary, as a proof of the
awe inspired at this time by Luther's name, the proud
Archbishop himself had been terror-struck by the
rumour of what was preparing, and had sent Capito,
his confidential friend and adviser, both to the Witten
berg Evangelicals and to the Elector Frederick, to urge
these friends of Luther's to entreat for him that he
might not be assailed.
The Elector seems to have bestirred himself beyond
his wont ; and Spalatin wrote to the Wartburg convey
ing the Electoral mind and his own to Luther. The
peremptoriness of the injunction not to deal harshly
with the Archbishop we may estimate from the vehe
mence of Luther's reply. When a ball of steel, pro
ceeding at a very high velocity, impinges on an
ironclad, the latter bursts, at the point of impact, into
flame. Luther's answer was in words of fire. " I will
not stand being forbidden by the Prince to write against
Mayence and disturb the public peace. Sooner will I
cut myself away from * you, the Prince, and every
created being. If I defied the Pope, the creator of
this Archbishop, shall I cower before his creature ? A
pretty thing, indeed, that you should think it a neces
sity to guard the peace of society, and should suffer
* De Wette, 346. Perdam — I will lose or be quit of. The word has
been translated " destroy," but Luther had that word at hand if he had
chosen to use it. The sense I suggest is legitimate. It makes Luther's
assertion of his independence strong yet not ungracious. It would be
difficult to defend the other meaning from the charge of bombast and
extravagance.

194 MARTIN LUTHER.
the eternal peace of God to be broken by this man's
impious and sacrilegious works ! Not so, Spalatin ; not
so, Prince ; but for the sake of the flock of Christ,
resistance must be made to the utmost to that ravening
wolf, as an example to others." He has not changed,
he says, a word in his treatise, but he does not object to
submit it to Melanchthon for his judgment. In the
sequel of the letter he bids Spalatin, and through him
his master, to be unmoved by the slanderous reports
either of his avowed adversaries, or of those who are
" too civilly prudent in doing the work of God." Mean
while, he defers publication of the treatise ; but, on the
1st of December, he sends a letter to Albert. As we
read it, we reflect with amazement on the change which
four years had effected in the relative positions of the
men, and upon the immense progress which had already
been made in the subversion of Popish authority in
Saxony. The tone is one of frank and sharp rebuke. Luther
recalls his original attack upon Indulgences, charges the
Cardinal with having been inextricably involved in that
bad business, and calls to remembrance the caution he,
Luther, had exercised in sparing the Archbishop and his
brother, the reigning Prince of Brandenburg, and direct
ing the storm upon less distinguished heads. Twice,
writing in Latin, he had admonished his grace, and
twice it had been in vain ; he now wrote for the third
time, and in German. Once more the idolatrous prac
tice of Indulgence had been resumed, and poor, simple-
minded Christians were being defrauded of their money

REBUKING A CARDINAL. 195
and put in peril of damnation. He bids the Cardinal
leave the people unseduced and unrobbed, and show
himself a bishop, not a wolf. He enjoins him also to
abstain from meddling with those priests who, to avoid
sin, have entered wedlock. What God has given them,
let not their Bishop take away. He demands an answer,
explicit and satisfactory, within fourteen days ; other
wise his treatise against the Idol of Halle, that is to
say against Albert, will appear. The letter is long, and
there is hardly a paragraph without its sting.
Wonder of wonders ! Instead of going into a tower
ing passion, the Prince-Archbishop takes up his pen and
writes to Luther in terms of courtesy and contrition.
He addresses him with familiar friendliness as " Dear
Doctor." He has read Luther's letter, and takes it "in
all grace and good part." Not a hint is let fall that the
rebuke — the Cardinal had twice been symbolised in it
as a wolf — had been too severe. For the rest, the mat
ters which occasioned it had long since been set right.
He (Albert) would conduct himself as became a pious
ecclesiastic and a Christian prince, in so far as God
lent him grace and strength. For these he will pray,
and ask others to pray on his behalf, for he knows
that, apart from God's grace, there is no good in him,
but he is malodorous filth (stinkender Koth) like anyone
else, if not worse. " Brotherly and Christian chastise
ment I well can bear."
What a singular situation ! If it affords no points
of advantage to the spectacular drama, it surely is well
fitted to interest all those who are capable of being moved
n 2

196 MARTIN LUTHER.
by the incidents of man's spiritual history. David
humbles himself before Nathan. Nor can we believe
that the penitent was wholly insincere. Albert leant
towards the Liberal side. At Worms he had not been
among Luther's enemies. His brother, Joachim of
Brandenburg, had indeed favoured the sharpest mea
sures of repression, but Albert took a leading, part in
the overtures for conciliation. He was ambitious of
shining as the friend of good causes, the patron of good
men. He shrank from an abrupt severance between
past and present, and yearned more or less vaguely
after a reform carried out on the lines of the Roman
system. For Luther, compromise with Rome had
become impossible. What is more, the profoundest
consideration of the case between Luther and Rome, as
we look back upon it from the distance of four cen
turies, justifies the conclusion that medisevalism and
modernism could not be reconciled, that a Church in
which the " performance of mass " was the essential act
of worship, the essential function of soul-salvation,
could not frame a compromise or working arrangement
with a Church in which the essential matter was pro
clamation of the infinite grace of God in Christ. All
this may illustrate the power of Luther's intellect, and
the decision of his character ; but it would not justify
us in refusing to recognise the difficulty in which not a
few well-meaning and reverent minds, among those who
opposed him, found themselves placed.
Albert's letter, one is really glad to find, was ac
cepted by Luther, when he first read it, in open-hearted

REBUKING A CARDINAL. 197
simplicity. Better — far better — was it that he should be
generously deceived in such a case than that he should
be coldly, suspiciously, and cynically right. The frank
surrender of the Archbishop, the frank confession of his
faultiness, the clear yet not inflated expression of his wish
to be a good ecclesiastic and a good man, his profession
of complete dependence on the grace of God, overcame
Luther's doubts.* He was ready to break out into
exclamations of admiring rapture, and to kiss the feet
of the Cardinal. f But presently there arrived a letter
from Capito, Albert's confidential spokesman, and the
reading of this gave Luther pause. It betrayed the
artist-hand, the cunning application of paint. Suspicion
revived. He wrote, not to Albert himself, but to Capito,
and the letter is one of straight thinking and plain
speaking. Its first sentence is a blow. " In the same
proportion in which your Cardinal's letter set me up,
your own letter has cast me down. Perchance your
countenance also has fallen at sight of this sad and
thankless exordium. But the fault is yours. You have
taken away trust and authority from the letter of the
Cardinal by your untimely expenditure of rhetoric."
What has awakened his wrath and suspicion is the
anxiety manifested by Capito to inspire him with mild
and accommodating counsels. Capito and Albert favour
the idea that preachers of truth should have regard to
the sensibilities of princes. The Gospel cause, accord
ing to this meek hypothesis, may be promoted by con
niving at the defects of the great, winking at their
* De Wette, 358. f De Wette, 359.

198 MARTIN LUTHER.
weakness, excusing their lapses, and taking care not to
challenge such formidable enemies to the field. And so
we are to admit that adulation and plausible pretences
usher along the truth of God ! Luther will give no
quarter to such thoughts. The Scriptures utterly
proscribe and detest such doings as irpow-iroXq^la, respect
of persons. " I know that what you profess to want
is Christian mansuetude and benignity. But what is
there in common between a Christian and a flatterer ?
An open thing, the simplest thing in the world, is
Christianity." There is time, no doubt, and there is
place, for charity. But it comes after the Gospel has
been preached and accepted. In stating the Gospel,
there is no accommodation, no compromise. Christ
dealt most sharply with gainsay ers, yet, had they
received Him, He would have gathered them under
His wings as a hen her chickens. " Charity indeed
bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things ;
but faith bears nothing except the Word ; faith assails,
devours, or, as saith Jeremiah, overturns, destroys, and
dissipates all falsehood. And cursed is the man who
doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully." It is not per
fection that is wanted ; it is sincerity in the acceptance
of truth. " H your Cardinal had written his letter out
of an honest mind, I protest, such had been my joy,
such my readiness to humble myself before him, that,
casting myself down, I would not have held myself
worthy to kiss the dust beneath his feet." He, Luther,
made no pretence to sanctity. He owned himself a
sink of iniquity. Let the Cardinal but acknowledge

REBUKING A CARDINAL. 199
the Word of grace, and he would be proud to be his
servant. " But towards those who either condemn or
despise, or underhandedly oppose, the doctrine and
ministry of the Word, no grace, no charity, no benignity
is to be shown : or rather, indeed, it is the office of
supreme charity to resist with all possible strenuousness
their madness and impiety."
And how is the sincerity of our sublime Cardinal and
Archbishop to be tested? "Sell all thou hast," said
Christ to the superfine, self-satisfied lawyer. Martin
Luther does not refer to this passage, nor is there any
indication of a consciousness on his part of modelling
his action on that of the Saviour; but the correspond
ence is unmistakable. He tells the Prince- Cardinal
Albert that if his faith is unfeigned, if he is not hiding
hypocrisy in his heart, he will disrobe himself of his
Cardinal's pallium and his episcopal pomp, and address
himself as a simple parish minister to the preaching
of the Word. "It is impossible that he should be in
the way of salvation, if he continues Bishop of so
many churches, while he is scarcely able to admin
ister one, even though a small one." Here was a
searching test. Luther might well expect that Capito
would think such transcendental courses impracticable.
" Who, you will ask, shall dare to address such a
demand to the Archbishop? And how, I ask in
reply, can you be sure of his sincerity unless you make
him know and realise that this is the truth ? " Once
you know that the man is right at heart, you may deal
as leniently with him as you please — you may tolerate

200 MARTIN LUTHER.
and connive at his shortcomings without contributing
to his spiritual detriment. The test which Luther
applied in this instance, he applied to Bishops generally.
" I shall believe," he said to Spalatin, " that Bishops
preach the Gospel when I see them leave their episcop
ates and devote themselves only to the Word." * We
may hope that Albert did not find the stern discipline of
Luther unprofitable, but it is certain that he did not
sell all that he had and restrict himself to preaching the
Gospel. The letters to Spalatin, like all that he wrote from
the Wartburg, evince the mood which is perhaps most
vividly represented in this letter to Capito. His tone
and temper are those of a leader calling on his men
to follow him into the breach of the fortress, or to
storm the batteries in the field. Not that he was
incapable of detachment, frantically possessed with one
idea. He does not forget to be solicitously awake to
the interests of Melanchthon — to plead for an augmen
tation of his salary, to urge that he shall be made to
leave Wittenberg on the appearance of the plague.
Amid the engrossment of his conflict with the Pope,
and the press of his interminable activities, Luther be
thinks himself, also, that he may be a charge to the
knight of the Wartburg. Spalatin is sharply interro
gated on this head. " It is no matter to me," he says,
" where I do my work, if only I am not a burden and a
trouble to these people. I want to be a weight on no
one. I altogether believe, however, that I am here by
* De Wette, 352.

REBUKING A CARDINAL. 201
the bounty of our prince. I would not stay for an hour
if I knew that I was consuming the substance of my
host, although he ministers to me in all things freely
and hilariously."
We find that he has now decisively parted company
with Erasmus. Spalatin, always inclined to modera
tion, had sent him some soothing counsel, backed up
by the opinion of Capito and the eloquent Dutchman.
" For the opinion either of Capito or of Erasmus,"
he fiercely rejoins, " I care not one particle." Erasmus
in all his writings looks first, he says, not to the
cross of Christ, but to the preserving of peace. " He
thinks that all things are to be achieved by dint of
civility, and a certain benevolence of humanity. But
this is not the way to settle with Behemoth." He
mentions that, when he first read the preface to
Erasmus's New Testament, he was struck by the
remark, " A Christian easily despises glory." " 0
Erasmus," he then thought in his heart, " you are
deceived, I fear. It is a mighty difficult matter to
despise glory." Erasmus, he plainly suggests, prefers
the subtle sweetness of praise to the bitter tasks of
duty. As for reformation by dint of civility, he holds
that books, with no " bite " in them — toothless, mum
bling, accommodating, apologising books — do nothing
to promote the cause of truth. " Popes, when they are
courteously admonished, take it for flattery, plume
themselves on their right of escaping correction, and
persevere well-pleased because no one dares to repre
hend them."

202 MARTIN LUTHER.
It is not, he insists, of having been too vehement in
the work of the Lord that he has to accuse himself, but
of the reverse. " I much fear," he says, " and am vexed
in conscience, because at Worms I yielded to the advice
of you and your friends, curbed my spirit, and did not
give those patrons of falsehood some earnest of a present
Elijah. They would hear another tale if I were again
summoned to meet them."
But though there is ever and anon an angry glit
tering of the eye, and a snort of the nostrils, when
Spalatin irritates him by soft sayings, Luther never
dreams that his familiar friend is other than he has,
from their youth up, known him to be : his reverently
obsequious vassal and Gibeonite, devoutly believing in
his plenary inspiration, glad to do his fetching and
carrying, and to take all mechanical details off the pro
phetic hands. Luther sends him, without misgiving,
treatise after treatise in manuscript, so soon as it is
ready for the printer — controversy, exegesis, tracts on
confession, on monastic vows, on the mass, and so forth
— to be by Spalatin put into shape for the press, sent
to this friend or that in the Wittenberg circle, and, on
the whole, dealt with as Luther, aloft on the Wartburg,
intends. Spalatin was, in short, the factotum of Luther
at the Electoral Court. " Such is the sway of your
great men o'er little."

CHAPTER IX.
A RUN TO WITTENBERG.
Towards the end of November, Luther, who had long
fretted on the curb, made up his mind that life had
become unendurable unless he could spend a few days,
or at least hours, in Wittenberg. Apart from the im
patient longing for some change, there were particular
reasons that urged him to go. He wished to obtain
furtherances, promised by the book stores of Wittenberg,
in his cherished project of translating the New Testa
ment into German. He wished to talk over that grand
enterprise with the Wittenberg professors ; above all,
with Melanchthon. On the translation of the New
Testament he was now concentrating his energies. It
was the work in which his soul delighted, the work in
which his spirit drank the reward of Christ's own peace
amid the loudest fury of the controversial fray. A
sure and deep instinct told him also that his best
support, his firmest defence, against the Papacy,
lay in a simple appeal to the records of the earliest
Christian inspiration, unveiled by reverent scholarship,
and placed before the unsophisticated mind of Germany
in its own language.
He doubtless also had some feeling of anxiety as to

204 MARTIN LUTHER.
keeping himself au courant of the situation. His coign
of vantage was of necessity to some extent a coign of
separation. He yearned to mingle once more in the
throng of combatants, to share in their glowing enthu
siasm. Active as he was in correspondence, and
though he seems to have been well served by his corre
spondents, he must often, as he gazed upon the
autumnal woods of the Wartburg, have pined for news.
The pace, besides, at which the main current of the
movement hurried on at Wittenberg was tremendous ;
and he may have feared, at times, that he was falling
out of touch with the other leaders.
When November was ending and December about
to begin, he could withstand the impulse no longer.
His vigilantly attentive host had provided him with
an armed retainer, who accompanied him in rides
about the district. The yeoman chosen for the service
had proved eminently fitted for the rather ticklish
business of piloting Squire George about. The latter
could never be rightly taught to guard his incognito.
Fond of the haunts of men, he scrupled not to make his
way into convents about meal time, or to enter freely
into conversation. If any book happened to catch his
eye, he made for it at once, betraying an interest in its
contents that seemed hardly in keeping with his knightly
garb and beard, and with the sword dangling at his side.
His remarks were likely to form a contrast to those of
the people who commonly favoured the monks with
their company. On one occasion this peculiar squire
had been actually recognised for the most renowned and

A RUN TO WITTENBERG. 205
popular of living Germans, and his attendant was forced
to hurry him away to prevent an explosion. But Luther
thus got used to the saddle ; and with four stout legs
beneath him, was not likely to consider a journey to
Wittenberg a very formidable project.
Accordingly, on one of the early days of December,
who should make his appearance in that town, and steal
into the house of Amsdorf, but the enigmatical squire,
whose eye, under all possible disguises, had for Amsdorf
the unique sparkle that announced Doctor Luther.
His friends soon came clustering round him, and there
was the intensest buzz and schiodrmerei of sympathetic
talk. His picturesque garb formed a minor topic of
interest. Who can be at a loss to imagine the fervour
with which hands were shaken, the exultant glances
with which eye met eye, the clamorous eagerness with
which questions were put and answered ?
But amid all this our Doctor became more and more
sensible of something amiss — of something that stood
in the way of complete mutual understanding. He made
allusions, we may suppose, to his Wartburg writings on
the mass, on clerical celibacy, on monastic vows — con
tributions which he, from his watch-tower, had sent on
to testify that, though absent, he was neither dead nor
sleeping, and with which he would expect Melanchthon,
Amsdorf, Jonas, and the rest of his friends, to be
familiar. They struck him as strangely ignorant on
the subject, seeming to have never heard of treatises
which he believed them to have read, marked, and in
wardly digested. He was not in the way of fishing for

206 MARTIN LUTHER.
compliments, and had none of the professional author's
conceit, vanity, or touchiness; but this conspicuous
ignorance of all that he had essayed to do with his pen
since he had taken his perch among the birds was
not pleasant. The truth could not be hid. Alas for
the fallacies of hope, and the illusions of trust ! Spala
tin, the unsuspected, the friend of friends, had either
failed to receive the manuscripts — a theory suggested
only to be waived aside as obviously incorrect — or had
kept them to himself and the Elector, not forwarding
them to the printer, not communicating them to the^
Wittenberg friends, simply and silently putting them
away. Here was a discovery !
Sorely chagrined, Luther seized his goose-quill and
dashed off a hot and hasty letter to the recreant
Spalatin. He avowed himself deeply moved. He could
hardly believe that the manuscripts had reached his
friend. " If you really have them, do try to put some
limit to your pusillanimous prudence. Why try to row
against a whirlpool ? I certainly will have the things I
wrote issued, if not at Wittenberg, then elsewhere. If
the copies are lost, or if you insist upon retaining them,
my spirit will be so embittered that I shall reproduce
them in much more vehement form. You will not
extinguish me though you destroy my bits of paper."
In his intercourse with his Wittenberg friends, which
had otherwise yielded him "the superlative of sweet
ness," he had found, he said, this drop of gall.
" Judge you whether I ought to consider my poignant
distress the just. thing to receive at your hands."

A RUN TO WITTENBERG. 207
He composes himself sufficiently to tell Spalatin
that the spirit animating the Wittenberg men pleases
him, on the whole, exceedingly. But he adds a reser
vation which may prove significant. He has become
aware of tumultuous doings, and so soon as he returns
to his place of refuge, he will prepare an address ex
horting his countrymen to quiet courses. He com
mends himself to the "most illustrious Prince," from
whom, for reasons which Spalatin will understand, he
had concealed his journey to Wittenberg. He dates
from " Wittenberg, with my Philip, in Amsdorf 's
house." And so the habit of long and tender friendship
asserts itself, and the leonine nature flings from it the
chilling dewdrops of grudge and disappointment. Luther
forgives what was really a stinging provocation, and he
and Spalatin-, par nobile fratrum, are themselves again.
The treatises kept back by the cautious Spalatin did
one by one pass into the hands of the printer and the
world ; and posterity may take the liberty to doubt
whether Spalatin's prudence was not of use to the
cause, as well as Luther's impetuosity.

CHAPTER X.
NEW TESTAMENT TRANSLATION.
The state of men's minds in Germany at that time may
be gauged by the intelligent reader from this one fact
— that Martin Luther himself, having ridden from the
Wartburg to Wittenberg and back, visiting Leipzig and
other towns and villages on his way, and keeping his
eyes and ears open, was impressed with the necessity of
allaying rather than of stimulating the excitement
that prevailed. His first work, on returning to his
hermitage, was to prepare an address exhorting his dear
countrymen, specially his Wittenberg townsmen, to
moderation. Then, with that power of detachment
which was not the least enviable in his retinue of intel
lectual gifts, he threw the entire energy of his mind into
the task of translating the New Testament. It was the
central wish of his heart to enable his Germans to hear
the words of Christ, of Paul, of John, as they had been
actually spoken. The Book containing those words he
would set apart from all others, to reign " supreme and
sole, in the tongues, the hands, the eyes, the ears, the
hearts of the entire population." *
* De Wette, 354.

NEW TESTAMENT TRANSLATION. 209
The Gospels and Epistles had not been unknown to
the people of Germany. Partial translations, defectively
executed from the Latin version, had long been in cir
culation. But these not only retained the inaccuracies
of the Vulgate, but sometimes misrepresented the Latin,
and were hard, unmodulated, devoid of grace and free
dom in the modern tongue. Luther made it his aim to
remove mistakes by reference to the original, and to
wed the exact sense to free, forceful, idiomatic German.
The Greek text on which he worked was that which
had, a few years before, been published by Erasmus,
whose labours in this department he highly prized.
The progress of critical scholarship has occasioned many
alterations in the Erasmian text, and corresponding
changes have been necessary in Luther's New Testa
ment ; but it does not appear to be disputed that these
do not affect the essential questions in debate between
theologians. Luther took a severely just — too severe perhaps to
be quite just — view of his capacity as a translator.
Now, he said, when he strenuously took up the work,
did he first find out what translation meant. There was
henceforward, he said, no fear that he should die under
the delusion that he was a learned man. " Transla
tion," he deliberately pronounced, many years later, " a
peculiar grace and gift of God." * There has been,
however, among competent judges since his time, no
difference of opinion as to his having possessed some of
the most rare, precious, and incommunicable qualities
* Table-Talk, vol. iv.
0

210 MARTIN LUTHER.
of a translator. His superb genius for going to the
heart of things — for hitting the mark — for seeing the
essential — did not fail him here. Unquestionably also,
though it cannot be said of him that his sympathies
ran equally through the whole gamut of Scriptural
sentiment and thought, it may be maintained that he
surpassed the crowd of translators both in the range and
in the intensity of his Biblical sympathies. No modern
man has lived so completely in the idea of God ; and
the idea of God is the inspiration of the Bible. It
was well said by Carlyle that the Bible is the most
earnest of books ; it is also the least affected of
books ; and Martin Luther was the most earnest man
of an earnest time, the man most thoroughly exempt
from affectation in the frank, strong, unaffected six
teenth century. By his character, too, and his breed
ing, he was the man to apprehend, or rather to feel,
with nicest sympathetic intelligence, the combination
in the Bible of great thoughts and simple words :
thoughts of legislators, poets, prophets, statesmen;
words not merely intelligible, but instantly intel
ligible, to childlike men. Luther, like Goethe, was
impatient of long, involved processes of thinking and
demonstrating. His genius was intuitive rather than
scholastic. And the Hebraic mind was pre-eminently
of this kind — light came to it by inspiration, not
by ratiocination. In this fact of Luther's constitu
tion we have the key to much in his fierce revolt
against Aristotle and the schoolmen. Cardinal truths,
essentially self-proving, were absolutely the soul's

NEW TESTAMENT TRANSLATION. 211
element of Luther. All this adapted him to be a
prince among Bible translators.
His German language had been learned not only
from the best vernacular literature to be had in con
temporary Deutschland — which, perhaps, is not saying
much — but from converse since boyhood with an im
mense variety of persons of every class. He tells us in
the Table Talk that his native Saxon was the classic
German of the day, spoken by Kaiser Maximilian and
Frederick the Wise, and received in all German lands
by princes and other heads of society as the language
of polite and cultivated men. He, for his part, thought
the dialect of the Mark a lighter, finer speech; the
words of the men of the Mark flowed in such clear-cut
lucency that you hardly saw the lips move.* But the
Saxon was the main dialect of Germany — the language
of the common man throughout the vast Teutonic race,
and therefore most suitable for Bible translation.
* Table Talk, vol. iv.

0 3

CHAPTER XI.
A GLIMPSE OF POPE AND EMPEROR.
Leaving Martin, then, wdiile wintry winds pipe loud
around the deep seclusion of his chamber on the
Wartburg, to pass his days and nights in clothing
the thoughts of the Sermon on the Mount, or of St.
Paul's hymn to charity, in a German dress, we must
find space for brief reference to more conspicuous, not
more important, events which are in these months
taking place on the stage of European history.
When Pope Leo reckoned up the profit and loss
resulting from the encounter between the Papacy and
Luther at Worms, he probably concluded that he
had been reasonably successful. Though there are
no grounds for believing that, with a heavy stake
against him, he would have scrupled to do a bold, bad
act, he was the last man in the world to blunder into
useless and perilous crime, and had far too fine a sense
of the requirements of his age to wish to have Luther's
blood on his hands. He had secured against the as
sailant of the Vatican a decisive verdict of the respect
ability of Germany assembled, under auspices of the
Emperor at Worms. He was a temporal prince ; his

A GLIMPSE OF POPE AND EMPEROR. 213
temporal principality was of ten times more consequence
in his eyes than his spiritual power ; and he might now
securely believe that in his secular sovereignty Luther
could do him little harm. The Emperor, having put
the mutinous monk under the ban of the empire, had in
other respects been complaisant, and afforded Leo all
requisite aid in carrying out those objects in the north
of Italy which he had at heart.
The course of events during the summer had
brilliantly answered to Leo's projects and hopes. Be
fore the splendid and powerful alliance of Pope and
Kaiser the armies of France fell back. Parma and
Piacenza were recovered. Cardinal Julius Medici, an
uncle of Leo's, commanded the Papal army in the field,
and took possession of Milan, which Charles had
previously conquered for the allies. " It was," in
Ranke's phrase, " a great moment " for Leo. He might
flatter himself that the Emperor was a puppet in his
hands. He might count himself still young — very
young for a successful Pope — being several years on the
morning side of fifty. What to him was the Gospel
and anti-Gospel babblement of monks and professors in
bleak Wittenberg ? What for him was the burning of
oil at midnight on the Wartburg, in unflagging trans
lation of the New Testament, by a fanatical Doctor
Luther ?
On the day when the grand tidings of the entrance
of his troops into Milan reached Leo he was at his
villa Malliana. He gave himself up to the satisfaction
naturally resulting from success in an important under-

214 MARTIN LUTHER.
taking. The festivities which the people set on foot
were gratifying to him ; and until late in the night
he continued to go to and fro between the window and
the blazing hearth. With some feeling of lassitude,
but not alarmed as to his health, and in hearty good
humour with, himself and all the world, he returned to
Rome. The rejoicings were still going on when he
was struck with an illness which soon declared itself to
be deadly. He had not time even to take the sacrament
and receive extreme unction when the hand of death
was upon him. He asked those at his bedside to
pray for him ; and the request was not insincere, for
Leo was no cold atheist, no malignantly hypocritic
man, but merely a typical figure — with jewelled hands
and genial manners — of his generation in Italy. He
told his attendants that his wish had been to make
them happy : and this also was true ; for he liked
happiness too well not to prefer having happy rather
than gloomy faces round him. It was the first of
December, 1521.* * Eanke and Roscoe.

CHAPTER XII.
SPIRITUAL ANARCHY  A CRY FOR LUTHER.
It is a familiar fact that revolutions outrun those who
have conjured them from the vasty deep of human
nature and human existence. After a few months'
retirement in the Wartburg Luther was astounded by
the intensity of the excitement which, during his brief
excursion to Wittenberg, he saw on all hands. He
who even on the way from Worms had expressed his
amazement at the long-suffering of the Germans in
presence of Roman assumptions, now felt himself
called upon to issue an admonition to moderation.
His name was on every lip ; he was acknowledged
and felt by all to be the dominating spirit of the
movement ; but many were beginning to exchange his
steady march for a headlong race, and several per
sonages, starting into the position of leaders, were
already out-Luthering Luther.
Conspicuous among these volunteer drivers of the
sun-chariot — most self-confident, excitable, and feather
brained of Phaethons — was Andrew Carlstadt. Readers
have not forgotten how he rode first and apart in his
vehicle, on entering Leipzig for the far-famed dis
putation, while Luther fared along in his waggon, at

216 MARTIN LUTHER.
due distance behind; how, in that moment of exalt
ation, a wheel broke in the Carlstadtian carriage, and
out he tumbled into the mud; and how the tittering
Leipzigers interpreted the omen to mean that Carlstadt
imagined himself entitled to go before Luther, while
fate appointed him to fall behind. The heady wine of
new opinions mounted into the light brain of Carlstadt ;
and when Luther was interned in the Wartburg his
driving became fast and furious. On Christmas Day,
1521, he administered the communion in both kinds,
and almost without discrimination of applicants, in the
parish church. Fired by his example, a party of
students, a few weeks subsequently, rushed upon priests
engaged in celebrating mass, and tore from them the
apparatus used on the occasion.
Meanwhile, monks were hurrying in tumultuous
throngs from their convents, some betaking themselves
to trades, others becoming popular preachers and swell
ing the din by vociferous outpourings. Carlstadt
bounded into matrimony. As in all such cases, the
comic element mingled with the tragic or the solemn,
and many a hungry soul, unable to contribute much
to the good cause in the way of theological disquisition
or fervent sermon, proved himself a true disciple of
Carlstadt by strenuous consumption of eggs on Wednes
days and flesh on Fridays, or by willingness to marry.
Carlstadt himself harangued in an inflated and oracular
style, more and more preparing himself, in proportion
as he became loud, bombastic, and inane, to believe in
his own direct inspiration from heaven. The effect of

SPIRITUAL ANARCHY. 217
the archdeacon's eloquence — Carlstadt was an arch
deacon — was heightened by that of Gabriel Zwilling,
the sweetest of all the voices that the break-up of the
monasteries had evolved into popular preachers.
Here was a fermentation ! Let us note its ex
travagances, its inevitable glimpses of absurdity ; but
let us not forget that its central impulse was noble.
The people exulted in the grace of God and in their
recovered freedom ; and in their exultation they did as
men in analogous circumstances have always done — fell
into partial confusion and spiritual intoxication, and
threw themselves open to be victimised by well-meaning
charlatans. These were at hand. In Zwickau, a town lying
within easy distance to the south of Wittenberg, the
teachings of Luther had been received with rapturous
enthusiasm ; but the reservations and qualifications with
which he tempered the right of private judgment were
by the fiery Zwickauers either overlooked or spurned.
It must be admitted that the position they took up can
be defended by superficially plausible arguments. If
the spirit of a man, or the immediate voice of the Spirit
of God in a man, is, as Luther contended, a better
interpreter for him of Holy Writ than the external
authority of Pope or Council, why should not the Book
be dispensed with, and inspiration from on high be
directly flashed upon problems of the present, with
which no seer of the past, were he Daniel, Abraham,
Job, or John, could be perfectly acquainted ?
Nicholas Storch and Mark Thomas, weavers in

218 MARTIN LUTHER.
Zwickau, believed this question to be answerable only
in one way, and leaped to the pleasing conclusion that
they were the recipients of an inspiration independent
of Scripture. Mark Stubner, who had been a Witten
berg student, and Thomas Miinzer — a name that will
be tolerably well known in the history of the revo
lution now going forward— who preached at Alstadt,
were of the same opinion. Storch had been favoured
with interviews by the archangel Gabriel. The arch
angel had said to the weaver, " Thou shalt sit on my
throne." Storch provided himself with twelve apostles
and seventy evangelists. He and his brother prophets
found great acceptance among the Zwickau populace,
and their tumultuary proceedings alarmed the muni
cipal authorities of the town. In the end they were
expelled the place, and Storch, Thomas, and Stubner
took refuge in Wittenberg.
It is a suggestive indication of the state of suspense,
expectancy, and trepidation, in which men's minds were
placed, that these prophets met with a respectfully defer
ential welcome in Wittenberg. Frederick, the Elector,
unspeakably desirous of peace, but entirely immovable
in his determination to silence no word that might
be a word of truth, a syllable from God, resolved that
they too should have a fair hearing. He consulted
Amsdorf and Melanchthon on the subject. "I am a
layman," said the old prince, now growing very frail,
" and do not understand theology, but I had rather take
my staff in my hand and quit my country than resist
God."

SPIRITUAL ANARCHY. 219
Melanchthon was considerably staggered. He did
not like the business. The argument on which the
prophets based their rejection of infant baptism — that
baptism required faith, and .that no infant could have
faith — gave him pause, although it did not actually
carry conviction to his mind. But Carlstadt received
Storch and his brethren with acclamation, as manifest
heralds of celestial peace. The undiscerning multitude
in Wittenberg hailed them as prophets of the Most
High. Away with learning ! Away with the musty
inspirations of former times ! Let us drink the waters
of salvation at the fountain-head ! Let even the Bible
— a valuable Book, but belonging after all to the past —
be relegated to the second place, and let the inspiration
of these men, who have just been in colloquy with the
angel Gabriel, take the first ! Glorious news to the
dunces ! Greek and Hebrew — nay, Latin, and culture
of every kind — were hindrances rather than helps to a
knowledge of Divine things ! Some of Melanchthon's
pupils decided to abjure learning. What is more sur
prising, Martin Mohr, rector of the Grammar School, told
the parents of his pupils to remove their children and
apprentice them to trades. The infection was spread
ing among the students of the University. Carlstadt
abandoned study, neglected Bible reading, and ostenta
tiously frequented the workshops of voluble artisans
who proclaimed themselves inspired. Under his in
stigation the mob of zealots rushed into the churches,
tore down crucifixes and the decorations of shrines, and
flung out all images of saints. " Heads, hands, and

220 MARTIN LUTHER.
limbs were broken or chopped off, and the fragments
left on the floor, or thrown into the streets, or consumed
by fire amid shouts of exultation."
How was it all to end ? Melanchthon — thoughtful,
gentle, well-instructed Melanchthon, of refined tastes
and reverent piety — felt his heart sink within him, and
wished earnestly that God and the Elector would " send
them back their Elias." The feeling of all rational souls
in Wittenberg was that Martin Luther alone could rule
the storm. As he looked abroad upon the clouds, he
too felt that the hour had come when he ought to quit
his eyrie.

Book XI.
THE PEASANTS' WAR.
1521—1525.

2500k Xi.
THE PEASANTS' WAR.

CHAPTER I.
THE FLIGHT TO WITTENBERG.
On the evening of the third of March, 1522, a couple
of Switzer lads, one of whom was named John Kessler,
travelling from their own country with their faces to
wards the north, approached Jena and entered The Bear,
an inn on the outskirts of the town. The weather had
been wet, the ways were miry, and the condition of
their shoes and other habiliments, as well as the light
ness of their purses, induced in them a demure and
retiring state of mind. They observed that the room
of the inn was tenanted by a gentleman in knightly
garments, who, sword on knee, the hilt in his right
hand, the sheath in his left, sat reading a book that lay
upon the table before him. To intrude themselves into
such company seemed out of the question, and they
shrank down upon a bench near the door.
But the quick eye of the knight, absorbed though
he appeared to be in his book, caught sight of them.

224 MARTIN LUTHER.
Comprehending the situation at a glance, he addressed
them, bade them be seated at the table with him,
offered them beer, and made them feel at home. Their
accent informed him that they were Swiss, and he asked
from what canton they came. They were natives, they
said, of St. Gall, but had been studying theology at
Basle, and were on their way to Wittenberg. The
knight proved to be well acquainted with Wittenberg,
and advised them to give good heed to Melanchthon,
the great Greek scholar, who could instruct them in the
original language of the New Testament. They evinced
a keener interest, however, in Martin Luther, of whom
indeed they said they were chiefly in quest, for they in
tended to enter the ministry of the Church, and they
were anxious to know the purport and worth of those
views of his which seemed to subvert all accepted ideas
on the subject of the priesthood. The knight asked what
people said of Luther in Basle, and was told that men's
minds were divided concerning him, some extolling,
some detesting. Could he, they asked, tell them whether
Luther was now in Wittenberg ? He was in a position,
he replied, to state that Luther was not at present in
the town, but he soon would be. He inquired particu
larly after Erasmus, the luminary of Basle. So frank,
familiar, and cordial was this well-informed gentleman,
that one of the students ventured to take a look into
the volume in which he had been reading. Lo ! it was
a Hebrew Psalter. Who could the strange knight be ?
The spurred and sworded squire of the period, a com
pound of knight, soldier, and country gentleman, did

THE FLIGHT TO WITTENBERG. 225
not usually talk of Melanchthon and Erasmus, or take
his ease in his inn over the Hebrew Psalter.
The landlord, calling Kessler on some pretext out of
the room, told him in a hasty whisper that the knight
was Luther. Being unaware of any mode of accounting
for the transmutation of a theological Doctor into a
belted knight, Kessler believed this to be absurd ; and
he and his comrade, with whom he contrived to have a
second or two of consultation, decided that the enig
matical stranger must be Ulrich von Hutten.
Presently two merchants entered, and took their
places at the table. One of them produced an unbound
volume, which he stated to be an exposition of the
Gospels and Epistles just issued by Martin Luther.
Had the knight seen it ? "I shall soon do so," was the
reply. The merchants showed themselves intensely
interested in Luther, but, like the people of Basle, had
their doubts whether he brought with him airs from
heaven or blasts from hell. When supper was placed
on the table, the thrifty Switzers begged the host to
provide something for them apart ; but the genial
knight — versed evidently in the ways and wants of
students — told them to partake of the good cheer, say
ing that he would square matters with the host. And
so they and the merchants supped with the erudite
sword-bearer, whom the reader has discovered to be
Martin Luther. The fare was doubtless unexception
able, and travel is a good whet to appetite ; but the
merchants and students thought less of the host's good
things than of the pithy and idiomatic talk, full of
P

226 MARTIN LUTHER.
shrewdness and humour, not without the noblest patriot
ism and moral elevation, of their new friend. He dwelt
on the. -religious question, making no secret of his
sympathy with the Reformers, but expressing a fear
that the present generation — so deeply had Papistical
error been rooted in its mind — would never be wholly
enlightened. The next, he hoped, would see better
things. He spoke severely of the princes and nobles of
Germany, then assembled in Diet at Niirnberg. Instead
of considering the sufferings of the people, or preparing
Germany for the acceptance of the truth, they were
wasting their time in mere festivities and frivolities.
When the merchants had retired, he pledged the Swiss
in a last glass of beer, taking care, however, that they
should have wine, which, as he had observed, they pre
ferred. Thanking him for their generous entertainment,
the students made bold to say that they took him to be
Ulrich von Hutten. On this the landlord interposed.
" No, no, you are not Hutten, you are Luther." " They
make me out to be Hutten,'' he replied with a laugh ;
" you believe me to be Luther ; I shall next, I suppose,
be called old Harry.''
It is worth adding that Luther did not cast off re
membrance of his simple Swiss acquaintance on arriving
at Wittenberg. He took notice of them and introduced
them to distinguished people. A thoroughly sincere
and friendly man !
On the fifth of March he was at Borna. Thence
he despatched a memorable letter to Frederick. In
words of great dignity, force, and elevation, he states

THE FLIGHT TO WITTENBERG. 227
his reasons for betaking himself to Wittenberg. These
tumults, bringing scandal upon the Gospel of Christ,
have been to him a source of anguish such as he never
before experienced. He would with gladness have
given his life to heal the disorder. In the extremity of
his pain he would have despaired, had not his faith in
the truth sustained him. He felt burdened with a
responsibility towards God on the one hand, and the
world on the other ; and under the joint impulse he
threw himself into the breach.
He solemnly assures the Prince that he had re
ceived the Gospel not from man but from God.
Until now he had offered himself to be interrogated
and judged, thinking, in his meekness and submissive-
ness, to draw others. He found that his excessive self-
humiliation had served not to the promotion, but to the
hindrance of the Gospel. His conscience told him that
he must henceforward act differently. He had done
enough, in the way of compliance, in that he had
sought refuge in the Wartburg, a thing to which he
consented only in deference to his Highness. The
devil knew well that it was not before him he had fled.
He would have entered Worms had the devils opposed to
him been as many as the tiles on the roofs. Now Duke
George was far from equal to one devil. Aud if there
were at Leipzig, Duke George's peculiar domain, the
same call for him that there now was at Wittenberg, he
would ride into Leipzig though it rained Duke Georges
nine days running, and though every Duke George
were nine times more furious than this one. Duke
p 2

228 MARTIN LUTHER.
George took the Lord Christ for a man of straw. He
(Luther) would not hide it, however, from his prince
that he had prayed and wept for Duke George. He
would pray and weep once again ; then he would do so
never more.
In proceeding to Wittenberg he asks no shelter
from Frederick. The matter was one in which the
sword could give no help ; it must be transacted by
God without human aid. He who had most faith
would give most help; and since his Highness was
of weak faith, he was not the man to be looked to for
assistance or defence. Having declined to remain in
security, he took his life in his own hand, nor
could Frederick be answerable to God for it if he were
taken or slain. " Christ has not taught me to be a
Christian at the expense of other people." " If your
Princely Highness had faith, you would see the glory of
God; but because your faith has failed hitherto, you
have seen nothing." One thing only, in the matter of
defence, would he say further. He did not ask Frede
rick to shield him, but he could not bear the thought of
his dear prince being himself his executioner, the tool
of Pope and Kaiser. No favour did he ask, but a fair
field, against Kaiser, Pope, and devil. Let them come
on! But let Frederick send no catchpoles to arrest
him, and lock upon him a prison-door.* A letter
wholly of noble strain; an authentic chapter in the
God-breathed scripture of human heroism.
* De Wette, 362.

CHAPTER II.
LUTHER PREACHING DOWN ANARCHY.
We have arrived at perhaps the central crisis, the chief
turning-point, in Luther's life. His colossal energy
has hitherto been thrown without reserve into the for
ward-going movement ; henceforth his labours, always
Herculean, will be exerted in great measure to temper,
to moderate, to restrain, and even to beat back the
headlong forces of revolution.
He vanished into the Wartburg as the impetuous
and iconoclastic reformer. In his absence the winds
have broken from their cave, and the Saxon Reformation
has become a tumult. The question that has now pre
sented itself to him is whether he will yield to the
clamour of the crowd, place himself on the crest of the
surge, and ride in precarious elevation as the supreme
demagogue of Germany, or whether he will possess his
soul in patience, and neither accept for himself, nor pro
mise to others, any freedom that is anarchic, any free
dom that refuses to braid its golden locks by wisdom's
side, any freedom that is not measured by truth and
modulated by justice. It is the question of questions
for leaders of men. If they flatter the multitude, if
they take it as the leader's duty to bend to the impulse

230 MARTIN LUTHER.
and inclination of importunate faction, right or wrong,
then they rank for ever as demagogues ; if they refuse
to put inclination in the place of reason, to obey a
crowd clamouring for poisoned bread and for water of
destruction, they are honest men, and if their powers
are on a level with their honesty, they are great men.
It is of infinite importance to distinguish between
the demagogue, even the gifted and high-souled
demagogue, and the truly heroic leader ; but so difficult
is the task that few accomplish it. The great man is
misunderstood on all hands ; nor need we be astonished
to learn that Luther, at this crisis in his life, gave
scandal to many. Frederick, who had known him only
as the impetuous assailant of error and abuse, was
terrorstruck at the idea of his leaving the Wartburg,
while those who rose shrieking with the Zwickau pro
phets, and concluded that the kingdom of Heaven was
to be taken with violence and taken at once, were
chagrined to find that he did not accept their shouting
as the voice of God, and that the foremost of all the
advocates of liberty took his stand inflexibly on law.
Before leaving the Wartburg Luther had well
considered the Zwickau phenomenon. He saw that
the new excitement might be used as a furnace-
blast to stimulate to fury the opposition to Rome:
but was it from the Good Spirit, or was it merely
the latest device of Satan, presenting himself among
the sons of God ? Mere power of working miracles
would not satisfy him as to the Divine credentials of
any proposal if it were plainly at variance with the tenor

LUTHER PREACHING DOWN ANARCHY. 231
of previous revelation. He doubted not the power of
the devil to exhibit signs and wonders, and an angel
from heaven would have had scant credence from him
if attempting to shake his faith in truth once clearly
delivered. After all, the question was whether their
inspiration, which he would freely permit to speak for
itself, was a bringer of celestially excellent tidings, a
producer of spiritual and ennobling results. As Gama
liel said of the Apostles' preaching, and as he (Luther)
had said of his doctrine at Worms, if the inner light of
the Zwickau prophets , had vital power in it, it would
live ; if not, it would die. He had as yet, he avowed,
seen nothing from the prophets that bore any trace of
Divine inspiration ; nothing that was beyond the in
ventive or mimetic capacities of Satan ; but he had no
severer treatment to "bespeak for them than that com
mended by Gamaliel.*
Thus prepared by meditation on the facts of the
case, and study of the Bible, Luther had issued from the
Wartburg an address exhorting to pacific courses, and
soon followed it up by appearing in person in the midst
of the storm. A feeling of joy diffused itself among his
old friends, and all reverent, simple, quiet souls in
Wittenberg, when it became known that Doctor Luther
was in town.
On Sunday, the ninth of March, 1522, he mounted
the pulpit of the parish church, and preached the first of
eight discourses which he delivered on successive days.
In homely, terse, expressive language, without
* De Wette, 357, 358.

232 MARTIN LUTHER.
rhetorical artifice, without surplusage of florid words, he
proclaimed the inadmissibility of violence as a means of
propagating the Gospel, and urged the duty of considera
tion for the weak in the transition between the old and
the new. Above all he insisted that the Gospel was a
spiritual force. The Word had been the dynamic
principle in his operations from the first, and it would
be so to the end. The Word, he reiterated, the Word
of God's creative grace, had done it all. With the Word
he smote at Indulgences, but lifted no weapon against
them that eye could see. While he slept, while he
walked and talked with his friends, the Word worked ;
the spiritual power made itself felt ; and weakness stole
through the joints of the Papacy, weakness such as no
princely defiance or Imperial frown had ever made it feel.
" I did nothing ; the Word worked, and worked, and
accomplished. Had I chosen to ally myself with insur
rectionary force, I might have set Deutschland in a bath
of blood — I might, at Worms, have started a fray that
would have shaken the Kaiser on his throne. But what
would it all have come to ? It would have been a revel
of fools, with general destruction to body and soul. I
did nothing. I let the Word work." The Word is all-
potent, for it enters into the heart ; and once the heart
is taken the outworks fall of themselves.
As for the Word, it must have full course. In
respect of faith and grace, there can be no compromise,
no delay. You cannot, you must not, veil the sun.
God all in all ; Christ in us uniting us to the Father :
that is the Gospel, and he who withstands it is Anti-

LUTHER PREACHING DOWN ANARCHY. 233
christ. But even this is not to be forced upon the weak
in startling, importunate haste. And in relation to the
multitude of non-essential things, the regulative prin
ciple is love, the method is freedom, the habit of mind
to be cultivated is forbearance and mutual toleration.
Here he illustrated his views by throwing in a
sketch of what took place, in circumstances analogous
to those in which his hearers were now placed, when
Christianity was first promulgated. " While the
Apostles lived there were Hebrew Christians and
Gentile Christians : those believing that the Mosaic law
was still of sacred obligation ; these maintaining that
Christ had set them free from its bonds. Paul taught
that all might observe the Mosaic ordinances, or might
not, as they pleased. No essential truth was involved
in the question, and no imposition was to be made either
of the one practice or of the other. Christians might
obey the Jewish law or might not, without danger
either way. And so the usage was established, and
prevailed until the time of Jerome. This Father insisted
that the freedom of choice should be over-ruled by a
Must, that an ordinance and statute should be made
for the discontinuance of Mosaic observance. Then
St. Augustine arose, and reverted to the judgment of
St. Paul, alleging that Christians were free to observe
or not to observe the law. St. Jerome was a hundred
miles behind the truth as taught by St. Paul. And
so the two Doctors tilted at each other in controversial
tournament. But Augustine died. Jerome succeeded
in carrying his point. Ecclesiastical statutes were

234 MARTIN LUTHER
passed which compelled Christians to abjure the Mosaic
law. And out of this first instance of enforced renun
ciation grew a thousand others, so that we were over
whelmed under a mountain of impositions."
What is the moral of this history? That in all
indifferent things we are to guard against turning what
is free for our own consciences into law to bind the
consciences of other people. Eggs on Wednesdays, .
meat and milk on Fridays : yes, they assuredly are
within the range of Christian freedom ; but are we to
make it a law that they shall be eaten, in imitation of
those Papists who make it a law that they shall not ?
And are we to exult arrogantly over such as scruple to
enjoy them, scornfully asserting that we alone are
Christians and spiritual ? Let us see to it that, in our
vauntful freedom, we become not tyrants over weak
consciences. The same principles of faith and love, of freedom
and tenderness, will apply to the case of monks and
nuns. The monk or nun who is sensible of overwhelm
ing temptation, and robust enough of conscience to cast
away the vow that artificially guards artificial chastity,
and to have recourse to God's and nature's resource
against licentiousness, let him or her marry. " What
God has made free, that ought to remain free." The
Pope, the usurping Antichrist, has no right to turn
freedom into bondage. But neither has anyone a right
to make the ordinance of marriage incumbent upon all,
or to say it is a sin for monks and nuns who are in no
stress of temptation, and are sensible of no infraction

LUTHER PREACHING DOWN ANARCHY. 235
of their spiritual freedom, to remain in their convents.
Let the cowl and the shaven crown alone, they will not
choke you, however spiritual you are ; and the universal
law of love requires you to deal tenderly with them for
your brethren's sake. " In short, dear friends, there is
no mystery in the matter. You have simply to under
stand that freedom is not to be turned into command. You
say, ' Here is a monk who has taken a wife, let all monks
rush from their convents.' Do not say that. You say,
' In yonder church they have broken and burnt the
images ; the images must be burnt and broken in all
churches.' Not so fast, dear brother. Or you give
voice on the other side. ' This priest has no wife ;
therefore must no priest marry.' Wrong again ! Those
who are unable to maintain purity in single life ought
to take wives. Those who have no difficulty in remain
ing single, and find it good for them to be single, may,
if they choose, decline marriage, for they live in the
spirit, and are not in bondage to the flesh." Inalien
able vows, from which there is no relief under natural
pressure, are Papistical impositions. " We are not per
mitted to register vows against God's commands. God
has left it a matter of freedom to marry or not to marry,
and do you presume, you blockhead, to construct an
inflexible vow of bondage out of the Divine ordinance of
freedom ? "
Along with these eight sermons — ever memorable
in the history of the pulpit and of European civilisation
— we ought to take the address previously alluded to,
entitled An Admonition to all Christians to avoid Uproar

236 MARTIN LUTHER.
and Insurrection, which he composed before quitting the
Wartburg. The sermons may, in fact, be partly looked
upon as an expansion of the address. In both one
principle is laid down, that physical force is the
weapon of the magistrate, and that the Christian, in
his private capacity, and in the regulation of the
Church, is absolutely prohibited from having recourse
to it. Riotous tearing down of images, however ob
jectionable those images might be, was forbidden to the
congregation. In the Church of God, physical force has
no place ; the rule, if you rightly understand and
apply it, is without qualification or reserve. The most
frantic of the Zwickau prophets, so long as he merely
prophesied, was not to be flung into chains. The
wildest dream, the maddest doctrine, so long as it used
no enginery but that of words, was still an appeal to the
spirit of man; and, while it remained such, no finger
was to be lifted against it. If, on the other hand, the
most instructed Christian, the man whose countenance
glowed like a lamp with the inner shining of the grace
of God, was tempted to exchange spiritual force for phy
sical, and stretched out his hand to tear down pictures
or to smash images, he was instantly to be restrained by
that force whose ministry he had invoked, and which
God had committed, as a weapon, to the civil magistrate.
" Therefore look well to the civil power. So long as it
refrains from ordering change, hold your hand, your
mouth, your heart, and presume not to move. Once,
however, you prevail on the magistracy to intervene —
once a regular order is issued for dismantling of churches,

LUTHER PREACHING DOWN ANARCHY. 237
of images — then lend assistance. If the civil power
refuses, you also must forbear. If you, the evangelical
Christian, anticipate its decision, and take the matter
into your own hand, you are already on the path of
unrighteousness, and are far more culpable than your
less enlightened Popish opponents. I am on the side,
and shall ever be on the side, that is made the victim of
uproar and violence, how wrong soever may be its
doctrinal views ; whereas the side that makes use of
violence and uproar, be it as sound in the faith as it
may, will have me for an adversary." The infraction of
the abstract principle is inevitably accompanied, he at
the same time points out, with gross practical wrong.
" Mr. Mob, Herr Omnes," cannot draw distinctions, and
brings down his bludgeon on the innocent head as well
as on the guilty.
He speaks with scornful bitterness of the rudely
ignorant, impudently conceited persons, the bullies of the
movement, who, having got hold of some catch-words
of reform, some shibboleths of the new school, overcrow
simpler, solider people, telling them that they know
nothing of the Gospel, and passing themselves off as
fine Lutheran theologians and men of progress.
Sciolism and the itch of novelty, were the pests and
the counterfeits of reforming zeal in Luther's day as
in ours. Nothing stung him more sharply than that his
own name should be used to designate the adherents
of the evangelical cause. The very wicked and
cruel slander, often repeated in modern times, against

238 MARTIN LUTHER.
the Protestant Churches, that they put the teaching
of some one man, some Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, in
place of the whole counsel of God, is by anticipa
tion fiercely repudiated in these sermons. "I im
plore you," he cries, " to hold your tongues about
my name, and to call yourselves not Lutherans, but
Christians. What is Luther? The doctrine is not
mine. I was crucified for no one. St. Paul would
not suffer Christians to be called Pauline or Petrine, but
Christians. How comes it then that I, a poor, malo
dorous dustbin of a creature* should have my graceless
name adopted as a badge by the children of Christ ? "
These words form an emphatic reply, if such is required,
to the assertion that those reformers, Luther to begin
with, whose grand aim was to place the Church on the
foundation of Christ and the Apostles, were really
engaged in an attempt to narrow it into a temple for the
hero-worship of some pet theologian. The words cast
at the same time a revealing and redeeming light upon
many of those expressions used by Luther which ap
pear to savour of arrogance. Never of himself did he
boast — far from it : humility, melancholy, a tendency to
despondency and despair, were more truly characteristic
of his great and modest nature. Only when he spoke
of what God, through Christ, had done in and by him —
only in accentuating the greatness of God's work, there
by not denying but implying the infirmity of the human
instrument — did he use words that might be miscon
strued into self-praise. His own unaffected estimate of
* Ich armer, stinkender Madensaek.

LUTHER PREACHING DOWN ANARCHY. 239
himself we have in the passage just quoted, and it is by
no means alone in his books and letters.
But we must leave these transcendent discourses.
Their main theme is the duty of joining together love
and faith in the promulgation and diffusion of the
Gospel, the sublime wisdom of trusting to the creative
power of light, and putting forth no unhallowed or
hasty finger in rearing the Church of God. Luther
will not permit faith, confident in its strength, to deal
ungently with the weak, or to outrun patience and love.
He unfolds the banner of freedom in its whole width and
breadth — large as the blue sky of God. Not only is man
to beware of intruding a thou shalt when God has given
liberty, but he is to beware of interpreting the mere
absence of command into a thou shalt not. Scrupulosity,
to cabin, crib, confine the natural motions and preferences
of Christian souls, may enact ordinances as rigid and
as cruel as those of superstition and priestcraft. Not
our own preferences or methods are to be our rule in
considering our neighbours. We are to take as our
measure the love of God Himself. And what is
Luther's conception of that love ? We have it in one
of those stupendous figures which may not conform to
the rules of polite rhetoric, but which are mighty to
move the Christian imagination. " God is a glowing
oven, full of love, that reaches from earth to heaven."

CHAPTER III.
THE LULL.
It was a great moment for modern Europe when Luther
succeeded in bridling the spirits of disorder and uproar
that had in his absence bewildered Melanchthon, and
rapt Carlstadt away with them in a wild dance of
spiritual intoxication. To perform in such circum
stances the office of storm-queller is to achieve one
of the most difficult and kingliest enterprises man can
undertake. Had he not performed it — had he not
regained his place in the Phaethon chariot and resumed
the reins of the movement — the Reformation would
assuredly have gone off in riot and extravagance.
All was now changed. Men saw that to his im
mense faculty for destruction he added a faculty equally
great of conservation. Melanchthon and the other
friends of order ventured once more to lift up their
heads. The magistrates asserted their authority. Those
of the enthusiasts who were docile and magnanimous
yielded to his influence, and returned to the ways of
order, pleasantness, and peace. Such a one was Gabriel
Zwilling, full of delicate rose-pink sentiment, who
felt contrite and abashed in presence of the royal man,
and was content to resume pulpit operations under his

THE LULL. 241
auspices. Capito, who had recently been so sternly
tutored by Luther, appeared at this time in Witten
berg, heard two of the sermons, came to a complete
understanding with his censor, and leaving the service
of Cardinal Albert, devoted himself to evangelical
labour in Strasburg.
The victory was signal; but the war was not at
an end. The first surge of fanatical agitation that
rose in the wake of the Reformation had broken : it
will not prove the last. Carlstadt sang surrender,
but he was cowed rather than conquered or changed.
For the moment the predominance of Luther could
not be contested, but Carlstadt's inner grudge against
him remained. Thomas Miinzer, a darker, stronger,
and subtler spirit, did not affect acquiescence, but
roamed abroad hatching millenniums, and training him
self to execrate Luther.
It is impossible to believe that Frederick was less
than pleased, as well as surprised, by what had occurred.
Schurff, his legal adviser at Wittenberg, wrote to him
in terms of rapture : " Oh ! what joy has Dr. Martin's
return diffused amongst us, whether learned or un
learned ! He is daily, by Divine mercy, bringing back
our deluded people into the way of truth."* Frederick
showed by his subsequent reliance on the Doctor in
difficult cases that his experience of Luther's practical
talent in this instance had not been lost upon him. But
it is vain to deny that the worthy Prince leaves with us
an unsatisfied feeling — a vague sense of his not having
* Worsley, translating from the original letter in Walch.
1

242 MARTIN LUTHER.
risen to the grandeur of the occasion. There was no
enthusiastic burst of applause — no heartfelt, proud, self-
accusing transport of admiration and gratitude. Judi
ciously he took his measures to clear himself in the eyes
of Kaiser and Diet. Wisely and in sincere friendliness
toward his Doctor, he employed Schurff to instruct the
latter how to draw up an account of his re-appearance
in public, presentable to the Diet assembled at Nurn-
berg. But he did not kindle into sympathetic heroism.
Nay, when Luther, as his constant manner had been,
wrote to Frederick on behalf of this and that penury-
stricken mortal, the response was not more but less
generous than formerly. Luther was pained and sur
prised. He took high ground in speaking of the matter
to Spalatin. He would know whether his intercession
had given, offence, and whether he was to infer that his
pleadings for the poor were irksome to Frederick. " Be
sure you tell me how the matter stands. If I molest
the Prince with my petitions, I shall trouble him no
more. But my silence will be his loss. I shall urge no
one to do good who is obstinately unwilling ; let him
look to it that he can answer to God for shutting my
mouth." Regarding it as a thing too obvious to need
specification that one duty of the Christian minister is
to admonish to charity, and, as occasion offers, to
suggest objects for charity ; and having all these years
looked upon Frederick as practically a member of his
flock — and one indeed who was but a babe in spiritual
knowledge — Luther justly thought that it would be a
solemn thing on the part of Frederick to forego the

THE LULL. 243
privilege of his begging letters. The loss would be
Frederick's, not Luther's. " I am by nature abhorrent
of courts," he says, " and it will be no unwelcome thing
to nie if it now becomes consistent with my duty to
have no more dealings with them even by letter." * This
was within a month of the delivery of those seven sab
batic thunders by which, exposing his life to the chance
stab of any fanatic who might wish to do Pope and
Kaiser a pleasure by slaying the outlawed heretic,
he had performed a service for Frederick which all
his horses and all his men, with jurists and magistrates
to boot, could not have accomplished. Frederick, to do
him justice, was a prince, and Luther's letters were
sometimes adapted to ruffle princely sensibilities.
It is pleasanter to think of the homely but hearty
way in which the magistrates showed their appreciation
of Luther's conduct. They made him a present of
cloth, and of wine and beer, and sent wine and beer also
to old John Luther. A primitive way of acknowledge
ing kingly services, but not inexpressive !
* De Wette, 382.

q2

CHAPTER IV.
POPE ADRIAN.
We must now pause, if but for a very brief space, to
cast a glance upon what is being transacted on the
public stage of Germany and of Europe. If we would
rightly know our man we must take some note of the
spread and potency of his influence.
The Diet of the Empire was in session at Nurn-
berg in the spring of 1522. The fiercely Papistical
party, whose most energetic leader was Duke George,
were bent upon pushing the advantage they had won at
the Diet of Worms. But time had told, and was still
telling, in favour of Luther and his adherents. The
tide of antagonism to Rome was steadily increasing in
volume and augmenting in velocity. This being so, it
was favourable to Luther that Sultan Solyman, who had
taken Belgrade, and blazed subsequently as a menacing
portent in the east of Europe, should have drawn upon
himself the attention of the Diet in its spring session.
After making arrangements, military and financial, for
prosecuting the war with Solyman, the Diet adjourned
until the autumn, leaving the Council of Regency, or
executive committee, to do what might in the meantime

POPE ADRIAN. 245
be necessary in relation to the religious question. Every
week of delay was a gain for the reforming party.
In the Council of Regency Duke George had at first
some success. He made the most of the disturbances
which had arisen at Zwickau and Wittenberg during
Luther's absence in the Wartburg. He prevailed upon
the Council to order a visitation of the districts most
disaffected to the Papacy by bishops known to be
zealous against Luther. This visitation took place, but
Luther followed it up by a preaching tour of his own,
in which, at one and the same time, he denounced the
Papacy, exhorted to loyalty, peace, and moderation, and
proclaimed the gospel of salvation by faith alone. Duke
George, therefore, and his strenuous ally, the Bishop of
Meissen, took little by their move.
Frederick, wise and true but painfully slow, had in
the earlier months of the year left Duke George to
lord it over the Diet and Council of Regency, but in
the course of the summer he proceeded to Niirnberg.
Though constantly instructing Spalatin to lecture
Luther on his excess of vehemence, Frederick had
nevertheless, on all grave occasions, proved himself a
friend. He now made it felt in the Diet that he
recognised in Luther no mere fanatical preacher, hurry
ing on at break-neck pace, but a man who could rule
storms as well as raise them.
Meanwhile the Roman conclave had performed its
office, and a new Pope had succeeded to Leo. It was
after a goodly number of possible Popes had been sug
gested, against each and all of whom some objection

246 MARTIN LUTHER.
had been pressed, that the vigilant and far-seeing
Julius de Medici proposed Adrian of Utrecht, Cardinal
of Tortosa, formerly Dean of Louvain, and tutor of the
Emperor Charles. As if by a sudden inspiration, the
conclave elected Adrian. The choice had been made in
January, 1522, but the year was well advanced when
the new Pontiff arrived in Rome.*
Adrian, his head white with the snows of more than
sixty winters, was a man against whom nothing could
be said; and it is interesting, though to unthinking
persons it may seem strange, that under these circum
stances he proved good for nothing. An innocent,
studious, benevolent, unimpassioned old gentleman, he
had not felt the smallest ambition to be Pope, but
accepted the office in the unaffected desire to do good.
He brought with him to Rome his ancient house
keeper ; and the citizens and nobles, accustomed to the
brilliant profusion of Leo, could appreciate the hermit
like simplicity of his manners and of his fare. He
came prepared to acknowledge that much was amiss in
the system and administration of the Papacy, and was
devoutly willing to rectify errors and remove abuses.
But this was a terribly difficult problem. Seldom has
a Papa of Christendom occupied a more forlorn position
than Adrian, and seldom has a more perplexing situa
tion been surveyed than met his eye. The angry cres
cent glimmered along the eastern rim of Europe ; but
the Christian family of nations was rent by discord more
fierce than had ever been known before. In vain did
• Ranke.

POPE ADRIAN. 247
Adrian adjure his dear pupil the Emperor, and his
dear son the King of France, to sheathe their swords.
In Germany what Adrian called heresy was raising its
head in a way totally unprecedented. He wished to
undertake reforms both in Rome and in Germany ; but
neither in the one nor in the other could he in the least
succeed. In Rome every abuse he attempted to pluck
up was found to be rooted deep in the ground by silver
threads of interest. He sent his legate, Chieregati, to
the autumn session of the Niirnberg Diet ; but Chiere
gati found that both he and his master had lost touch
of the people of Germany. The Cardinal's solemn
pomposity of blessing had become a mere subject of
mirth and mockery to the German multitude.
The Papal envoy, true to the instructions of his
master, made to the Diet a frank avowal that reform
was necessary. The Roman See itself had not been
faultless; corruption had descended from the Pope to
the clergy, and to the whole Church system ; but now
there was to be reform at Rome, and it was to extend
to all parts of Christendom.
The extent to which the alienation of Germany from
the Papal See had proceeded is impressively attested by
the way in which this ingenuous confession, which
redounds to the honour of Adrian, was received. In
stead of gratefully accepting the Pope as an ally in
reform, and inviting the legate to make common cause
with the Diet, the assembled nobles and princes turned
the Pope's confession against himself, treating it as a
plea of guilty, and eagerly demanded that the evil done

248 MARTIN LUTHER.
by the Papacy might be redressed. By way of specifi
cation of those particulars which the Diet included in
the general confession of Roman delinquency made by
Adrian, a list of a HUNDRED GRIEVANCES was
handed to the Pontifical envoy. Chieregati was plainly
told that the enforcement of the Edict of Worms against
Luther, which Adrian had asked for, was not advisable.
The Diet expressed a hope, which implied a request,
that his Holiness would consider the grievances which
had been set forth, and would call a General Council,
in which the laity should have voice and vote as well as
the clergy, to avert schism and restore tranquillity to
Christendom. A committee of the Diet, in which John
von Schwarzenberg, an adherent of Luther, played the
leading part, drew up a report embodying these com
plaints and proposals ; which report was adopted by
the Diet.
The princes and nobles, assuming that the proposal
of a Council would be given effect to, proceeded to con
sider how, in the time that must elapse before it assem
bled, the antagonist parties should conduct themselves.
The Papists urged that in doctrinal teaching and
preaching the Bible should be flanked by four unex-
ceptionably orthodox fathers, Jerome, Augustine, Am
brose, Gregory. The Evangelicals stood out for
Scripture alone as the standard of faith and practice.
At last it was agreed that " nothing should be taught
excepting the true, pure, sincere, and holy Gospel, and
approved writings, piously, charitably, and Christianly,
according to the doctrine and exposition of writings

POPE ADRIAN. 249
approved and received by the Christian Church." Such
was the deliverance or, as it was technically called,
the recess, of the Diet upon the subject. The practical
result of so vague an injunction could obviously be
nothing else than to leave every Christian man to
preach as he chose.
Chieregati was disappointed, but could hardly have
been astonished. He had, in fact, found so much to
startle him in Germany that his sense of surprise
must by this time have been somewhat blunted. When
he heard Niirnberg ringing with sermons in which
the authority of the Pope was ruthlessly laid prostrate
before the authority of Scripture, he made bold to hint
that it was his duty, with the force at his disposal, to
put into operation the Edict of Worms, and arrest the
audacious preachers. But even Albert of Mayence told
him that this would be madness. An insurrection of
the people would, in the event of his making the at
tempt, have sent him and his catchpoles far.
At tidings like these Adrian stood aghast. Was
ever poor soul — the best meaning, the most unselfish
and pious of Pontiffs — so piteously impotent ! His
efforts to introduce reforms at Rome procured him in
veterate hatreds, but produced no amendment. In Ger
many everyone seemed to be frantically bent on removing
abuses ; and yet, when he proposed to institute com
prehensive reforms, he was met by a clamorous recital
of grievances, and a contemptuous evasion of his offer
to co-operate in the enterprise of improvement. He
wrote to Frederick in a tone of petulant, yet pitiable,

250 MARTIN LUTHER.
irritation, evincing absolute ignorance of the nature of
the phenomenon with which, in Germany at least, he
had to do. The work of Luther was, in his estimate, a
letting loose of hell. Luther was a " serpent who
stained heaven and earth with his venom." Frederick
had nursed the pest. To Frederick it was due " that
the churches were without congregations, the people
without priests, the priests without reverence, and
Christians without Christ." One would have thought
that Luther had spoken loudly enough and clearly
enough to make it understood that his object was to
persuade Christians to have nothing but Christ.
Adrian becomes more rational, or at least plausible,
in his reference to Luther's views on the supreme
authority of Scripture, interpreted by each man on his
own responsibility and by his own lights. " So silly
and senseless," said the Pope, " had the Elector been as
to believe one pigmy of humanity, covered with sins,
rather than so many renowned fathers of the Church,
and so many universal Councils. The Bible was a
sealed book, which only the Lion of the tribe of Judah
could open, and loose the seals thereof." That Luther
was one, and that the maintainers of the old theology
had been many, was the most specious and effective of
all the arguments used against Luther.
When he spoke of Luther personally, Adrian's
words were those of a child in a passion. " Lu
ther," he cried, "was continually inciting the laity
to wash their hands in the blood of the priests. He
taught that no satisfaction for sin was to be rendered to

POPE ADRIAN. 251
God ; that fastings, prayers, and lamentations were no
redemption of guilt ; that the body and blood of Jesus
Christ ought not daily to be offered in sacrifice ; that
vows were not binding. He polluted the sacred utensils
of God's house ; he restored to the world, or rather to
the devil, the virgins espoused to Christ, &c. &c."
This farrago — sheer absurdities mixed up with bits of
fact or distorted fact — proves that Adrian had conceived
neither what manner of man he had to deal with, nor
what was, theologically, the essential purport of Luther's
doctrine and the secret of his power.
"Adrian," remarks Ranke, "said once, 'How much
depends upon the point of time in which even the best
of men appear ! ' The key to the pathetic failure of
his own Pontificate is contained in this exclamation.
It was well chosen for inscription on his monument in
the German church at Rome." Had Adrian filled the
Papal chair only three or four years earlier, when
Luther occupied the position taken up by him at the
Leipzig disputation, how different might have been the
course of history ! Luther was then willing to accord
reverent precedence to the See of Rome, to own a
primacy based on real claims to gratitude and trust, and
to undertake, in conjunction with the leaders of the
Church, a revision of mediaeval theology in the light of
Scripture, and a reformation of manners on the standard
of Divine morality. Even then, indeed, it might have
been impossible for Luther and the new Pope to see eye
to eye, for Adrian was an ardent disciple of Aquinas,
and had strongly promoted the judgment of the

252 MARTIN LUTHER.
University of Louvain against Luther. But now the
objection of Luther and his followers was not merely to
the scholastic theology, but to the office of the Pope ;
personal delinquencies or abuses of administration
were not now the question. And this could not have
been more emphatically or more luminously announced
than by their declinature to accept the authority of the
Roman See, even when wielded by a devout and simple-
minded Pontiff like Adrian the Sixth.
In Rome the bad and the indifferent cordially hated
Adrian for his attempts to reform, and there was no such
ardour of enthusiasm among those who agreed with
him as might have enabled him to conquer opposition.
After twenty sad months of effort, with much prayer
and no right manly force in going forward — a pathetic
example of the facility of ceasing to do evil and the
difficulty of learning to do well — an epistle, read or
readable by all men, of the indispensably aggressive and
militant nature of good, if it is to counteract the earth
ward gravitation of evil — one of the most pious and
ineffectual of Popes laid down a burden too heavy for
him.

CHAPTER V.

HUTTEN and sickingen.

We must glance also, and no more than glance, at one
of the minor episodes in the history of the Reformation
which transacted itself about this time in the Rhine-
land. Luther had made the air of Germany electric,
revolutionarj'- ; and when the vibration of revolution is
in the air, weak heads become giddy, and grown children
leap frantically at the moon. There were not a few
who hailed Luther eagerly as an ally, with whom he
had not much in common ; there were many who were
at one, or nearly at one, with him as to ends, but whose
views as to the means to be used to attain them he
sharply condemned. Nor is it necessary to impute the
slightest dissimulation to him, although it be admitted
that some believed themselves to be much more
thoroughly in possession of his sympathies than they
really were.
By no one had he been greeted with louder welcome
than by Ulrich von Hutten ; and Hutten's friend, Franz
von Sickingen, was as ready to strike for him with the
sword as Hutten to plead his cause with tongue and

254 MARTIN LUTHER.
pen. Hutten is one of those historical personages
whom it is not possible to regard without some warmth
of admiration. An unselfish, brave, outspoken, generous
nature ! But with one bad defect — incompetence to
take his own measure and the measure of his fellow
men. A man smitten incurably with that fatal brain-
disease, a passion for extremes. What Hutten, and the
like of Hutten in all periods, never can understand is
that progress, if genuine, has its own laws, its own
modulation — that unregulated motion goes off into in
finite space. What better instance is there of free and
vigorous progress than that of a ship at sea ? Yet her
progress depends upon the felicitous combination of a
thousand fine and exact obediences. She must obey
her helm ; she must obey her compass ; she must take
counsel of the waves as she rides them, and humour
every wind that sits in the shoulder of her sail. Hutten
had no notion of this. Heroic of temper he was, full
of audacity and random brilliance, a true child of the
opening sixteenth century, discontented with past and
present, fuming in chronic exasperation against priests,
prelates, pontiffs, eager always for change. But he was
not ballasted with common sense, and had no patience,
no deliberation, in adjusting himself to the conditions of
practical endeavour. When you read his address to the
Diet of Worms on behalf of Luther you are sensible of
arrogance, of presumption, almost of impudence, as well
as of vehement sincerity and verve. It is like Luther's
invective without Luther's sense. Such advocacy could
do no good to Luther, and it was with his usual sound-

HUTTEN AND SICKINGEN. 255
ness of discernment that he had quietly but inexorably
declined, at the time of his appearance at Worms, the
assistance proffered him by Hutten and Sickingen, from
the neighbouring castle of Ebernburg.
Had Sickingen possessed practical talent enough to
make him capable of becoming an efficient commander,
there were materials in abundance at that time through
out .Germany with which to construct a formidable
military power. A democratic general with a hundredth
part of the military genius of a Napoleon or a Cromwell
might in the first quarter of the sixteenth century have
placed himself at the head of perhaps the largest, and
certainly one of the most fervid and courageous, demo
cratic armies the world ever saw. But Sickingen and
Hutten were too impatient to wait for the rapidly
ripening harvest. In vague, indiscriminate fury against
priesthoods and tyrannies, they rushed at what they
took for enemies, without waiting to ask whether the
selected foes were the proper men to attack, or whether
they had themselves, before joining battle, made victory
probable. Among the principalities and powers of the period
few were less offensively associated with either priestism
or tyranny than the Prince-Archbishop of Treves, the
Elector Palatine, and Philip, the young Landgrave of
Hesse. One and all, these were of the liberal party ;
disposed to look propitiously on Luther ; as favourable
to change as men in their situation could be reasonably
expected to be. And it was these whom Sickingen, in
his blind fury, arrayed against himself. Of course, he was

256 MARTIN LUTHER.
soon beaten. His attempt to take Treves having failed,
he was besieged in his own castle of Landstuhl. This
was stormed ; and when the victors poured in, he was
found dying of his wounds. In a tone which we may
believe to have been one of honest amazement as much
as of reproach, the Archbishop of Treves addressed him:
" What had I done, Franz, that you attacked me and
my poor subjects in my see ? " " And what had I
done," added Philip of Hesse, " that you plundered my
land ere I had attained to man's estate ? " It was too
late for explanations. Sickingen, conscious that he had
meant well, that he believed the light which led him
astray to be light from heaven, preferred to fall into
the hands of God rather than to make his confession to
men. "I shall soon," he said, "answer before a higher
tribunal." He was religious ; and Luther had been
warmly interested in his affairs ; but he failed to learn
one grand lesson which Luther loved to inculcate, that
the conquests of the Spirit of God are in the moral
sphere, and that the sword of the Spirit is the Word.
Luther foresaw the end of Sickingen's confusions, as a
man might foresee the fate of a fractious child that
insisted on losing itself in a wood. " It will be a
dismal affair,"* he wrote to Link, in December, 1522,
when informed that Sickingen had started on his
enterprise. Four or five months later, when mid
summer was near and the end had come, he gave his
verdict on the matter in a few stern words to Spalatin.
" I heard and read yesterday the true and sad story of
* De Wette, 444.

HUTTEN AND SICKINGEN. 257
Sickingen. God is a just judge, but wonderful are His
waj's." *
Let us be scrupulously fair to a man whose heroism,
picturesque in its unpracticality, was too ideally aspiring
for a world of ways and means. If it were as easy to
steer a balloon as to float it, a fine time there would be for
the Sickingens ! Had he been a worse man, however,
he might have been a more successful soldier, and per
haps we ought to give him praise for not trying to place
himself at the head of an army of peasants. His con
nections appear to have been not with the democracy
proper, but with the minor nobles. These shuddered
back when they beheld his break-neck pace, and left him
" to take the precipices alone." " God is a just judge,"
said Luther. He will not have His hand forced by
picturesque knights errant.
Sickingen dragged down Hutten, a much more
important man. Turning after his friend's death from
the liberal-minded Elector Palatine and from Philip of
Hesse, with whose frank, strong, and generous manhood
his own ardent temperament might have led him to
sympathise, Hutten betook himself to Switzerland, and
knocked at the door of Erasmus in Basle. Erasmus
had often smiled on Hutten ; for though the sovereign
of European letters disliked too ruggedly honest men,
he knew that it was part of his sovereignty to recog
nise the claims of one who had been from his youth an
athlete in the struggle against obscurantism, priestism,
monkery, and all kinds of intolerance and persecution.
* De Wette, 499.

258 MARTIN LUTHER.
But people who made an unconscionable amount of
noise were naturally vexing to the serenely brilliant
Erasmus. Hutten got the cold shoulder, and he
was far too fierce, proud, and froward not to let the
world know it. He proclaimed Erasmus a summer
friend, and wandered away in moody wrath to die. In
the island of Uffnau, in the lake of Zurich, in 1523,
his fiery heart grew cold. It is mentioned of him that
when he was at the point of death he lifted his cap to
the Archbishop of Treves, " in reverence for what was
above him." Carlyle pronounces this " the noblest,
politest thing that is recorded of any such moment as
that." *
* Quoted by Professor Dowden from MS. report of Carlyle's lectures.
Nineteenth Century Review, May, 1881.

CHAPTER VI.
COMING TROUBLES.
" The anti-Kaiser is knocked over," sneered some
worldly-wise men when the too highly aspiring Sickin
gen died ; " the anti-Pope will shortly follow ! " But
those who thus advertised their cynical knowingness by
predicting the fall of Luther and the collapse of his
influence had little conception of the long day of revolu
tions that was to follow on the stormy morning of the
sixteenth century.
The strength of Luther's influence, and the breadth
and profundity of the agitation that bore men's minds
along, were signally attested by the fact that these
underwent no sensible check or abatement from the
conspicuous and almost ludicrous failure of the swash
buckler, fine-talking party, the party of pseudo-classic
bards and stagey knights errant. The Papac}*- reaped
no permanent advantage, and the cause of Luther was
not seriously discredited, because the cloud, highly
charged indeed with electricity, but small in size, spat
out its little fires, and shed its little matter of blood,
and passed away.
Elements of far more menacing character — elements
and agencies of world-wide anarchy and paroxysmal
r 2

260 MARTIN LUTHER.
change — were still present in the social atmosphere
of Germany. The peasant population throughout a
vast extent of country — a country that may be vaguely
conceived as stretching from the springs of the Danube,
in a westerly and north-westerly direction, almost to
the mouth of the Elbe — had for a long period been in a
state of discontent and turbulence. We shall err if
we give carte blanche to the imagination to paint the
peasants as angels, and the nobles and gentry as
devils, just as we should err if we conceived of all six
teenth century Papists as sinners, and all sixteenth
century Reformers as saints. The old order was chang
ing in everything, and the feudal lord was becoming as
ill adapted as the mediaeval priest to the requirements of
the new time. The peasants were growing out of those
mental conditions which had made serfdom tolerable,
and the nobles found themselves, by sheer change of
circumstances — a change whose approach they had not
marked and of which they had no "distinct conscious
ness — not only viewed as oppressors, but under a . kind
of fatal necessity to play the oppressor's part. When
the lord was a military leader, holding with his tribe a
particular district, it was obviously necessary that the
fighting men who were his garrison should not be
permitted to leave of their own accord a district
which constituted in fact a standing camp. A
private soldier cannot live quite the same life as the
citizen at large. But in the sixteenth century the
peasants had forgotten that they formed part of the
feudal array. There is no need to suppose that the

COMING TROUBLES. 261
nobles and great landowners of Germany at that time
were more cruel or exacting than nobles and land
owners have been in other times and places ; but it does
not seem to have ever been made subject of debate that
the peasant population of Germany was suffering more
than the average of ills — a sternly hard average at best
— to which peasant flesh is liable. All processes of
social transition bring with them a certain malaise, and
the serf of the Middle Ages could not be changed into a
small farmer or agricultural labourer — could not become
his own master — without passing through a bad quarter
of an hour. The pains of dying serfdom were compli
cated with the penalties of free citizenship in its birth.
The man who rejoiced to find himself getting beyond
the whip of the slave-driver was startled into irritation
by falling into the grip of the tax-gatherer ; and the
informed and reflective reader will not be surprised to
learn that it was exactly where the peasants were most
advanced, in Suabia and the upper Rhine lands, that
chronic exasperation began to take the form of insur
rection. For the rest, a very few items will suggest to intel
ligent minds the general nature of the peasant griev
ances and claims. They demanded that the vast forests
of Germany — those interminable woods that had been
almost as much the possession of the born German as
the sky overhead — should not be appropriated by the
lords. The fallen branches and the brush-wood that
warmed the cot in winter ; the wild boars, the hares, the
deer that roamed the meadow, or peopled the morass ;

262 MARTIN LUTHER.
the fish that lurked in the brooks, or swam in the lakes ;
these appeared to the peasant faggot-gatherer, huntsman,
or fisher, a natural heritage, transmitted to him from
the remotest antiquity. With this general demand for
freedom of the forest was connected the more particular
one that the commons and breadths of natural pasture
should not be enelosed. The peasants demanded equality,
also, in the eye of the law. They demanded relief
from the exactions of the Church and from the burden
of the taxes. They demanded the complete abolition
of serfdom and bondage. They demanded security of
tenure in their holdings, and a remission of those
galling fines which the lords were in the habit of
levying on occasion of death and succession.
Such were the main claims of the peasants who
swarmed to various gathering points throughout
Deutschland, at the time when all German-speaking
men had been thrilled and agitated by the message of
Luther. Nor ought we to forget that Luther was by no
means alone in representing and incarnating even the
strictly religious elements of change in that epoch of
revolution. Zwingli, who had been born into the hut of
an Alpine herdsman within a few weeks of the day
when Martin Luther appeared at Eisleben, began
preaching salvation at Einsiedlen before Luther posted
his Theses at Wittenberg. As Germany proper had her
Tetzell, so German Switzerland had her Sanson ; and the
intrepid Zwingli made the rocks and valleys of his
Alpine home ring with the proclamation, as articulate as
Luther's own, that repentance is a spiritual act, that the

COMING TROUBLES. 263
pardon of sin is not to be bought with money, that the
Papacy and its myrmidons had no monopoly of heaven.
He too preached the omnipotent grace and love of God,
and assailed the Popish system, with its priests, monks,
and sacrifices, which had sealed up the fountains of light
from mankind.
Zwingli was an intrepid and clear-seeing man, and
the Gospel he preached was essentially the same as
Luther's ; but Luther may be justly regarded as the
central representative of the Reformation in its early
period, for this among other reasons — that he, more
powerfully than any other, impressed upon the new
doctrine the character of glad tidings of great joy.
Salvation was proclaimed to be without money and
without price, the gift of God to all, guaranteed in
that Book which God had inspired, and which Popes
and priests had withdrawn from mankind. And sal
vation, whatever else it might bring with it, was under
stood to imply freedom and happiness, the breaking of
chains, the flinging open of prison doors, the overthrow
of all tyrannies.
We now see how the two mighty influences — first,
insurrectionary wrath on account of wrongs and miseries,
animating tens of thousands of peasants ; second, the
good tidings of salvation by unbought grace of God,
preached by Luther, Zwingli, and a host of followers; —
were fitted to meet and join hands. It was hardly to
be expected that the myriads of peasants, whose eyes
flashed with joy in response to the clarion tones pro
claiming salvation from Wittenberg, should make lucid

264 MARTIN LUTHER.
distinction between spiritual and temporal salvation.
Human nature is human nature. The followers of a pro
phet, when counted by scores of thousands, and hungry
and horn -handed, are not unlikely to yearn, in their
aspirations, for something more solid than angels' food.
The millennial joys which the new evangelists proffered
could not but be associated by the peasant with a more
visibly righteous distribution of this world's comforts
between rich and poor, between lords and serfs. We
need not conclude that they made a mere stalking horse
of the Reformers' doctrine, although doubtless there
might be some of the more artful men who did so. In
the vast majority of instances the impulse would be a
vague enthusiasm of belief that the day had at last come
for justice, mercy, and brotherhood — Christian brother
hood, which surely did not mean that the Christian
landlord and rich man should have good things in
both worlds and the Christian peasant only in one. At
all events the movement of the peasants in Germany
in the period of the Reformation was avowedly religious
as well as social. ' They put forward their claims in the
name of God, of Luther, and of the Bible. The first
of their demands was for the right to choose their own
pastors ; and to each of their main clain?." they prefixed
a passage from Scripture.
Such, in its broadest aspect, as a grand fact or phe
nomenon of the century, was the rising of the German
peasants. Luther conducted himself towards it in a
characteristic manner, and not unworthily. His boldly-
avowed sympathy at the outset was with the peasants,

COMING TROUBLES. 265
and he called upon the princes and nobles to do them
justice. Declaring himself a born peasant, the son of
generations of peasants, he spoke as for his kindred, as
well as in the capacity of Christian pastor. But as the
garments of the peasants became stained with blood,
as their fury rose, as they more and more ceased to
distinguish between innocent and guilty, and as they
finally proceeded to excesses of cruelty, his sympathy
waned and his alarm and anger increased. Persuaded
finally that, in their frenzy, they were overturning all
social order, and introducing incalculable misery and
desolation, he became vehement on the other side, and
made use of the fiercest language at his command to
incite all men still in their senses to stamp out the
mischief.

CHAPTER VII.
carlstadt's eccentricities.
The preceding observations on the general attitude and
relation of Luther to the Peasants' War prepare the
way for more particular consideration of his dealings
with the tumultuary elements that played their part in
that convulsion.
The unruly and mutinous forces, to quell which he
hurried from the Wartburg, may be conveniently re-
¦ garded as centring in two persons, Carlstadt and Miinzer.
One thing that lends piquant and present interest to the
relations between Luther and these men is that certain
tendencies are thus brought within the field of our
survey which were subsequently developed in move
ments of great historical importance. There are moments
at which Carlstadt strikes one as the father of all those
Broad Churchmen who, declining to cross the border to
Socinianism or Unitarianism, have murmuringly dwelt
in the tents of the orthodox Shem. And in the
pinched and painful features of Thomas Miinzer one
finds something to suggest, with a difference, the stern
and sombre enthusiasm of the Puritans.
Unlike most of the people who believed in the
Zwickau prophets, including most of those prophets

CARLSTADT'S ECCENTRICITIES. 267
themselves, Carlstadt was a man of considerable parts,
and of great though fitful energy. Luther had grappled
him to his heart as an ally and friend, and it was only
in the course of years, and with bitter anguish, that he
felt compelled to give him up. With the rest of the
band it was easier to deal. The mere sanity and stead
fastness of Luther's mind, and the firmness of his reso
lution, sufficed to rid him of such frantic anarchists as
actually foamed at the mouth.
When two prophets of this last type, rallying after
their defeat, and inspired with impudent presumption,
made their way into his cell, a short time after his
descent from the Wartburg, and bade him own the
authority of the Divine voice that »pake through them,
he invited them either to prove their doctrines from
Scripture, or to produce credentials of their super
natural mission in the form of miracles. One of them,
having recourse to a piece of thought-reading trickery,
gave it out, as a miraculous announcement, that Luther
was in those very moments veering round to the
hypothesis that he, the speaker, was a true prophet. It
so happened that, though Luther was under no tempta
tion of the kind supposed, there had flitted across his
mind at the moment in question, and had no doubt
chronicled itself on his features, a thought as to how
matters would stand if he indeed joined the prophets.
But a momentary contemplation of Consequences did not
imply any real wavering of opinion, and his nerve was
not to be shaken by a trick. The attempt to ensnare
him by a bold guess confirmed his assurance that he was

268 MARTIN LUTHER.
dealing with charlatans. He replied, therefore, without
hesitation, " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " One of the
two conducted himself literally as a maniac — " spumabat
et fremebat et furebat "—thus adding one more circum
stance of a corroborative kind to the evidence already,
in Luther's estimate, adequate to demonstrate the self-
styled heavenly prophets to have no higher authority
than that of their own over-heated brains.
A flash or two from Luther's angry eye might rid
him of celestials like these ; but his friend and colleague
Carlstadt could not be so summarily disposed of. Carl
stadt was- one of those men — a large class in the
historical portrait gallery — with whom nature seems to
have had no very definite aim. They are gifted enough
to make themselves- conspicuous, and yet they turn out
to be unfit either for a first or a second place. Carl
stadt could not adjust himself to the part of second to
Luther, and yet, when he found an opportunity for
taking the lead at Wittenberg, he had failed egre-
giously. No man of sense could have lost his head, and
been carried round and round in dizzy whirl, as Carl
stadt was, among the Zwickau enthusiasts. Proneness to
Schwarmerei, though a form of mental disease to which
Germans of superior parts are perhaps more liable than
any other nation, pointedly evinced Carlstadt's infirmity
of mind and character. The new prophets, with their
glittering doctrines, warranted fresh from the mint of
heaven, superseding the letter of the Bible, or so illu
minating it that all aid from earthly learning was un
necessary, commanding the instant abandonment of the

OARLSTADT'S ECCENTRICITIES. 269
old rites and demolition of the old images, and proclaim
ing the equality of mankind and the community of goods,
turned him giddy. Hence, ye superfluous volumes of
learning ! Welcome, Divine voices, uttered by weavers,
cobblers, peasants, rapt into transports of celestial vision !
Carlstadt's fine frenzy reached a climax in his doffing
his Doctor's insignia, donning the peasant's blouse,
purchasing a miniature farm, beginning millennial life,
and driving pigs to market.
The sting of Carlstadt's eccentricities for Luther
lay in their forcing him to own that dissidence had
entered the Evangelical ranks. Carlstadt had been so
prominently associated with the cause that lawless un
rest on his part would tend with peculiar force to bring
" infamy on the Gospel and a just repulse upon its
evangelists."* He was convinced that it would be
easy for him to silence and put down Carlstadt, if mere
personal victory were his object; but he foresaw that
a public conflict between himself and his old ally would
" give occasion to the enemy of glorying, and greatly
trouble weak brethren."!
The conflict proved indeed to be unavoidable. We
cannot follow it in its successive stages. After various
passages of arms between the opponents, Luther ac
cusing Carlstadt of slipperiness and craft, Carlstadt
accusing Luther of taking unfair advantage of his
position to shut his mouth, Carlstadt got himself posted
at Orlamiinde. This cure, or incumbency, stood in
some connection with the Church of All Saints,
* De Wette, 320. t De Wette, 338.

270 MARTIN LUTHER.
Wittenberg, and Frederick was patron of the living. It
was extremely displeasing to the Elector that Carlstadt
should hold it ; but the bold preacher set his authority
at defiance. The people liked Carlstadt, and he main
tained that it was for the congregation alone to decide
who should be their pastor. Having thus stormed the
pulpit of Orlamiinde, he proceeded in his usual fashion.
The images were cast out, the Eucharist was adminis
tered in both kinds, and, what was a much more serious
matter, the bread and wine were declared to be not
Christ's flesh and blood, but symbols of His spiritual
presence. There is reason to believe also that Carlstadt had
developed new audacities in the way of moral latitude.
In a letter of January, 1524, to the Saxon Chancellor,
Briick, Luther speaks of a certain man who had been
advised by Carlstadt, presumably under circumstances
of extreme grievousness in his union with one wife, to
help himself to two. Readers will do well to note that,
at this early period, Luther held that restriction to one
wife is not enjoined in Scripture. " I confess, for my
part" — these are his words — "that if a man wishes to
marry two wives, I cannot forbid him, nor is his conduct
repugnant to Holy Writ." * He discusses the question
of exceptional polygamy on the principles which he
* "Ego sane fateor me non posse prohibere si quis plures velit uxores
ducere, nee repugnat sacris Uteris." — De Wette, 572. The Rev. H.
Worsley, in his biography of Luther, translates these words incorrectly.
" I confess that I cannot prevent any one from taking more wives than
one, if it be not repugnant to Scripture." Luther was not in the way of
writing truisms. Mr. Worsley does not suggest that Luther's word was
" repugnet," and, in fact, the context forbids this emendation.

CARLSTADT'S ' ECCENTRICITIES. 271
applies to Carlstadt's innovations in general. The law
of order is essential: The law of brotherly love and
consideration for weak consciences is also essential. To
these the rule of expediency must bow. "It is in
tensely unworthy of Christians," he characteristically
says, " to stickle so petulantly (anxie) for the highest
and newest stretches of liberty that may convenience
themselves, while neglecting the grand ordinance of
charity." He cannot believe that a Christian would be
so forsaken by God as to be unable to accept the situa
tion, if his wife had, by dispensation of Providence, be
come unable to perform her wifely duties.* In short,
he disapproves of bigamy, but does not see that Scrip
ture entitles him to pronounce it positively sinful.
Frederick was a long-suffering prince, but Carlstadt's
installation of himself as pastor in Orlamiinde, without
his permission, was more than even he could stand.
By his injunction, Luther undertook a journey of visita
tion to Orlamiinde, with a view to making personal
diagnosis of the case, and determining whether Carl
stadt's incumbency wanted ending or mending. Luther
came, saw, and did not conquer. Assembling Carlstadt's
supporters, he represented to them that Carlstadt must
take his departure. They urged that he was the choice
of the townsmen, and declined to submit to the will of
the Elector. Presently Carlstadt himself entered the

* This must be the sense of the words, " vix credo sic desertum a Deo
Christianum, ut non queat continere conjux divinitus impedita." The
reading seems to be corrupt ; or Luther may have written ungrammatically
in hot haste.

272 MARTIN LUTHER.
place, and attempted to take part in the discussion.
But Luther peremptorily refused to recognise his locus
standi, a position which he, coming as he did on the
Elector's business, in relation • to a living which the
Elector considered to be vacant, was fully entitled to
assume. Carlstadt persisted, and it was only when
Luther actually ordered the horses to be yoked for his
return that he consented to withdraw.
These preliminaries were not likely to dispose the
citizens to a favourable consideration of Luther's further
treatment of the case. Nor can it be alleged that the
theory, and still more the practice, of furious revolt
against the authority of Pope and priest, to which Luther
had been habituating Germans for years, tended to make
congregations meek and manageable. Accordingly, when
Luther asked questions, there was always some quick
witted cobbler, or other tribune of the Orlamiinders, to
volunteer a reply. Taking the view he had from the first
adopted that the images were, in themselves, of no con
sequence — nonentities, res nihili — and meaning doubtless
to lead on to the inference that they ought not to be
removed in a way that violated the universal law of
charity, and the universal rule of decency and order,
Luther asked what Scriptural warrant could be alleged
for their destruction. He was referred to the second
commandment. He answered that it applied to the
worship of images ; no one could allege that the Orla
miinders were in danger of worshipping them. Up starts
an Orlamunder and announces that he was liable to the
temptation of image -worship. Well, persisted Luther,

CARLSTADT'S ECCENTRICITIES. 273
was his abuse of images to make them proper objects
for violent destruction? Was wine to be spilled in the
gutters, were women to be slain, because they were
sometimes put to base uses? But* some Orlamiinde
luminary, cobbler, baker, or blacksmith, flashed out the
answer that God had not published a commandment
enjoining people to have nothing to do with wine and
women. Too plainly there was small probability that this
kind of thing would issue in agreement. Even Martin
Luther could not but fail in the impossible task of
convincing a crowd, by the process of question and
answer, that they had been acting culpably. The meet
ing became stormy. Luther was not one who could
stand rudeness with imperturbability of temper. He
saw that the problem was hopeless, and that there was
no use in trying to retrieve his defeat by mounting the
pulpit. He hurried away, therefore, happy to escape
without a shower of stones and mud. The cry of the
multitude reached his ear : " Be off, in the name of a
thousand devils, and may you break your neck ere you
leave the town ! "

CHAPTER VIII.
SIGNS OF DEEPER DIVISION  MORE OF CARLSTADT.
These incidents occurred in September, 1524. • Within
the month Frederick banished Carlstadt from his
territories. He wandered to Strasburg, and appealed
for countenance and support to the Evangelicals of the
place, charging Luther with having refused him a fair
hearing and procured his banishment from Saxony. The
echo of his complaints reached Luther at Wittenberg,
and the latter issued to the Strasburgers one of his
letters of warning and exhortation.*
Congratulating them on their joyful emergence from
" the horrible darkness of Antichrist," and the iron
bondage of Egypt, into the "wide, sure, free, and
promised land " of Gospel light, he points out that now,
as in the Apostolic age, sectarianism had troubled the
harmony of the reviving Church. The danger hence
arising ought not to induce despair, but to be confronted
in faith and courage. His own right and duty to
address them on the subject he based, in modest sim
plicity, on the patent fact that through him, as God's
unworthy instrument, their souls had found healing.
With some abruptness he strikes into the matter of
* De Wette, 1,142.

SIGNS OF DEEPER DIVISION. 275
Carlstadt. He has two things to object to the latter.
Carlstadt makes, in the first place, a fuss about some
things wholly out of proportion to their importance ;
and he has fallen, in the second place, into error on some
that are essential. On such matters as the immediate
removal from churches of the external badges of Popery,
and the form in which the Eucharist is administered,
Carlstadt makes too much noise. He will brook no
delay in the removal of images, whatever may be the
wounding of the sensibilities of weak brethren. The
dust and din thus raised obscure, thinks Luther, the
shining of the truth, and turn away men's minds from
the doctrines of grace and faith. But when the matters
in question are indeed essential — when Christ Himself
is immediately related to the subject of discourse —
Carlstadt, he infinitely regrets to say, does not shrink
from serious error.
He (Carlstadt) for one thing — a principal thing —
taught that the elements in the Communion were bread
and wine, symbolically and spiritually presenting Christ's
flesh and blood, but not otherwise. Years before, he
(Luther) had, he says, been so conscious of the advantage
such a position would give him in assailing the Papacy
that he had been most severely tempted to adopt it.
And the matter had been pressed upon him by two
correspondents who advocated the symbolical view with
far more dexterous power than Carlstadt. But he did
not yield then, and he could not yield now. The letter
of Scripture held him fast. " I am captive. I cannot
break my prison bars. The text is too mighty, and
s 2

276 MARTIN LUTHER.
cannot by force of words be wrenched out of its mean
ing." Should he ever be convinced of error on this
point, it certainly would not be by the arguments of
Carlstadt. These did not rest on Scripture at all — ohne
alle Schrift — but on mere conceits and subtleties of the
speculative reason.
So far Luther. He was indeed correct in saying
that the subject of the Real Presence was more import
ant than the violent or the gradual dismantling of
churches. Eccentric and prone to extravagance Carl
stadt may have been, but on the question whether the
presence of Christ in the Eucharist is spiritual or cor
poreal he does not stand alone against Luther. The
main phalanx of the Reformed Church has admitted,
and an immense proportion of modern Protestants ad
mit, only a spiritual presence. The common feeling
among Protestants in relation to the matter has been a
sense of amazement that there should have remained
in the mind of Luther, like a hard angular crag in
the midst of a spacious harbour, one totally inde
fensible dogma.
Two remarks occur as worthy of consideration on
this subject. The first is that Luther may have been
influenced in his decision by bias of a peculiar cha
racter. It is no fantastic supposition that in the case
of one so tremulously conscientious as he, the very fact
of his being sensible of a strong motive acting on him
in favour of a particular view might bias him against
it. A slippery-minded man — a man afflicted with the
mental disease of supersubtlety — has no difficulty in

SIGNS OF DEEPER DIVISION. 277
.satisfying himself with the plausibilities of any opinion
he wishes to adopt. But a scrupulously upright
mind will have a tendency to go to the opposite ex
treme, and to be specially suspicious as to the strength
of an argument when he sees much to incline him to
admit its validity. Had Luther been in the place of
Balaam, he would not have asked God twice to make it
consistent with his duty to finger Balak's broad pieces.
In the second place, it is indisputable — the reader
has seen ample evidence of the fact — that Luther
did less than justice to man's reasoning faculty in con
nection with religious truth. He frankly admitted —
not now, but subsequently — that he would believe in
the corporeal rather than the spiritual presence, although
the former might be a mathematical impossibility.
This is a hard saying. No sane man, if he follows the
proof that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right
angles, can disbelieve it. To say that he can is to deny
his sanity. It is a familiar fact that words may be
used either in a spiritual or in a corporeal sense ; it is
quite certain that Christ habitually made a spiritual
and symbolical use of language ; and therefore to insist
on the literal sense, in one particular instance, against
the evidence of mathematics, appears to be tyrannical
dogmatism. The first, then, of Carlstadt's doctrinal aberrations,
as described by Luther, was his preference of the spiritual
to the corporeal interpretation of Christ's words, " This
is My body." But Luther more than hinted that Carl
stadt and his enthusiastic friends were shaky in their

278 MARTIN LUTHER.
orthodoxy in another respect. To put it in one word,
and that a word which will make their position at once
intelligible to modern readers, their view of Christ was
ethical rather than theological. They dwelt on the ex
ample of Christ. This is vehemently rebuked by Luther.
" The example of Christ is," he says, " the smallest thing
connected with Him. In respect of His example, He
stands on the same footing with other saints — andern
Heiligen gleich ist. The supremely important thing is to
know Him as a gift of God, or, as Paul says, as the
power, the wisdom, the righteousness, the redemption,
the sanctification of God, given to us." It has been the
habit of the most intelligently Christian minds in all
countries in modern times to press towards the human
Christ — to take Christ as a model in life — to. seek in
His humanity a vestibule leading into Deity. It is
legitimate, therefore, with the reserve and qualification
due to changed times, to find in the Christology of
Carlstadt, as compared with that of Luther, some far
away resemblance to the Christology of our own day.

CHAPTER IX.

THOMAS MUNZER.

The steadfastness and the dogmatism of Luther are
well seen in bold relief against the suddenness, the
speculative extravagance, and, perhaps, also, the genial
pliancy and intellectual vivacity, of Carlstadt ; but the
mass and substance of his manhood, his king -becoming
strength and mighty grasp on the principles of human
life and civilised progress, are better shown in contrast
to the opposite qualities, incarnated in a man round
whom Carlstadt gyrated for a time when he shot from
his normal orbit as a satellite of Luther.
Among the Zwickau seers this one was more dan
gerous than the rest. History may be ransacked in
vain for a more finely perfect type of the fanatical
zealot and revolutionary monomaniac than Thomas
Miinzer. Honest ? — of course he was honest ; what
you may call tremendous, paroxysmal honesty — fiery
faith in his own hallucinations — is the first condition
of success for every such man. Narrowness of brain,
defect of that sovereign faculty of intellect which we
represent as the eye of the mind scanning the field of
vision for facts and the relations of facts — this too is
common to the character, and certainly was exhibited

280 MARTIN LUTHER.
by Miinzer. With innate and incurable irrationality
he combined a dusky fervour of moral heat and dogged
intensity of conviction. Natural moroseness of disposi
tion, moody gloom, and general exasperation announce
themselves in his pinched features and scowling brow.
Add a sombre imagination, wholesale belief in portents
and dreams, enormous development of vanity and self-
love, and you will have Thomas Miinzer complete ; a
man to mix the witch-cauldrons of popular delusion,
to call the spirits of revolution from the abyss and
send them on ministries of blood and fire; a magician
capable of raising conflagrations to sweep continents,
unless some magician stronger than he contrive to
chain the lightnings.
Finding his occupation gone at Wittenberg when
our Achilles left his tent on the Wartburg, Miinzer
wandered away to Niirnberg and Bohemia, and thence
to those uplands where the Danube begins to gather its
waters for their long journey ; raving and reciting amid
populations agitated by the new Gospel sound; re
ceiving and imparting revolutionary impulses. Return
ing to Central Germany, he established himself at
Alstadt, a town in the Thuringian district, announcing
an Evangel that claimed to be wider and grander far
than Luther's, applying the doctrine of inspiration, both
Biblical and personal, with greater boldness, and more
frank emancipation from the bondage of the letter ;
and above all, promising his hearers more thrilling
presentness and visibility of advantage, more prompt
realisation of millennial joys. Perfectly convinced of

THOMAS MUNZER. 281
his prophetic mission and of the immediate approach
of the day when the saints were to possess the land,
Miinzer not only did his office as a preacher, but set
himself with strenuous determination to knit the pea
santry into secret societies with a view to a rising.
Carlstadt had been drawn towards Miinzer, and co
operated with him, playing tenor to the deep bass note
of the sterner enthusiast. But justice compels the
admission that he did not quite yield to the fascina
tion. To Carlstadt and his Orlamiinders among others
came the invitation or command of Miinzer to make
themselves ready to join the army of the saints, form
ing, in the meantime, one of those associations which
were, at the signal given, to start into rank as com
panies of an armed host. But Carlstadt possessed
mother- wit enough to shirk enrolment among Miinzer's
grenadiers. Smashing of images, dreaming of dreams,
uttering of Divine voices, these to any extent ; but
at armed insurrection, with a view to starting the
kingdom of heaven by seizure of property, we draw the
line. Miinzer, and his like-minded lieutenant Pfeiffer,
astonished no doubt to come upon such a vein of
worldly wisdom in one from whom they had expected
much, rebuked Carlstadt with asperity, accusing him
and his Orlamiinders of being ensnared by the fear
of man, and of denying the Covenant of God.
These were difficult times for German princes. Frede
rick of Saxony, and his brother and heir-apparent, Duke
John, both of them earnestly religious and at the same
time self-distrusting, modest men, anxious to preserve

282 MARTIN LUTHER.
order, yet willing to give ear to any word that seemed
to be from God, found it a hard task to satisfy them
selves as to the line of duty. Frederick, strange as it
may seem to moderns, had not been without pious fears
in checking the prophetic effervescence at Zwickau.
The prophets claimed to speak in the name of God,
and might not suspicion of their talking nonsense be
lack of faith ? Miinzer was a clergyman, and made
immense pretensions to sanctity. Frederick did not
presume to shut his mouth. In July, 1524, when the
whole country was honeycombed with Miinzer's secret
societies, Duke John heard him preach. Nor did the
fanatic put his light under a bushel. Herr Kostlin
avers that he daringly proclaimed the principle of a
holy war, alleging it to be the duty of Christian princes
to destroy godless persons, particularly priests and
monks. Obviously, however, this was just one of those
instances in which either very dreadful or quite harm
less opinions might be enunciated in the same terms.
That the ruler is bound to smite evil-doers — that the
sword is put into his hand expressly with a view to the
smiting of evil-doers — is held by all who believe that
the social authority has power over the individual life.
Duke John had no cause to be severely shocked by being
told that it was the duty of princes to put godless per
sons to death, so long as it remained with them to dis
tinguish between those who were and those who were
not godless. The doctrine, however, becomes one of
the most terrific incitements that can be applied to the
purpose of converting human beings into wholesale

THOMAS MUNZER. 283
murderers, when the sword-bearer is a fanatical prophet
or theocratic king, and when the godless are all those
who do not accept his dogmas. In July, 1524, it
was still possible for Duke John to hear Miinzer preach
on the duty of princes to execute Divine vengeance
without being aware that the words meant anything
more precise than the usual pulpit commonplaces on
the subject ; but before the lapse of another year it had
been proclaimed, in characters whose red glare continues
at this hour to glimmer in the field of history, that it
was not in the innocent and conventional sense, but in
one of murderous efficacy, that the sword had been
spoken of by Thomas Miinzer as a weapon put into the
hands of the saints to execute vengeance on the enemies
of God. Luther could not foresee the particular incidents of
the future ; but he and Miinzer had singled each other
out, as representing irreconcilably antagonistic princi
ples ; and soon after the arch-fanatic had preached before
Duke John the responsible leader of the general move
ment of reformation saw that the moment had come for
addressing a letter to the Elector and the heir-apparent on
that other movement by which, as he believed, his own
was caricatured and imperilled.* If, as has been held by
great authorities, and as the records of the nineteenth
century, including the last quarter of the eighteenth,
seem to prove, we live in the epoch of revolutions, it is
not easy to imagine a more interesting occasion, or one
promising more vivid and vital instruction, than that at
* De Wette, 617.

284 MARTIN LUTHER.
which we have now arrived, an occasion on which revo
lution confronted revolution, wave met wave, and the
principles of progress represented by Thomas Miinzer
came into collision with the principles of progress re
presented by Martin Luther.
Carlyle, who was a careful student of the life of
Luther, has placed on record the opinion that he was a
greater man than any of those who played the part of
leaders in the French Revolution. It is certain that,
whereas leader after leader was engulfed in the raging
whirlpools of the French cataclysm, Luther did not sink
in the revolution he called forth. " How seldom," says
Carlyle, " do we find a man that has stirred up some
vast commotion, who does not himself perish, swept
away in it ! Such is the usual course of revolutionists."
Already, in the revolution of the sixteenth century,
Sickingen and Hutten had been engulfed. Miinzer was
now to have his turn.
Luther begins his letter to the Saxon princes by sig
nalising two powers, hostile to each other, which are at
one in their opposition to the simple and sovereign
Gospel of the grace of God. On the one hand there is
the "last and mightiest of the Antichrists," the Pope;
and in his service range themselves the Kaiser, and kings
and princes of this world, eager to drench the fields of
Christendom once more with the blood of martyrs to the
truth. On the other hand are false prophets, spirits of
inconstancy, lawlessness, error; heretical and sectarian.
This emergence of lawless elements ought not to startle
or offend those who were steadfast in the faith. Such

THOMAS MUNZER. 285
has at all times been, such was, as St. Paul testifies, in
the Apostolic age, the experience of those who preached
the Word of God. The sectarian and anarchic power
has made its nest at Alstadt ; and with it is his present
business. First of all — a circumstance which he views with
unfeigned satisfaction — these Alstadt prophets exalt
their horn above himself and his friends, sounding their
own praises, owning no Lutheran lineage, and affirming
that they have " neither learned nor received aught from
us." They hail from Heaven direct; they come from
the presence of God ; He converses with them as with
the angels. It is in their eyes a pitiful affair {ein schlecht
Ding) that we of Wittenberg are concerned with — mere
" faith, love, and the Cross of Christ." God's very
voice, say they, we must with our own ears hear. The
living voice is better than the printed Book. They
even twit the Wittenbergers with their perpetual noise
of " Bible, Bubel, Babel."
Luther frankly owns that he can make no claim to
these sublime exaltations, these eagle flights of spiritual
vision. He brags not of being commissioned to use
such high words. He is a poor, pitiful creature, and
did not by any means begin his enterprise of reforma
tion in this Lucifer- son-of-the-Morning style. On the
contrary, it was with fear and great trembling, as,
indeed, St. Paul acknowlegdes was his case also — and
one would have thought he might have had some cause
for pluming himself on acquaintance with heavenly
voices — that he had begun the conflict. With bated

286 MARTIN LUTHER.
breath and tremulous humility he had assailed the
Pope. And yet, humble as he was, he had in fact
succeeded in laying a stroke upon the Papacy such as
this world - swallowing spirit — Weltfressergeist — of
Alstadt had neither effected nor seemed likely to effect.
At Augsburg, at Worms, he had managed to bear his
testimony as well, perhaps, as this proud spirit, which
looked down on him as the sun might on a small
worm. He had spoken no great swelling words ; he
had been vouchsafed no super-Biblical transports of
inspiration. " Out with the secret : I have no power
at all except what Christ gives me. If He leaves me,
I tremble at a shaken leaf ; if He holds me up, I am
conscious only that the praise is His." If he cannot
speak face to face with God, he can study his Bible,
and attain to a better mastery of it than Papist, sophist,
or sectarian. Luther here puts his finger upon one of those
qualities, or sets of qualities, in which true apostles
of social progress, true leaders in the procession of
spiritual and moral civilisation, differ from charlatans.
Practical progress aims at some definite object, pre
scribes to itself some method, respects gradation, and is
glad to take one step at a time. Not so the quack
or the sectary. A few years ago these Miinzerian
fanatics had hardly dared to peep into a Bible without
permission of a priest. They now did no more honour
to the Bible than, to make it a perch from which to
start in their own flights of heavenlier inspiration. It
was, in their eyes, the iniquity of all iniquities to

THOMAS MUNZER. 287
impede such celestials as themselves. There was some
excuse, they said, for the Papists. They were born in
darkness, bred and suckled in error, piteously incapable
of lifting their eyelids to receive the new light. But
that the men of Wittenberg, who had themselves tasted
the heavenly gift — that Martin Luther, who had him
self snatched the reins from the lax hand of the Pope —
should refuse to acknowledge the surpassing brightness,
the shining of the perfect day, was too bad. Miinzer
and his angelic throng hated Wittenberg, Luther says,
more than Rome. Everything or nothing always was,
and ever will be, the grand maxim of impracticables.
While the world lasts, the example of Luther at this
crisis will profit those who take part in social move
ments. But the plan of Miinzer will always have im
passioned advocates. It is so much pleasanter to regale
oneself with visions of Elysium than to realise, and
painfully make the most of, what has been already
gained! The vision of what looms in the distance is
so much more resplendent than the concrete fact ! We
have got our open Bible, said Luther ; we have got
faith and love ; we can preach the Gospel of the grace
of God : does not this give scope to practical endeavour
for one while ? Is there nothing here worth consolid
ating? What can any transcendency of inspiration
give us better than life in Christ, than life spent in
assimilating all men to Christ? Surely, in these cir
cumstances, it is better to prize the good we have than
fly to other that we know not of.
But Miinzer not only appealed to the splendour of

288 MARTIN LUTHER.
his visions, he flung down the gage to Luther in the
field of every-day duty. The ecstasies of spiritual
exaltation resulted in gloom and moroseness when trans
lated into the daily habit of these superlative Christians.
In a word, a new ultra - Protestant asceticism was
showing itself, and the faces which might be radiant
when conversing with archangels in the courts of
heaven wore an aspect of repulsive gravity in inter
course with ordinary men. In the visage of Miinzer
there was more to suggest the sullenness now asso
ciated in the general mind with Puritanism than to
recall the pleasure of virtue or the radiance of heavenly
joy. He scowled upon the jocund ways of Luther, and
denounced the freedom of his manners on grounds akin
to those on which the Pharisees arraigned the manners
of Christ. He thanked God that he was not like this
wine-bibbing Martin, this friend of publicans and sin
ners. Miinzer was the father of all those Protestants
whose religion has been Puritanically grave and sad, a
thing of long faces and of dim and formal attire. The
character of Luther and his teaching have the whole
some freshness and freedom of open air and common
day, as against the sanctimonious gloom of crypt,
cathedral, or conventicle. This new asceticism he in
volved in the same condemnation with the asceticism of
the Papists. He did not pretend to be an angel upon
earth; it was enough for him to be a man. He did not
affect the super-terrestrial virtue of saints, monks, or
Puritans, preferring a home-spun, useful, durable article,
based on the great natural ordinances of morality.

THOMAS MUNZER. 289
At the time when Luther wrote the letter before
us Miinzer had not overtly proceeded to any act of
war, and we cannot be sure that Luther knew him to
have decided upon recourse to violence in any more
serious form than image-breaking. But the published
opinions of Miinzer, as referred to by Luther, were
extreme enough to include actual insurrection ; and his
censor, therefore, puts the case of his rising in revolt.
" I have learned," says Luther, " and have also under
stood from their written statement, that they decline to
treat the matter with words only, but intend to betake
themselves to warlike violence, rising against the autho
rities and breaking out in actual war." The context
shows that he believed the putting of these intentions
into execution to be contingent on the adhesion of the
multitude. It thus continued to rank among abstrac
tions, not among facts, and could claim the liberty of
abstractions to clothe themselves in words. Luther was
willing to concede the claim. For thought and speech
there was one law, that of toleration ; he would coura
geously and liberally apply it : for stricken blow,
whether its implement were the club of the image-
smasher or the sword of the rebel, there was another
law, physical force, and it too he adjured the princes
to put into operation when the time came. Expressly
warlike preparation was, however, equivalent to war,
and the heads of the people were bound to look so far
ahead, and to use such methods, as might be necessary
to prevent a rising. But the general principle was clear
— violence, and violence only, ought to be met with
t

290 MARTIN LUTHER.
force. It attests the tolerance, the brave and unaffected
candour, of Luther, that in this letter he fervently
pleads that the utmost liberty of speech may be ac
corded to these people. He expressly asks Frederick
and John of Saxony to allow to Miinzer all the tolera
tion which he asks for himself. Let Miinzer and his
followers preach what they will. Let it be spirit
against spirit ; the right will conquer.

CHAPTER X.
THE INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS.
Mqnzer was too far gone to be recalled to wisdom's
ways by Luther's noble letter to the princes. Fanatic
as he was, and though we need not doubt ; the sincerity
of his belief that legions of angels would, if necessary,
assist him in fighting the battles of the Lord, he knew
that means are ordinarily required to produce ends.
He had drawn into the net of his secret organisation
immense numbers of peasants in the districts extending
from the skirts of the Thuringian wood in the south to
Mansfeld in the north. The multitude has in all ages
delighted in following men who have pushed things to
their utmost possible lengths, who have dealt in sweep
ing generalisations and promises of magnificent extent,
and who have not teased the uneducated brain with
qualifications, reserves, distinctions. " Monomaniacs,"
it has been said, " have a logic of their own." It con
sists in a daring and superb consistency. " You have
only to admit the value of a principle in moderation
and they insist on your devoting soul and body to
that one principle alone. Go a little way with them,
and they are angry with you if you don't start for
the North Pole." Miinzer gnashed his teeth against
t 2

292 MARTIN LUTHER.
Luther because he would not start for the North Pole ;
and tens of thousands of peasants, whose intense
excitement laid them open to the contagion of mono
mania, hailed with rapture Miinzer's promises to lead
them to that fertile clime. Miinzer was in all things
for the whole, not the half. If you possess an inspired
Bible, then take its every sentence, irrespectively of time,
circumstances, or common sense, for an absolute com
mand of God. Smash graven images, cut Amalekite
throats. If Isaiah and Paul were inspired, if Jacob
and Joseph dreamed dreams, why should not- Thomas
Miinzer be also inspired, and his dreams and visions
be fraught, like Joseph's, with promise of more than
¦Egyptian harvests ? This was a logic which the most
puzzle-headed of clod-pates could comprehend — a logic
on the lines of which the slowest intellect could
advance as with seven-leagued boots.
"More than Egyptian harvests." Ay, and flesh-
pots to boot. Throughout the centre and north of
Germany, as well as in the south, it had flamed across
the imagination of the hand-workers that some signal
improvement in their earthly condition, some relaxation
of the stern ordinance of toil, some shining realisation
of the promise of this world, as well as the next, must be
associated with the new proclamation of the infinite grace
of God. Luther says nothing in his letter to the princes
of community of goods as one of the objects of Miin
zer's organisation ; but in the cottages of the peasantry
this aspect of the business was not likely to be over
looked. Miinzer, complete in cunning as in all other

THE INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS. 293
characteristics of the sincere quack, found it an easy
thing to let his mind, on this essential point, be
perfectly well known, through the ministry of trusty
agents, to the body of the peasants, while taking care
to avoid committing himself publicly. It is established
beyond dispute that before the appearance of Luther's
letter it had been distinctly arranged by Miinzer and
his conclave that the land should be taken possession
of, and cut up into portions to suit the wants of the
militant saints, the landed gentry who proved recalci
trant being decapitated or hanged.
Luther had, from the first instant of his new
spiritual birth, accepted the doctrine that life in Christ
is life for the brotherhood — that Christ is loved not
only in Himself, but in the persons of His people — that
the highest worship of God is service of man, that
selfism and diabolism are convertible terms. It was
inevitable, therefore, that he should sympathise with all
practical efforts to better the condition of the peasantry.
But he denied that Christians have any commission to
slay Canaanites ; and he equally denied that the salva
tion offered by Christ ensures in all instances an
abundance of the good things of this life.
Of course, he would have admitted that the promise
of salvation is comprehensive of time as well as of
eternity, of body and soul as well as of spirit. Salva-.
tion impedes every influence of body or soul that
tends to make a man worthless ; and reinforces all that
tends to give him worth. If he is a dwarf, religion
will not make him a giant ; if he is a simpleton, religion

294 MARTIN LUTHER.
will not make him a man of sagacity ; but, be his
faculties weak or strong, they will work better under
the rule of moral law than in moral anarchy. Christian
salvation, on any theory of it which does not perversely
and flagrantly reverse its main import, involves the
unquestioning acceptance, as a practical standard of
duty, of the Ten • Commandments. That means, at
lowest, that the man shall, in the set purpose and habit
of his life, be upright, truthful, continent. These
words express qualities that make for worldly pros
perity as well as for righteousness. Accordingly, it
has been proved by a wide experience that when
Christian religion is genuine enough to imply obe
dience to the moral law, the promise of this world's
wealth is fulfilled. The Christian monks of the me
diaeval age, when they gave themselves to industry,
were prosperous as cultivators. The industrial success
of the Jesuits was still more conspicuous. Members of
the Society of Friends have been noted as successful
traders. In all these cases the belief that God requires
men not to steal was an essential factor in the resultant
prosperity. The moral law of God is, in fact, the moral
law of nature. It was not created at Sinai. It was
simply swept into the sj^stem of revelation. In relation
to the good things of this life, that law is true for
Jew and Gentile, for Christian and atheist, alike ; and
the Rothschilds owe to it the great river of wealth that
Hows into their treasury exactly as a sincerely Christian
baker in the New Cut, whom the costermongers of the
neighbourhood know to be incapable of giving them

THE INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS. 295
bad weight, owes to it the small rill of coin that tinkles
into his till.
But this Christian promise of earth is entirely dis
tinct from the Christian promise of heaven. And it was
the heavenly promise that dwelt chiefly in Luther's
mind. He sharply discriminated it from the other
promise. He considered it infinitely superior to the
other promise ; and although he resolutely honoured the
moral law of nature and of God, and did not make light
of its rewards as dispensed in the providential govern
ment of the world, yet, for himself personally, he esti
mated one orient pearl of the heavenly riches, one
dewdrop of the grace of God, as more precious than
all the thrones and crown-jewels of the world. To
this heavenly wealth he gave his heart, and frankly
avowed that the heavenly promise is distinct from the
earthly, that the heavenly riches may abound when
the earthly riches fail, and that it is blasphemously
sinful to accept, or pretend to accept, the heavenly
promise with a view to filling the purse. In a hundred
passages in his books and letters — passages expressing
the essential spiritual life, the soul's soul, of the
man — he speaks of the heavenly promise as linked
with earthly affliction rather than earthly pleasure, as
an experience of the power of the Cross of Christ, as
possibly abounding, or even as chiefly abounding, at
moments when the believer is suffering the pangs of
penury, or disease, or violence. Some will say that this
is illusion and fantasy. And for them it may be so.
The language which Luther uses on the subject will

296 MARTIN LUTHER.
appear mystical and visionary to all except those who
are able by sympathy to understand it. But no one
who has known, in the provinces of philosophy or of
poetry, the rapture that may reside in the passionate
acceptance of some high ideal, will be wholly without
a key to it. In the poetical and the philosophical,
as well as in the religious province, the blessedness in
question is wholly apart from the enjoyment of this
world's goods. Goethe had it in view when he uttered
what to some may seem the high-flown aphorism that
the artist does not live by his art — if he does, he is an
artizan. Burns knew what it meant when, amid anguish
of straitened circumstances, he yet shuddered back, as
from desecration, when payment was offered him for his
songs. There are few, if any, provinces of human affairs
in which the difference between the man who is a world
ling and the man who is not a worldling is not prac
tically infinite. But it is of the very essence of Christian
religion to exalt the spiritual riches. In the eyes of
Luther it was an almost inconceivably degrading notion
of the heavenly promise made in the Gospel to apply it
to the provision of peasant properties for all believers,
or the turning of tbe great body of the population into
rich, or at least well-to-do, people.
This was what . Miinzer did ; or, if we would guard
against the remotest possibility of doing him injustice,
let us say that this was what the great multitude of
peasants who flocked to him when he reared the standard
of social insurrection understood and believed him to
do. The Kingdom of Christ was to be established, no

THE INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS. 297
doubt ; the liberty of Gospel preaching was to be placed
beyond attack ; the people were to choose their own
pastors ; they were to have the spiritual enjoyment of
saints : but they were also to have the sweat dried on
their brows in the balmy air of an actual Eden ; they
were to ear the fields of a present Canaan ; they were
to be put into possession of the visible earth ; and
miracles were to be forthcoming to secure this result.
If this was done for Jews, why should it not be done,
asked Miinzer, for Christians ?
Alas, why not ? There is but one argument valid
to condemn poor Miinzer, namely, that he could not
work the miracle he promised, and that the belief of his
being able to work it was ruinous. If any miracle is
available to turn struggling peasants wholesale into
well-to-do farmers, it would be stupendous folly, as
well as inhuman cruelty, to forbid them to have the
benefit of it. The only argument against world-re
generating quacks, who propose to make the few do
the world's hand-labour, and the many eat the fruits
thereof, which requires answer, is that the thing is
impossible. " To change places " — that is always the
quack-reformer's dream. He cannot work his miracle,
and, what is more, one cannot conceive how even
a miracle could put the many where the few are.
It is indisputable that Christ never held out hope
of such a miracle, and that He peremptorily refused
to encourage those who came after Him in the idea
that, by a stated supply of loaves and fishes, they
might be relieved from the pressure of daily toil. The

298 MARTIN LUTHER.
language of Jesus was pervasively metaphorical ; and
infinite perversion has arisen from its being crudely
literalised. Should reverent Reason, with her two hand
maids, Candour and Common Sense, ever prevail so far
with us as to induce the acceptance of Christ's words in
the simplicity of their figurative meaning, we shall be
as much ashamed of finding injunctions subversive of
the laws of property in His figurative inculcation of the
duty of benevolence, as of finding, in the profoundly
expressive symbolism by which He urged His disciples
to take in their inmost hearts the stamp of His char
acter — to live His life and, to the utmost stretch of
possibility, to be what He was — the strange and repul
sive idea of eating His actual flesh and drinking His
actual blood. By changing the spiritual into the ma
terial, and the figurative into the literal, the German
peasants in 1525 were beguiled into transferring the
New Testament descriptions of the glories of Christ's
spiritual kingdom to a reign of militant saints, quar
tered upon lands that had been wrested from their
lords.

CHAPTER XI.

THE REVOLT.

It was in the far south of Germany, in the town of
Waldshut, in those regions where the German tongue
had found itself a domicile among the woods and
waters of Switzerland, that the peasants first rose in
arms. Miinzer, as has been already mentioned, found
time, at the juncture when Saxony was becoming too
hot to hold him, to make an excursion to the inflamed
districts. His idea probably was to form an alliance
with Hubmeier, the leader of the southern revolt, and
to proclaim from the north to the south of Germany
the levelling of ranks and the division of property. In
this project he was not successful, or not wholly suc
cessful. The views of the southern leader appear to
have been of a less wildly excited and hysterical kind —
to have had in them more of the element of worldly
wisdom, and less of that of fanatical enthusiasm — than
those of Miinzer. The southern peasants expressly in
cluded in their manifesto a profession of willingness to
withdraw any part of their demands which might be
proved to be not in accordance with the Word of God.
Certain of their proposals, relating to the constitution of
the Reich, the unification of Germany, the assimilation of

300 MARTIN LUTHER.
the coinage in different states, have commended them
selves to the wisdom of Germans in succeeding times.
But extravagant and subversive fancies were also
current among them. The rage was to level down to
the plane of peasant existence, aristocracy of all kinds
being abolished, walled towns proscribed, and only
villages and cottages left in the land. As castle
after castle fell into the hands of the advancing
horde, and those hands became imbrued in blood, their
temper grew more dark and savage. At length, in
April, 1525, they perpetrated an act of atrocity which,
though there is no reason to think that it was more
criminal or more cruel than others among their per
formances, was so picturesquely pathetic in its accom
paniments as to strike the imagination of Europe and
fix itself in history. The Count of Helfenstein was
taken prisoner. His wife, with his child in her arms,
implored the peasants to spare him. But they pointed
their spears at his breast, and transfixed him between
two lines.
Miinzer flitted back to the North German countries
about the beginning of 1525, and took post finally in
Mulhausen, where Pfeiffer, who was, if possible, in a
state of wilder frenzy even than himself, conducted the
evil business in his absence. There is not much in the
first letters of Luther surviving to us from this year to
show that at its commencement he had a vivid appre
hension of the coming storm. In the first week of April,
however, he had become alarmed, and his mind was made
up as to the pernicious nature of the disturbances, which

THE REVOLT. 301
had already, in South Germany, become exceedingly
grave. Sad tidings, he informs a correspondent in a
letter of April 3rd, had reached him from Thuringia.
The world had formerly been full of devils, but they
had been disembodied; now they were incarnate in
human form.* On the 11th of the month he reports
that Miinzer is figuring as King and Kaiser at Miil-
hausen.f These touches from his flying pen are signi
ficant of much. One great body of the southern
peasants had rolled away eastward to the Austrian
kingdoms ; another had streamed off northwards ; and
it was the dashing of this last flood upon the Thu-
ringian highlands that Luther chronicled.
His own name, as has already been said, was
placed by the peasants of the south in the forefront of
their Twelve Articles. In one of their manifestoes they
expressed a desire that he, Melanchthon, and others
should be appointed to arbitrate upon their claims.
But these were little more than complimentary refer
ences, intended rather to advertise to the world that
the peasants counted themselves allies of Luther and
Melanchthon, than evincing any serious wish to submit
their cause to adjudication by the Wittenberg doctors.
Luther answered the appeal. He had gone to Eisle-
ben, by request of Count Albert of Mansfeld, to set
on foot a school under the superintendence of his
friend Agricola; and there, on the 16th of April, he
struck off in rapid vehemence of word and deliberate
earnestness of thought his exhortation to both parties to
* De Wette, 689. f De Wette, 691.

302 MARTIN LUTHER.
make peace. The sentiments of this address have been
sufficiently indicated. It has never been denied that
Luther rebukes with Nathan-like honesty and stern
ness the selfishness, the harshness, the cupidity of the
nobles and the clergy, their opposition to the Gospel,
their oppression of the people. Nor can it be called in
question that he adjures them to come to terms with
the peasants by a generous consideration of their claims,
many of which he pronounces just. He is equally
explicit in condemning the peasants for having pro
ceeded to violence. The ruling orders are, he avers,
appointed by God. It is not permissible, even though
they have come short of their duty, to attempt their
displacement by violence. The power is the ordinance
of God. No colourable pretext can be deduced from this
piece for imputing to Luther either indifference to the
sufferings of the peasants or obsequiousness to the
nobles. It ought to be remembered that he could not
but see in the insurrection the outcome and effervescence
of elements of mischief, anarchy, and uproar, with
which he had been in conflict from the day when he
stepped down from the Wartburg. This was the spirit
which, with a pang of torturing agony, compared with
which that of taking his place at the stake would have
been slight, he had recognised as the Satan of discord
presenting himself among the sons of God. And yet he
was so careful to distinguish between what might be
good in the rising of the peasants from what was palpa
bly bad, that the best thing the peasants could possibly

THE REVOLT. 303
have done for themselves would have been to listen to
him, and to accept his mediation between them and
their lords. Had their appeal to him been a grave
and practical matter, instead of the mere waving of
a flag, he would have lent them his earnest advo
cacy to procure for them all that was best and most
rational in their demands. A free Gospel and the right
to choose their own pastors — these he would of course
have demanded for them ; and he, a peasant born, was
not the man to withhold fellow-feeling from peasants
asking for remission of tithe, or tax, or degrading
servitude, or grinding usury, or for leave to take those
fish of the lake, or beasts and birds of the forest, of
which, as he would agree with them in maintaining,
God gave the dominion not to nobles only, but to men
in common. The peasants, however, took no notice of his admoni
tion. And every messenger, as he arrived from the
villages of the Black Forest, from the sources of the
Danube and the Rhine, from Frankenland and Sehwa-
benland, brought news of castles burning, of monas
teries sacked, of lords and retainers massacred. While
Luther was awaiting the effect of his remonstrance
upon the peasants, the tragedy of the Weinsberg, of
which the unfortunate Count of Helfenstein was the
victim, made all sane men in Germany shudder. And
Miinzer was now reaching the paroxysmal point of his
madness. The astounding extravagance of spiritual
pride to which he had attained, and the firmness of
his persuasion that one prophet was as good as another,

304 MARTIN LUTHER.
may be estimated from the saying imputed to him that
if God would not speak with him as readily as with
Abraham he would spit in His face.* Miinzer took
pains to secure himself against the charge of sparing
Amalek. He shrieked to his followers to rush upon
the enemies of the Lord, to slay, and slay, and tire not.
The sword of Gideon was in his hand, and he would
lead them to victory. On ! on ! on ! No weakness !
Never mind the wail of the godless. Though they beg
in friendly tones, though they cry and whimper like
children, pity not. Was it not thus that God com
manded His people to slay the Canaanites? On, on,
while the fire is hot. Down with the castles and their
inmates. God is with you. On ! on ! f
And so the work went forward. Infected with
their leader's monomania, the wild horde raged and
destroyed in this direction and in that. More than
forty convents were wrecked in Thuringia, and a
goodly proportion of castles. Miinzer hated Luther
with frantic intensity, and perhaps this had something
to do with his special wrath against mining populations
unless they arrayed themselves among his saints. One
great division of the plunderers stormed into the district
of Mansfeld, and Count Albert found himself suddenly
called upon to perform the perilous duty of defending
his territories from devastation.
Then Luther showed himself in two ways. His
* The remark is coarser in the German — unquotable even in the
original. f Walch, in his XVI. vol., gives Miinzer's letters and addresses, the
famous-infamous " Dran, dran, dram, " manifesto among them.

THE REVOLT. 305
anger against the peasants waxed hot, if indeed anger
is the right word for a feeling qualified by a vague
apprehension that they were mad. He referred to them
as rabid dogs, and called loudly upon all sane men who
could fight to treat them as such. In the second place,
he stood by his lord, the Count Albert of Mansfeld, in
his hour of need, as a true knight ought. Taking his
life in his hand, he proceeded from town to town,
ascending the pulpit everywhere, and inveighing against
the insurrection.

CHAPTER XII.
THE DEATH OF FREDERICK.
While the flame of sedition and fanatical insurrection,
advancing from the south, threatened to envelop North
Germany in conflagration, a prince who had long striven
to hold in check the elements of unrest in Deutschland,
and who had hoped never' to see the present evil day,
was lying down to die. Frederick of Saxony, never an
intellectually strong man, had felt for a considerable
time — we may in fact venture to extend the retrospect
to the date of the issue of Luther's Theses — that the
march of events was getting beyond his control. His
perfect moral heroism — the unsullied purity of his wish
to show himself a prince by rendering princely service
to his nation — had always preserved his dignity, and
had guarded him from gross or vulgar mistakes. His
reign, in its most notable part, is an historical demon
stration that, for a sovereign prince, " to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God," is to
be a noble sovereign. But his generation, and historians
down to our time, have hardly been felicitous in calling
him Frederick the Wise. Frederick the Just, Frederick
the Good, Frederick the Peaceable, he was ; but wisdom,
unless we concede the high designation to a quality

THE DEATH OF FREDERICK. 307
more passive and negative than wisdom ought to be,
cannot be claimed as his characteristic. Luther was a
spiritual force too great for Frederick's managing. The
Lutheran Reformation was a phenomenon too new,
too splendid, too terrible, for his political astronomy.
He was of great use to Luther, and Luther knew it ;
but the man of a thousand years — the religious genius
to whom civilisation owed a new departure — could not
but chafe under the control of a man of blameless,
beautiful, but quite unoriginal character like Frederick.
Luther had been deeply sensible of Frederick's
good intentions in sending him to the Wartburg ; and
yet he would have sincerely preferred to go back at
once to Wittenberg, face all risks, and remain in the
front of the battle. He never quite forgave Frederick
for laying a kind hand on his bridle-rein and con
ducting him out of the fray. And Luther's instinct
was perhaps right. It might have been better for
Germany, for Europe, for all nations at this hour, if
Luther had not at that particular moment been spirited
away to the Wartburg. Left to themselves, with
Carlstadt to push himself into Luther's place as leader,
the Wittenberg doctors rather lost their heads. At
first Luther on the Wartburg shared their heat, moving
on in some departments of theology at a pace that
was for him unusually rapid. Then the intolerable
eccentricities of Carlstadt, stimulated to the utmost
pitch by the Zwickau prophets, startled him into
partial reaction, arresting his advance in the quest,
previously so calm, so luminous, so brave, for new
u 2

308 MARTIN LUTHER.
truth, and preparing and presaging the dogmatism of
a later date. Frederick might have done better for
the Reformation if he had left Luther, as Luther de
voutly wished to be left, to the guardianship of God.
Be this as it may, Frederick never was in entire and
cordial sympathy with Luther after his return from the
Wartburg. He wrote to his brother John about the in
surgent peasants in terms of sympathetic pity which, to
Luther, may well have seemed to savour of imbecility. To
us, however, they cannot fail to endear the dying Prince.
The toiling masses, Frederick reminded his brother, were
severely pressed upon both by the secular and the
spiritual lordships. " If God wills to have it so," he
meekly added, " things will turn out in a way to bring
about the government of the common man." A pro
phecy, might we not say, from the lips of the- dying
Frederick, of the representative democracies of modern
times ! He was anxious that as much concession as
was possible, consistently with safety, should be made
to the peasants.
Difficult as it had been for him to wean himself
from the system which he had reverenced in youth, and
though he was tottering towards the grave before the
treasury of relics, by which in his early manhood he
had set so much store, was finally dismantled, he did,
nevertheless, firmly believe that God had wrought a
great redemption by Martin Luther, and that the sole
method of salvation was by faith in Christ. He had
never exchanged a word with Luther; never, except
once at Worms in the presence of the Emperor, seen

THE DEATH OF FREDERICK. 309
his face. But on his death-bed he longed to hear the
voice of the great preacher of righteousness. It could
not be. Luther could not turn from the urgent
service of his nation even to wait upon his dying
sovereign. But Spalatin, Frederick's bosom friend and
spiritual counsellor, was with him to the last. He
testified his final assent to the Reformation by taking
the Sacrament in both kinds. In the first week of
May, 1525, at his castle of Lochau, he breathed his
last.

CHAPTER XIII.
MUNZER GOES DOWN.
It was in those days and hours when Frederick was
looking steadfastly into the eyes of death, reading in
them Christ's promise of peace, that the final agony of
the Peasants' War shook Germany as with great throbs
of earthquake. Duke John took the place of his dying
brother in council and in the field, with heroic courage,
yet perfect humanity, not forgetting for a moment the
claims of justice and compassion. Gathering, from town
and fortress, what armed force could be had, he looked
eagerly round to Philip of Hesse, to Henry of Brunswick,
to any ally that held out hope of honourable help.'
But the prospect was appalling. No adequate force
could at once be assembled, and great masses of in
furiated peasants were storming about on this hand
and on that. The number of insurgents was estimated
at above 32,000 in the districts between Gotha and
Vogtland, distributed in bodies of from 2,000 to 8,000.
The old feudal array had fallen into desuetude; and,
indeed, those peasants and their sons who in feudal
times would have rallied round Duke John were now
in the insurgent ranks. He tried to enter into negotia
tion. The peasants were profuse of offers to hurt no

MUNZER GOES DOWN. 311
one, if only they were allowed to have their own way,
and to enter at once into possession of the country.
This profession of innocent intentions Luther denounced
as, under the circumstances, mere devilish mockery
(Teufels Spott). " Is it not," he exclaims, " doing harm
to hunt out the nobles and strike them dead? If
they mean to harm no one why do they con
gregate ? why do they demand that all power shall
be yielded up to them? To harm no one, and yet
take possession of everyone's goods ! — why, the devil
himself, if only we gave him in all things his own
way, would promise not to harm us." " So says the
highway robber to the pacific waggoner, ' Give me all
you have, and drive where I tell you, and you shall
have your life.' Oh, beautiful innocence, how finely does
the devil dress up his murderous ministers ! But with
God's gracious help, rather would I lose a hundred lives
than countenance their iniquity or speak them fair."*
It was in the highest degree satisfactory to him that
Count Albert of Mansfeld stood firmly by the side of
Duke John. Albert had entered into conference with
the peasants of his neighbourhood, had generously
acceded to their request for a removal of grievances,
and had received a promise from them to be true to him
to the death. Straightway, after making these profes
sions, they began to wreck the monasteries of the dis
trict. The multitude was in a dangerous mood — full
of suspicion, exasperation, and the maddening hope of
exchanging places with their lords. Luther says that,
* De Wette, 696.

312 MARTIN LUTHER.
taking his life in his hand, he went among them, but
found them perverse, arrogant, stiffnecked, becoming
more proud in their frenzy the more they were spoken
with. Meanwhile every wind from the south came
laden with new tales of atrocity; the authorities in
Weimar, unequal to the emergency, seemed in a
trance of incapable horror ; the peasants appeared to
be on the highway to victory. Amid the tumult
Carlstadt becomes momentarily visible, mounted on
some appropriate stump, in peasant's grey coat and
white hat, haranguing the crowd. Whether it was that
he had again, as in the first frenzy of his fraternisation
with the Zwickau prophets, quite lost his senses, or
whether it was that he held the cooler wisdom with
which he had repelled Miinzer's invitation to prepare
for insurrection to have been rebuked by what his
distracted vision might take for the palpable fulfilment
of Miinzer's prophecies in the triumph of the peasants,
certain it is that he was at this time understood to have
cast in his lot with the warrior saints. We may, indeed,
be quite sure that his inventive genius provided him
with some view of the situation peculiar to himself.
The multitude which followed the peasant standard was
a mixed multitude, and we know from Luther's letters
that some of those who took part in the movement
disclaimed sympathy with the violence of Miinzer.
Luther pleaded earnestly on behalf of such loyal and
peaceable persons as had been forced to join the rebel
ranks. Against the desperate fanatics he issued a final
address, brief, compact, and terrible. Calling upon all

MUNZER GOES DOWN. 313
children of God to withdraw from them, he poured the
vials of his wrath upon the "murderous robber-gang"
that, under blasphemous pretext of promoting Christ's
cause, was subverting the order of human society and
turning everything into chaos and conflagration. They
were condemned already, he said, by the law of God and
of the Kaiser, and it was the duty of every man, in
proportion to his power, not waiting for official direc
tion, to attack and exterminate them. When a town
was on fire, no man able to throw water on it could
without sin refrain from doing so.
The decisive moment was now at hand. The new
Elector of Saxony, who had been joined by Philip of
Hesse, Henry of Brunswick, and Duke George, and who
was gallantly supported not only by Count Albert of
Mansfeld, Luther's friend, but by Count Ernst of
Mansfeld, who was resolutely Popish, advanced, in the
second week of May, 1525, towards one of the largest
bodies of peasants. They had taken post at Franken-
hausen. The princes had recourse once more to negotia
tion, and there was some prospect of a peaceable settle
ment being effected. But Miinzer, who had been in some
other quarter, entered the camp at this juncture at the
head of the men of Miihlhausen. He came promising
victory, declaring himself armed with the sword of
Gideon, and breathing destruction to Amalek. The
peasants, waxing bold in the contagion of his maniacal
exultation, broke off all conference with the princes.
Miinzer, who had not been so fooled by his fanaticism
but that he could take rational enough measures to

314 MARTIN LUTHER.
prepare for his rising, did not now rely exclusively upon
miraculous aid. He had taken care to supply his tumul
tuary troops with cannon . But the disorder of his mind,
and the general military incompetence of the leaders of
the peasants, are attested by the fact that though the
big guns were there, the powder with which to fire them
had been forgotten. AH accounts tend to show that
Miinzer was now in his wildest mood of paroxysmal
frenzy, staking all on some such miraculous interference,
on behalf of the peasants,, as he had taught himself
and them to expect. He bade his followers look up
for that sign of God in the heavens which announced
their invincibility, pretending to discover it either in a
rainbow or a halo round the sun which was visible at
the critical moment when the princes advanced to the
attack. The peasants were protected by an entrench
ment constructed of waggons and other impedimenta, a
form of camp as old as the days of Tacitus and Her
mann. The artillery of the princes tore a path through
this obstacle, and the cavalry charged in upon the main
body of the peasants. As they advanced, the peasants
attempted to raise the hymn, "Come, Holy Spirit!"
But their loose array was broken in a moment, and
the battle soon became a massacre. More than half
the number of the rebels were slain. Miinzer escaped
from the field. His mania was cured, but the foxy
cunning which was in the nature of the man survived.
He crept into a house, got into bed, and feigned sick
ness. But he was taken, and most justly condemned to
death. The delirium that had possessed him for years

MUNZER GOES DOWN. 315
subsided, and the religion of his boyhood returned. He
took the Sacrament in one kind, and died a Roman
Catholic. There are things on which all comment is drowned
in tears. Who can express the pathos of that hymn
of the peasants, " Come, Holy Spirit ! " as the horse
men dashed in upon them ?
That Miinzer made a poor end must not be held con
clusive as impeaching his sincerity. He had a narrow
brain to begin with ; the agitation of the time intoxi
cated him ; .and when the visions of his frenzy vanished
he awoke to the consciousness that he had been acting
the madman. There was truth, doubtless, in his bitter
answer to those who asked him why he had wrought
such woe, that the peasants would have their way.
The noble leader of a democracy is bound to save
his followers from themselves. He is to prove his
fidelity to the multitude by having regard to their true
interests, by standing stubbornly to principles which he
knows to be true, by choosing rather to see their eyes
inflamed with fury against him, or to hear them shout
ing around him on his way to the guillotine, than to
humour their fancies or to nurse their hallucinations.
Of all the lessons of his life, Luther has left none more
grandly significant for these democratic ages than that
brave independence, that heroic stability and self-
respect, in the leadership of men, which formed so
bold .a contrast to the suicidal compliance that Miinzer
confessed. It was natural that Miinzer should vehemently hate

316 MARTIN LUTHER.
Luther. He called him " Doctor Liar," " Doctor Ludi-
brii," "flattering scoundrel." Luther was the raven
sent out from the ark (der schwarze Kulckrabe) ; he,
Miinzer, was the dove. * A slight examination of the
curious piece in which these epithets occur, and of
others by Miinzer, enables us to perceive that his system
was not without method and articulation. He assigned
immense importance to the Old Testament. Unintel
ligent minds, intensely impressed with belief in infallible
verbal inspiration, will always ask whether God's direc
tions to the Jews, in the matter of hewing Agags and
conquering and dividing Canaans, can have become
obsolete, and whether the godless do not need to be
smitten hip and thigh in modern times as well as in
ancient. Luther made short work of such argumenta
tion, simply laying down the principle that Moses has no
place in the New Testament (Im Neuen Testament halt
und gilt Moses nicht). Miinzer had, however, an ingenious
way of arming the Christian democracy with weapons
of war. The Church meant the people. To the Church,
in the sense of the Gemeinde (congregation), were com
mitted not only the keys but the sword. It was their
part to execute the Lord's judgments; and the customary
fondness of the multitude for witnessing executions was,
he suggested, a right and proper testimony to this fact.
All those passages in which judgment is denounced
against evil-doers, as when fear and trembling are
pointed out as their lot, and the fowls of heaven are
* Hoch verursachte Schutzrede' und Antwort wider das gaistlose
sanfftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg, &c.

MUNZER GOES DOWN. 317
invited to eat their flesh, and the beasts of the field to
drink their blood, were interpreted by Miinzer into
indications of the will of God as to how His saints
ought to treat the wicked.
Without question the Miinzerian idea, if it were put
into practice by great men, might be one of the most
elevated and inspiring that can be presented to the
imagination. That right should be clothed in might,
that good men should bear the sword, that justice should
not be leaden-footed but swift, and that evil should not
be at liberty to exist in God's world — this is indeed a
stirring idea. The reign of the saints, as conceived by
the noblest of the Puritans, was something of this kind.
But it is at best hardly a Christian idea. Luther's
position was the true one. Christians fight with the
sword of the Spirit. " My kingdom is not of this
world." These words can have no rational meaning if
ministers of the Gospel are to enlist troops, and win
Christ's kingdom by steel weapons.
But we are never to forget that Miinzer claimed
powers which the Puritans no more than Luther pre
tended to. Miinzer was under the illusion that he
could work miracles. Luther never imagined for a
moment that he possessed this power. Nor did he
fancy himself miraculously inspired. He believed him
self providentially sent by God, and created anew by
grace. But his sound brain repelled all illusive notions
of miraculous inspiration. Miinzer's quasi-prophetic
ravings were falsehoods which had on the multitude a
maddening effect. The people thought that balls would

318 MARTIN LUTHER.
not pierce the saints of the Lord. In estimating the
tightness or wrongness of Luther's hard words spoken
of Miinzer and his peasants, we ought to recollect that
not even in the paroxysms of the Jacobin terror in
France were great masses of men in arms with the
object of dividing property. Miinzer proposed to do by
fire, sword, and miracle what the Convention and the
Government of Robespierre did not quite venture to
attempt even by law. It may be unduly harsh in ex
pression, but it is literally true to fact, that Miinzer
excited his peasants to sheer frenzy, and that mad
peasants, with arms in their hands, are as much more
dangerous than mad dogs, as men are superior in powers
of mischief to four-footed animals.
If Luther's words stung like scorpions, he was in
action the most forgiving, the least spiteful of men.
Carlstadt, whose theology had often prompted Luther
to think him possessed of one or more devils, and whose
recent caperings had brought him into serious trouble,
had the mother- wit to betake himself, when the hope-
of victory faded and the danger of punishment had
come, not like Hutten to Erasmus, but to the often
reviled Luther. And Luther received him with a
smile of forgiveness, and gave him refuge in the con
vent until the peril had gone by.

Book XII.
KATIE. 1525.

33oofe XH.
KATIE.

CHAPTER I.
LIGHT AT LAST.
In one of the most terrible conflicts in which man ever
engaged Luther was victorious. He had taken his life
in his hand and confronted the dragon of anarchy. He
knew what he had done, and regarded his victory with
serene and solemn pride. " It was I who slew Miinzer.
His blood is on these hands. I slew him because he
was bent on slaying my Christ." *
He was now, in this year 1525, in his forty-second
year. His life had been one of toil, agitation, strain on
every faculty of body and mind. Of himself he had
taken no thought. Gain, comfort, earthly reward in
any kind, he had never looked for. The idea of building
for himself some nest of pleasantness — of seeking some
refuge from the consuming stress of service for God and
man — did not occur to him. A nature so constant and
so sound would naturally thirst for repose, but he asked
* Also hob ich Miinzern getbdtet, dess Tod liegt auf meinem Halse.
Ich hab es aber darum gethan, denn er wollte meinen Christum todten.
— Tischreden, vol. iii.
V

322 MAB.TIN LUTHER.
for no remission of toil in this world ; and his brightest
hope in the way of reward was that his Lord might
think him worthy of the crown of martyrdom and seal
him to the heavenly rest.
But on one thing he was inflexibly resolved — that
he would not omit any part of the testimony which it
lay in his power to bear against the Roman system ;
and in the practical working of Romanism nothing was
for him more malignantly bad than the enforced celi
bacy of the clergy. The two pillars of the Papacy
against which he, with what approximation to Samson's
power was attainable, would press were, first, the mer
cenary mass, and, second, the pseudo-chastity that dis
honoured marriage and exalted celibacy.* Suddenly,
therefore, at the very time when the Peasants' War was
approaching its crisis, and the probability that he might
fall a victim to its fury forced itself upon his mind, the
thought rose in him like an inspiration that he would
add deed to word in his testimony against celibacy.
" To spite the devil," he wrote, "I will take my Katie
to wife before I die." f
Accustomed as he was to regard himself as expressly
called by God to smite the Papal Antichrist, he habi
tually cherished the opinion that his life was aimed at
by Satan. He had now excited to the fiercest pitch of
resentment the Antichrist of spiritual lordship — usurpa
tion and false doctrine — on the one side, and, on the
other, the Antichrist of pseudo-inspiration — raging
fanaticism, lawless insolence calling itself Christian
* Tischreden, vol. iv. f De Wette, 696.

LIGHT AT LAST. 323
liberty, and rapine disguised in the sheep's clothing
of saintliness. Between the Pope and Miinzer he felt
that his life might easily fall a sacrifice. He resolved
therefore — so he stated subsequently * — that if he found
" that fell sergeant, death " laying his arrest upon him,
he would have some pure maiden brought to his bed
side, and would be betrothed to her there and then,
giving her the customary marriage gifts, thus announc
ing his utter and eternal repudiation of any vows which
had withheld him from honouring as it deserved God's
holy ordinance of matrimony.
And who was Katie ? She was one of many
young women whom Luther had found himself
obliged to look after in those years. Born in 1499,
at Steinlausitz on the Mulde, of a noble but not very
wealthy Misnian family,! Catherine von Bora had been
put at ten years of age into the convent of Nimptsch,
near Grimma. There she had been under the superin
tendence of Staupitz, and may well have owed to him
her access to the idea that salvation is wholly of grace.
It is legitimate to surmise that when Luther dis
charged the duties of Vicar as Staupitz's deputy in
1516, his fiery words and intense personality may have
done more to stir thought in Catherine, then in the
flush of early nun-hood and opening womanhood, than
she was aWare of. In the following year the news
reached the convent that the same Luther of Witten
berg, who had acted as Staupitz's substitute, had written
up, in words with which all Germany was ringing, that
* In the Tischreden. t Karl Zimmermann, vol, iv.
v 2

324 MARTIN LUTHER.
repentance was a spiritual work, that salvation meant
Christ living in the soul, that all the mechanical routine
and taskwork of the convent were but a lighting of
candles at noonday to help the sun. Catherine, who
had certainly, at ten, been able to yield no intelligent
consent to being shut up in a convent, would, at
eighteen, hear of these things with eager concern, and
talk over them with her sister nuns. When Luther
was snatched away into the Wartburg Catherine was a
woman of twenty-two, vigorous in body and in mind,
cool of nerve and clear of head, singularly capable of
judging whether she ought to remain in the convent or
to go out into the world. At last, in the spring of
1523, in company with eight other nuns, she left her
cage and took flight for Wittenberg. She obtained a
situation in the family of the municipal secretary,
Reichenbach, a man of good position and unimpeach
able respectability. She moved in the best society of
Wittenberg, the painter Cranach, not only a distin
guished artist but an eminent citizen, being, with his
wife, among her particular friends. When Christian,
the ex-King of Denmark, paid Cranach a visit, in
1523, he marked his appreciation of Catherine by pre
senting her with a gold ring.
Inevitably a prominent — extremely prominent —
place in Catherine's firmament was occupied by Luther.
He had eclipsed, in reputation and in potency of in
fluence, every living man she had heard of; he "had
revolutionised her native land ; and he had changed the
current of her own life. Yet she was not in the least

LIGHT AT LAST. 325
fluttered out of her bright feminine composure by the
presence and intimate society of this great man, whose
goodness did not make him the less enchanting. One
of the most subtly sweet of all the forms of spiritual
passion — let us call it spiritual, without microscopic
inquiries as to the possible presence in it of less ethereal
elements — is that with which a noble girl regards the
man who has been in spiritual matters her guide, and
friend. George Eliot Owed much of her power to her
sympathetic understanding of this feeling, and has por
trayed it at its best 'n the relations between Savonarola
and Romola, and at its worst between Gwendolen and
Deronda. Too great proneness to this spiritual passion
implies hysterical excitability and unsoundness of moral
fibre ; those, on the other hand, who are wholly insensible
to its attractiveness are apt to be too hard, and to stiffen
in womanhood into conventional formality, primness, and
prose. Catherine von Bora had this peculiarity — that she
fell decidedly short in the sensibilities, the aspirings, the
morally-sublime ambitions of the Saint Theresa type of
woman ; and yet did not by any means sink to the level
of mere commonplace womanhood. Genuine Theresas
are rare. Counterfeit Theresas, affected Theresas, soft-
sighing and priest-worshipping Theresas, are not rare.
If Catherine was below saintship, she was above any of
its counterfeits. To Luther, when he first knew her,
she seemed " proud," and he conceived something like
a prejudice against her. This we may safely take to
mean that she had no special difficulty in maintaining
her self-possession in his presence — did not approach

326 MARTIN LUTHER.
him with that homage, conveyed in bated breath, in
downcast eye, in reverential footfall, which, without
being quite aware of it, he would naturally expect from
young women. Nor is there proof of her having con
sulted him touching her spiritual state, or shown
the slightest disposition to make him the depositary
of spiritual confidences. His spiritual influence on her
would be none the less real on this account. She moved
apart in womanly completeness, her faculties adequate
to her needs, having no doubt as to her duty, and
making no fuss about doing it. Perhaps Luther had
been influenced by recollection of her noble blood when
he pronounced her proud. But the main significance
of his remark lies in its suggestion of a self-sufficing com
pleteness and dignity about Catherine which made her
difficult to patronise, incapable of the maudlin graciosi-
ties and vapid reverences of feminine hero-worship.
Deeply concerned in seeing her permanently and
honourably provided for, Luther heard, with a satisfac
tion which there is no reason to think insincere, that
she seemed likely to be married to Jerome Baumgartner,
a young gentleman of Niirnberg who frequented Wit
tenberg in the character of an earnest adherent of the
Evangelical party. Catherine's heart had been touched,
and when Baumgartner returned to his own town and
broke off the connection she was grieved to a degree
that temporarily affected her health. But this was
exactly the sort of disappointment which her sound and
elastic nature would triumph over ; and we find her
towards the end of 1524, playing no neutral or tacit

LIGHT AT LAST. 327
part in certain negotiations going forward on the subject
of her settlement in marriage. Luther wrote to Baum
gartner, hinting that if he was in earnest about Cathe
rine he had better look sharp, a rival being in the field.
This rival was not himself, but Dr. Glatz, pastor at
Orlamiinde, who, with Luther and Amsdorf to second
his proposals, doubtless believed himself on the way to
success. With the crystalline clearness of perception
which always characterised her, Catherine saw that in
the good-natured officiousness and too business-like
practicality of those gentlemen matters of quite vital
interest to her might be compromised. Luther, she
had no doubt perceived, generally effected his purposes,
and the idea that he might make up his mind to see
her wedded to Glatz startled her into prompt and
decisive action. She would marry no man whom she
could not love, and some instinct, justified by Glatz's
subsequent history, told her that she never could love
him. In justice to him as well as to herself, she was
bound to put an end to all possibility of misconception
on the point. She begged Amsdorf, accordingly, to tell
Luther that she would on no account marry Glatz.
Most girls would have said no more. But Catherine
knew that Luther and Amsdorf had a right to expect
from her no petulant opposition to their friendly plans,
no dainty fastidiousness like that of the romantic love
sick young lady who will have none but the fairy
prince of her dreams. She added, therefore, that she
would marry Luther, or Amsdorf himself, if they chose,
but Glatz never.

328 MARTIN LUTHER.
Sancta simplicitas ! " Hence, bashful cunning !
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence ! I am your
wife, if you will marry mc."
Are we at liberty to suppose that there was, in the
association of Amsdorf with Luther, in Katie's offer of
her hand, the smallest possible particle of art to temper
its artlessness, of ingenuity to qualify its ingenuousness?
Amsdorf was a good enough kind of man, an evangelical
preacher, a sound reformer, a trusted friend of Luther's.
But his place of abode was Magdeburg; his acquaint
ance with Catherine must have been slight as compared
with Luther's ; and it seems never to have occurred
either to Amsdorf himself or to anyone else that the
question of his marrying her could be serious. His
name, probably, was introduced only as an artless-artful,
entirely innocent screen, behind which mention might
be made of Luther. So it appears to have been under
stood by everyone.
Here was news for Martin ! " I did never think to
marry." He could say this as truly as Benedick, when
the tale of Beatrice's love had just penetrated to his
heart: There is no higher authority in love-lore than
that of him who delineates the change wrought in Bene
dick's feelings towards Beatrice by the conviction that
he might, if he pleased, get her to wife. Nor have we to
•dive very deep into the subtleties of human nature to
find cause for believing that when Luther learned that
the climax of Catherine's aspiring was to be married to
Jam, he might cease to object sharply to her pride.
That a fine girl knows her superiority to most people,

LIGHT AT LAST. 329
and yet owns his superiority to her, taming her wild
heart to his loving hand, is the reverse of offensive to
any man. And Luther could not but perceive, when
he thought the matter out a little, that Katie had
notable attractions. Herr Kostlin says that with re
ference to women, Martin was not wood or stone. De
cidedly not. His temperament, if he had not been
caught up in the fiery chariot of prophetic inspiration,
would probably have resembled that of Burns. Katie
was thought by some to be beautiful — otherwise Eras
mus could not have edged a taunt against Luther by
saying that he had married a " wonderfully pretty
girl." Maimbourg the Jesuit says she was very good-
looking, but he may possibly have had some Jesuitic
intent in so saying, for he adds that Luther was
" mortally in love with her," which he certainly was
not. Her features were comely, but nowhere would
they have been thought regularly beautiful. The eyes,
without being piquantly intellectual, or glowingly
spiritual and exalted, were eminently adapted to ex
press feminine orderliness and firmness, and to be
homes of wifely and maternal affection. Complexion
clear, brow unwrinkled, fresh and calm — the kind of
brow Scott had in view when he made Bailie Nicol
Jarvie speak of the " brent brow " of his Matty : —
" Brent brow and lily skin,
A leal heart and a true within."
The couplet as a whole is, in fact, singularly applic
able to Katie. Her face gives no evidence either of

330 MARTIN LUTHER.
imaginative sensibility, or of religious enthusiasm, or of
such curiosity as might take interest in the theology of
the time. That she left her convent under the strong
displeasure, as may be inferred from their standing aloof
from her, of her relatives, and that she loved the great
reformer, must be held to prove that she was strongly
anti-Papal, earnestly evangelical ; but there was no
trace of disputatiousness in her nature, no tincture of
speculative doubt. By a transition as easy and effort
less as that by which a healthy child passes from
slumber to wakefulness she emerged from the super
stitious dusk of Papalism into the breezy light of the
Protestant morning. Kate had a genius for quietly
succeeding ; never failed in her life ; and effected all
transitions and transactions with a minimum of fuss.
" Seldom she altered feature, hue, or muscle,
And could be very busy without bustle."
Such was the emancipated nun whom the emanci
pating monk, amid the horrible eclipse and earthquake
of the Peasants' War, suddenly announced his intention
to marry. The affair had matured with rapidity. It was
in March, 1525, that our Benedick definitely learned
that he " could an' if he would " have that proud,
shy, superior girl. Luther had the very crash of
worlds about his head, but we are at liberty to sup
pose that he found an hour now and then for the
blissful work of wooing. At all events, there arose a
complete understanding between the two, and so early

LIGHT AT LAST. 331
as the fourth of May he could speak, not without an
accent of jubilance, of his Katie, proclaiming to all the
world that if he were to die in the immediate future
he would at least leave his name to a wife.
Straightway a clamour and an uproar of surprise,
disapproval, and consternation began which has not yet
quite howled and whimpered itself into silence. Of
course the Papists were incensed. Antichrist, they said,
could not fail to be born from the sacrilegious union of
a monk and a nun. " If so," slyly remarked Erasmus,
" there must have been a good many antichrists born
before now." But not a few, even among the Pro
testants, were scandalised. Melanchthon felt uneasy on
the subject. Jerome Schurf, the jurist, predicted that
Luther's marriage would wreck the good he had pre
viously accomplished. The time was pronounced inappro
priate. Frederick, who for so many years had shielded
Luther, was sinking in those very days into the grave.
Germany was the scene of a frightful social struggle.
Was this the season to steal away to the selfishness and
solitude of hymeneal enjoyment ?
There was one, however, who entertained no mis
givings, and to his approval Luther attached more
importance than to that of all the theologians, Papist
and Protestant, in Europe. Old John Luther had no
feeling but profound satisfaction on the subject of his
son's marriage. Step for step John had accompanied
Martin, with clear acquiescence in his successive attacks
upon the Papacy, and had of late been showing signs of
impatience at his not taking a wife. The last link of that

332 MARTIN LUTHER.
chain by which, much to the chagrin of old John, he
had bound himself on entering the convent was now to
be broken off; and Luther heard with unaffected indif
ference, tempered slightly with scorn, the titterings,
taunts, and clamours of others, as he fell back on three
grand sources of approbation, his conscience, his father,
and his God.
By the law and usage of Germany, the one essential
requisite to a true marriage was that the man and the
woman should accept each other, in word and deed, as
husband and wife. If their having done so could be
established by sufficient proof, the marriage was valid in
the absence of even a single personal witness. Luther,
anxious doubtless to lay stress upon the civil and non-
sacramental nature of marriage, took Katie to wife
on the 13th of June, 1525, in the presence of three or
four of his most intimate friends. These were Bugen-
hagen and Jonas, two eminent clergymen of Witten
berg, and Luke Cranach the artist, and his wife, who
were, as has been mentioned, particular friends of the
bride. Herr Kostlin looks upon it as open to no reason
able question — and I agree with him — that a brief
marriage ceremony, accompanied by prayer, took place.
The solemnity of the thirteenth was followed up by
a more public but yet modest festivity on the twenty-
seventh. Though the marriage had taken place before,
Luther attached considerable importance to this second
celebration, as blazoning to all the world that he had
become a married man. Matthesius, though laying
stress on the previous marriage, as solemnised in the

LIGHT AT LAST. 333
name and on the Word of Christ in the presence of
good people, states that there was subsequently a
regular going to church and public marriage.* But
Matthesius did not know Luther at this time, and did
not write down what he may afterwards have heard
from eye-witnesses, or from Luther himself, until the
latter had been dead for nearly twenty years. Herr
Kostlin quotes Matthesius's statement without chal
lenge, and Herr Kostlin's authority is high ; but he
does not say that he positively endorses it. The point
is not of much importance ; but expressions used in
Luther's letters between the thirteenth and twenty-
seventh of June seem to me to exclude the idea of a
second ceremony and of a going to church. On the
fifteenth he wrote to his friends Ruhel, Thiir, and
Miiller, men of good standing at Mansfeld, inviting
them to his "little festivity and house-warming,"
and asking them to bring, if possible, his father and
mother with them. He would venture, he says, to
ask the Counts Albert and Gebhard of Mansfeld, did
he not know that they were engrossed by public
duty. But what concerns us is that he writes ex
pressly as a married man. In the letter to Spalatin
he speaks of his " marriage " as of something that has
taken place. In the letter to Amsdorf he calls Catherine
his wife. In none of these letters is there a syllable
that would lead his correspondents to think he wanted
them to be present at an ecclesiastical ceremony. But
* Einen offentlichen Kirchgang und ehrliche Hochzeit. — Matth. 5te
Predigt.

334 MARTIN LUTHER.
they reveal, more distinctly perhaps than I have enabled
the reader as yet to realise, the exact nature of the
complex motives that influenced him in his proceedings.
He uses these words to Spalatin : "I have shut the
mouths of those who have been defaming me in relation
to Catherine." A telling hint ! We find, in -the letter
to the Mansfeld three, that his father has been even
more pressingly urging matrimony than there seemed
reason to expect. Alarmed, we may suppose, by
Martin's frequent expressions of a belief, hope, or
presentiment that his death was near, he had grown
anxious lest his son should pass away without progeny.
Luther connects with the mention of his father's
urgency in pushing on the marriage a reference to
the " evil tongues " * of calumny which could not be
silenced. He does not, indeed, say that the malevolent
rumours stood in any relation of cause and effect to his
father's wish to see him married, but he places the two
things in immediate juxtaposition. The main and
grand motive of his sudden determination to marry,
namely, to enrage Satan by trampling into the dust his
malignant device of clerical celibacy, is, of course, always
present. But the other expressions, corroborated per
haps by Maimbourg's remark about Luther's having
been mortally in love, put it beyond question that his
courtship of Katie had attracted notice in Wittenbero-,
and caused the evil tongues aforesaid to wag. It would
be pleasant to think that, with the ardour and
* De Wette, 715. I adopt Walch's reading in preference to De
Wette's.

LIGHT AT LAST. 335
impetuosity by which he was so deeply characterised,
Luther had passed rapidly from interested but almost
unimpassioned esteem for Katie into the limitless admi
ration and infinite rapture of accepted love. But we may
be almost quite certain that he had no such experience.
One reason for this decision is that in the afternoon of
his life he spoke of never having known what it was to
enjoy greatly — to be as happy as possible. Another is
that there is not a trace of unusual excitement in the
letters written at this time, and that he describes his
feelings in terms that attest a manly and rational affec
tion, but give no hint of lyric ecstasy. Nee amo, he
says, nee cestuo, sed diligo uxorem. The words define
with exquisite accuracy three different kinds of love ;
but I cannot undertake to give their just equivalents in
English. He loved Katie sincerely, nobly, but not
" With adorations, with fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire."
It is pathetic — though not with stage pathos — to
note that in these letters he is under the necessity of
begging this and that guest to send some contribution,
in shape of game or other food, to help him to furnish
forth the modest marriage table.
The healthy composure of his mind at the time, and
his admirable and wonderful power of detachment, are
illustrated by the fact that when his marriage had just
been solemnised and the marriage feast was full in view,
he did not forget the duties of his primacy of Protestant
Christendom. On the seventeenth of June he wrote

336 MARTIN LUTHER.
one of his pastoral letters to the Christians of Liefland.
There, as elsewhere, the spirit of division had shown
itself, and he writes in homely and affectionate earnest
ness, warning the people both against yielding to the
divisive zealots, and against being cast down and
offended by their appearance in the wake of the Gospel.
Slavish submission and insolent licence are alike, he tells
them, easy ; but if they maintain both their freedom
towards God and their love towards men — if they are
firm in essentials and pliant in circumstantials — if they
take care that their liberty shall not be imposed as a
law upon others — then they will find that the problem
is difficult, requiring vigilant attention and constant
prayer. And so, working up the finest practical counsels
of Paul's Epistles with homely advices of his own, he
strengthens the hands and comforts the hearts of the
worthy evangelicals of Liefland.
That the festivity of the twenty-seventh came off,
and that it was pretty much like other celebrations of
the kind — something between a business and a pleasure
— may be taken for granted, but no particular informa
tion exists on the subject. Doubtless it "certified,
sealed," and published, to Luther's satisfaction, the fact
of his marriage. The University of Wittenberg sent,
by way of wedding present, a handsome goblet, silver-
gilt. It would be interesting to have the remarks of old
John and Margaret on their daughter-in-law. She was
the sort of person they would like — quiet, wide-awake,
managing, affectionate, with the kind- of piety which
Dinah Morris exemplified as Adam Bede's wife, rather

LIGHT AT LAST. 337
than that which made her a preacher on Hayslope Green.
We hear of no jar or flaw in the amicable tenor of the
relations subsisting between Katie and the pair in Mans
feld valley whom her husband so deeply reverenced;
and one circumstance, eloquent in its testimony to the
daughterly tenderness of Katie, may be mentioned,
namely, that when John Luther was sickening towards
his last illness, she, then a busy mother, implored " with
tears in her eyes " that he might come to Wittenberg
to be nursed by her. Meanwhile old John would re
turn to his furnace with a feeling that any mischief
Martin had incurred by immuring himself in a convent
was as good as repaired.

w

CHAPTER II.
THE ETHICS OF MARRIAGE.
" Now," said Luther, some six or eight wTeeks after
these things, " not in word only, but in deed, have I
testified to the Gospel. I have taken to wife a nun in
despite of the enemy, who triumph and shout Ha !
ha ! "
He was never slow to recognise, or specially modest
in proclaiming, what God had done by him. He has
left on record words of grateful and joyful pride with
reference to his appearance at Worms. But I am not
aware that he has applied to any incident in his career
words of more high and exulting satisfaction than
those he has used with reference to his marriage. And
although it cannot be alleged that he invariably touched
upon the relations between men and women, with the
gracious delicacy which the subject requires, it may, I
hold, be justly affirmed that his marriage was an integral
and essential part, and in some respects a crowning part,
of his work as a reformer. In glancing at his views on
the question reference must be made to letters, treatises,
and conversations, too numerous to quote. It was a
theme on which he delighted to dwell. In no instance
did he hold up his example to others as more strictly in

THE ETHICS OF MARRIAGE. 339
accordance with the spirit of Christ than in that of his
marrying Catherine von Bora.
Doubtless it is startling that a man and a woman
both of whom had solemnly vowed that they would
never marry should rend their vows from off their
necks and join in wedlock. But no human being can
rationally bind himself never to change in his concep
tions of duty. A well-regulated life is based to a great
extent on resolutions, practically equivalent to vows ;
but if the life is vitally progressive times will come
when old resolutions must be exchanged for better and
broader. " A man ought to be king over his habitudes."
Adherence to resolution is a true test of manhood ; but
there are epochs in the soul's life when old resolutions
ought to be torn up, and new departures taken. In
proportion to the strength and sacredness of the original
resolution will be the solemnity of the moment, the
earnestness and elevation of the new departure, when
the old resolution is put away. It was in obedience to
their sense of duty that Martin Luther and (presumably)
Catherine von . Bora took on them vows of monastic
chastity; they had kept those vows irreproachably
while their consciences approved of them ; and they
were now, for this very reason, the fit and proper per
sons to blazon the claims of a higher morality by casting
those vows behind them.
Luther by his marriage protested against the
appalling wrong that Hildebrand had done to the
Church by the institution of clerical celibacy. And
it is certain that, whatever may be obsolete in the
w 2

340 MARTIN LUTHER.
contendings of Luther and the opponents of Luther, the
question of a celibate or a married clergy is as fresh to
day as it was in the sixteenth century. Its settlement
is essential to the restoration of Christian unity in the
West. The moral element is vital to civilisation ; and
Christianity, diffused by a clergy of refinement, educa
tion, and gentle manners, is the best influence that can
act upon society. But a celibate priesthood is not com
patible with high social civilisation. Once for all,
men should not, cannot, and will not trust celibate
priests to be on confidential terms with their families.
Lord Macaulay asserts, and states that Dr. Johnson also
asserted, that the non-juring priests who found refuge
in the households of Jacobite squires after the Revolu
tion of 1688 abused the kindness and confidence of
their hosts. That was a test case, and it goes far to
demonstrate that the temptation to which celibate
clergymen are exposed is too much for human nature.
In Italy and France clerical celibacy has done more to
ruin the Church than Voltaire. With a bitter laugh
men give up hope of possessing moral homes, and
indemnify themselves by atheism and libertinism.
Marriage is the keystone of the natural system of
morals, nor is it easy to exaggerate the extent and
malignity of the evils that ensue from tampering with
the cardinal facts and arrangements on which society
depends. This was one of those things which Luther
eminently understood. Nature was, for him, God's
ordinance. To search nature, and having discovered

THE ETHICS OF MARRIAGE. 341
nature's laws, to give them due scope and obedience,
was, in his apprehension, a co-ordinate duty with that
of searching Holy Writ and obeying its precepts. He
had unqualified respect for the honest reading of both.
He was impatiently distrustful of commentaries, in
vincibly sceptical of improvements, upon either. His
quarrel with Aristotle was by no means that he im
pelled men to the study of nature, but that his system
had lent itself to the schoolmen, to be spun into
metaphysical tissue for sophistication of the clear
words of Scripture, and for obstruction of scientific
research. In the sphere of reKgion he put the natural
first and the spiritual second. The moral law became
freedom and life in the Gospel, but was not vaporised
in the process. Health was not necessarily holiness ;
but the laws of health were Divine, and could not be
superseded with advantage to holiness. The inno
cence of nature is one of the fundamental principles
in Luther's scheme of things. And he explicitly con
demned, as a sin for which God would call a man to
account, the presumption of attempting to live a
spiritual life, and to abjure the natural bounties of
Providence, unless one were lifted above the common
level by special grace. Under ordinary circumstances
it was, in Luther's view, a sin for a man to be a
bachelor. The point comes up in a letter which, in
the very month of his marriage, he wrote to Albert,
Cardinal- Archbishop of Mayence.* He exhorts Albert,
not only in order that his example may have a good
* De Wette, 710.

342 MARTIN LUTHER.
effect on ecclesiastics in Germany and elsewhere, but
as a matter of personal duty, to take a wife. " Your
Princely Grace must acknowledge that you are a male
person made by God. Now, it is God's work and will
that a man should have a wife. ' It is not good,' says
God, ' that the man should be alone ; I will make him
a help-meet.' Unless, then, God works a miracle, and
turns a man into an angel, I cannot see how, without
incurring God's anger and displeasure, he can remain
alone and wifeless."
It has been admitted that Luther does not always, in
treating of marriage, use terms acceptable to the delicate
sense of moderns. But perhaps it is as well that, in a
department where infinite ill is done by false delicacy,
he was not careful to spare the sensibilities of dainty
souls. He called a spade a spade. He believed in
facts. He recognised man's want of woman and
woman's want of man; and if he occasionally laid a
rough hand on the sentimentalities, he made rich
amends by bringing into light and encircling with the
rainbows of Divine promise and Divine approbation
the greatest of all natural joys. In exalting marriage
he removed that calumnious shadow by which mediaeval
ecclesiasticism had eclipsed the radiant beneficence of
nature's and God's great ordinance of sex — an ordinance
by which, throughout all the kingdoms of life, joy is
at once doubled and ennobled. You cannot go out into a
May pasture and see the butterflies reeling and flickering
in the sunlight like flakes of incarnate joy — you cannot
go into the spring woods and listen to the notes of the

THE ETHICS OF MARRIAGE. 343
mated birds, musical from gladness — you cannot look
into human literature, and hearken to the most joyful
outpourings of the lyre — without being taught, unless
you shut your eyes and stop your ears, how vast is the
felicity thus produced. Overlook this — misrepresent
this — and you obscure the most pointed and pertinent
proof nature tenders of a dominant impulse of bene
volence in the scheme of things The richest draught of
natural delight that the Universal Father has provided
for His children, throughout all the tribes of life, from
men to linnets, is put out of sight. When this is
done, can we wonder if the grand virtue of gratitude,
that virtue which played a central part in the typical
temptation of Eden, that virtue without which even
obedience could make no appeal to the heart, becomes
veiled, and men begin to question whether it is due to
a God whose beneficence lacks proof?
If we assent to this — and it is scientifically and
Scripturally true to the last syllable — shall we not
agree with Luther that it was temptation, diabolically
impersonated or not, which persuaded Hildebrand that
the pestilential evil of clerical celibacy was hyper-ter
restrial good ? And shall we hesitate to give him our
deliberate and whole-hearted applause when we see him,
amid the blind fury of some and the frivolous gibes or
pusillanimous scruples of others, adopting the most
impressive means at his command, namely, by marrying
a nun, to announce his condemnation of Hildebrand's
act? Luther's marriage conquered for himself and for the

344 MARTIN LUTHER.
Protestant Church and world the health, the joy, the
holiness of home. It was grandly appropriate that he,
who had restored to the Christian layman that priest
hood and that kingship which the Papacy had mono
polised for the clergy, should restore to the Christian
minister the wife of whom a Pope had bereft him. In
the face of Katie, beaming from pallid nunhood into
ruddy wifehood and motherhood, we read a truth and
a Christianity that may still be fresh and fruitful when
the forms and phrases of dogmatic Lutheranism have
become venerable monuments assisting men to date a
stage in the evolution of Christian civilisation.

CHAPTER III.

BETTER DAYS FOR LUTHER.

It is pleasanter to contemplate Luther's life after his
marriage than his life before it, and especially his life
immediately before it. Frederick, indeed, was dead,
but the sceptre had passed to [a living prince who was
more intelligently in accord with Luther than his pre
decessor had ever been, and more intrepidly resolved to
uphold the cause of reformation. John, the brother of
Frederick, who immediately succeeded him, had the
discernment to perceive that the fact of facts, in
relation to Saxon and to German history in his time,
was the presence of Luther ; and that his own main
work as a sovereign prince consisted in carrying into
effect that great change which Luther had initiated.
This implied a very considerable brightening and bet
tering in the general position of the latter.
The improvement in his personal comfort was still
more marked. Hitherto almost his sole guerdon amid
strife and toil had been the "delight of battle" — a
delight real enough, and not ignoble when the war is
heroic, but mingled nevertheless with tragical drawbacks.
His life in the convent had gradually gone from bad to
worse, as the inmates departed and the revenues declined.

346 MARTIN LUTHER.
For a considerable time his friend the ex-prior con
tinued with him in the building ; but at last he too
went, and Luther had been left alone. Agitated by
the excitements of the time, he had been entirely for
getful of himself, and when the eyes and pen could
labour no longer he flung himself ou a bed that, month
after month, was left unmade. In short, his circum
stances had been desolate and squalid. He now began
to experience the magical effects of woman's influence.
Katie had been a nun as he had been a monk, and could
doubtless exist on a minimum of food, and bear up under
great personal hardship. But proof exists that she was
not indifferent to creature comforts. We hear much of
her thriftiness and management. Luther, who looked
on his marriage primarily as the performance of a solemn
duty to God and man — an act of religion — had mainly
trusted for a marriage provision to Him who feeds the
ravens. But the wants of the pair were supplied, and
Katie knew how to make the most of little. Luther,
moreover, now ate his bread under conditions that would
have lent sweetness to a crust. His eye rested on a
bright woman's face, which looked on him in the calm
fervour of affection ; and at intervals the red lips opened,
and some simply intelligent question — Herr Doctor, is
it this ? or, Herr Doctor, is it that ? — made the air thrill
as with music. Luther felt amazed, enchanted. He
tells us in the Table Talk of his wonder and his
delight. Here was one that was not precisely himself
and yet not quite another. The angularities of his
rugged nature seemed to melt away in the solvent

BETTER DAYS FOR LUTHER. 347
sunshine of this brilliant personality. Selbander he called
her, using the old German word which indicates matri
monial unity with so much finer felicity than our " other
self." A melodious mystery — light and order incarnated
in woman's form — turned squalor into comfort, con
fusion into order, chaos into Eden. Katie soon made
a little space around him pleasant for the social com
muning of those friends whom he liked to meet, and
who delighted in his society. No longer could the most
virulent of his enemies pretend that he was a haunter
of taverns. He had a home. A true church, too, in
the house was founded under Katie's influence. Luther
was born to be the life of a conversational gathering —
so vivacious was he, so sensitive to every influence, so
richly gifted with mother-wit, observation, sagacity, and
with such stores of homely illustration and idiomatic
German speech. He was in his element as apostolic
bishop of this fireside church; a bishop who did not
choose a text and formally preach upon it, but who
talked upon any topic of the day, upon any question in
philosophy, morals, or theology, and who always talked
with pithy sense and vivid interest. It has sometimes
been suggested that the volumes of his Table Talk
are of more fresh, practical, perennial worth than all
the tomes of his controversial literature ; and the
Table Talk is neither more nor less than an abstract
of the discourses with which, in discharging the epis
copal duty of hospitality, Luther enlivened and in
structed his guests. It was Katie whose propitious
influence formed the household circle in which such

348 MARTIN LUTHER.
discoursing was possible. To her the world owes the
Table Talk.
Not that Luther and his wife were as dainty-sweet
at all times towards one another as lovers in a picture.
A well-ordered Christian home is the best place on
earth, but it is not heaven. In his letters — he was
as open, be it remembered, and communicative as a boy
of nine — there are a few scattered hints that those
pungencies which may be pronounced inseparable from
married life did exist. He said — perhaps it was an
obiter dictum — that if it were known beforehand what
is in marriage no one would marry. The happiest
of married men might, at moments, say so — in his
haste ! There is an irreducible minimum of feminine
idiosyncrasy which no man can understand. And
Luther may himself have been in fault. There were
hours in which he would have answered to the descrip
tion which Carlyle's attached and admiring mother gave
of her son, as one difficult to live with. Melanchthon,
deeply as he revered, and truly as he loved Luther, was
not ignorant of this fact.
Anyhow, the trace of pungency which made itself
felt in the relations between Luther and his wife was
no more than enough to supply that " bitter " which
prevents " the sweet " from cloying. If a word or two
of disparaging reference to his marriage may, with great
difficulty, be gleaned from his letters, it is the case, as
Zimmermann says, that in countless places he expresses
himself on the subject with exuberant satisfaction. He
says that he has in his wife a treasure that he would

BETTER DAYS FOR LUTHER. 349
not give for all the wealth of the Kaiser. He deliber
ately pronounces it " God's highest grace and gift " to
have a pious, friendly, God-fearing wife, with household
qualities. He scruples not to compliment himself by
congratulating Katie on her good fortune in possessing
him. " You have a pious man who loves you ; you are
an empress." Of course, not only as a sensible man, but
as one who had fully realised that the corruption of the
best is in all cases theworst, he recognised that ill-
assorted marriages produce the most exquisite wretched
ness. " Ah, dear Lord God," he once exclaims,
"marriage is not merely a natural thing; it is God's
special gift ; the sweetest of all sweetnesses, the dearest
of all delights, and the chastest of all states, more chaste
than any possible form of celibacy or solitude, when it
falls out well : when it falls out ill, it is hell." Above
nature ; yes, as the crown and acme of natural bounties ;
but most truly and authoritatively natural. To forbid
it, to cast a slur on it, to condemn it, is to go right in
the face of natural necessity, and natural right — "as if
one should proscribe eating, drinking, sleeping." The
idea irritates him. "Away with such nonsense ! What
God has done and ordained it stands not with us or our
fancies to improve. Ours is not the artist-hand that
will touch up God's disposing, and put His work to
shame. Let us attempt it, and experience, as it has done
in the past, will reveal our mistake." With sterling
chivalry, better than any highflown, pinchbeck imitation
of knightliness, he rests the claim of women to tender
consideration on the mysterious glory of maternity.

350 MARTIN LUTHER.
".Although a woman is a weak vessel and instrument,
still she possesses that highest honour, motherhood.
All men are conceived, born, suckled, nursed by women.
Thence come the darling little ones, the highly-prized
heirs. This honour — that they are our mothers — ought
in fairness to cover and swallow up all feminine weak
ness." " Oh, how rightly things go on when man and
wife sit friendly at table ! Though they have their
little bickerings now and then, they must not mind
that ; it is mere chance exception, not the rule of life.
Put up with it." *
The man is frankly and bravely to commit the reins
of house-government to the woman. Among his busi
nesses, or his books, he may want silence in the house,
and dislike to hear her sharp tongue among the servants,
but he ought to feel that she is performing an indispens
able duty. " Though a woman is a trifle bitter, you
should have patience with her. She and her sharpness
are part of the household machinery, and the servants
at times thoroughly deserve what they get — a good
hard talking -to."
The sum of the matter is that if the planet had
been searched with a candle, a better wife for Luther
could not have been found. Gradually a more cheerful
tone became perceptible in his letters. The thought
that he was immediately to die passed from his mind,
and a spirit of conciliation tempered, for the first time,
the violence of his polemical contendings.
* Table Talk.

Book XIII.
THE NEW ERA

3500ft xm.
THE NEW ERA.

CHAPTER I.
RETROSPECT  BIBLE V. POPE  LETTER TO STAUPITZ —
ANTICHRIST.
We have accompanied Luther, without rupture of
biographical or historical continuity, until the stormy
terrors of the Peasants' War are past, and he nestles
down in peace and comfort under the domestic auspices
of Katie. But it is absolutely necessary for us to
return to take up threads which we were compelled to
let fall in the impetuous rush of events. While the
forces of destruction were at work, other forces, of a
constructive character, were in operation, and to judge
of these we must recur to the year 1522, when Luther
resumed activity at Wittenberg after having left the
Wartburg. The fifth summer since he had posted the Theses
was dawning upon Germany. What a change had
taken place ! — a change unparalleled through long ages
— a change affecting not only the externals of human
life, but the thoughts in men's brains, the feelings in
x

354 MARTIN LUTHER.
their hearts, the conceptions entertained of all things in
heaven above and on the earth beneath. The mediaeval
age had melted away like a dissolving view. Modern
life had begun. Customs which but yesterday had been
universal and unquestioned were ceasing to be prac
tised, nay, to be remembered or understood. Cardinal
Chieregati, proceeding through Germany in the course
of this year, lifts his two fingers, as had been his
wont, to bless an appreciative, grateful, reverent people.
Ah me ! instead of bowing their heads, as of old, to
receive the benediction of a prince of the Holy Roman
See, they stare in wonderment, in tittering surprise and
curiosity, as if they did not know what the consecrated
personage could mean. They lift their two fingers in
mimetic pantomime, ironically offering to bless him !
The spell which, from time immemorial, had been
wielded by the Papacy was broken. The change had
been most completely effected in Saxony and the Ger
man districts adjoining Bohemia ; but it had taken
place to an extent which we are much more likely to
under-estimate than to exaggerate from the founts of
the Danube to the mouths of the Rhine, from the gates
of Vienna to the market-places of Holland. Christen
dom was already rent asunder. Not yet calling them
selves Protestant, but in jubilant, all-hoping, defiant
protest and insurrection against Papalism. proudly
confident in their new exercise of private judgment,
painting the skies of the future with the promises of
freedom, the men of the advancing party stood aloof
from those who still clung to the mediaeval order. But

RETROSPECT. 355
the party of reaction and resistance possessed great
power, and met frank antagonism with fierce hostility.
The summer of 1522 did not close before the Papists
had recourse to fire in dealing with heresy.
Let us apprehend distinctly the position taken up by
Luther at this time — what he taught as Gospel, what
he assailed as error, usurpation, or injustice. As to the
essentials of the truth of God, he had never wavered for
an instant from the day of his new birth. Salvation
was for him the indwelling of Christ. Apart from
Christ he owned no spiritual life, no righteousness.
He made, with universal completeness, that surrender of
the soul to God which religion in its intensest form has
always required. To refuse this was to die spiritually,
to commit the sin against the Holy Ghost. At the
same time there is not, in any sentence which I have
seen from Luther's hand up to this time, any hint of
limit placed to the number of those who may have
Christ dwelling in them. The divine life was freely
offered to all. The sin of sins was to doubt the pleni
tude and bounteousness of Infinite Love. The Gospel
was essentially a flooding of the soul with joy, with
heaven. The life of grace was a life of glory — begin
ning the moment the soul had been born anew, and
increasing throughout eternity. To resist this infinitely
beneficial message was not only the greatest possible
sin against God, but the greatest possible cruelty to
wards man. With those guilty of such wickedness no
alliance was permitted. Whether they openly con
demned and scorned the Word, or whether they
x 2

356 MARTIN LUTHER.
cunningly repressed and persecuted it, " no favour, no
charity, no benignity" had they to expect from Luther.
He avowed it to be, "towards them, supreme charity
to resist their madness and impiety to all lengths and
with all strength." *
On a second point also he had now ceased to have
any doubt or to make any compromise. Gradually,
through difficult and painful processes of investigation,
he had reached certitude that what he had been bred
to look upon as an organisation for the diffusion of
God's benignity upon earth was in fact a usurping,
an apostate, an antichristian thing, nay the actual and
transcendent Antichrist. The authority which had, so
to say, guaranteed and modelled theology, and which
commanded men, in the name of God, to accept its
interpretation of the Bible itself, he held to be un
worthy of trust.
On the 27th of June, 1522, he wrote a letter to
Staupitz. f His dear master, through whose lips the
dayspring from on high had visited him, had been
appalled at the extremities to which he had proceeded.
Staupitz had written in a tone of distress and expostula
tion, saying that in the foulest dens of iniquity there
was exultation over his achievements. He replied by
counselling Staupitz, with gentle earnestness, to shut
his ears to lies about him and his fellow- workers. " I
adjure you, by the bowels of Christ, not to believe our
calumniators." But that his war with the Papacy is
to the death he plainly avows. "That kingdom of
* De Wette, 359. f De Wette, 411.

RETROSPECT. 357
abomination is to be destroyed, with all that pertains to
it." God will destroy it, not man, by the sole power of
the Word.
It was not to be wondered at that scandals should
be given, and portents arise, in such an operation.
One martyr to the truth, the prior of a convent in
Antwerp, was about to be burnt by the Papists, if in
deed he had not already suffered. " They are in con
sultation how they can have me also burnt ; but I pro
voke Satan more every day, doing my best to accelerate
the time when Christ will appear to destroy Anti
christ." In assailing and seeking to remove " the
body " of Antichrist — the system through which the
Papacy exercised its influence upon men, celibacy of
priests, sacrificial masses, tyrannous vows of monastic
renunciation, and so on — he and his coadjutors were
" angels sent out to gather the tares in the field of the
Church " against the great and mighty day of the Lord.
On the question whether the Papacy is Antichrist
much may be said, and few will now adopt Luther's
language on the subject; but the question whether the
Pope, or the Roman Church, is invested with authority
to overrule the judgment of mankind in declaring the
sense of Holy Writ is as fresh to-day as it was when
Luther wrote this letter to Staupitz. In the Apologia
Cardinal Newman distinctly states that it was in obedi
ence to this authority that he accepted the doctrine of
transubstantiation. He had been a devout reader of
Scripture from his childhood. He had studied theology
for many years. He had brought all the resources of a

358 MARTIN LUTHER.
cultivated intellect and a reverent conscience to test the
purport and net result of the Bible teaching on the
subject. Still he " did not believe the doctrine." He
stepped across the threshold of Papacy. Then all was
changed. " I had no difficulty in believing it as soon
as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the
oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine
to be part of the original revelation."
We must not be led from our path by the specula
tive questions, curiously interesting and philosophically
important as they are, which this intimation suggests.
Whether " belief " in a doctrine might not, under these
circumstances, be more correctly described as acquies
cence in a doctrine, may be doubted. Let us assume,
however, that what was impossible for Galileo is pos
sible for Dr. Newman, and that, at the nod and beck
of the Roman "oracle," he can in very deed believe
either that the earth goes round or that it stands still.
It is at least open to no dispute that modern science,
unanimously and without reservation, denies to every
kind of oracle authority to determine the sense of ancient
writings, traditions, records, or revelations of any kind.
Luther made Europe vibrate as with earthquake
throbs by the power of his proclamation that no Roman
oracle possessed authority over the Word of God or the
conscience and mind of man. For him, all authority re
sided in the Bible. He seems to have believed, however,
that the Church, in the sense of the general and lasting
persuasion of the body of Christians, has been guarded
from error. The acquiescence of Christendom in infant

RETROSPECT. 359
baptism he puts forward as at least one very strong
reason for believing that usage to be lawful. But he
assigns no organ of expression to this authoritative
mind of the Church. He distinctly alleges that General
Councils, as well as Popes and conclaves, have demon
strated their fallibility by sanctioning error ; his asser
tion that infant baptism had always been acquiesced in
is open to challenge ; and so widely, and for periods so
protracted, did doctrines and practices which he held to
be against the letter and the spirit of the Gospel pre
vail throughout Christendom, that his reference to the
general sense and sentiment of "the Church" as, on
the whole, trustworthy, does not seem to be of much
practical value Or availability.
Did he hold, then, that there was no king, no
authoritative judge or tribunal, in the Christian Israel,
but that every man might do what was right in his
own eyes, interpreting for himself the written Word ?
Whether he would have accepted this result simpliciter,
or would not, may be a question ; but that practically
is his opinion. He held explicitly that the king of
the Church is Christ ; that Christ's government, though
real, is invisible ; that this government has not been
transferred to any man or to any organisation; that
it is competent to Christians, acting in accordance with
the principles of Christ, and taking into consideration
local peculiarities, to make arrangements through which
this government shall be carried on. Christ left an
infallible law; but He did not leave an infallible man
or tribunal to interpret and apply it.

360 MARTIN LUTHER.
Lord Macaulay puts into lucid words what I believe
to have been the substantial meaning of Luther on this
subject. " The Protestant doctrine touching the right
of private judgment, that doctrine which is the common
foundation of the Anglican, the Lutheran, and the
Calvinistic Churches, that doctrine by which every sect
of Dissenters vindicates its separation, we conceive not
to be this, that opposite opinions may both be true ; nor
this, that truth and falsehood are both equally good ;
nor yet this, that all speculative error is necessarily
innocent ; but this, that there is on the face of the earth
no visible body to whose decrees men are bound to sub
mit their private judgment on points of faith."
If, however, Luther denied the existence of an in
fallible human depositary of truth, or tribunal of
authority, he vehemently affirmed the existence of an
infallible law. Private judgment was limited by the
Word ; freedom exalting its horn against the Bible
was impious presumption. He asked no man to praise
him for doing what he had no mind to do. He did
not set up for liberator of the universal reason. The
freedom he claimed was freedom to read the Bible, and
to obey its commands.
Many a modern, vauntfully firm in his conviction
that an infallible Book is as much an imaginary and
superstitious conception as an infallible Church, will
on this exclaim that Protestant freedom of judgment
and Popish submission to the infallible Church come
to much the same thing. But the slightest reflection
will make it plain that this is not so. Even on that

RETROSPECT. 361
view of the case which is most favourable to the
objector — even if we adopt the theory of Bible infalli
bility in its utmost rigour, and say that we will believe
the Bible against mathematics, which Luther, in fact,
did — we shall find the practical difference to be great.
A Bible conned by a population, studied and discussed,
becomes an immense incentive to mental exertion — can
not fail, in fact, to provide a highly important education.
The Bible is not a mere collection of theological pro
positions. Apart from all theories respecting it, no
competent judge, no man of sense, has ever denied that
it is a literature in itself — legal, poetical, historical,
philosophical, as well as religious ; a literature of great
variety, vitality, pith, and power. The man who, having
thoroughly surveyed it, having gone down into its mines
and scaled its mountains, having thrilled to the pathos
and the lyric melody of its Psalms, and passed from the
shrewdness of Solomon to the elevation of Isaiah, and
so on to Jesus on the Mount, and Paul at Athens,
and John in Patmos, yet pronounces himself too sub
limated in moral and mental condition to profit by it, or
to follow its counsels, must either be a stupendous genius
or a prince of coxcombs. To have a thorough know
ledge of any book reasonably pretending to greatness is
to be, in some true sense, an educated person. In the
hurry and stress of political and professional avocations,
in the absorption of art, of science, of skilled handi
crafts, in the exhausting toil of agricultural and other
forms of labour, a vast proportion of mankind can
find time and energy for but a limited amount of high

362 MARTIN LUTHER.
thinking and high reading. The Bible, take it for
all in all, affords the best material for the spiritual
culture of mankind, for exercising the faculties of
reverence and adoration, for ennobling the affections,
and giving to life a soul of the heroic and the ideal,
that civilisation, has any hint of — the best without a rival,
the first without a second. Very serious difficulty has,
no doubt, been experienced by some in dealing with the
cruelties and other crimes which were associated with
religion as portrayed in the Old Testament. But modern
science has conclusively and lucidly disposed of all such
difficulties by its doctrine of evolution. We now see
that if the divine-human religion was a living growth,
it must needs have proceeded from a lower to a higher
perfection, in proportion as the conception of Deity
was spiritualised and exalted. This once perceived, it
becomes incontestable, and will, in fact, be disputed by
no reasonable man, that the Bible, whatever else it may
be, stands absolutely unrivalled as a manual of spiritual
culture, of adult education, of universal mental disci
pline. All this we might learn from shrewd reflection
beforehand ; all this we find to be verified by experience,
when history is interrogated on the subject. Bible-
reading peasants have been the stoutest of patriots,
Bible-reading artisans the most intelligently indus
trious of citizens, Bible-reading nations the van of
mankind. In proclaiming the authority of Rome to be usurpa
tion Luther referred Christendom to this Book. It was
the noblest service which, at that juncture, any man

RETROSPECT 363
could render to human progress and the civilisation of
the world.
He decided that the one thing needful for Europe
was "more light," that the one satisfactory and in
expugnable defence of himself and his Reformation
was a complete and open Bible. He came from the
Wartburg bearing the first rough draft of the New
Testament in German. No sooner did he quell the
tumult that had arisen in his absence than he addressed
himself to the prosecution of his enterprise, showing
his greatness to be massive and of the sterling ore by
courting no attribution to himself of a position of
isolation or pre-eminence among the translators, but
organising a body, or, as we should now say, a com
mittee, of the best Wittenberg scholars and divines,
Melanchthon, of course, conspicuous among them, to
co-operate with him in the work.
Oppressed as he was with other and more agitating
employments, he collected his faculties into the finest
exercise of critical skill, linguistic felicity, and home
bred sense and tenderness, in the translation of the
Bible. Vividly eager to secure accuracy even in matters
which theological zealots might deem of slight im
portance, he wrote to Spalatin to make searching in
vestigation among the court jewels with a view to
instructing the translators as to the colours and the
names of particular gems mentioned in the Bible. His
main principle in the choice of words and phrases was
to avoid Latinisms, Grecisms, Hebraisms as much as
possible, and to express the exact sense in idiomatic,

364 MARTIN LUTHER.
expressive, quietly melodious, and home-bred German.
His principles were, on the whole, admirably exemplified,
a century later, in our Authorised Version. During
this summer of 1522 he pushed steadily on with his
great work, and began to send portions of it to
the press, instead of waiting until the whole was
ready. But we have, after all, to remember that our hero
lived in the sixteenth century, and that he did not and
could not leap suddenly into the intellectual atmosphere
of the nineteenth. We must assure ourselves that it is
the living, concrete man we know, by realising some of
his limitations and blind sides. So deficient was he in
respect of scientific appreciation of natural but unusual
occurrences that he believed them to be portents of
Divine wrath. A whale, " seventy feet long, thirty-
five feet round," had been stranded on the Dutch coast.
" This monster," he wrote, " they know from ancient
instances to be a certain sign of God's anger." He
believed that Rome, the site of the Papacy, would
perish by express act of God's wrath in terrific cata
strophe ; and since Germany had been an accomplice in
the crimes, it might fear to be partaker of the plagues, ,
of Rome. The Rhine stream was red with blood, and
Huss, Jerome, and other martyrs called to God to
avenge them on Deutschland. Such were the sombre
and lurid imaginings that at this time varied the scenery
of Luther's mind.
That he was wrong as to the imminency of the
Judgment Day and the end of the world has been

RETROSPECT. 365
demonstrated by mere lapse of time ; and there are not
many in our day, even among those holding with him
that the Church of Christ was metamorphosed and
travestied in the Papacy, who will accept his inferences
from this condition. We may believe that, of the "many
Antichrists " already at work in the apostolic age, and
which still continue at work in all Christian com
munities, the Antichrist which gradually culminated
in sacerdotalism, in clerical celibacy, in auricular con
fession, in vows of tyrannical monasticism, in the
ecclesiastical lordship which made of one member of
the Christian brotherhood a Prince-Pope, and in the
ceremonial which turned other members of the Christian
brotherhood into a caste of mystically endowed priests
and bishops — to wit, the Roman Antichrist — was one,
and a potent and pre-eminent one. But that the anti-
christianism of Rome had been aught else or worse than
a subtle, unconscious, marvellous blending of good and
evil — that the Roman Church had not conferred im
mense benefits on Europe in its time — that it does not
admit of reform — that it ought not to be waited on
and pleaded with in the spirit of tenderest Christian
charity, but recoiled from as past conversion — that the
destruction awaiting it in the final triumph of Christ
upon earth can be anything worse than to have its
imperfections removed in the fulness of spiritual light,
and its sins pardoned in the plenitude of Divine love,
and its heart broken in passionate repentance — these
are propositions to each and all of which every Pro
testant who cherishes the hope of seeing his protest

366 MARTIN LUTHER.
taken up, and the unity of the Christian family restored,
will return a sharp denial.
Luther's assumption of an attitude of irreconcila
bility towards Rome — his definite and inflexible con
viction that the Pope was unpardonably and unsalvably
Antichrist — is one of the cardinal facts in modern
history. To it is due the strange and lamentable
circumstance that abhorrence of Papists has been a
religion to Protestants, and abhorrence of Protestants a
religion to Papists. The true unity of Christendom — a
unity of spirit and affection independent of all forms
and organisations — cannot be regained until this part
of Protestant religion and of Roman religion has been
cancelled on both sides. It cannot be so until Papists
and Protestants reciprocally acknowledge that the case
which can be presented on each side is, at a first glance,
so strong that candid men, who are no fools, may be
convinced by either. It is marvellous that Luther, who,
until he attained mature manhood, until many years
after he accepted and preached the Gospel of grace,
until, in fact, he read Laurentius Valla, and search-
in gly scrutinised the historical and Scriptural defences
of the Papacy, had found no difficulty in living as a
Papist,, should not only have assured himself that the
Pope was Antichrist, but should, after a brief period of
transition, have lost the power of sympathetically
making allowance for any who held stiffly to his own
former belief.
" Who held stiffly." This is a qualification that must
be carefully remembered. For 'those who obstinately

RETROSPECT. 367
persisted in allegiance to the Pope he had no suffer
ance ; but for all who were in heart on the side of the
Gospel, though still cumbered with the habitudes and
ceremonialisms of Popery, he had tender consideration.
If anyone said that the mass was a sacrifice, or that
the saying or singing of masses was a meritorious work,
the purchase-money of salvation, he anathematised the
heresy. But whether the bread and the wine were both
partaken of ; whether the communicant took the bread
into his own hand or received it into his mouth from
the hand of the minister ; whether confession were made
or were not made ; whether images were left in the
churches or were excluded; these were in his view
" mere nothings, res nihili," about which it was un
christian to vex weak consciences. He provisionally
restored, in the parish church of Wittenberg, those
usages which Carlstadt had abolished.

CHAPTER II.
SETTLING PASTORS AND REBUKING A KING.
Although Luther had in him a great fund of pugnacity,
and though it is as a man eminent in the strife of
words that he chiefly figures in history, we are con
stantly reminded, as we trace in his letters the course of
his personal and spiritual life, that his choicest delight
was in the work of construction, and that he preferred
to counsel and to lead rather than to engage in the
controversial fray.
From the time when he quelled the tumult of the
Zwickauers until his death, he never ceased to labour,
with a sedulity and an intensity that would have been
oppressive but for the congeniality of his tasks, in the
pastoral duties of his office. The enterprise of Bible
translation was never suspended. Nor did he ever tire
in pushing forward that essential operation in the
reform of the Church, the providing of congregations
with suitable pastors, and the finding for capable and
evangelically inspired men sympathetic and appreciative
congregations. An illustration — one of a thousand — of the mode in
which these transactions were conducted is afforded by
the settlement of Gabriel Zwilling as pastor at Alten-

SETTLING PASTORS AND REBUKING A KING. 369
burg. Zwilling had a notable gift of eloquence, but his
head was none of the strongest, and it had been con
siderably turned by impact of the Zwickau fanaticism.
During the last period of Luther's stay at the Wart
burg he had been an admired pulpit orator in Witten
berg in sympathy with the image-breakers and the
quack prophets. But when Luther appeared, and
Zwilling heard him, in that chaos-quelling week, take
the measure of the vaunted inspiration of Storch and
Company, he awoke as from a feverish dream, and
returned to his allegiance to modesty, common sense,
and Luther. Zwilling therefore marched no longer
with Storch, Carlstadt, and the opposition party, but
loyally submitted himself to the true leader in the
cause of reform. And since absolute incapacity to retain
a grudge against any sinner who repented characterised
our Martin, he took Zwilling into cordial friendship.
While matters were on this footing, the municipality
of Altenburg — the burgomaster and council of the
town — sent a letter to Luther asking him to help them
in procuring a minister. He replied in brief and
dignified terms, commending their Christian desire for
the Divine Word, and naming Zwilling as the man they
ought to hear. He takes it as a matter of course that
the joining of the pastoral tie must depend upon their
finding that Zwilling's preaching is to the edifying and
spiritual delectation of their souls. But he advises
them not to be startled by his having left his convent
and abandoned his monk's dress, which Luther thinks
were wise proceedings.
y

370 MARTIN LUTHER.
Then he writes to Zwilling. The Altenburg people
have asked him, Luther, to supply an evangelical
preacher. " If they come to you," he proceeds, " go
with them ; and if they accept you, regard their voice
as a most certain call from God. For I also have
offered and commended you to them. Wherefore I beg
that you will take this my counsel and deed, in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who calls thee by me
and Philip. Go in peace, and the Lord make thee
grow into many thousands." It is partly in the style
of an apostolic bishop, partly in the style of an affec
tionate father. He adds a word or two of frank
admonition and caution, glancing, one clearly per
ceives, at Zwilling's high-flying oratories and fantastic
masqueradings when under the influence of the prophets.
He is above all things to study modesty, and to go
about in simple and reputable attire, not in queer hats
or costumes, giving offence to the weaker sort. He is
to be mindful of the sensibilities of feeble piety, and to
beware of lapsing into any spasmodic work of the image-
breaking kind. The Word, the Word alone, is to be
his weapon. The Father wills that men should be
drawn to Him through Christ, not forced. Contempt
of impiety is first of all to be instilled into their
hearts ; then, without stroke of hand, impiety will fall
away. Love of piety is first to be introduced; then
piety will come of its own accord.* And again, when
Zwilling had been writing something in which Luther
detected a false note : " Your letter did not please me.
* De Wette, 387.

SETTLING PASTORS AND REBUKING A KING. 371
I perceived in it something — I know not what — of
spiritual presumption. Don't glory in your willingness
to do and suffer much for the Word. Let him that
standeth take heed lest he fall. Walk in fear and in
contempt of yourself, and pray the Lord that He may
do all, yourself nothing. Be thou, silent and un work
ing, a Sabbath in which Christ may do wonderful
works." * Is not this Martin a bit of sterling stuff — a
man that one can love ? Often do his rugged force and
angry vehemence repel us; but are we not conscious of
relenting impulses when we see him, a moral Hercules,
at the very time when wrestling with the crested crowd
of anarchy, turn round and, with the wisdom of a saint
and the tenderness of a father, deal with a noble nature
somewhat too delicately organised ?
But if he refused to exercise compulsion, or to
sanction disorderly haste, in discarding what he held to
be the husk and shell of Romanism, destined in due
time to disappear, he was still more keen in his remon
strance when he found compulsion brought to bear upon
men whose consciences enjoined them to abandon the
Papal system. Frederick, halting as usual between two,
was inclined to deal severely with those pastors who
had invincible objections to reading the mass. Luther
pleaded eagerly for such, urging that all facilities should
be afforded for transferring them to benefices in which
the reading of mass would not be wanted, and that
in the meantime they should not be deprived of their
livings. * De Wette, 395 (slightly paraphrased).
y 2

372 MARTIN LUTHER.
Sincere as was his respect for persons in authority,
he was not disposed to veil the Gospel in the presence
of kings. Of this fact the new Tudor sovereign of
England, Henry the .Eighth, had occasion to become
aware. It is the habit of wise mankind to credit
princes with all kinds of fine qualities in their youth,
and to debit them sternly in their old age with the
difference between promise and performance. The
gloss had not yet worn off bluff Harry, whose innate
arrogance and conceit, inflated by the incense of flattery
from a thousand censers, were mistaken by the simple
for guarantees of solid ability; whose dalliance with
study masked his fathomless sensuality, and whose
frank manners and love of social distinction were not
known to hide a bad heart. The itch of universal
shining took in Henry the place of an honest and manly
thirst for fame. In his boyhood he had been designed
for the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and had probably
read in theology a good deal more than is customary
for princes. He had urged Charles, at the time of the
Diet of Worms, to deal roundly with the pestilent
heretic of Wittenberg, and when the edict of the Diet
had been issued and Luther had betaken himself to the
Wartburg, he deigned to step into the controversial
arena and engage the presumptuous monk. It was the
treatise on the Babylonish Captivity that had specially
offended Henry's theological prepossessions, and he
undertook to establish once more, on their scholastic
foundations, the sacraments of the Church. Accord
ingly the world was illuminated with A Defence of the

SETTLING PASTORS AND REBUKING A KING. 373
Seven Sacraments, against Martin Luther, by the most in
vincible King of England and France, Henry the Eighth
of that name. Pope Leo had lived to see this good day.
With largesse of glowing applause the fine-gentleman
Pontiff welcomed the sceptred champion of sacer
dotalism. It was debated whether Henry should re
ceive the honorary title of the Apostolic, the Orthodox,
the Faithful, the Angelic, or simply the Defender of
the Faith. A bull was composed in his honour, and
his production was declared in eloquent Latin to be
dipped in the dew of celestial grace. Leo had the joy
of signifying this in October, 1521. It was indeed con
soling to know that the Papacy had still a royal friend
in the land of Coeur de Lion, and to be assured that if
all the world forsook the See of Rome, the Pope might
count on a sure asylum in the island of Britain. Papal
infallibility, it would seem, does not include the gift of
prophecy. Luther published his reply in July, 1522. It is in
his worst style — coarse and acrimonious ; to read it now
is like trying to penetrate a thicket of matted thorns. It
called forth much remonstrance from his friends at the
time. But he heeded them not. During those years
one of the dominant and fixed ideas of Luther — furnish
ing the motif to not a little in his books — was that in
dealing with Papists he had been too meek and yielding
in speech and demeanour. He ought, in particular, he
believed, to have been more passionately defiant at
Worms. He reminds an expostulating friend, on the
present occasion, that he had written many a book in

374 MARTIN LUTHER.
gentle tones, without a trace of sharpness. But the
milder he had been the more had the enemy raged ; and
now he would strike a different note, taking as his
example Christ, who had called the Jews a generation
of vipers ; Peter, who had told Simon Magus to take
himself and his money to the devil ; and Paul, who had
characterised the foes of the truth as dogs, liars, mes
sengers and children of Satan.
The episode of Luther's controversial duel with
Henry is of some historical importance, not much.
Had Luther been civil and deferential, Henry would
have had one incentive the fewer to make him theo
logically a detester of the Reformers ; but it is unlikely
that in any case he could have appreciated the
spiritual and moral elements in the new doctrine ; and
the impelling forces which hurried him to a breach with
Rome, and made him declare himself Pope-king in
England, were not of a kind to be much influenced by
considerations of gratitude for golden roses or for titular
epithets. At the first wind of troubles between Henry
and the Pope, Luther, who in the intervening years had
attained to a more tranquil and pacific frame of mind,
hastened to apologise for his book, and to express the
earnest hope that Henry was opening his heart to the
Gospel. But magnanimity and the power to forgive
were not among Henry's qualities. He repelled the
reformer's advances with a contemptuous snarl. The
part which Luther took in the Reformation of England,
a part comprehensive and profound, was that of work
ing in the hearts and minds of the people, not that of

SETTLING PASTORS AND REBUKING A KING. 375
counselling kings. The Lollard fires had not burnt
evangelical heresy out of England ; and Wickliffe and his
preachers had been, on all essential points, pioneers of
Luther. There were thousands, therefore, in England
prepared to read his books with eager avidity, and they
did so with results of which neither Henry nor the
Pope had a surmise.

CHAPTER III.
POPE BY DIVINE RIGHT.
How true is it that life is a ravelled skein — a ravelled
skein and with many threads of different colours. It
seems impossible for us to attain to anything like con
tinuity in this delineation of the life of Luther, so close
do surprises of difficulty and sorrow lie to bright gleams
of gladness or cheering spaces of serene repose.
We may deem it, on the whole, a solemnly joyous
enterprise to rear the form and fabric of the new
Church, divesting it of spot or blemish, and watching
the dawn, over cheek and forehead, emergent from
troublous foam, of pristine and immortal beauty. And
yet there were twinges of sharp anguish for Luther,
when his conscience, on the one hand, pricked him for
temporising with what he now firmly believed to be
perilous idolatry, and his heart, on the other, drew
him towards old friends, and most of all towards an old
and beloved prince, who might be pained by change.
The church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, with its world-
famous treasury of relics, had become to Luther pretty
much what a grove of Baal, planted on an airy knoll a
bow-shot from his bedroom window, would have been to
Elijah. But no enginery of theological argument

POPE BY DIVINE RIGHT. 377
seemed strong enough to quite do away with the
witchery by which old Frederick had been knit in affec
tion and reverence to the shrine of his fathers. As
month by month and year by year went on, and the new
era more and more powerfully announced and pro
nounced itself, the church of All Saints became more
marked in its singularity, standing out in reformed
Wittenberg like a mediaeval ruin in a modern garden.
So late as the very verge of 1524 we find Luther chaf
ing at the tolerance which has been extended to All
Saints. He can understand how evangelical friends,
looking at the city of the Reformation from afar, should
be offended at the persistent vitality of " that sacrilegious
Tophet" on which the Saxon princes had worse than
wasted money. But by the mercy of God, the Witten
berg Gospellers possess, he says, such opulence of truth
that they can ring All Saints round with the Divine
antidote, and thus isolate the pest. He will not have it
attacked save with the sword of the Spirit. Did he not
rein in the people daily, " that house of All Saints, say
rather of All Devils," would soon wear a different
aspect. And yet, at a time which must still have been
fresh in the memory of Luther, Staupitz, with hardly a
brow-darkening of disapproval from his fiery friend,
had gone relic-hunting, at the instance of Frederick,
with a view to enrichment of his ancestral shrine. One
could wish that Luther's conscience had permitted him
to deal more tenderly with the scruples of a prince who
strove with simple honesty to do his duty. But when
Luther felt that the categorical imperative of conscience

378 MARTIN LUTHER.
was laid upon him he could be stayed by no considerations
whatever. The resistance of Frederick to a fundamental
change in relation to All Saints became feebler and
feebler, and some little time before his death, with his
listless connivance rather than positive consent, the
ancient relic-shrine was dismantled. The idea that
within the circuit of Wittenberg there should be an
institution, calling itself a church, that lent sanction to
the notion that saints or relics may share with Christ the
office of mediation between God and man had become
unendurably painful to Luther.
It is, however, in a far pleasanter, and equally charac
teristic, light that he appears when counselling simple and
pious people as to how so ticklish and complex a transac
tion as the breaking up of a monastery is to be con
ducted. The people of Leisnig had so prosperously
managed what had fallen to them locally of this kind of
business, that Luther printed an account which they
sent him of what they had done, to serve as a pattern
in similar cases, and introduced it to the public with a
letter of Christian advice and admonition which, if
we read it with the open eye and heart of sympathetic
intelligence, will not only bring us very near to Martin
Luther, but will help us to feel at home in Germany in
those days when the old mediaeval order was visibly
giving place to the new.*
The dangers he mainly guards against are, first,
those arising from temptations to violence, and secondly,
those arising from the cunning avarice that seeks to
* De Wette, 519.

POPE BY DIVINE RIGHT. 379
appropriate to its own uses what had previously been
devoted to the service of God. No violence or compul
sion is to be called into play. If the inmates of the
convent, or other ecclesiastical foundation, wish to quit,
they are to be permitted to go. Should the bulk of the
inmates go, but some, whether from old age, or from
lack of means to obtain a livelihood, or from a conscien
tious objection to accept of freedom, choose to remain,
"they are not to be thrust out, or treated with any
unfriendliness, but are to be provided for, so long as they
live, on the same scale which they had formerly enjoyed.
For the Gospel teaches us to do good to the unworthy,
as the heavenly Father lets the rain fall and the sun
shine on good and bad ; and we have to take into con
sideration that these persons came into their present
situation through the influence of a common blindness
and error, and were not taught any handicraft by which
they might keep themselves." Nay, being perhaps re
minded by his practical instinct that the broken- winged
lingerers in convents would run considerable risk of
being neglected, he goes on to say that they ought to be
more bounteously and gently cared for than formerly,
" so that all may see that it is not avarice, clutching at
property dedicated to spiritual uses, but Christian faith,
that is hostile to convents."
The officials of the foundation are to be dealt with
on the same generous terms. He does not forget that
some, on leaving the cloister, might, with small assist
ance, to be laid out in regaining skill in a half-forgotten
craft, or otherwise procuring a start, be able to earn a

380 MARTIN LUTHER.
livelihood. He particularly insists upon it that if the
founder's heirs are poor and needy, " a great part " of
the available means shall be allotted to them, or even,
if necessary, the whole. " For sure enough the intent
of their father was not, and ought not to have been, to
take the bread out of the children's mouths, and put
it to other uses. And, indeed, if this was the inten
tion, it is false and unchristian, fathers being bound
before all things to provide for their children. No
higher God's-service than that can they do with their
goods." One of Martin's pet notions, this — and of
John Luther's before him ! To put the second before
the first — to cultivate superfine spiritual virtue by
shirking or scamping the plain duties of nature — was
not to the mind of either of those practical men. If,
however, the heirs of the founder were in comfortable
circumstances, they should not take again what their
ancestor had given.
What, then, was to be done with the surplus ? It
was to be formed into a fund for the benefit of the
poor. The wish of the founders had been to honour
and serve God. They did so unwisely in founding con
vents, but their intention deserves respect. There can
be no greater service of God than helping the poor, " as
Christ Himself, on the last day, will acknowledge and
decide." One use to which Martin points out that convents
can be applied is that of establishing schools for boys
and girls. The buildings might be utilised also for
municipal purposes. " The episcopal consecration

POPE BY DIVINE RIGHT. 381
need not stand in the way, for God knows nothing
of it." He is scrupulously anxious that all shall be done
decently and in order, with respect for authority and
deference to law ; but the tenderness of the Christian
poet, and the homely yet delicate kindness of the
Christian pastor, are beautifully evinced by his reiterated
insistence that something finer than mere worldly
justice — something which he calls Christian love —
meaning the sagacity, the tact of gentle, affectionate,
enlightened fatherhood — is necessary in dealing with
the inmates and apportioning the funds of convents.
" Christian love," he says, " and not the sharpness of
man's jurisprudence, ought to be the deciding power."
It is this kind of thing that irresistibly endears Luther
to us. This was the work he loved ; his furious and
coarse contending, on the stage of the world, was
bitterness to him, compared with this.
The range of his correspondence was immense.
Everyone consults him, from princes who think of
introducing the Reformation into their territories to
girls who confide to him their wish and hope to be
married. His letters to eminent persons, and to the
Christian Church or Churches, are the likest things to
St. Paul's epistles that, so far as I know, exist. Inferior
they indeed are, immeasurably inferior, to the writings of
St. Paul, which, next to the discourses of Jesus, are the
most Divinely-inspired pieces in the religious literature
of mankind ; but they read like echoes from them, true
though far off. They are very noble in their unaffected

382 MARTIN LUTHER.
withdrawal of the writer into the background — his
entire absorption in his idea, in his cause, in his Lord.
In the letter to the Christians at Worms there is not
one word of reference to the part he had played in their
town some three years before ! His thought is only of
the joy he has in their acceptance of the good news of
salvation, and of the use he may be to them in beacon
ing them onward in the right way. In this and all his
letters he displays an astonishing familiarity with the
Bible, an astonishing grasp of its facts and its argu
ments. After four centuries of Bible reading and Bible
preaching, we are inevitably sensible, in perusing these
letters, of some trace of conventionality and triteness ;
but even the modern reader feels that Luther was, in a
quite exceptional and transcendent sense, " mighty in
the Scriptures." At the time, such letters- were un
exampled, and their influence was like that of an
inspiration fresh from God. The letter to Duke Charles
of Savoy, in whose domain there was more than a
glimmering of the Gospel light, is a brief and terse but
comprehensive summary of the Christian faith as set
forth by Luther in contradistinction to the sophistica
tions of the Papacy. Most of it, being nothing more
than a lucid and animated statement of Protestant
doctrine, would fail to interest this generation ; but I
shall quote one paragraph because it brings out pointedly
the unselfishness of Luther's conception of Christian
activity, and because it draws, with exquisite precision,
the line of demarcation between this activity in its
normal state and this activity as exhibited in the
monastic system.

POPE BY DIVINE RIGHT. 383
He has explained the action of faith, in uniting the
believer to Christ, and thus making him a good tree,
capable of bearing good fruit. Faith works by love ;
but how ? Our paragraph supplies the answer. " We
inculcate such work as is necessary not to us, but to our
neighbour, that is to say, love. And herein again are
monastic institutions condemned, that their whole work
and effort are directed to the object of bringing the
founders' souls, and the souls of those struggling and
toiling in the convents, to heaven. According to this,
there is no need that we should seek for the salvation of
others, but only for our own. Oh, how far is that from
Christian love ! " It is not possible to conceive a
nobler appreciation of the genius and essence of Chris
tianity, as the religion of self-sacrifice, than is shown
in these few words. It goes far beyond the mere
perception, which indeed the most rudimentary under
standing of Christ's religion implies that no one, by
merely casting up an account, in respect of personal
gain and pleasure, between heaven and hell, and de
ciding that the balance is in favour of heaven, can
constitute himself a Christian. Even if you take the
true and high view of heaven, putting aside the question
of profit and loss altogether, and looking upon heaven
as a state of spiritual attainment, of moral health, you
are still, says Luther in effect, not permitted as a
Christian to step aside, and make it the main business
of your life to nurse heavenly sentiments in your own
soul, to tend the garden of the Lord in your own
breast. No ! The fundamental ordinance of the

384 MARTIN LUTHER.
Gospel — self-sacrifice, enjoins you to forget yourself and
think of your neighbour. In your neighbour you are
to see Christ ; and, at the last day, the decisive ques
tion will be whether you did or did not give Christ,
thus incarnated, a cup of cold water.
There are ever so many of these pastoral or paternal
letters, sent out by Luther to all points of the compass.
He is, as was hinted before, the veritable Pope of the
vast portion of Christendom which, on the kindling of
his beacon fire, awoke from unquiet sleep, and began to
protest against the obscuration of the Gospel by the
Roman Pontiff. Mankind are governed incomparably
more by their habits than by their logical reasonings.
The nations of Europe had been habituated for long
centuries to a Pope ; and though Laurentius Valla with
his history, and Martin Luther with his Bible, had for
millions of Christians logically and theologically de
molished the Papacy, the great body of the people
continued, in a vague, unconscious way, to look for
something in the religious world correspondent to the
discredited Pontiff of the seven hills. It was only by
scoffers that Luther was called Pope, but millions of the
most intelligent and devout Christians in the world
practically looked to him for many years for that
spiritual superintendence which they used to expect
from the supreme Pontiff.
In point of fact he was, for about a quarter of a
century, the unintentional, the informal but veritable
realisation of his own grand and beautiful conception
of a Primate of Christendom, as entertained at the time

POPE BY DIVINE RIGHT. 385
of the Leipzig disputation. Transcendency of character
and genius — transcendency of self-sacrificing devotion to
the cause of Christ — gave him a natural, unsolicited
right to be the leader, for the time being, of the host
of the Lord. A corresponding transcendency of quali
fication placed upon the head of Calvin — different as
the two men were — the Protestant tiara which Luther
wore until his death. He would be a surly and
narrow-brained Protestant who should object to such
a Papa of Christendom — elected by the inarticulate
murmur of reverent esteem from the general Protestant
population. But no Protestant Pope succeeded
Calvin ; and that not solely because no clerical man
of Calvin's calibre has since appeared to focus the
suffrage of Protestant Europe, but also because the
vague but potent craving for a spiritual Papa had, in
two generations, as good as died out among Protestant
nations. I, for one, should be glad to live under the rule
of a Pope Luther, acknowledging his entirely Divine
right to exercise, by natural superiority, powers of
spiritual superintendence over average men.

CHAPTER IV.
A BUSY PONTIFF.
It is interesting to observe the ways and note the words
of this Martin, Pope of Protestant Christendom. From
Bohemia to Brabant, from Savoy to the waters of the
Baltic, the sagacious, friendly, pious, and fatherly allo
cutions of our Papa go forth. One remarks, as curiously
characteristic, their combination of profound modesty
with the authoritative tone of one born to command.
Since his boyhood, as readers know well, his compactness
of faculty, decision of judgment, and fervour of tem
perament had impressed his influence upon all within
his circle. He writes now like one habituated to com
mand, but with more than the submissiveness of a great
constitutional soldier, a Wellington for example, in
relation to the Sovereign he obeys. The very idea of
asserting his own originality does not occur to him, and
his unaffected delight is to clothe his suggestions as
nearly as possible in the words of Scripture. Adulation
he reckons among the afflictions of life, and he is stung
to sharp anger when he finds people making him the
hierophant of a new doctrine, the setter up of a new
sect. Those who call God's perennial truth " Lutheran
doctrine " speak, he says, " with mouth of wicked

A BUSY PONTIFF. 387
slander." The cordial warmth and genial earnestness
of his letters form an agreeable contrast to the fierce
ness of his controversial treatises. They glow indeed ;
that was inevitable ; the man's nature was glowing,
and he never wrote a cold or languid page ; but their
glow is a mellow radiance of white and ruddy flame,
in which is no foul smoke or lurid glare. Jets of
ardent expression rise when some great, human, Divine
principle, against which the Popish adversary has
raged, is to be affirmed. That man's moral freedom,
for example, should have been cabined, cribbed, con
fined by tyrannic routine, with its mechanical con
straint, its tread- wheel piety, its monastic drill-exercise,
incenses and amazes him. " God help us ! " he exclaims.
" Will nothing then teach us? Have we no sense, no
ears ? I say it the second time, God will have no forced
service. I say it the third time — I say it a hundred
thousand times — God will have no forced service ! "
The words occur in a letter to the Count of Mansfeld,*
on the escape of a nun from her convent.
In addition to these pastoral, paternal, or pontifical
letters, he has an immense private correspondence. He
is every man's — especially every poor man's — servant,
every good woman's friend. A girl nun — already alluded
to — of noble family, has managed to break her fetters,
and writes to Papa Martin asking him to further her
scheme of getting married to some young man who,
though not noble, is, in her eyes, all that could be
wished. Luther writes that her matter completely
* De Wette, 591.
z 2

388 MARTIN LUTHER.
interests him, and that he agrees with her that the fact
of her lover's not being noble, if only they sincerely love
each other, is of no consequence. She may count upon
him, Luther, to give her his best service ; but as to any
doubtful matters, he cannot take even her word in her
own cause. " When more than one person is engaged
in an affair, God has forbidden the pronouncing of judg
ment on the representation of only one side." All will,
he trusts, go well, and it will be his endeavour to pro
mote her true interest. " Biit take care that you seek
God's blessing, so that you and your lover may share
not only the passionate rapture of earthly love, but the
grace and favour of God." Little touches come out
sometimes of home-bred fireside tenderness which sur
prise one in so rugged and unconventional a man.
" Give- my kind regards to your wife and children, and
smile upon them sweetly in my name — arride meo nomine
dulciter." Think of that !
He never remits the duty, irksome as it is, of listen
ing to the petitions and complaints of poor persons, and
attempting to obtain relief for them. To him, for
example, it is that the forester who has been wounded
and crippled by a boar when hunting under the auspices
of the prince, and is reduced in consequence to utter
poverty, has recourse. Luther at once places the case
before Spalatin for presentation to Frederick. The
humble request of the cripple is that he shall be allowed
some corn wherewith to make bread. " I know," says
Luther, in the tone in which it becomes a Pontiff to
admonish a Prince, " that the services he performed and

A BUSY PONTIFF. 389
the dangers he ran are due to princes from their sub
jects ; but I know also that it is the duty of princes to
have a thought for their subjects, and that they too
frequently pass all degrees of moderation in hunting,
and in using up men in this particular service. On
grounds, therefore, not only of charity but of justice,
this poor man has a claim to compensation."
He was never too busy to undertake the business
of such applicants, but it most severely taxed his patience
when placehunters from distant countries came begging
his interest at court, and all sorts of obtrusive mortals
heaped their burdens on his willing back. What with
public and private duty, the ramparts of tyrannic
usurpation to be scaled on this hand, the dragon of
anarchy to be quelled on that, treatises to be composed,
sermons to be preached, the Bible to be translated,
Divine service to be remodelled, monks and nuns to be
provided for, letters to be written, more was laid upon
him than human strength could stand. Even his
extraordinary powers of body and mind began to be
exhausted, and signs of cerebral trouble, in the shape
of afflictive ringing in the ears and liability to giddiness
and fainting fits, to appear. But he bore up with heroic
fortitude, a groan only escaping him how and then — a
groan hard-wrung, such as might have heaved the chest
of Atlas when he staggered under the weight of the
firmament. " Orbis," he says once, " incipit mild incum-
bere, the weight of the whole world is pressing on my
shoulders." He knows that his enemies are indefatigable
in propagating calumnious reports of him, and virulent

390 MARTIN LUTHER.
hatred and injustice cannot but be painful to a kind-
hearted man. But he contrives to treat them with
silent scorn, or to make a jest of them. He tells
Spalatin once that a legate, or whatever else he may call
himself, from King Ferdinand, has been on a mission to
Wittenberg, to see what kind of man he (Luther) is,
and what kind of life he leads. The account given of
Luther at the Court of Ferdinand, this emissary in
genuously stated, was that he went about armed and
guarded to escape assassination, and that he spent his
leisure in taverns, ale-houses, and places of still worse
fame. " I know not with what other honours my head
shines refulgent at that court, But I' am seasoned to
lies." Like all confiding, fearless, and generous correspond
ents, he found himself cruelly victimised sometimes by
the publication of letters hastily struck off, and not
intended for the eye of the world. His relations with
Erasmus had been growing more and more delicate and
precarious, as Erasmus drew on more carefully the kid
gloves of prudence, and Luther took off his coat for the
work. All the more, therefore, did he desire to say
publicly of Erasmus only what he had carefully weighed
and measured ; and his annoyance was keen when
foolish, or false, or interested persons printed what he
had privately written on the great humanist. First to
be importuned, and then to be betrayed, was, he said,
vehemently unpleasant.*
But he could himself, on occasion, be importunate
* De Wette, 533.

A BUSY PONTIFF. 391
enough with a friend in the matter of publication, and
was capable of taking liberties when his importunity
was of none effect. Melanchthon, for example, who
had been often urged by him to publish his Commen
taries on St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans and the
Corinthians, and had set his face like a flint against tlie
proposal, was surprised, one fine morning, to find the
said commentaries, in book form, in his hands, with a
letter of Luther's figuring as preface. In the said
letter * our Papa appears in his most waggishly jubilant
mood. " Be angry and sin not ; speak with thine own
heart on thy bed and be still ; I am the man who edits
these annotations of yours, and sends you yourself. If
you do not like the figure you cut, no matter, so long
as you please us. You are the sinner, if there has been
any sin in the business : why did you not edit them
yourself? Why did you let me so often urge you in
vain to edit them ? This is my apology. I choose to
be, and to be called, your thief, no whit alarmed at your
complaints or accusations." Possibly, however, Melan
chthon may have shrunk, he suggests, from the censure
of Popish critics. " Well, let them do better, say I."
They boast, these critics, of Thomas of Aquinum as
having written with the highest ability on St. Paul.
What they falsely attribute to Thomas, "I truly attribute
to you." If they do not like this, Luther will take the
risk of offending them. Nay, he is prepared to irritate
them still further. " What if I say that the com
mentaries of Jerome and Origen are mere trifles and
* De Wette, 424.

392 MARTIN LUTHER.
absurdities if they are compared to your annotations ? "
But Melanchthon may ask what is the good of awaken
ing the resentment of the supreme geniuses of the
Papal faction. " Be as humble as you please ; but
allow me to boast in your person. Who forbids the
consummate geniuses to produce better commentaries
if they can, and thus convict me of temerity ? When
better commentaries appear, I shall be particularly
happy to see them."
Instead of expressing contrition for his present act,
he threatens other feats in the way of literary purloining.
Unless Melanchthon looks sharp and anticipates him,
he will make off with the commentaries on Genesis,
Matthew, and John, which he knows to have been
written. Does Melanchthon object that commentaries
are not wanted — that Scripture needs no candle but
Scripture ? Luther will be alongside of him there. If
his commentaries were like those of Jerome, Origen, or
Thomas, pretentiously illuminating, or expanding, or
sophisticating, or adding to Scripture, then he might
keep them, for all that Luther would say to the con
trary, to himself. Those famous people " wrote com
mentaries in which they delivered their own opinions
rather than interpreted Paul or Christ." But Me-
lanchthon's commentaries deserve rather the name of
indices, their purpose being, more expressly than any
such compositions in existence, to elicit the exact mean
ing of Scripture. You cannot have too much of such
annotation as simply places you in the immediate
presence of the Scripture writers. " I ask no pardon if

A BUSY PONTIFF. 393
in all this I offend you. You rather are the offender
and have need of pardon."
When we reflect upon the subtle, ravenous, and
jealous nature of the passion for distinction — how it
insinuates itself into all conclaves, all academies, all
scientific societies, all political bodies — how it divides
friend from friend and brother from brother — and re
collect that it was unquestionably one of the strongest
natural cravings in the heart of Luther — we cannot
but own that there was the manliest generosity in
his thus forcing Melanchthon up the steps of the
temple of fame, and insisting upon it that he, and not
Luther, should bear the palm among the theologians
of the Reformation.
Curious things — affording quaint little glimpses
into past history — occur in the correspondence. Let
us make room for one. The immense revolution trans
acting itself among the Christians had naturally excited
the Jewish population. Luther hoped for great things
in the way of their conversion, now that the offences of
the Papacy were being removed, and way made for the
clear shining of the Gospel light. Among the new
converts was one Bernhard, and a letter to him from
Luther, which has no date, but seems to be rightly
placed by De Wette about the close of 1523, makes
very vivid for us the general aspect of the Jewish
question at the period.
He begins with the frank remark that the conversion
of Jews is almost universally suspected of insincerity
both among Jews and Christians. The Jews allege

394 MARTIN LUTHER.
that no one has left their ranks and entered those of
their adversaries unless he had first, by some flagrant
offence, made Jew society too hot to hold him. The
Christians allege that Jew converts either relapse into
Judaism openly or are Jews at heart while Christian in
name. He then recalls an incident said to have occurred
in the time of the Emperor Sigismund. One of the
courtiers, a Jew, had with much entreaty prevailed on
Sigismund to let him declare himself a Christian. At
length he was admitted by baptism into the Church. But
the Emperor prepared for his faith a severe and terrible
test. Two fires were kindled by the imperial order.
One of these was proclaimed to be a fire lighted by the
Jews to consume deserters from Judaism, the other to
be a fire lighted by the Christians for the death of
apostates to Judaism. Sigismund commanded the
newly baptised Israelite to choose between the two,
observing that, having just been baptised and sanctified,
he was not likely to be better prepared to die at any
subsequent period. Whereupon the miserable man,
whether it was that his faith had been feigned or that
he had lost his wits,* elected to die a Jew, leapt into
the Christian fire, and was consumed. Many other
instances, adds Luther, could be given to show the
problematic nature of Jewish conversions.
The cause, however, of their bad repute he believes
to be not so much the wickedness of the Jews as
the hideous darkening of the truth, and the frightful
* Thus I, somewhat dubiously, understand the expression : vel fictts
vel imbecillis fidei suae testis. — De Wette, 568.

A BUSY PONTIFF. 395
corruption of manners, under the Papacy. " But now,
when the golden light of the Gospel rises and shines,
there is hope that many Jews may be seriously and
faithfully converted, as you and some others are, of
that remnant of the seed of Abraham destined to be
saved by grace. For He who has begun the good work
will bring it to perfection, nor allow His Word to return
to Him void."
It is worthy of note that though Luther in this
letter specifies the bad doctrine and bad living of the
Roman Catholic priesthood as causes of the invincible
opposition of the Jews, he makes no mention of perse
cution or oppression on the part of Christians as con
ducing to the same result. That they did so — that
Shylock was sinned against as well as sinning — admits
of no debate ; but this letter of Luther's is a strong,
though negative, proof that the mediaeval proscription
of the Jews had not made such an impression upon the
popular imagination in Germany as sufficed to attract
pity towards them as a wronged and suffering race.
Of course it formed part of the thousand and one
avocations of Luther to give advice in cases of con
science. If husband and wife fell out, he accepted it as
a normal duty of the Christian pastor to do his best to
remove the discrepancy by searching inquiry into its
cause, and decisive fixing of the blame in the proper
quarter. He was perpetually consulted on the meaning
of particular passages of Scripture ; and when a devout
person found himself confronted with some spiritual
difficulty, awed by some mystery of Divine government

396 MARTIN LUTHER.
or human fate, his first thought was to have recourse to
Papa Luther. One of the letters thus occasioned * is
too characteristic to be passed over. John von Rechen-
berg, an eminent Bohemian, addressed to him, through •
Count Albert of Mansfeld, a request to deliver an
opinion on the question whether, if one died without
faith, God might save him. It was indeed the difficulty
which in all the Christian ages has agonised believing
souls of tender sensibility and vivid imagination, and
which never was asked with more beseeching earnest
ness than in the present day— Is there any hope for the
lost ?
Luther addresses himself to the task before him with
deep apprehension of its grave and solemn nature. The
difficulty, he says, has been felt in his own circle, and
not only so but by the very highest souls in all times,
by Origen, for instance, and his peers. To Origen it
had seemed all too hard, stern, plainly at variance with
Divine goodness, that God should have formed creatures
for eternal pain. And they quoted from the Psalms
and other Scriptures words appearing to prove that God
could not forget to be gracious, and that all men will,
sooner or later, come to the knowledge of the truth.
Nay, they go farther, and hold that the devil himself
will finally be saved.
Luther, as all who understand the make of his mind
must be prepared to hear, though he has none but
gentle and respectful terms to apply to Origen and his
kindred, does not profess the slightest sympathy with
* De Wette, 570.

A BUSY PONTIFF. 397
their views. The principle he lays down, as regulating
the entire discussion, is that implicit reliance must be
placed upon Scripture, and that it is calmly to be ac
cepted as better that men, angels, and devils should go
to perdition than that God should not speak the truth
in His Word. It is the most precious and essential
virtue of faith that it declines prying into the mysteries
of God's will — does not cross-examine Him as to why
and wherefore — but believes in His mercy and in His
righteousness, although reason, sense, and experience
denote them as vindictiveness and injustice. It is the
office of faith to believe things that do not appear.
" The eye of nature is to be torn out, and faith alone to
take its place." It is worse than useless to try to get
rid of the difficulty by thinking. This is commonly
done by persons young in the Christian life,, un
exercised in faith, the light of nature still strongly
influencing them; and the peril is great that they
may fall into antagonism and hatred towards God,
in which case it is hard to deal with them. Young
believers therefore ought peremptorily to forbid their
minds to speculate on the Divine judgments.
If the form of the question is whether God can,
either in the article of death, or after death, impart
faith, the. answer of course, says Luther, is that He can.
But it is impossible to prove that He does. At all
events there is no salvation without faith. Various
well-known passages of Scripture are quoted in proof
of this proposition, and reasons are adduced for con
cluding that the passages which seem to favour the final

398 MARTIN LUTHER.
universality of salvation cannot bear this construction.
In the end of the letter he reiterates the advice to abstain
from high-flying attempts to penetrate the blinding,
burning light that encircles the throne of God, and to
take the practical way to God's heart through the man
hood of Christ. " Why was the man Christ given us,
to be our leader to the Father, if we let Him alone,
pass Him by, start for Heaven in the strength of our
own virtue, and undertake to measure the judgments of
God ? "

CHAPTER V.
CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP.
Before leaving the Wartburg, Luther, as we know, had
irreversibly made up his mind on the subject of mon
astic vows. Every man and woman, he held, who had
taken those vows could sinlessly discard them. En
forced celibacy he regarded as in all cases a grievous
iniquity, and its cruel and baneful influence reached a
climax of badness in the enforced celibacy of the clergy.
In the practical enterprise, therefore, of reforming
the Church and purifying the social life of Germany, he
directed his energies unremittingly to the breaking up
of monasteries, and to the restoration of woman to her
place of honour in the house of the pastor. In the
monastic order he saw great bodies of men and women
socially paralysed in respect of industrial production
and the continuation of the race, disjoined from family
relationship, and appended as janizaries to the Papacy.
It was one of the cardinal principles of his reformation
that God's natural arrangements are statutory. The
first step towards making one a Christian is to make
him a man. Celestialise humanity if you will ; but
take humanity with you to be celestialised , humanity
of the stout European type, wide - awake, industrial,

400 MARTIN LUTHER.
scientific ; with passions not orientalised into dreami
ness, or emasculated into feebleness, but sending warm
blood from strong hearts into blooming cheeks. Thou
shalt not spoil a citizen in the hope of making a
saint. Luther, therefore, exerted himself with conscientious
earnestness to encourage and assist monks and nuns in
leaving their convents. He would have added exhorta
tions to them to follow up the abandonment of their
convents by entrance into the married state, had he not
found this quite superfluous, the emancipated men and
maidens flying off into the groves of matrimony like
blackbirds and throstles in April, frequently with less,
assurance of adequate provision for themselves and their
progeny than can be counted on by song-birds at that
exuberant season. Under these circumstances marrying
men of approved probity, sense, and substance were in
demand ; and Luther always had a stimulating word for
any of his men correspondents who could be reasonably
looked to for help in the work of turning white-
faced nuns into ruddy wives and mothers. Spalatin
was thus admonished, and would have taken the advice
sooner than he did had not his gentle, noble ways been
indispensable to the comfort of poor old dying Frederick.
Next to the incipiency of heaven in his own soul
through the sense of Divine love, Luther had, in the
years at which we are now glancing, no greater delight
than that of acting as counsellor and spiritual father
to congregations appealing to him from many lands for
aid in rearing the sanctuary and remodelling the service.

CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP. 401
Stern as had been his rebuke of those who introduced
riot and uproar into the operations of Church reform,
careful as he had been to respect the sensibilities of weak
brethren, he never denied that new wine wants new
bottles, that visible changes must follow those wrought
in the secret places of the soul,, in short, that worship
ought to correspond with belief. As time went on
he quietly but inexorably insisted that images should
be removed from the reformed churches in Wittenberg,
and that the sacrifice of the mass should be replaced
by the Lord's Supper.
As the Christian, not the clergyman, was in Luther's
view the type and standard of the personal Christian
life, so the Christian congregation was his type of the
Christian Church. Admitting no difference, except that
of office and delegation, between layman and clergyman,
he admitted no essential difference or gradation between
one class of clergymen and another. A distinctive
Divine right, privilege, or potency, belonging to bishops,
he absolutely disallowed. He pronounced the very ex
pression " a spiritual- order " to be " false." All clergy-.
men, whether called bishops, presbyters, pastors, or
parish priests, were the servants of the Church, in the
sense of the congregation. He devoted a short treatise
to the task of proving that a Christian assembly or
congregation possesses the right and the might to judge
doctrine and to call its own minister.*
It is not easy to see how Carlstadt and his spasmodic
* Dass eine christliche Versammlung oder Gemeinde Recht und
Macht habe, alle Lehre zu urtheilen und Lehrer zu berufen, 1523.
a a

402 MARTIN LUTHER.
friends could have taken a more democratic view
of the Church than this ; but it must be owned that
the frantic exaggeration of the heavenly prophets had
a reactionary effect upon Luther himself, infecting
him with some slight fear and distrust of Christian
freedom. He became almost too vehement in his cry
for submission to the secular power, and in his injunc
tion to Christian congregations to accept, in all external
matters, the ruling of the civil magistrate. In treatises
of his which preceded the great disappointment and
disenchantment consequent on the attempt at physical
force reformation, such as that on the freedom of a
Christian man, and his address to the nobles and people
of Germany, there is an exultant faith in the universal
priesthood and universal kingship of Christians which
seems to be toned down in his later works.
These remarks must not be understood to ascribe to
Luther a complete withdrawal of confidence from the
Christian democracy. He never doubted that the church
or congregation held powers from Christ, and that no
pastor could be rightly appointed without regard to the
will and choice of the people. The call of the church
was in his view an essential and indispensable element
in the constitution of the pastoral relationship. No
government, no patron, no ecclesiastical authority, could
impose a minister upon a congregation. On the other
hand, he viewed congregational freedom as compatible
with, and conditioned by, the unity of the Christian
Church. He entirely approved of the harmonious and
co-operative action, in the appointment of ministers, of

CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP. 403
some Christian authority, whether of bishop or of
presbyter}'-, external to particular congregations. No
Christian congregation could exist for itself alone.
An inalienable part of its duty was to contribute
to that universal diffusion of righteousness, peace,
brotherly affection, and social virtue which Christ
commissioned his followers to bring about. As it is
totally impossible, in ordinary circumstances, for a good
man to stand alone — an essential element in human
goodness being sympathetic and benevolent association
with other men — so it is impossible for a Christian
church to be in a state of spiritual health, of living
Christianity, without being in unity and fellowship
with other Christian churches. This appears to require
that some method shall be provided by which those
other congregations may be certified that the essentials
ofthe faith are not abandoned in any particular congre
gation. No congregation had a right to violate Christian
faith or manners without incurring the penalty of
ceasing to be in fellowship with the general body of
congregations, that is to say, with the Church.
Such were Luther's general views. In the revolu
tionary ferment, however, and state of violent transition,
amid which he had to perform the difficult task of
organising the rejuvenescent Church in Germany, it
was inevitable that, being a sensible man, he should
have respect to soundness of results rather than to
regularity of methods. He was himself, as has been
already remarked, the universal bishop or pope of
Germany, or rather of North- Western Christendom;
a a 2

404 MARTIN LUTHER.
indefatigable in visitation of his diocese : now at Borna,
now at Altenburg, now at Zwickau, now at Eilenburg,
now at Weimar, now at Erfurth ; now raying forth
episcopal counsel as far as Dantzig on the north and
Savoy on the south ; bent always upon the essential
point of settling preachers of the Gospel among flocks
willing to hear them. If he could work with the
magistrates, or with the patron of a living, well and
good ; he did not trouble himself with nice questions as
to the line of separation between civil and spiritual
matters. If the pastor he commended to a church that
applied to him was not pleasing to the patron, as when
the Elector objected to his nominee in Altenburg, he
avoided extremity of resistance, and contented himself
with making sure that the man chosen was on the
anti-Papal side. True, also, to those instincts of prac
ticality which put him in accord with the great evolu
tionary currents of world-history, he preferred in all
cases a minimum of change to any avoidable interference
with existing arrangements. It was not a new Church
that he was founding, but an immortal Church that he
was rescuing from temporary hebetude and defacement.
He did not wholly discard the mass, but modified
it in accordance with his fundamental conception of
Christian worship. The saying or singing of mass
could not, in the first place, be a sacrifice for sin.
The sacrifice of Christ was the sole, sufficient, never-
to-be-repeated sacrifice for the sins of the world. The
celebration of mass could not, in the second place,
be a piece of meritorious service, a good work in

CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP. 405
consideration of which men obtained the remission of sins.
Man obtains salvation through the merits of Christ only.
The mass, therefore, could only be, like any other act of
worship, a channel of grace, an occasion for exercising
the Divine life. All saying or singing of masses for
money he abolished. Private masses were declared to
be at variance with the essentially social character of
the Lord's Supper. Into this last, socially administered,
the old masses gradually changed.
His general views on reformed worship may be
gathered from a letter which he penned in August,
1523, on the modifications to be introduced into the
service in the Foundation Church of Wittenberg.*
Seldom, perhaps never, in the history of the world has
a change so profound and comprehensive, in all that
related to principle and spirit, been announced by visible
alterations so slight. No contrast can be sharper in
principle and idea than that between worship celebrated
by a priesthood, as a means of propitiating the Deity,
and worship consisting in homage of spirit, soul, and
heart, in acknowledgment of the supremacy of Infinite
Goodness, Justice, and Love, in meditation on Christian
truth, and in adoration of Divine Holiness. But the
altejratiojL_in — externals- was- -slight. Luther specified
little more as essential to worship than that Scripture
should be read, with intelligent exposition, that the Te
Deum should be uttered in the morning service and the
Magnificat in that of the afternoon; and that there
should be singing of hymns. * De Wette," 522.

406 MARTIN LUTHER.
The central idea of worship, as conceived by Luther,
was that it is a ministration of the Word, not a, perform
ance of sacerdotal rites. In signalising the preaching
of the Word as the distinctive note of Christian wor
ship he made a priceless contribution to the cause of
spiritual civilisation, and one which sets intelligent
Protestantism in a position of conspicuous advantage
over any other religious system that has claimed the
belief of men. The Christian pulpit cannot indeed
be pronounced a monopoly of the Protestant side
of Christendom. There were great preachers before
Luther, and there have been great preachers within the
Roman Catholic Church since his day. But in the
Protestant Church, as compared with the Popish, the
accent has been laid on preaching. The manifest
effect of this is to make Protestant Christianity, in
volving freedom of judgment, an immense and potent
agency of adult education. Unless the preacher is
incompetent, the hearer must be stirred to mental
activity by being constantly appealed to; by being
encouraged to verify his faith; by being accustomed
to argument. A peasantry whose worship is done for
them by mass priests will sink into intellectual torpor,
like the peasantry of Spain; a peasantry taught by
its preachers to search the Scriptures, and to track the
subtleties of theological controversy, learns to answer
every question by asking another, and produces a Burns
and a Carlyle. We constantly forget, but ought vividly
to remember, that Christianity swept into its current
and bore along with it, in the first Christian centuries

CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP. 407
the fruit and outcome of the best moral philosophies
of antiquity. The highest utterances of Platonic and
Stoic ethics, as we have them summarised by Cicero,
agree with the New Testament ethics of self-sacrificing
kindness. The pulpit, occupied by Christian preachers
quite worthy of the name, would not only call men to
salvation by faith in Christ, but would apply to the
problems of individual, domestic, social, and political
life, the principles of Christian ethics, and the maxims
of moral philosophy. The Bible is indisputably a mind-
moving, thought-producing body of literature ; and the
country which has effective Protestant preachers pos
sesses, under another name, a professor of moral philo
sophy in every parish, with the Bible for his handbook.

CHAPTER VI.
PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS.
It need hardly be said that Luther regarded no part of
Divine worship with more tender and glowing intensity
of interest than the service of song. With reference to
the accompaniments of worship generally he cherished
no narrow or fanatical notions, but believed that all that
was comely in every art might, as opportunity offered,
be associated with congregational worship ; this reserva
tion only being made, that no adjunct to the service
for which Scriptural warrant could not be intelligently
pleaded should be imposed on the conscience of the
people, and that no freakish extravagance, or frivolity,
or irreverence, should violate the universal rule of
decency and order. " I am by no means," he said,
" of the opinion cherished by some fantastically spiritual
persons, that all arts ought to be struck down and
renounced in homage to the Gospel. On the contrary,
I would gladly behold all arts, and most of all the art
of music, occupying a place in the service of Him from
whom they draw their origin, and who has bestowed
them on us as a gift." He recognised the duty of
making the service of God in this manner attractive,
especially to the young, to whom the godless world is

PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS. 409
so profuse of allurements, and called upon all Chris
tians who had art-gift to consecrate it to Christ.
His own vein of poetic genius, real and fine though
of small range, he worked with joyful energy, to the
end of supplying the new Church with hymns and
psalms and spiritual songs.
It was not, however, in the calm and pacific opera
tions of building up the Church that his poetic genius
first found voice. It was in the agony and clash of
conflict, it was when he saw others attaining to a glory
for which he had often yearned, mounting the pyre and
being encircled by the flames of martyrdom, that the words
with which his heart was full rose to his lips in song.
Nowhere except in Saxony itself had the Gospel of
Grace met with more eager acceptance than in the Nether
lands. In Antwerp, in a convent of Augustines, the
enthusiasm of the new faith glowed so brightly that the
authorities, stimulated by the Popish advisers of the
Emperor Charles, whose power in this quarter was
liable to no such hindrances as in the German Reich,
had recourse to the old orthodox method of extinguish
ing it. It will be remembered that, in the fore-front of
Luther's offending against the majesty of Christian
power, as represented by Legate and Kaiser at Worms,
stood the appalling item that he had denied that
heretics should be put to death. That sword of fire
which, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, had been
upheld, in the face of mankind, for twelve hundred years,
as the guardian of ¦ truth, had been declared by this
audacious innovator to be an ensign not of Christ, but

410 MARTIN LUTHER.
of Antichrist. It was now to be determined, on the
stage of Europe, in a strife continuing for centuries,
whether the Pope's and the Kaiser's method, or Luther's
method, for the maintenance and protection of religious
truth, was to be finally owned and established. In
Germany, Luther was beginning to have his way, but in
the Netherlands the fiery sword could still be paraded
as the symbol of Christian order. On the 1st of July,
1523, at Brussels, two young men, one a mere stripling',
Henry Voes and John Esch, were burnt at the stake.
A third, Lambert Thorn, was to have been executed at
the same time, but, for some unexplained reason, was
taken back to prison. Ultimately he, too, seems to have
died a martyr, but of this we have no certainty. Luther,
at all events, wrote to him in prison not only in terms
of sympathy and condolence, but with fervent congratu
lation on the privilege of suffering such things for the
sake of Christ. As for himself, he said — expressing a
sentiment which we know to have been often in his
mind — he was, alas ! not held worthy of the like honour.
" Wretched man that I am — the first, as I boastfully
reflect, to teach these Gospel truths, the last to be deemed
worthy, and perhaps never to be thought worthy, to be
a bearer, with you, of your chains — a partaker, with you,
of the fire ! But I shall triumph over my wretchedness,
and find consolation in my distress, for your chains
are my charhs, your prisons and fires are mine, since
I confess Christ and preach as you do, and both suffer
along with and congratulate you." *
* De Wette, 576.

PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS. 411
The tumult of exultation and distress, the trans
ports of sacred joy at the spectacle of faith triumphing
over mortal pain, accompanied by the deep ground-swell
of sorrow in view of the atrocity of extinguishing
young life by fire for accepting the salvation of Christ,
so moved Luther that his feelings became rhythmic, and
he poured forth a ballad, rugged indeed and with little
grace or ornament of composition, but tingling, every
line of it, with sincerity and intensity, in commemora
tion of the Brussels martyrdom. Briefly, with terse
and smiting force, the essential facts are stated, in simple
historical sequence, as the popular mind requires. The
place, the names of the youths, the elaborate attempts
of the " sophists " from Louvain to convince or bewilder
them, the courage and constancy with which they stand
against the wiles of the sophists, are lucidly detailed.
Then follow the stripping from them of their conventual
garments, and their degradation from the priestly office,
on all which they look with a smile. Two great fires
are then kindled, every onlooker being amazed at the
fortitude with which the young creatures scorn the
prospect of pain.
" With joy they stepped into the flame,
God's praises calmly singing.
Strange pangs of rage, amazement, shame,
The sophists' hearts are wringing ;
For God, they feel, is here."
The poetic faculty thus awakened was diligently
employed by Luther in the preparation of hymns for
use in Divine worship. Some he translated from the

412 MARTIN LUTHER.
Latin of the mediaeval Church, being, as usual, much
too practical to let himself be prejudiced by the mere
fact that they had been composed or used under the
sanction of the Papacy. Several were translations or
adaptations of Hebrew Psalms. It was indeed at the
feet of the poets of Israel that Luther learned to sing.
Loving the Bible as a whole, and finding occupation for
his intellectual faculty chiefly in the Epistles of Paul,
he set his heart on the Psalms with a transcendency of
affection. They were for him a fountain of inexhaust
ible delight — an Eden in the heart of Eden — a place of
sweetest bloom and freshest coolness in the midst of the
garden of God. It cannot, of course, be said that in
any instance he approached the merit of the Psalms as
works of poetic art. The poetic excellence of the best
Hebrew Psalms is of that highest and rarest kind which
defies the tooth not only of time, but of translation, and
survives in prose even when the language of the original
is no longer spoken among men, and when the melodies
to which the poems were first sung have been forgotten.
This highest excellence depends on perennial truth to
the organic facts of human feeling, and on perennial
aptness and impressiveness of imaginative embodiment.
The imaginative passion which sees mountains skipping
like lambs at the presence of God cannot be antiquated
until atheism has worked the God-believing instinct out of
man, or until mountains cease to steady the plains. The
lyric ecstasy which makes of the Infinite God a shep
herd of His people, and of the good man a tree growing
by a river, loses little in translation. Such symbolism

PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS. 413
is of all climates, and cannot grow old. When the
excellence is not of this supreme order, translation tells
more against it. The originality and power of Luther's
hymns depend on a stammering intensity of feeling
which breaks into rhythmic chant or cadence. But
no heart of modern man has rung so true to that
grand note of Hebrew song, the faith of Israel in his
God, as Luther's. In the most celebrated of all his
poetical pieces, composed not at this time, but a few
years hence, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, the imageryi
is derived from the forty-sixth Psalm. He applies
the Hebrew similitude of God as a high tower in a i
way that irresistibly recalls those castellated crags
which, during the whole of the feudal time, were places
of strength in Em-ope. But the first line, which is
from the Hebrew, is the finest in the piece. The merit
of the rest lies in its panting intensity and clang as of
charging squadrons. It may be said of Luther's hymns
generally that they are characterised by a jugged but
fundamentally melodious rhythm, a piercing intensity
and expressiveness, with tender, lovely, picturesque
touches here and there. Above all, they are sincere.
They seem to thrill with an intensity of feeling beyond
their power of expression, like the glistening of stars
whose silence speaks of God.
That Luther had a keen relish for the beautiful in
language and in music, apart from the purpose to which
these were devoted, admits of no question ; but artistic
ambition and aesthetic admiration played a small part in
the impulse under which he produced his verses. Even

414 MARTIN LUTHER.
the relief and comfort they afforded him through express
ing his own feelings were with him trivial commenda
tions, as compared with their use_in„.Jiringmg Jhome
Gospel truth ,kL_heart..and .conscience. The melodious
" caaences and clear and brilliant phrases of sacred song
were for him golden characters by which the knowledge
of God was to be imprinted on the memory. Never is
the singleness of the man's heart more conspicuous — the
concentration of his soul upon one grand life-purpose
more evident — than when, with congenial toil, he sets
to simple words and simple tunes, for children to sing,
the main verities of Christian faith, the main facts of
Christian story. The poet never for a moment ceases
to be the preacher, the instructor, the reformer. And
his words of stirring invitation to kindred spirits to
help him in providing the Reformed Church with
service in song called forth hymns worthy to stand
beside his own, though perhaps in no instance quite
equal to his. Early in 1524— a tiny streamlet destined
to swell into a river — Luther's first collection of hymns
appeared in Wittenberg. It contained eight pieces, five
by Luther, three by a zealous and courageous poet-
preacher of Suabia, by name Paul Speratus. A tiny
brook, made up of eight silver threads trickling from
the rock — and lo ! it has become a river of song that we
can trace through the modern centuries. Luther gave
the initiative for countless psalms and hymns and grave
sweet melodies, sung by the Protestant vanguard of
mankind, round the watch-fires of Gustavus Adolphus,
in the opulent homes of England and the craggy glens

PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS. 415
of Scotland, carried out to the far West by the Pilgrim
Fathers, cheering the hearts of a thousand missionaries,
and, amid harsh conquest and grasping commerce, coming
as a credible revelation of God's grace and man's good
will to the weary millions of Hindostan. The best re
ligious inspiration of these last ages is in spiritual song.
It would be unjust to draw a hard and fast line
between the music of the Mediaeval Church and that of
which Luther may be named the father. It is not true
that he can be described, as some fond admirers
would describe him, as " the man to whose sole efforts
the improved music of the Church is owing." Vehe
ment — too vehement — as was Luther's repugnance to,
and rejection of, whatever bore the image and super
scription of the Papacy, his mind was never clouded
with a doubt as to the continuity of life, doctrine, and,
in essentials, even of worship, between the old Church
and the new. From first to last he explicitly main
tained that his was the true Catholic doctrine — not that
of Scripture merely, but that of the best authorities of
the Church ; and he was incapable of discarding any
thing in the music of the Church merely because it had
been appropriated by Rome. But the judicious his
torian of music, having made these acknowledgments,
proceeds, to point out that, in one department of
Church music, Luther, not by invention strictly so
called, but by specialisation and accentuation, was prac
tically an important innovator. He gave unprecedented
significance to the congregational hymn. " Its value,"
says Emil Naumann, "as a medium for bringing the

416 MARTIN LUTHER.
congregation into closer communion with the spirit of
the service cannot, when compared with that of the
hitherto used Latin chorale, be over-estimated. Al
though there was no lack of hymns in the mother-tongue
in the Catholic Liturgy, yet their use was so restricted
that when Luther assigned to them so prominent a part
in the Reformed service it was regarded as quite a new
feature. With the Catholics, hymns in the mother-
tongue were only used at processions and on high
festivals, and were then sung by the congregation only
at Christmas, Easter, and certain other high feast-days.
With these exceptions, the Catholic congregational song
consisted of short musical phrases, chanted by the
priest, to which the people either responded or added
their voices to the refrain sung by the choristers from
the altar. The part assigned to the people then was
but a very subordinate one." * Naumann estimates
that, within fifty years after Luther's death, progress
had been made in Church music which may be measured
against what had been made in a thousand years before
the dawn of the Reformation. To himself personally he
attributes a highly considerable gift in relation to music,
referring to his enthusiastic appreciation of Josquin
des Pres and of Ludwig Senfel as demonstrating not
only the soundness of his knowledge of the art, but the
fineness and acuteness of his critical judgment in dis
criminating the merits of composers. " How intimately
conversant with the rules of polyphony," says Naumann,
" must the critic have been to have detected in how far
* " History of Music." By Emil Naumann. Cassell and Co.

PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS. 417
Josquin was tied or not by academical lore ! " In
Josquin Luther discerned that free force of natural
genius which masters the material in which it works.
The notes followed Josquin as he would ; other masters
were vassals to the notes, and could not choose but
follow as they would. " Josquin's compositions," said
Luther, " are blithe and gay, free, gentle, and grace
ful, neither forced nor unnatural, nor bound by rigid
laws, but free like the song of birds." The authority
of Naumann may suffice for the assertion that remarks
like these prove Luther to have been an expert in
music, but they will interest the general reader chiefly
as showing that here as elsewhere his nature was
fundamentally hopeful and of good cheer, instinct with
melody and mirth, in glad accord with notes of music,
and songs of birds, and all bright and winged things.
Essentially it is the same Luther we have all through —
the man for whom the Gospel is glad tidings of great
joy, the man whose idea of godliness is an opening of
the heart to receive the grace of God, the man whose
indignation burns as a furnace against Antichrist in
every form, whether pope, prince, demagogue, or devil,
in so far forth as said Antichrist makes the grace of
God of none effect and interposes the malarious fogs of
earth between man and the light of heaven.
It is almost unnecessary to observe that in apply
ing his principles of reform to social worship Luther
carefully avoided that worst of blunders, the prescrip
tion of one unchanging type or scheme of ceremony
and ritual. When his good friend Nicholas Hausmann
b b

418 MARTIN LUTHER.
wrote to him putting forward, with easily imaginable
commendations, the notion that advantage might be
derived from the assembling of a Conference or Council
to frame some one programme of public worship, to
be used in all churches, he sent a short but important
letter in reply, in which the plausible fallacies of the
commonplace man were conclusively disposed of. In
Councils generally he avowed himself to have little
faith; and it was living freedfom, not dead and fixed
regularity, that he aimed at in social worship. It is
unmistakably plain that if there had been an Act of
Uniformity in existence, to stereotype the worship of
the German churches, his first step towards improve
ment would have been its abolition. " If one church,"
he wrote, " does not spontaneously imitate another in
things external, what need is there of compulsion by
means of Council decrees, which straightway are turned
into laws and strangling cords of the soul ? Let one
church imitate another if it likes, or, if it does not, let
it enjoy its own ways and manners. The essential
point is that there shall be spiritual unity in faith
and Word. Diversity and variety in externals if you
will." Does it not humiliate one a little, and insinuate
some slight scepticism as to the majestic constancy of
mankind in the march of progress, to reflect on the com
prehensive practical contempt which Protestant Christians
have been pleased, in the intervening centuries, to pour
upon this deliverance of Luther on the freedom of
Christian worship ? Christians in England subjecting

PSALMS AND HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS. 419
themselves for any number of centuries, under the rod
of Parliamentary law, to the obligation of going through
the same routine of Prayer-book service, Christians in
Scotland gravely debating as to the " innovation " of
kneeling instead of standing in prayer, and the tight
ness or wrongness of aiding the natural voice by instru
mental music in praise — furnish sad comment on the
breadth of Luther's views as to Christian worship.
His sovereign common-sense apprised him, however,
that mere change for its own sake, mere freakish volatility
and thirst for excitement, ought to be avoided in public
worship, were it for no other cause than the deadly
exhaustion they entail. In another letter to Haus
mann * he expresses the sharpest contempt for those
incurably frivolous persons who have not mind enough
for faith and fixity in anything, who rush to every
sermon and service where there is the sparkle of novelty,
and no sooner cease to be titillated by novelty than
they complain of oppressive dulness. While not only
sanctioning but positively prizing variation in congre
gational worship, he never for a moment relinquished or
relaxed the principle that worship must conform to the
spirit of Christ.
Passages might be found in his letters capable of
colourable interpretation in favour of the extreme
Puritan contention that nothing may be introduced
into congregational worship for which no warrant can
be adduced from the practice of the first Christians,
recorded in the New Testament. But this was not
* De Wette, 555.
b b 2

420 MARTIN LUTHER.
his deliberate or final opinion. He laid it down,
indeed, that nothing can be authoritatively imposed
upon churches which is not based upon Scriptural
precept or precedent.* But between authoritative
imposition, which enslaves the conscience, and right of
free adoption there is a great gulf fixed ; and that the
conspicuous absence from the New Testament of one
binding model of congregational worship should amount
to a positive law of negation, denying to Christians all
variation in worship, is a proposition too monstrous to
have occurred to Luther's mind. On essentials he in
sisted with peremptory dogmatism. But in forms and
ceremonies, in attitude and dress, in use of service-book
or expatiation in extemporary prayer, the limits of free
dom were to be as wide as the requirements of decency
and order, of spirit and of truth. And since worship
was an act of intelligent homage to God, of vivid re
cipiency of Divine influence, of distinct confession of
sin, of clear profession of faith, and of reasonable praise,
it followed that dead language was to be discarded, and
that Protestant nations should worship God in their
mother tongue.
• Nihil prorsus geri debet in cultu Dei, sine certo verbo Dei. — De
Wette, 461.

CHAPTER VII.
LUTHER AND ERASMUS.
In 1524 the lustre of Erasmus, now not far from three
score, had begun to wane, but his intellectual supremacy
was not yet substantially impaired or formally chal
lenged. Popes were glad to take counsel with him.
His friendship was a privilege of princes, his conversa
tion a luxury of kings. It may be questioned whether,
since that time, any man has swayed Europe so com
prehensively, so genially, by right of mind alone. He
was a lover of peace, a hater of all who stirred up strife,
and many eyes turned towards him as the only man
who could break the influence of Luther.
While the boy was uplifting his voice in the streets
of Eisenach — while the youth was wrestling for light
in his Erfurth cell — Erasmus had been preparing
Luther's way for him. , He had done so in a spirit of
moderation, anxiously deprecating collision between the
old and the new. Though his tone was rational, Erasmus
was no rationalist. " Some," wrote the late Dr. James
Hamilton, an excellent judge on the point, " call him
(Erasmus) a rationalist and the father of them. But if
they mean that he was an unbeliever, they are utterly

422 MARTIN LUTHER.
wrong." Gibbon, indeed, could not forego the sweet
illusion of having Erasmus on the same side with him
self. " I have sometimes thought," says Gibbon, " of
writing a Dialogue of the Dead, in which Luciah, Eras
mus, and Voltaire should mutually acknowledge the
danger of exposing an old superstition to the contempt
of the blind and fanatic multitude." But it would have
been indeed a dead Erasmus, an Erasmus with the spiritual
personality extinguished, that we should have had in
the Dialogue of Gibbon. The labours of Erasmus on
the text of the New Testament were the natural and
indispensable prelude to a reformation based on an
appeal to the original Christian inspiration. Luther,
however, was too differently constituted from Erasmus
to do him justice. What the one called moderation
the other called sin. Erasmus gradually withdrew
from Luther even the qualified approbation he had at
first expressed. Luther's distrust sharpened into keen
hostility and fervent anger. Erasmus became for him
the type of all those who serve God by halves, and,
while declaiming on the beauty of truth, are apologists
for institutions that buttress falsehood.
Open war between the antagonists became inevit
able. Erasmus surveyed the ground, chose his sun and
wind, and took up a position which gave him the
greatest attainable advantage against Luther. He
posed as the defender — the temperate and reverent
defender — of man's free will and erect, individualism
against what he maintained to be Luther's too dog
matic and absolute assertion of the Divine sovereignty.

LUTHER AND ERASMUS. 423
Kings, princes, humanists, Pope Clement, Emperor
Charles, looked with eager interest on the cojaflict.
As fate would have it, before taking up Erasmus's
world-famous treatise, I had laid down a tract by
Miinzer. The savage and crabbed sentences of the.
arch-fanatic — like the snarl of a hyeena — all the
more savage and crabbed because of the old, harsh
German in which the thing is written, were still in
my mind. And here came such a stream of golden
and melodious speech as Carlyle had before him
when, looking on a page of Macaulay's History, he
said, " Flow on, thou shining river ! " Never did modern
Latin lend itself to the hand of a master more consum
mate than Erasmus.
With the dignified grace and ease of an accomplished
gentleman, and the persuasiveness of a magician of
rhetoric, whose spell steals over you ere you are aware,
he begins by dwelling on the circumstance that Luther
has set himself up against the Universal Church. But
Erasmus was by no means so illogical as to make this,
though strong as a presumption, serve for a proof.
The mystical immensity of force which Dr. Newman,
whose temperament is the imaginative-emotional, con
cedes to the argument from general consent, could
not impose upon an intellect like that of Erasmus.
In point of fact — as, in these scientific times, we can
have no great difficulty in remembering — it is the
regular and, in some sense, necessary arrangement, that
every great change in faith, in science, in art, should be
introduced by one man. Nay, more, it seems to be an

424 MARTIN LUTHER.
infallible symptom of national decay — absolutely the
death-mark on the face — when a nation loses the power
of believing that the new, represented by one man, can
transcend the old, represented by many. In science, if
you are to go forward, you must believe in Newton
against all preceding astronomers. The old has, how
ever, in every instance, the amplest right to be calmly
and courteously heard by the new. Erasmus was no
such fantastic reasoner as to hold that because Luther
told them they were all in error and had long been,
Luther was wrong ; but he spoke unanswerably when he
urged that Luther, appealing against the judgment of
centuries, ought to have some forbearance with his oppo
nents, and not demean himself as if all who differed with
him were sceptical in religion and at enmity with God.
For the rest, Erasmus assailed what has always been
at once the offence and the strength of the Evangelical
system. What had startled Duke George when he
heard it from Luther's lips in the pulpit, what had be
wildered the simple monks of Juterbog, what had en
couraged Eck to tell Luther and Carlstadt that they
turned men into stones — in one word, the complete
spiritual impotence of man, the exclusive action of
Divine grace in the salvation of the soul — this it was
that Erasmus called in question. Luther, grand always
in his intrepid openness, not condescending to imitate
Minerva in making her shield a mask, owned that
Erasmus had taken fair ground. Man is nothing ; God
is all ; refute that, and you refute the Gospel. So said
Luther always.

LUTHER AND ERASMUS. 425
And against this, not in the tone of a scoffer, not in
the tone of one who has for a moment doubted the
existence of God or the authority of Holy Writ, but in
the spirit and tone of one who will not be driven from
the fastness of human personality, and who cannot be
brought to admit that a sentient, reasoning creature,
whom God has made, can be absolutely paralysed in
will and yet justly punished for wickedness, Erasmus
urges and insinuates, in meanderings of golden phrase,
that Luther's iron dogma Cannot be the whole of God's
truth. With a dexterity too finely strong to be hot or
furious, he states with pungent lucidity some of those
consequences of the Augustinian and Lutheran dogma
from which natural reason has always staggered back
appalled. God being the source, and the dynamic
basis, of existence, the created universe in all its parts,
in all its qualities, is essentially dependent on Him.
There is a final sense, therefore, in which sin, in man
and in devil, owes its existence to God ; and Erasmus
quotes a terrific sentence from Augustine to the effect
that in the joy of the saved God may be said to
reward His own good, and in the pains of the lost to
punish His own sin.
But Erasmus is too erudite and wary a theologian
to be thrown, in recoil from this astounding paradox,
into the anti-Augustinian extreme, to wit, the branded
heresy of Pelagianism. He refuses to petrify man,
but he will not admit that he fails to exalt God.
"My voice is with those who attribute something to
free will, but superlatively much to grace." "Non nihil,

426 MARTIN LUTHER.
not nothing;" this is what he asks for man's person
ality : " plurimum, much as much can be ; " this is what
he leaves for God. It is substantially the position
taken up by Locke in The Reasonableness of Christianity.
And why, Erasmus supposes the reader to ask, should
anything be left for free will ? In order, he replies, that
those who voluntarily forsake God may be intelligently
and justly taxed with impiety. In order that no plausibly
calumnious charge of cruelty and injustice may sully
the name of God. In order that despair on the one
hand and security on the other may gain no advantage
over us. In order that we may be incited to do our
best. He argues that the lovely apostolic exhortations
to virtue would be mockery if all spiritual good de
pends on " mere inevitable necessity." Still, when he
has most convincingly expatiated on the fatal results of
obliterating free will he always harks back on the life-
giving breath of God. All, all is ineffectual " without
the perpetual grace of God."
Of the argument of Erasmus some- idea may be
formed from what has been said — and more is not
needed for our purpose. In his peroration he tries to
leave matters in as smooth a face as possible. If what
he has advanced be true, nothing, he urges, will perish
that Luther has piously and Christianly said. On
the duty of casting away confidence in our own merits,
works, or strength, on the duty of transferring all our
trust to God and His promises, Luther, he admits,
has written wisely and well. But the reader will, he
says, consider whether the ' balanced and modulated

LUTHER AND ERASMUS. 427
truth, as set forth in the preceding treatise, ought to
be relinquished in favour of that paradoxical extreme
of Luther's doctrine, " about which the whole Christian
world is now being tumultuated." Last of all comes a
pathetic word, reminding us how often the charge of
being a time-server had been brought against the
writer, and how keenly sensitive he was to the reproach.
He will, he says, be told that he wants to patch up an
accommodation between Christ and human nature. He
will be reminded that no one understands this matter
who has not the Spirit of God. Well, well. If he has
not yet known Christ, he is far astray ; he is not un
willing to learn; but he would ask, with respectful
humility, what spirit the doctors and bishops of the
Church, for thirteen hundred years, have been of.
Luther undertook his reply to Erasmus soon after
his marriage — among the delights of his honeymoon,
slily remarked the latter. He had got Katie seated
beside him. The gracious mystery of a new life linked
to his — another dearer self, doubling the worth of
existence for him — had exercised a benign influence on
his temper and habitudes. His work on the bondage
of the will shows him in his best form — his strength
massive and concentrated, his temper profoundly moved
but not irritated or fierce. In addressing the sovereign
of European letters he manifests none of that scorn
ful rudeness with which he had, so to speak, cuffed
and kicked the amateur theologian, Henry King of
England. He owns the superiority of Erasmus in the
gifts of expression, but places his own trust in the

428 MARTIN LUTHER.
teaching of the Spirit and in the clear sense of Scrip
ture. Of course he dwells on the ingenious carefulness
of Erasmus to avoid decisive utterance, attempting
always to shade down his Yes until it is almost a No,
and to burnish up his No until it might almost pass for
a Yes. Erasmus is a Proteus. He is an eel. He tries
to walk on eggs without breaking them. He advances
on argumentative lines until the conclusion is in sight,
and then sidles off without reaching it. In all this
Luther insists on detecting the furtive glance of the
sceptic. " Kylcet doch der Scepticus Aervor." But "the.
Holy Ghost is no sceptic." The Christian must say
Yes or No. For his own part, he does not write under
the influence of any doubt. His belief on the matter
in dispute is as firm as his belief that two and three
make five.
There are indeed mysteries in the Bible. But
Christ, he says, stands forth as its main subject, robed,
not in mystery, but in clearness. The substance of the
Gospel is manifest — no obscurity about it ; although
those who do not look may fail to see it ; as a brook
may evidently run through the market-place, though
some, lurking in the town vennels and alleys, do not
see it. Without the Holy Ghost even the simplest
truth in Scripture is unintelligible.
He maintains that God alone works what is spirit
ually good in man. "All we do and all that takes
place, though it may seem to happen by chance and
mutably, still happens necessarily, and cannot otherwise
be if you give due consideration to God's will." Even

LUTHER AND ERASMUS. 429
the ancients, he says, by their doctrine of fate, bore
testimony to this fundamental truth. Certa stant omnia
lege, all things are steadfast by eternal law, says
Virgil. Such, too, is the teaching of Holy Writ ; and what
he finds in the Bible he (Luther) will proclaim upon
the housetops. " No man can come to Me except the
Father who hath sent Me draw him." "Whom He
will He hardeneth." " Why doth He yet find fault ? "
Luther .owns that here there is indeed a mystery ; but
he leaves it where St. Paul leaves it. " 0 man, who art
thou that repliest against God?" It is an insoluble
problem; it is the "secret of the Divine Majesty."
Does Erasmus ask, Who, then, can believe that God
loves him ? " No man," Luther boldly answers, " un
less God by grace convinces him that he is accepted."
It is God's method to act by contraries. When He
will make us alive He kills us. When He will raise
us to heaven He thrusts us down to hell. When He
will purify and exalt us to holiness He awakens our
conscience and shows us the hideousness of our sin.
Luther avows himself perfectly aware that natural
reason rebels against all this. What of that ? It is
the grand touchstone of faith that it believes when
reason stands dumb and astonished. Faith believes
that God is infinitely good though few may be saved ;
that God is infinitely just . though He wills that some
shall be damned. " What were the use of faith if
reason could solve all mysteries ? " He well knew, he
says, the difficulty of implicit acceptance of the Divine

430 MARTIN LUTHER.
will. For long years he had been agonised by the
fiercest temptations on these matters. It was on this
mystery of the Divine character that he had suffered
the intensest anguish of doubt and of perplexity. He
speaks of the greatest temptations being those which
relate to the first table of the law, and turn essentially
on the question whether it is a good spirit or a bad
spirit that is supreme in the universe. But he had
learned to refer the insoluble mystery to " the secret
council in heaven and the Divine Majesty." On the
practical question of how man is saved every shadow
of doubt had left his mind. First, and last, in begin
ning, middle, and end, salvation was of God.
It need not be said to anyone in the slightest
degree acquainted with the contents of Scripture that
both Luther and Erasmus could quote passages in sup
port of their respective contentions. Erasmus could
point to the many and glorious words — with which, as
with star work and jewelled flowers, the temple of Holy
Writ is festooned — expressive of God's willingness to
be gracious, of His positive negation of willingness that
the sinner should die. He could point to the sentence
which refutes eternally all pessimism, all despair —
" God is love." The gentle scholar, leaguing himself
with such kindred spirits, men of heart rather than of
logical brain, as Jerome and Origen, would fain have it
that those sublime utterances should be the canons of
Scriptural interpretation, all passages of narrower import
being overarched by their Divine spaciousness, as the
infinite blue encloses the planetary systems. Luther,

LUTHER AND ERASMUS. 431
whose inexorable principle it was to accept Scripture,
the whole Scripture, and nothing but Scripture — with
out glosses, without feats of harmonising ingenuity —
put no veil upon those high lights of the Biblical
picture. Simply and unfeignedly he expressed his
belief in them all. But neither would he permit any
veil to be hung before such passages as those in which
God is said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart ; to have
loved Jacob and hated Esau before the children had
done good or evil ; to have made some vessels of human
clay unto honour and some unto shame. Luther did
not profess himself able to reconcile the latter passages
with the former. He believed both. He trusted God.
Therein was, for him, the office and the test of faith.
Luther ends with a passage of great nobleness,
unstained by one coarse word, by one ungenerous,
heartless, or intolerant expression. He will now, he
says, conclude, hoping that he may more fully treat the
subject on another occasion, but feeling that, for a
Christian soul, open to the truth, what he has said is
enough. If all takes place according to God's will, which
even unassisted reason owns, then reason must further
grant that there can be no free will, in men, angels, or
any created thing. The fall of Adam, the incurable
tendency of the Jews to lapse from God, the inability
of the heathen nations to attain to virtue and to heaven,
prove that without grace man is impotent for good,
potent only for evil. Last of all, were man not dead in
sin there would be no supreme necessity for a crucified
Christ to save him.

432 MARTIN LUTHER,
In no tone of arrogance or insolence, but as one who
feels that he is speaking for God, he entreats Erasmus
to accept his instruction, never minding the speaker.
He acknowledges that Erasmus is a " dear, high man,
graced with many dear, noble, costly gifts by God."
He praises the learning, the experience, the understand
ing, the eloquence of his opponent. For himself he
can claim none of these gifts ; he is nothing ; but he
earnestly believes that he is a Christian. He specially
commends Erasmus for one thing — that he has gone to
the heart of the matter, not engaging him in inde
cisive strife about " Papacy, Purgatory, Indulgence, and
the like." Erasmus, and Erasmus alone in this contro
versy, has fought on essentials, and taken his antagonist
by the throat. " For this I heartily thank you."
If Erasmus cannot agree with him, he expresses the
wish that he may devote himself to those Greek and
Latin studies in which he has already performed such
noble service, and by which he has laid Luther personally
under obligations. In those provinces he recognises
Erasmus as worthy of all honour ; and will earnestly
pray that God may make him as superior to him (Luther)
in grace as he already is in all other respects. " It is
not so new a thing that God should teach Moses by a
Jethro, or Paul by an Ananias."
Luther wrote his celebrated reply to Erasmus in
Latin, but his friend Jonas, working under his own eye
at Wittenberg, translated it into German; and the
German, though it is less idiomatic, pithy, and pic
turesquely vivid than it would have been if he had

LUTHER AND ERASMUS. 433
written in German to begin with, is entirely to be
depended on for his meaning.
It is a just remark of Mr. John Morley's that when
generations are earnestly religious they do not seek to
minimise their degree of subjection to the Divine Being.
Their mood rather is that they cannot have enough of
God. So it was in the sixteenth century. With pas
sionate and enthusiastic completeness men gave them
selves up to God, eager to divest themselves as much as
possible of human personality, to have no will but God's
will, to be filled with God as dewdrops in the morning
are filled with light. In the debate we have been con
templating, people of academic culture, of speculative
disengagement and serene intellectual indifference, voted
with Erasmus. The moderates throughout Europe, the
fine gentlemen of courts, the semi-sceptical intelligences
of universities, told the golden-mouthed apostle of com
promise that he was in the right, and hoped that he
had put down the paradoxical fanatic. But the heart
of the world beat with Luther. The wave of spiritual
revolution, gathering volume and impetus, rolled on,
leaving Erasmus and his fine intelligences stranded ;, and
ever, from the loftiest crest of the surge, rang out the
voice of nations, ascribing glory to God and proclaim
ing the nothingness of man.

e <?¦

CHAPTER VIII.
BORES.
It was not always with adversaries of the type and
calibre of Erasmus that Luther found himself called
upon to contend. When we look into his study, we
perceive that the ferment of the time had for him
one result peculiarly afflictive — the intrusion of bores.
Didactic, homiletical, speculative, mendicant — their
name was legion. In a letter to the Christians of Ant
werp, written-about the time when he was dealing with
Erasmus,* he enables us to form an idea of what he
suffered from the uproar of divergent sects and opinions
that filled the air. As many views and fancies were
being put forward as there were heads to get bewildered
or tongues to wag. " No booby is now so abject but
that if he dreams or fancies anything, he must impute
it to the Holy Ghost, and give himself out for a pro
phet." And they all made for Luther — him every fool
thought himself able to instruct and entitled to judge.
He speaks of one of this kidney who came announcing
that he had been expressly sent by the Maker of heaven
and earth. " He reeled off his jargon floridly yet not
* De Wette, 763.

BORES. 435
without boorish coarseness." His special command
from God was to order the doctor to read to him the
books of Moses. Luther, good soul, asked the intruder
what credentials he had of his mission. He gave a
general reference to the Gospel of St. John. That was
sufficient. " I now felt that I had had enough of my
gentleman, and told him to come again, as there was not
time enough at present to read the books of Moses."
Thereupon the heavenly messenger took himself off,
talking distractedly about God the Father having shed
His blood to bring us to His Son.
Another bore, more pretentiously speculative, had
betaken himself from Antwerp to Wittenberg, and was
now about to return from Wittenberg to Antwerp.
Luther warns his Antwerp friends to be on their guard
against him. This one was clearly no fool in the
common sense, and some of his ideas might strike the
present generation as less extravagant than they appeared
to Luther. He held "that every man possesses the
Holy Ghost;" that the Holy Ghost is in fact "the
reason and understanding of man ; " and that every
man has faith. But his view of the nature of faith,
though it will startle no one now, was startling then.
He held it to be nothing more than the adoption, as
creed and maxim, of the principle that we ought to do
to our neighbour as we would have our neighbour do to
us. He confined perdition exclusively to the flesh, thus,
in Luther's opinion, denying the existence of hell. It
is noteworthy that Luther expresses no particular horror
at these ideas, merely pronouncing them frivolous and
c c 2

436 MARTIN LUTHER.
whimsical, and warning the Christians of Antwerp
against being tempted to waste time in discussing the
like. He advises the Antwerpians to look askance on
all tenets that are put forward as new and singular,
and to keep their attention upon such as bear on the
salvation of the soul. That there should be division of
spirits and strife of tongues ought not, he says, to be
an offence to those upon whom the light of the Gospel
had lately shined. Under the dominance of the Papacy
there had been peace in the house, the peace of spiritual
slumber, the peace of calm possession by the enemy of
Christ's Gospel; but now that the stronger man had
entered and was turning the enemy out, there was
tumult, contention, confusion. This was Luther's way
of stating what four centuries of Protestant wide-
awakeness have shown to be a fact of universal ex
perience alike in politics, philosophy, and religion,
that the Liberal party is the party of divergent and
many-coloured opinions, and that reformation is not
promotive of sleep.
It is interesting to mark, in this early encounter
between an Evangelical and a Broad Churchman —
decidedly broad — a few of those traits and circum
stances with which, in the thousand-and-one instances
in which representatives of those sections of Protestant
Christendom have crossed swords in more recent times,
we have been familiar. Luther complains, as Dean
Mansel complained, that he could not bring his specula
tive extravaganzist, Rumpel-geist, to the point. When
such propositions as those quoted above were set before

BORES. 437
him as his, the Rumpel-r/eist repudiated them. Yet
other people were convinced that he held them, and he
himself, when you got into free and easy talk with him,
betrayed that he did so. Evangelicals now address
Broad Churchmen in terms of elaborate politeness :
Luther's words were rugged as the stones on a newly
macadamised road ; but, in the gist of his description of
this advanced thinker as " a shifty, evasive, liigen'
haftiger creature, flippant and without modesty, who in
the same breath can say a thing and deny that he has
said it, and whom it is impossible to keep to any one
point," many Evangelicals of to-day would recognise a
graphic sketch of what they have themselves expe
rienced. And perhaps the Broad Churchman of the
sixteenth century would have said, as Broad Church
men of the nineteenth say, that Evangelicals are not
signally blessed with the gift and grace of intellectual
sympathy. But our interest is more seriously engaged when we
learn that the question most keenly discussed between
Luther and this interviewer from the Netherlands was,
fundamentally, that same question of the will and
purpose of God in relation to sin, and of the reality and
infinitude of God's love, which emerged in the debate
between Luther and Erasmus. It is easy to fancy how
the alert rationalist, finding it a ticklish business to
debate with Martin Luther on such perilous proposi
tions as that the Holy Ghost and human reason are
identical, would take refuge in the Scriptural announce
ments of God's goodwill to men, of His willingness

438 MARTIN LUTHER.
that all men should be saved, of His own essential
nature as Love. One can gather from Luther's own
account that the Wittenberg Hercules had been put
somewhat on his mettle. The rationalist had striven to
pin him to an assertion that " God wills sin." Luther
tells his Antwerp friends that they will be assured by
the man that he, Luther, had been shut up to this
necessity. He denies it ; but with important qualifica
tions. His opponent's general attitude and contention
are sketched by him in a few graphic sentences, and we
may be quite certain that, with some slight allowance
for bias in the describer, the description is true to the
life. We shall therefore take it along with us, not
verbatim and literatim, but with as near an approach to
actual reproduction as seems compatible with instan
taneous intelligibility to the non-metaphysical reader.
The Netherlander set his foot down on the simple
proposition that God does not will sin — cannot, with or
without explanation, be alleged to be the author of
moral evil. Luther accepts the general proposition that
God does not will sin, but insists that this is not the
last word to be said on the matter. Sin exists. This
the interviewer did not deny. But it cannot, urges
Luther, exist, unless God, in one sense or another, gives
it existence. Who compels Him to let it exist ? ' How
could He let it exist if He did not will to do so ? The
interviewer had no reply. He threw up his head, as if
for more convenient scrutiny of the stars and the
immensities, and tried to form an idea how God could,
at one and the same time, not will, and yet, by

BORES. 439
implication, will sin. The attempt was vain. Throw his
head never so far back, he could not pierce the infini
tudes of Divine mystery, or understand how these two
facts are true. He stood fast to it, however, that there
is but one will in God.
Luther accordingly says, in his own rough way,
that, if the man affirms in Antwerp that he, Luther,
alleges that God wills sin, he will be lying. But it is
as plain as Luther's own words can make it that there
is a sense in which he did hold that God wills sin. He
maintained that God has two wills, the will manifested
in Providence and the law, and the will hidden and
incomprehensible. " God," he says, " has forbidden sin
and wills it not. This will is revealed to us, and it is
imperative on us to know it. But how God permits, or
wills sin, is not for us to know; He has not revealed it.
St. Paul himself would and could not answer : ' Who
art thou, 0 man, that judgest God?' " In one word,
Luther believes in a secret and inscrutable will of God,
in addition to that will which is blazoned on the face of
Scripture, and which forbids sin. He advises the Ant
werpians, if this speculative genius comes bothering
them about the secret will of God, to put him aside,
addressing him to this effect : " Is it too little that God
sets before us His revealed will ? Why do you make
fools of us by trying to get us to pry into matters which
it is forbidden and impossible for us to know, and about
which you yourself know nothing at all ? Leave God
to assign the due cause to whatsoever takes place ;
enough for us to know that He wills no sin. How He

440 MARTIN LUTHER.
permits or wills sin, let us leave unanswered. A ser
vant shall not know his master's secrets, but only what
his master orders him to do ; much less shall a creature
penetrate and comprehend the secret prerogative of its
God." Herr Kostlin, criticising Luther's view of the two
wills of God, in connection with his controversy with
Erasmus, points out that he has fallen into some incon
sistency. Refusing absolutely to listen to reason if it
demurs to any textual utterance of Scripture, he never
theless, Herr Kostlin submits, owes to reason the
suggestion of his own theory, for he quotes no Bible
verse to prove that there is a hidden as well as a
revealed will of God. But Luther might have given
reference not to any one verse or chapter, but to Scrip
ture passim. It is one of the commonplaces of the
Bible that the thoughts of God are unsearchable ; and
to say that St. Paul, when he states the problem of
Divine justice, and bids man be silent in confessed
inability to solve it, adds no specific announcement
that there is a hidden will of God, is really no more
than to say that St. Paul eschews tautology.
As a matter of practical fact, the principle on which
Luther insists must form part of every possible ethical
scheme, unless it denies the existence of evil, or in
thorough-going pessimism calls evil good and good evil.
.Even the atheist, acknowledging only the physical uni
verse, must admit that there is a mysterious residuum
of distress and desolation, of pain and anguish, which
remains unexplained and inexplicable in the system

BORES. 441
of things. If this mysterious remnant — this core of
solid and irreducible blackness — is a valid impeachment
of the All, then that sentiment of wondering reverence
in the contemplation of the universe which seems to
be the ultimate form of atheistic religion is precluded.
Under any possible or conceivable scheme of theistic
religion, the facts of sin and sorrow must be admitted
to coexist with God. To say that He is and that
these are, is to say that He permits them ; and it is
surely braver and honester to say this right out, as
Luther does, than to throw back our heads, stare
into the sky, talk of immensities, eternities, Divine
silences, and refuse to admit what is self-evident.
Shakespeare — whose colossal common sense was akin
to Luther's, and whose curiously exact and profound
apprehension of Luther's doctrine of grace suggests to
me that he may have had access to Lutheran materials
which his critics have not traced — Shakespeare, I say,
has this line —
" God does with us as we with children do."
That is what Luther meant. The wise, kind parent
gives clear and precise instructions to his children as to
their duty ; but he does not necessarily explain to them
the motives of his commands.

Book XIV.
POPE CLEMENT AND POPE LUTHER.

1524—1534.

Book xw.
POPE CLEMENT AND POPE LUTHER.

CHAPTER I.
ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY  BATTLE OF PAVIA  SACK OF
ROME  FIRST DIET OF SPIRES.
Luther's work had now taken its place among those
influences which are reckoned with by princes ; and, in
order to its intelligent apprehension, we must under
stand its relation to the general procession of events in
the sixteenth century.
Among the personages by whom, in that age, his
tory, in the sense of battles, sieges, and treaties, was
made, two stand prominently forward — Francis I. of
France, and Charles V. of Germany, Italy, Spain, and
the Indies. These two engaged in life-long rivalry
and conflict. Among those who looked with keenly
interested eyes upon their contendings two figures were
conspicuous — Henry VIII. of England and Clement
VII. of Rome — who leant alternately to the one or to
the other, in accordance with the views they respec
tively entertained as to the comparative advantages to
be obtained by themselves. But the part played by
Henry, though of primary importance to English

446 MARTIN LUTHER.
historians, and not without considerable value as a factor
in Continental affairs, was for our present purpose of
much less consequence than that of the remarkable
man, head of the great house of Medici, who, having
been potent among the cardinals of fine gentleman Leo,
and having placed the tiara on the head of innocent
Adrian, now essayed to discharge the office of Christ's
Vicegerent in conjunction with that of temporal sove
reign of the Roman States. If one were forced to adopt
a single epithet by way of designating Clement, one
might call him, par excellence, the Macchiavellian Pope.
The essence of Macchiavellianism, as distilled in the
Prince, consists in three things : the possession of noble
or at least respectable aims, the furtherance of these by
any means, foul or fair, and — here is the final differentia
— the application of the evil means,, if evil means are
alone available, with all the skill, energy, courage, and
wisdom which the best and ablest men display in apply
ing right means to right ends. The noble element in
Clement's policy was his wish to neutralise, as much as
possible, that influence of foreign Powers upon Italy
which, in the chronic agony naturally arising from
political home rule, afflicted her. To this we add, as
also a legitimate motive, his regard for the success of
the Papacy. The sinister means by which he promoted
these ends were fraud and falsehood ; and Macchiavelli
himself could not have complained of laxity or silliness
in Clement's execution.
In the autumn of 1524 the King of France, after
bringing to a brilliant finish his warlike businesses on

ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY. 447
his own side of the Alps, insisted, against the advice of
his sagest counsellors and the remonstrance of his
politic mother, Louise of Savoy, upon carrying the war
into Italy. Accordingly, the French army came
glittering down the Alpine slopes by Mont Cenis, when
the trees were shedding their leaves, and formed the
siege of Pavia, a town on the Ticino. Pescara and
Lannoy, the skilful generals who commanded the
Imperial army in Italy — Charles himself was in Spain
— deemed their force too inconsiderable to engage the
splendid French army headed by its dashing king ; but
they threw into Pavia, which occupied a strong position
on the river and was additionally protected by forti
fications, a garrison of 6,000 veteran soldiers, under the
resolute and capable leadership of Antonio de Leyva.
During the winter. months the siege went forward with
varying fortune ; but to all ordinary observation it
seemed clear that the issue could be none other than
the victorious entrance of Francis into the town. In
that event, he would be the foremost man in Italy and
in the world.
Clement had hitherto courted Charles under the
impression that he was manifestly the Lord Paramount
of Italy. Between Pope and Emperor, at the time when
Francis advanced into Italy, there had been league and
friendship. But this vicegerent of Christ was no man
to omit the worship of the rising sun. He made
advances to the monarch before whose presence the com
manders of Charles had fallen back, and who seemed
destined, in a few weeks,. to be captor of Pavia. His

448 MARTIN LUTHER.
idea was that if he could induce the Emperor to cede a
considerable territory to Francis, his own gain would be
decisive. The rivals, to begin with, would balance and
check each other in Italy. The Pope, in the second
place, might persuade them to unite in alliance, himself
being the clasp between them, with a view to put down,
more majorum, the pestilent heretics of Germany. It
was a clever scheme enough, but Charles thwarted it.
Clement's diplomacy he treated as mere treachery. Thus
repelled, the Pope concluded a treaty of neutrality with
Francis, and was classed by Charles as among his an
tagonists. When the first pale sunbeams of 1525, therefore,
touched the peaks of the Alps, Francis naturally thought
himself the darling of fortune, and believed that no
enterprise was too hard for his puissance. The
pasquinaders of Rome assured the world, in phrases
witty, that Pescara and Lannoy, Charles's generals, had,
with their army, lost themselves among the north Italian
hills. Francis doubtless enjoyed the joke, and mani
fested his scorn for the Spaniards by resolving, even
while the siege of Pavia was on his hands, to stretch
out his sword across Italy and pierce into the Nea
politan domains of his rival. On this mission marched
John Stuart, Duke of Albany, with 6,000 men. They
marched without resistance from Charles's commanders
— a signal proof, we may be sure, in the eyes of the
brilliant Roman pasquinaders, that Lannoy and Pescara
were indeed as helpless as babes lost in a wood.
Meanwhile, unobserved by Francis, " clouded with

ON THE. ST AGE OF HISTORY. 449
his own conceit," but presumably in communication
with the babes in the wood, there approached the
French camp a formidable body of armed men. The
Imperialists, under Lannoy and Pescara, then assumed
the offensive, and on the twenty-fourth of February
fought the great battle of Pavia. Francis performed
prodigies of valour, and his army, with the exception
of a body of Swiss, fought bravely, but his defeat was
complete and tremendous. Ten thousand fell, including
many persons of high rank. Francis was made prisoner.
Here, then, was a bouleversement — a topsy-turvying
of all plans and calculations. Charles himself appears
to have been " astonied for one hour " — and to have felt
the grandeur of his position to be overpowering. Thus,
at all events, may be interpreted the elaborate show of
moderation with which he received the tidings. " With
out uttering one word expressive of exultation, or of
intemperate joy, he retired immediately into his chapel,
and having spent an hour in offering up his thanks
givings to heaven, returned to the presence-chamber,
which by that time was filled with grandees and foreign
ambassadors, assembled in order to congratulate him."
Amid the storm of compliments his demeanour was
loftily meek. He descanted in an edifying manner on
the instability of greatness, expressed sympathy for
his royal prisoner, and forbade public rejoicings for a
victory won by Christians over Christians. But even
the indulgent Robertson admits that Charles was in
part play-acting, and the sequel proves that the occasion
ministered to his ambition and his pride. In short, he
d d

450 MARTIN LUTHER.
was pausing, and concentrating himself for future
efforts. All the world felt the shock of the battle of, Pavia.
In England Henry was startled to see Charles tower
suddenly into unapproached ascendency. France was
filled with consternation and distress ; but if Louise of
Savoy had the caprice and sentimentality of a brilliant
woman she had the ability of an extraordinary man,
and helmed her son's affairs in his absence with a
stronger arm than his own. It was the Medicean vice
gerent of' Christ, however, the politic, too clever Cle
ment, who was most sharply taken aback. What
should he do ? Francis had been struck down, and no
man could have a finer appreciation of the rule of avoid
ing a falling friend like a falling knife than the Macchia
vellian Pope. His first impulse was to enter into
negotiations with Charles, asking for certain advan
tages, and advancing money, of which Charles was
always in want. Lannoy, complaisant enough until
the money was paid and distributed irrecoverably among
the troops, now informed Clement that the Emperor
would not accept his terms. He fell back, therefore,
on the alternative scheme of plotting against Charles, a
course which indeed commended itself to him on general
grounds, for he extremely dreaded the attainment of
complete ascendency by the Emperor in Italy.
And now it would be much to our purpose to follow
Clement into the dusky labyrinth of conspiracy and in
trigue, for thus we should furnish ourselves with data
of high importance on which to base our estimate of the

ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY. 451
wisdom or unwisdom, the Christian fidelity to righteous
ness or the unchristian hardness, of Martin Luther
when he came to consider projects of conciliation between
the Papacy, headed by Clement, and the Reformation
centred in Wittenberg. For Luther the Papacy was
not a theory but a fact, and we learn what kind of fact
it was by becoming acquainted with the practical ethics
which, under the auspices of Clement, were in vogue
in Italy in 1525. But we are under no necessity of
lingering long in a region so haggard and graceless, and
one sample of pontifical conspiracy must suffice.
Clement's grand ally in the plot in question was
Morone, Chancellor of the Duchy of Milan, a statesman
of fourscore, but still clear and keen in all operations of
the mind. The object of the confederates was to
induce Pescara to turn traitor, and to aim the deadliest
blows at the Imperial cause while still figuring in the
world's eye as its armed defender. Morone artfully
represented to Pescara that Charles had treated the
latter with ingratitude, and enlarged on the splendid
reward that would be his if the Imperial power in Italy
were broken. The infantry of Spain, invincible in the
field, might, suggested Morone, be gradually but effec
tually got rid of if they were posted by Pescara in
small detachments in the villages, to be cut off in detail
by the peasantry. Pescara listened to these proposals,
but declined to return an immediate answer, having
some doubts as to the safety of such proceedings, from
a religious point of view, even under sanction of the
Pope. Morone and Clement succeeded, however, in
d d 2

452 MARTIN LUTHER.
removing his scruples, and he announced his willingness
to be their instrument.
Some little time had been indispensable for bringing
matters to this point, and it was arranged that a" final
interview should take place between Pescara and Morone
at Novara, in order to bring the treaty to a conclusion.
Pescara received the Italian in a tapestried chamber,
and they went once again over all the essential parts
of the grave and delicate undertaking. At length
Morone rose to take leave. One can imagine the smile
of lofty satisfaction mantling over his venerable counten
ance as he reflected on the skill with which he had
succeeded in beguiling the famous soldier. Then the
folds of the tapestry opened, and disclosed the form of
Antonio de Leyva, Charles's Governor of Pavia. Placed
behind the arras, he had heard the whole conversation,
and now arrested Morone in the Emperor's name.
No sooner had Pescara got the threads of the con
spiracy fairly in hand than he laid the matter before the
Emperor, and received his instructions as to how he
should proceed. He had been told to carry on the
intrigue until a favourable moment arrived for entrap
ping Morone. The vicar of Christ, therefore, was again
badly checkmated.
Warned by the Morone plot, as well as other cir
cumstances too many for mention, of the formidable
dangers by which he was encompassed, the Emperor,
before releasing his royal prisoner, not only imposed
hard conditions on Francis, but bound him by the most
solemn oaths to observe them. The treaty of Madrid

ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY. 453
was concluded between captor and captive, and in March,
1526, Francis was once more in his own dominions.
Indomitable, vigilant, and energetic, Pope Clement took
heart of grace at this turn of affairs. Before the end
of May he had organised another league having for its
object to depress the power of Charles. By a treaty
signed at Cognac the members pledged themselves to
stand by each other. It was called the Holy Alliance,
as many have since been, respecting which the rule of
lucus a non lucendo may be said to have been followed
in the choice of an epithet. In this instance the name
was perhaps more directly due to the part of prime
importance played in its councils by his Holiness the
Pope. As lord of the consciences of men, Clement
absolved Francis from his oaths and subscriptions to
the treaty of Madrid. This fact stands indelible on
the historic page, and it is but one of many such re
corded of the Macchiavellian Pontiff. To this point
had the mixing-up of temporal and spiritual authority
brought the Papacy in 1526< We are to remember
the fact when we deplore Luther's narrowness in calling
the Pope Antichrist.
Francis did not prove an efficient ally. He was
hampered by the circumstance that his sons remained
as hostages in the Emperor's hands. The confederates
found, moreover, that the Italian art of diplomatic lying
did not promote cohesion, harmony, and force in their
operations. A great Imperialist army of Spaniards,
Germans, Swiss, and Italians advanced into Italy and
marched for Rome. On the sixth of May the city was

454 MARTIN LUTHER.
taken by storm. An army of rude and furious soldiers,
intent on plunder, poured into the city. The scene of
pillage and devastation that followed was appalling.
Churches, palaces, convents, monuments of antiquity,
were involved in a common ruin. Though no great
number fell in the assault, yet, first and last, a large
number of all ages and both sexes were slain. Robert
son avers that Rome, though taken and sacked by
Huns, Vandals, and Goths, never suffered so severely
as when given over for a prey to the army of Charles.
" Never," according to Ranke, " did a richer booty fall
into the hands of a more violent host. Never was there
a more protracted, persistent, destructive plundering."
Luther heard of these things with awe-struck amaze
ment at the judgments of God. "Rome," he said,
" has been miserably laid waste ; Christ ordaining that
the Kaiser who, in behalf of the Pope, was to have
struck down Luther, should in behalf of Luther strike
down the Pope." Clement remained Charles's captive.
While Pope and Emperor had been bedewing the
Italian fields and the battlements and streets of Rome
with blood, in their fierce conflict of physical force and
godless machinations, the. work of reform was going on
apace in Germany. John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse,
and the high-minded princes, nobles, and congregations
that took part with them, pushed steadily forward the
two-fold enterprise of restoring primitive Christianity
on the model of the New Testament, and of making
room for it as a recognised and legalised form of
Divine worship in Germany.

ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY. 455
In the first part of this operation Luther was the
guiding and governing spirit. The princes listened to
him, deferred to him, obeyed him with deliberate recog
nition of his call from God to reform the Church; and
he desired no more conspicuous or shining tasks (nor
could any tasks be found more congenial to his spirit)
than those of preaching the Gospel, fitting the truth
to words of catechetical instruction so simple that every
child could understand them, helping congregations to
find pastors and arrange their affairs, and, above all,
translating the Scriptures.
In what we may somewhat vaguely define as the
international parts of the twofold enterprise, Luther
took much less interest. But the princes, to their credit,
were vigilant and energetic in their public champion
ship of the Gospel cause ; and they deftly availed them
selves of the opportunity presented by the furious strife
between Charles and Clement to obtain for the Re
formed Church a place among German institutions. At
length, in the Diet of Spires, on the 27th of August,
1526, they succeeded in practically attaining their object.
The Edict of Worms, which had so long hung as a fiery
portent and menace of coming wrath in the political
firmament of Germany, was not swept finally from the
heavens, but it was veiled in softening clouds of com
promise and reservation. Comprehensive and final
adjustment of the matters in dispute was referred to
a General Council. In the meantime — this was the
new and the vital point— all concerned were to inter
pret and apply the Worms Edict in such manner as

456 MARTIN LUTHER.
they deemed most consistent with due consideration
for the authority of God and the majesty of the Kaiser.
Decorously but effectively the famous instrument was
thus set aside. The proceeding looked like a mere
ceremonial entombment, but it proved almost equivalent
to a real burial.

CHAPTER II.
LUTHER AT HOME  KATIE's GUARDIANSHIP  DOGMATIC
PETRIFACTION — CORRESPONDENCE — LETTER TO MARY
QUEEN OF HUNGARY.
While the holy city of the Papacy is being sacked by
Christians ; while Clement rushes panic-stricken from
vain prayers in the church of St. Peter to take refuge
in the fort of St. Angelo ; while German soldiers,
throwing into the tragic uproar some rude touch of
comic humour, parade the streets in the garb of
cardinals, and shout, in the church just quitted by
Clement, "Long live Pope Luther!" we shall turn
from the Tiber to the Elbe, and see how it fares in the
convent dwelling of him who presented at that hour the
most accurate counterpart afforded by Christendom to
those popes of early Rome who took precedence of their
brother bishops by virtue of that natural Divine right
which assigns the task and the honour of leading to
those who are pre-eminently men of light.
Our Evangelical pontiff is in a thriving condition.
Katie mounts guard over him with civilising potency,
endeavouring, for one thing, to develop in him that
trait of civilised men — a sense of property. Her notion

458 MARTIN LUTHER.
is fixed that when nice things — shapely and sightly cups
or vases, for example — are given to her husband, they
ought to remain to ornament their modest quarters,
and not be handed, according to Martin's wont, to the
first man who showed vehement admiration for them.
Luther announces to a correspondent, in the beginning
of a letter of May, 1526,* that he is sending, by the
messenger who is to take the letter, one of the afore
said articles to his friend ; but lo ! before finishing,
he is forced to confess that the insidiatrix Ketha, his
cunning preceptress in political economy, had got wind
of his intention, and, cum peter em, transtulerat illud,
when he looked for it, she had put it out of sight. He
made a noise, but everybody was in Katie's plot ; and
her state of health exacted tender treatment. Wait till
her health improves, donee puerperio liberetur, and she
brings the article again to light ; then will he seize it
and send it off. I have not heard that this occasion
presented itself. Insidiatrix Ketha !
Martin, though he could make some show of storm
ing, felt in his heart that Katie was on these points
right. He tells Nicholas Hausmann, for example, with
evident satisfaction, that the glass which Hausmann,
having adorned it with his own hand, had given to
Luther as a keepsake, would have been " extorted "
from him had not she stuck to it "tooth and nail."
The inestimable feminine quality of thrift, whose
preciousness in the pastor's household he had not failed
to accentuate when it came before him in connection
* De Wette, 297.

LUTHER AT HOME. 459
with the cruel wickedness of clerical celibacy, he had
now opportunity of personally experiencing.
In due course the delicacy of health which had be
spoken extra tenderness for Katie reached the expected .
climax. On the 7th of June, 1526, about a year after
the marriage, she was delivered of a son. In the whole
matter of his marriage Luther had been influenced by
constant mental reference to his father, and he named
his first-born John. We have a letter from Martin of
the following day, in which he piously records the
occurrence — piously but briefly, for he must break off
suddenly, as the sick wife is calling him to her bedside.
" Fordert mich die kranke Kathe — my sick Katie calls
me." A few days afterwards he writes to Spalatin, who
has been sending congratulations. The calm, deep joy
of which, every day since the birth of his son, he has
been becoming more conscious, now overflows in glow
ing words. He describes himself as a glad husband on
whom the best and most charming of wives has bestowed
a little son, a Johnny Luther. With the blessing and
wonderful grace of God, he accepts, he says, the solemn
trust involved in becoming a father. He pleads for a
visit. Will not Spalatin come and have a look at
the memorials of their old familiarity and friendship ?
Things old and things new are to be seen. In this year
of happy omens — so strongly contrasted with the year
of Peasant War and heartrending agitation that pre
ceded it — Luther has learned to occupy himself with
labours which physic the pain of mental weariness. " I

460 MARTIN LUTHER.
have planted," he says, "a garden. I have built a
fountain." Fit achievements for a primitive Bishop
and Papa, who has called back Christendom to the sim
plicities of home religion. " Come," he concludes, with
a true touch of lyric poetry, " and you will be crowned
with lilies and roses." *
It is a significant note of this year of bettering that
he gave himself and the Papists a " respite," as Secken-
dorf f calls it. We find also, with lively pleasure, that
he is once more on friendly terms with Carlstadt. He
and Katie, with Melanchthon and Jonas, stood sponsors
for Carlstadt's son, and made merry with him on the
occasion at his farm in the vicinity of Wittenberg. It
was by Luther's special entreaty, acceded to with very
great difficulty, and against the influence of the entire
Court, that the Elector had been induced to let Carl
stadt return to the district. J
But his theological dogmatism does not abate. He
presents a face of relentless antipathy to all who accept
any modification of his doctrine of the Eucharist.
When any who desire his friendship avow that, for
them, the eating of Christ's flesh in the Supper means
only spiritual eating, he tells them with candid sharp
ness that he can have no fellowship with them. His
tone is not acrimonious. It is rather that of affectionate
sadness. But it is decisive. "I entreat you, if my
wish is of any weight with you, to give up vour soul-
destroying opinion and cease to propagate pestilence
in the Church. If you are given over to your error,
* De Wette, 805. f Quoted hy Worsley. J De Wette, 810.

LUTHER AT HOME. 461
continue to work mischief as far as Christ lets you.
But I will hold to the simple sense of the words. Look
you to it. I am innocent of your blood, and of the blood
of those whom you lead to perdition. Farewell; return
to a sane mind, or cease to call us brothers, or to have
fellowship with us in any Christian appellation." *
Could anything be more sad? He had put his foot
down. You might as well reason with Mont Blanc.
It cost him more effort to be coldly steadfast against
those who took the spiritual view of the sacrament than
to stand firm against the Pope. He was constrained
to admit that some of the Zwinglians were good men.
(Ecolampadius impressed him with a specially vivid realis
ation of fine and noble manhood of the Christian type.
But even against (Ecolampadius, though amazed, he stood
firm. " I grieve from my heart for (Ecolampadius; such
a man taken captive by frivolities and argumenta
tive nonentities, and led away into that sacrilegious
sect ! " f In this same letter, preceding not inappro
priately his woe-begone reference to the apostasy of
(Ecolampadius, there are words of misgiving as to the
general course of Divine Providence. "Christ,"- says
Luther to Hausmann, " begins to weary of the course
of this world; and therefore hands it over to Satan,
that vengeance be taken for the ineffable contempt
shown to the Gospel of Grace, in one place by raging
heresies, in another by the clash of hostile armies and
the fall of mighty kings." For his part, he is con
vinced that the Day of Judgment is " at the door." In
* De Wette, 814. t De Wette, 819.

462 MARTIN LUTHER.
a somewhat later letter to the same correspondent he
recurs to this last idea of war and uproar heralding the
crack of doom. " Such a fervour, such an ardour, such
a movement, such a falling, such a rushing, such a
raging," fill, he says, the air, " that only the advent of
the great God can quell the tumult." *
All this has a deep significance for the purposes of
our biography. It means that Luther's work, in its
essentials as an original contribution to the intellectual
and moral progress of mankind, was well-nigh done.
Prometheus snatches no second fire-germ from the
celestial altars. One man does but one man's life-work,
be it an average man's or a hero's, a dwarf's or a giant's.
Few among those whose names are " full -welling
fountain-heads of change " have done so much to impel
the race onward as Luther ; yet are there few, if any,
of the great men of history, in whose case the limitations
of the work done, and of the capacity to do it, are more
distinctly marked. One cannot help being struck,
moreover, with the suddenness of the end. The crystal
lising process took place quickly. In the Wartburg,
in the beginning of 1521, his moral nature was com
parable to a molten mass, capable apparently of much
flowing and changing; in the autumn of 1526 — the
period of these letters— the crystallisation had occurred,
and the lately fluent mass presented a surface of
adamant. It is not easy to treat of this stage in Luther's
spiritual history without seeming to fall into incon-
* De Wette, 822.

LUTHER AT HOME. 463
sistency and contradiction. It affords matter for con
gratulation ; it affords matter for tears. Nothing can be
surer than that the promise of the Reformation might
have been wrecked if Luther had not stilled the tumult
of the Zwickau prophets, and barred the gateways
of civilisation against the flaming insanities of Miinzer.
But those terrible conflicts cost him dear. He had
struggled with spectres and overcome ; but the shock
had told with paralysing efficacy upon his own powers
of hope, enthusiasm, and original thought. The distress
occasioned him by severance from those with whom he
had first undertaken the enterprise of reform was heart
breaking — had it not been for Katie and the sacred
calm of married love his heart might have been broken.
But his faith, though terribly tried, stood the test.
Always, in consoling others, he recurs to what was his
own mainstay — the fact that the Apostles had been con
fronted by false brethren as well as he. We may well
wonder, however, that it did not occur to Martin to ask
whether there is any New Testament warrant for re
garding and treating as a heretic one who believed
Christ's presence in the bread and wine of the Supper to
be spiritual instead of corporeal. If the Bible must be
taken as the basis of Church unity — which is Luther's
view — it surely follows that no interpretation of Scrip
ture which can be held by a reverent, sane, and candid
reader ought to exclude that reader from the fellowship
of Christians. Who made one man judge of another
man's honesty ? If we are ever to have full advantage
of what Luther did for us, we shall agree that neither

464 MARTIN LUTHER.
the view of Christ's presence in the Supper taken by
Thomas Aquinas, nor the view taken by Martin Luther,
nor the view taken by Ulrich Zwingli, can disentitle
any man to the name of Christian brother.
Luther, however, like Elijah and many other men of
the prophetic order, was much in the dark as to the
scope of the work in which he was engaged, and as to
the way in which it was to be utilised for humanity. He
stood aghast at the divisive potencies of the Protest
antism he had evoked ; but those divisive potencies,
surging out in a thousand channels, branching out in a
thousand directions, have been the life of modern
Europe. We revert, therefore, without oppressive
despondency, to his operations in that limited yet
extensive Pontificate whose central altar was Katie's
household fire, Pope Martin sitting by it with the Bible
at his elbow and Johnny on his knee, and whose
boundary was that vast and widening circle that had
now been reached by the illumination of the new Gospel
of Grace. Thus considered, his letter of this autumn of 1526
to Mary Queen of Hungary is not without interest.
Mary, sister of the Emperor Charles, had been given
in marriage to Lewis, King of Hungary. There, on
the far east of Christendom, where Cross and Crescent
were in actual strife, she dared to believe that
neither Pope nor Kaiser was so well instructed in
the meaning of Christianity as Martin Luther. She
exerted herself, against the strenuous opposition of the
bishops, in disseminating the Evangelical doctrines in

LUTHER AT HOME. 465
Hungary, Meanwhile the Crescent came flashing on,
the great Solyman invading Hungary with an army
estimated at three hundred thousand men. Lewis, in
discreetly brave, attempted to meet the enemy with a
force of thirty thousand. Worse still, he put his trust
in the confident generalship of Paul Tomorri, Archbishop
of Golocza and monk of the Franciscan order, and was
hurried by him into the battle of Mohacz, in which
himself and upwards of twenty thousand men were slain.
Under these circumstances our primitive Pope wrote to
the widowed Queen, as a fellow-worker in the Christian .
vineyard and an afflicted member of his flock. He
accompanied the letter with his exposition of four of
the Psalms, in which he bids her find consolation, as
well as admonition to continue " alert and glad of heart,
frisch und frbhlich," in the service of the Lord. He
encourages her to believe that the calamity which has
overtaken her has been sent in grace, not in anger,
reminding her of a heavenly Bridegroom, better than he
whom she has lost, whose kind angels will hover beside
her and take care of her. This of the companionship
and tendance of angels is by no means a common train
of thought with Martin, but none could be more beauti
fully appropriate to the present occasion. From the
sympathy of angels he rises to a still higher source of
consolation, the sympathy of God. No one, he says,
can sympathise with sorrow as God can, for God in
Christ knows sorrow as no man can know it. Nor is
there any disaster on earth that cannot be lightly borne
by one who knows that he possesses God's love. On
e e

466 MARTIN LUTHER.
the other hand, " he who has no sense of this love
cannot be truly cheerful, though he swim in a sea of
worldly pleasure and delight." *
Surely it was a lovely relationship that subsisted
between this Papa and his spiritual children — one- that
casts a light of revealing sweetness both into the far
past explaining the origin, and into the far future be
tokening the possibilities, of a true Divine-right primacy
among Christian brother-bishops. Queen Mary, as she
read this letter, which in its home-bred old German
comes closer to the heart than can be shown in English,
must have felt that God's hand was wiping the tears
from her eyes. * De Wette, 826.

CHAPTER III.
LUTHER AND ELECTOR JOHN — THE NEW SAXON CHURCH 
NATIONAL CHURCHES.
It could not fail to be an immense comfort and further
ance to Luther that there was now no cloud between
him and his sovereign Prince. The new Elector, the
magnanimous, noble, and valiant John, was animated
by a positive enthusiasm for the Gospel such as had
never quite realised itself in Frederick. He took it for
the purpose of his life to promote the cause of God's
truth in his own dominions and throughout Germany,
choosing as his heraldic motto and blazon among
princes the famous phrase, F'erbum Domini manet in
eternum, the Word of the Lord endureth for ever ;
which, on signet-ring and battle banner, could be
abbreviated into V.D.M.I.E.
The work of reformation, therefore, did not halt.
But there were difficulties inherent in the subject with
which even Luther, seconded by John, found it hard to
cope. We have a letter* from the former to the latter,
of November 22nd, 1526, which falls like a beam of
direct solar illumination into the general historic
dimness of the old Saxon world of the period. To
* De Wette, 828.
e e 2

468 MARTIN LUTHER.
transform the parish priests of the Papal regime into
pastors of the Protestant type involved changes both in
themselves and their congregations, implying such
growth of mind and heart as neither a prince could
command, nor a primitive Pope, who disclaimed all
power to work miracles, could improvise. A gradual
elevation and bettering in spiritual respects — in intelli
gence, information, general intellectual and moral
standing — was necessary to men who depended no
longer on their mystical gifts as a priesthood, their
power to perform worship and dispense salvation, but on
their effectiveness in preaching the Gospel. This last
expression must always, under Protestant institutions,
be equivalent, or nearly equivalent, to conducting the
spiritual education of the people. But many of the old
Popish priests were incapable of exercising any educa
tional influence upon adult humanity. Hence visitation,
inquiry, weeding out, proved indispensable, and could
not help being, in a considerable proportion of instances,
not joyous but grievous.
The congregations gave as much dissatisfaction as
the parish priests, or indeed more. The peasants were
stiffly refractory in the matter of contributing to the
maintenance of their pastors. Naturally so. The
rudest peasant understands that if a priest can certify
his admittance into heaven for some irreducible minimum
of coin, the ware is worth the money. Small as each
contribution is, yet, when made by a large number, the
combined result will be considerable, and the arrange
ment will work indifferently well . both for priest and

LUTHER AND ELECTOR JOHN. 463
people. But it would not be easy to excogitate a plan
more exquisitely adapted to keep down the level of
culture both in people and priest. And the average
peasant, who has been accustomed to pay for his
salvation as he pays for his pipe and his beer, by
minute dribblets of which he does not feel the pinch,
will find it sharply irksome to have to pay in larger
individual amounts, though at longer intervals, for the
ideal and not entirely unquestionable advantage of a
weekly, or bi-weekly, or tri-weekly sermon. Luther
had to own in plaintive terms to the Elector that
the peasants downrightly refused to pay their pastors.
Such thankless unconcern for the " holy Word of God "
portended, he thought, some great judgment on the
land. So dark was his mood on the subject, so ireful
as well as melancholy, that, could he but reconcile such
a course to his conscience, he would, he says, leave then'
to their own devices, without priest or pastor, " to live
as swine, which in fact they do." The freedom of the
Gospel, glorious and pure, they wanted to turn into
mere animal exemption from law. The ban of the
Papacy being removed, they had neither the fear of God
nor regard for morals before their eyes, but did every
man as seemed good in his own sight. This state of
things might be let alone were it not for the children.
But the little ones must have preaching and teaching,
church and school. "If the parents are stubbornly
wilful they must just go to the devil." But if the
children are neglected the country will become full of
moral savages, and the authorities will be guilty of

470 MARTIN LUTHER.
gross neglect of duty both towards God and towards
posterity. The duty of the governing part of nations
to educate the young is here unflinchingly laid down by
Martin Luther.
What, then, is to be done ? This is the statesman's
question, and Luther answers it with a comprehensive
discernment of essentials, and a decisive disregard of
non-essentials, attesting once more his practical and
organising genius. Waiving the attempt to draw lines
of theoretic demarcation between the civil and the
spiritual provinces, he points to the fact that in the
sudden crash and downfall of the old Popish arrange
ments a large amount of property, in the shape of con
ventual and other foundations, has come into the hands
of the authorities, that is to say, in the last resort, of the
Elector. The duty and the burden (die Pflicht und
Beschwerde) of directing the use to be made of the pro
perty rests with his highness. Luther has discussed the
matter with the principal functionaries of the court, and
the advice he tenders to the Elector is brief.
A Commission of Visitation shall be appointed, con
sisting of four persons, to traverse the country and make
the necessary dispositions. Two of the four shall attend
specially to the temporalities, seeing to it that revenues
devoted hitherto to spiritual purposes shall not be
diverted to secular uses. The other two shall deal with
matters of doctrine and moral character, taking care that
pastors and schoolmasters are fit for their offices.
Of the principles and methods in accordance with
which the two spiritual commissioners were to determine

LUTHER AND ELECTOR JOHN. 471
"the competence of preachers and teachers he does not
on this occasion speak. But he glances at the main
aspects of the problem of temporalities. First, he takes
up the case of those towns and villages which are rich
enough to maintain their own churches and schools.
These the Elector is to compel to do so. If the in
habitants are heedless of their own salvation, the prince
is the guardian of the young and of all who need his
help. He is to enforce contributions as frankly as he
does those that go to build bridges and mend highways.
But there are localities which, either from indigence, or
from being otherwise burdened up to the limit of their
capability, are unable to support the minister and the
schoolmaster. Recourse must in such instances be had
to the properties annexed to convents. They were
originally, it is to be presumed, intended for the spiritual
benefit of the common man, and they are still to be
used for that purpose. It is plain that a bitter outcry
would be raised, and justifiably raised, if church and
school were allowed to fall into decay while the nobles
appropriated the conventual properties — as they now
propose to do, and have in some cases actually done.
If any surplus remains after church and school have
been provided for, it will be the duty of the prince to
lay it out in the service of the public, or to apply it to
the maintenance of the poor.
Could anything be more simple ? And yet the few
sentences in which Luther offers his counsel on the
subject comprise a sketch of the entire process by which
the Reformed and National Church of Saxony arose.

472 MARTIN LUTHER.
With a minimum of change from the past, a minimum of
invention for the present, a minimum of novelty and
artificiality of any kind, the wise gardener grafts the new
branch on the old tree.
Without quite knowing it — working, that is to say,
as a half-unconscious instrument of providential evolu
tion — Luther did, in this simple fashion, a very notable
thing. Until now there had not been in Christendom
what moderns mean by a National Church. Persons
who have never breathed the atmosphere of other ages '
talk with glib assurance of the continuity, the historical
unity, of this or that modern Church. These people
start from a misconception. Until the Reformation
there was no Church of Saxony, no Church of France,
no Church of England. As single letters have some
times denoted profound differences in dogmatic theology,
so have profound differences in ecclesiastical position
been denoted by words of one syllable. There it is in
this instance. During the mediaeval time there was the
Church in Saxony, not the Church of Saxony ; the
Church in England, not the Church of England. There
of course were Christian Churches in those countries,
but people never forgot that the term " Church " be
longed strictly to the totality of Christian Churches
throughout Christendom. The Apostolic ' usage, as
exhibited in many passages of the New Testament,
had been maintained, and men continued to think
and speak as St. Paul thought and spoke when re
ferring to the Churches in Galatia or the Churches in
Judaea. Christianism had not been narrowed into

LUTHER AND ELECTOR JOHN. 473
nationalism ; and we do injustice, bitter injustice, to
mediaeval Christendom and the Latin Church if we
refuse to acknowledge this great fact.*
To the large view of the unity of the Christian
Church Luther never took exception ; but he had
absolutely satisfied himself, from Scripture and from
history, that by usurpation and corruption the Papacy
had forfeited the right, and lost the 'power, to represent
the unity of Christendom. The duty to his hand was
not to draft a scheme for the reconstitution of Christen
dom, but to make the best possible use of the means
and appliances available in Saxony for maintaining the
ordinances of religion and the moral education of the
people. The National Church had become one of the
practical necessities of the moment. It never seems to
have occurred to Luther to doubt that the organising
of such institutions was included within the Christ-
given freedom of Christian men and Christian nations.
" All things are lawful unto me." But he worked as
much as possible on old lines. By successive visitations,
by weeding out and humanely pensioning off parish
priests of shady character or intellectual incapacity,
by encouraging good men, and providing a modest
maintenance for all, the Saxon Church was brought
into reasonable efficiency. Elector John was of will
ing mind, but he sometimes fell short in force and
firmness, and the importunate energy and sleepless
* Since writing these sentences I haTe read and carefully considered
Lord Selbome's advocacy of a different view in a recent book, but I have
not a shadow of doubt that he is mistaken.

474 MARTIN LUTHER.
vigilance of Luther were requisite to help him to
overpower the resistance of worldly, greedy, apathetic
courtiers. The circumstances of the case were such
that Luther did not feel himself called upon to work
out in theory the complex and difficult problem of
the relation between Church and State. Entertaining
decided opinions as to the strictly Divine jurisdiction
of the civil power, he had no scruple in using John's
authority in all ecclesiastical arrangements. On the
other hand, it seems never to have occurred to him as
a thing to be believed by national men that kings or
parliaments were Divinely qualified to determine the
meaning of Scripture, or entitled to impose upon con
gregations a uniform system of worship. It was his
business as a doctor of theology and a preacher of the
Gospel, and that of the spiritual representatives and
guides of congregations, to instruct kings in the doc
trines of the faith ; and with congregations it lay,
subject to the laws of decency and order, and distinctly
recognising that variety, when reverent and comely,
is preferable to uniformity, to arrange methods of
worship. Luther's own leanings were to the conservative side
in Church matters. In Hesse the Evangelicals were
more boldly democratic than in Saxony. Philip, im
petuous and thorough-going in all things, had a
repugnance to the Episcopal order far keener than
Luther's. The V.D.M.I.E. of Elector John's motto
he jestingly translated into Verbum diaboli manet in
episcopis, The word of the devil remains in bishops.

LUTHER AND ELECTOR JOHN. 475
*
But the essentials of congregational liberty, both with
reference to the calling of pastors and the adoption
of ceremonies, were very safe in Luther's hands. It
is impossible to read his letters on the process by
which the Roman Catholic churches in Saxony were
transformed into the Protestant Church of Saxony
without being reminded of Cromwell's machinery for
promoting efficiency and purity in the Commonwealth
Church. Cromwell's Courts of Triers might have been
modelled, and very probably were modelled, on Luther's
Commissions of Visitation. And all parties,, even amid
the furious rancours of Cromwell's time, admitted
that his methods of promoting pastoral efficiency were
successful. The particulars of the organisation of the Saxon
Church belong, to Saxon history, and must not detain us
here. The entire arrangement of National Churches,
which followed upon the main lines of the Saxon
precedent, has often been called in question. That
it has obscured one or two of the fundamental ideas
of Christianity — blunting the sense of human and
Christian brotherhood, and narrowing the Church of
the world into the Church of this or that nation —
admits of no dispute. Seldom, in the interminable
battle of controversialists, has a more powerful or a
more legitimate bolt been hurled than the famous one
of Dr. Newman when, in retiring from the Church of
England, he pronounced it a mere " national institu
tion." But national institutions may open their win
dows to receive the cosmopolitan, Christian light. The

476 MARTIN LUTHER.
modern State- Church was a genuine birth of historical
evolution. The time had come for it. The centralised.
administration of Rome had been a failure. The
nations of Christendom wanted Home Rule in spiritual
things. The time may now be approaching when
National Churches, in their sixteenth - century form,
will be outgrown. Christian peoples, taking their
Churches out of the arms of those Kings and Queens
who have, in some measure, been their nursing fathers
and nursing mothers, may bear them up in their own,
and, in so doing, may regain, or more than regain, the
mediaeval idea of a united Christendom. It is unwise
either to inveigh against the founders and framers of
National Churches, or to claim for their arrangements
Divine right, universal fitness, and perennial endur
ance. They were expedients, suggested by the con
ditions and requirements of the time, practically in
evitable, necessarily imperfect, but naturally evolved
and worthy of honour. Compare them with the
artificial ecclesiasticisms of which the world has of
late had samples, — with the Church of the Eire Supreme,
or the ecclesiastical system got up with immense parade
by the First Napoleon, or the quaint Catholicism of
Comte and Mr. Frederic Harrison, — and the difference
will be perceived between true products of historical
evolution and their counterfeits.

CHAPTER IV.
THE HISTORIC STAGE AGAIN  CHARLES AND CLEMENT MAK
ING IT UP  SECOND DIET OF SPIRES— PROTESTANTS.
With his Bible at his elbow and the Elector at his beck,
and Katie for house-angel — Katie who finds in the
cares and joys occasioned by Johnny a new sermon
every morning on the blessedness of marriage and the
nonsense of monasticism — the Pope of Wittenberg may
safely be left to his devices, while we revert briefly to
an uncompleted subject, and turn the magic lantern of
history upon the Pope of Rome.
A prisoner in the hands of Charles, Clement did
not despair. If he fell short in practical insight and
promptitude, his ingenuity in plotting was inexhaust
ible, and his clear, capacious, Medicean brain overlooked
nothing in the most complicated situation. His Italian
allies, supposing his fall to be irretrievable, had found
consolation in eagerly seizing his accessible effects. The
Venetians appropriated Ravenna and others of his towns
— was it not well, said those pious men, to look after
such places, when his afflicted Holiness could not ? The
Dukes of Urbino and Ferrara followed their example.
Florence was his own peculiar town, the seat of his
House. He had established its government in the

478 MARTIN LUTHER.
hands of the Cardinal di Cortona, and valued the posses
sion of it more than that of Rome. The people now
rose upon the Cardinal, hurled the Medicean statues
from their pedestals, and proclaimed those liberties
which they prized so dearly, and for which Savonarola
had pleaded with the dying Lorenzo. In Italy was no
help for Clement; and he had opportunity to master,
once for all, the fact that elaborate leagues and coali
tions, constructed on the principles of Macchiavelli's
Prince, that is to say, without the element of conscience,
are not to be depended on.
Henry of England, however, and, still more, the
King of France, were alarmed at the astounding im
portance of Charles ; and though nearly a year dragged
on before the approach of an army under the banners of
France startled the Imperialists from their Roman prey,
still the knowledge that measures were being taken in
that quarter strengthened the hand of Clement in his
negotiations with the Emperor.
Charles was not unwilling to treat. He knew that
there was still a vast population sure to thrill with
indignant sympathy for a captive Pope ; and he was
himself too sincerely religious, too true a child of the
Church, to be altogether at rest with his foot on the
neck of the successor of St. Peter. As usual, too, he
was in straits for money, his Cortes having been chary
of supplies; and Clement, for all his troubles, was a
moneyed man. The Vicegerent of Christ agreed to pay
one hundred thousand crowns down, and an equal sum
in a fortnight. It illustrates rather curiously what has

THE HISTORIC STAGE AGAIN. 479
been said above, on the non-existence of National
Churches before the Reformation, that Clement could,
at this time, stipulate to bestow upon Charles one-tenth
of the ecclesiastical revenues of his patrimonial Spain.*
When kings and peoples believe, in very truth, that a
man carries at his girdle the keys of hell and of heaven,
they will not grudge him Peter's pence ; and even in
the last stage of its spiritual decay and moral decrepi
tude the Papacy could make monetary grants to an
Emperor. In what verse of Scripture the Vicegerent of Christ
was empowered to raise money, in order to buy himself
out of prison, by selling cures of souls, as he now did,
it would be difficult to discover. At all events, Clement
emerged from the prison of St. Angelo in the last days
of 1527, a wiser man than he entered it; and the friends
of reformation in Germany, the progress of which was
comparatively safe while Pope and Emperor were in
strife, might justly discern, in the circumstance of their
reconciliation, a looming in the distance of new peril
to themselves. But Clement, though enriched by his experience of
defeat and imprisonment, had not made up his mind to
throw himself wholly into the arms of Charles. One of
his first acts on regaining his liberty was to address a
letter of salutation to Lautrec the French general,
who, at the head of a powerful army, had marched into
Italy to contest the possession of the peninsula with the
Imperial commanders. From the Castle of St. Angelo
* One such fact suffices to dispose of Lord Selbome's theory.

480 MARTIN LUTHER.
Clement had sent to Henry of England such expressions
as encouraged him to hope that his marriage with Cathe
rine of Arragon might be annulled. But Henry was
remote, and Clement now refrained from sanctioning
the divorce of Catherine to avoid giving offence to her
nephew, the Emperor.
Meanwhile the cautious Pontiff watched the struggle
between the armies of Francis and Charles, of which
his beautiful Italy was the scene. He had strong
motives for wishing to maintain his alliance with
Francis. The French power was not likely to become
greater in Italy than might suffice to balance that of
Charles, whereas, if Francis were too completely extin
guished, Charles could absolutely impose his will upon
every State in the peninsula. It would doubtless in
any case remain possible for Clement, by adroit manage
ment, to influence the Emperor; but he would feel
himself in the position of a suppliant, or a courtier,
rather than in that of one who held the balance
between rival potentates ; and Clement, with his clear
Italian perceptions and his sensitive Medicean pride,
was quite the man to feel the force of this distinction.
During the year 1528, when at moments the star of
Francis was rising, Clement remained undecided. But
every month of time told in favour of the slow but
circumspect and patient Charles, over whom it was
easy to obtain advantage, but whom it was hard
indeed to beat. He was the best of masters, and
brilliant services were rendered him by men whom
insufferable slights, injustices, and neglects drove from

THE HISTORIC STAGE AGAIN. 481
the standard of Francis. The conflict between the
mighty rivals for the foremost place in Italy and the
world went on with varying fortune ; while the Pope of
Rome smiled alternately on this combatant and on that,
or, indeed, simultaneously on both, in so far as it was
possible for one face to wear two masks at the same
time ; and the Pope of Wittenberg, not caring much
for these things, gave himself to the ministering of the
Word and to prayer. At last the issue was determined.
Charles, constant in adversity, vigilant in prosperity,
triumphed over the fitfully energetic, unstable Francis.
The gallant Lautrec died, " lamenting the negligence of
his sovereign" and the precariousness of leagues. A
few thousand men, the remnant of that splendid host
which, beaconed by the spectacle of captured Rome,
had marched into the peninsula two years before, were
fain to " lay down their arms and colours, give up their
baggage, and march under a guard to the frontiers of
France." How thoroughly is the whole pageant of that year,
1528, erased from the memory of the present genera
tion ! And yet the effect of those events is not yet
exhausted ; nor would it be possible for anyone, without
forming some comprehension of them, to understand
how link added itself to link in the evolutionary chain
of modern history. For the Papal Vicegerent of
Christ no sooner perceived that victory was to perch
finally on the helm of Charles than he decided for the
stronger party ; suspended his smiling upon Francis, and
concentrated his attention on the task of ingratiating

482 MARTIN LUTHER.
himself with his rival. Anxious, like a Pope and an
Italian, to steal a march upon his allies, he set about
concluding on his own account the Treaty of Barcelona.
Among the peace-offerings which he placed upon the
altar of Charles one of the most conspicuous was the
decisive rejection of English Henry's application for a
divorce. Henry was one whom it was not safe to play
with, and his anger on finding that he had been
mocked burnt hot. He became thoroughly estranged
from the Pope, and transferred to himself in the course
of a few years the entire jurisdiction, spiritual as well
as temporal, which had been possessed by the Popes in
England. The English — countrymen of Wickliffe and
the Lollards — were not unprepared to receive the
Gospel; but no instinct has been more stubborn in
Englishmen than to do all things under sanction of
King and law. In formally breaking the yoke of the
Popes, therefore, from the neck of the English people,
Henry had done a memorable thing. True, he intended
the revolt to be from Roman jurisdiction, not from
Roman doctrine, but to exclude the authority and at
the same time safe-guard the doctrine proved imprac
ticable. Having Clement, in the negotiations attendant on
the conclusion of the Treaty of Barcelona, completely
in his power, Charles, who possessed a fine and far-
seeing perception of his own interest, discerned that
most might be made of the occasion by treating him
with indulgence. If you have a Pope among your
retainers it will not be politic to deprive him by

THE HISTORIC STAGE AGAIN. 483
contemptuous treatment of those prerogatives in
virtue of which his name is one to conjure with. All
the monarchs of that age — the circumstance is curiously
interesting to us moderns — were religious, though it
by no means followed that their religion made them
good men; and the religion of Charles was without
question sincere. He had not ceased to be a Roman
Catholic ; and it was not with an exclusively political
, object that he wished to see the general system of
Roman Catholic Christendom, of which himself and the
Pope were the pillars, restored and maintained. He
could not feel personally at ease so long as the spiritual
ban ofthe Pontiff rested upon him. A prominent con
dition, accordingly, in the pacification between Charles
and Clement was the granting of absolution by the
Pope to all who had been concerned in the capture and
sack of Rome. The Emperor, thus reconciled to the
Church, was to co-operate with Clement in setting
bounds to Lutheranism, and in recalling the Germans
to allegiance to the Holy See. But the concession
which, beyond all else, was dear to the successor of St.
Peter, the incarnation of Christ-like unworldliness, was
that in virtue of which Charles linked himself in bonds
of family relationship with Clement, by bestowing upon
Clement's nephew, Alexander de Medici, the hand of his
natural daughter. Such was the Treaty of Barcelona,
signed in June, 1529, by which the Vicegerent of Christ
cut in before his allies and secured golden terms for
himself. It was succeeded by a general accommodation
between Francis and Charles.
//2

484 MARTIN LUTHER.
These events could not but cast their shadow before.
The party of reaction and the party of reformation
in Germany had alike prepared for what was coming.
While Charles and Clement were arranging matters
in 1529, a new Diet was held at Spires, and the re
actionists exerted themselves to obtain a reversal of
that ordinance of the Diet of 1526 which had given
to the reformed doctrines a legal position in Germany.
Had it been possible, the Papist leaders would have
forced back the Diet on the old Edict of Worms, but
in this they were baffled. Then they took up another
line of defence and aggression. Where the Worms Edict
had been enforced, it was, they urged, to be maintained ;
but all further propagation of the reformed doctrines,
all religious innovation whatever, was to be forbidden,
pending the assemblage of a General Council. That is
to say, the friends of reformation were to accept defeat
where their adversaries declared themselves in the as
cendent, and at the same time to abjure all thought of
progress. This doom of arrest and paralysis — this imperious
mandate, " Hitherto shall ye come, but no further," —
could not be brooked by the followers of Luther. They
possessed the advantage of being admirably led. Philip
of Hesse supplied some elements of sound counsel that
were wanting in Luther himself. Bowing down, more
almost than was due, to the letter of Scripture, and find
ing the civil authority ordained of God, Luther regarded
with favour a doctrine which one might have held to
be specially repugnant to his sturdy individualism

THE HISTORIC STAGE AGAIN. 485
and rugged independence, the doctrine of passive
obedience. It was too much his notion that devout
Germans, if their Emperor commanded them to renounce
the truth, should simply die at the stake without a
murmur. God had committed the sword to Charles ; it
was not for his subjects to instruct him how to use it.
In the Empire, Philip was vassal to Charles, and Luther
scowled disapproval on the vassal whenever he mani
fested a disposition to resist his liege lord. Luther's
letters abound with expressions of annoyance and cen
sure in relation to the frank pugnacity of Philip. But
the latter had in fact apprehended a broader truth than
that on which his theological monitor insisted. He
also, as well as Charles, was a civil ruler ; he also was
commissioned by God to bear the sword; and if the
Emperor passed beyond the limits of his constitutional
authority, it was his right and duty, and the right and
duty of every other member of the Reich, to confront
the Imperial injustice in arms. As time went on,
Luther did not fail to appreciate the strength of this
contention ; but he never entered into it with an enthu
siasm even remotely comparable to that with which he
wielded what was, in his view, the distinctive and sole
instrument both of defence and aggression for Christians,
the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.
The most ripe and recent inquiries seem to prove
that it was about this very time, when the Evangelical
Princes and Free Cities of Germany were beginning to
put shoulder to shoulder and organise resistance, in
arms if necessary, to the Emperor and kthe Pope, that

486 MARTIN LUTHER.
Luther composed Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, & psalm
of trust in God, and in God only, as the protector of
Christians. He took no fervent interest, however, in
the Diet ; and Philip and his intrepid associates derived
little active support from him.
These were inflexibly determined that the decree of
the majority should not be assented to. Philip of
Hesse, John of Saxony, Markgraf George the Pious of
Brandenburg-Anspach, the Dukes of Lunenburg and
Brunswick, the Prince of Anhalt, and the representa
tives of Strasburg,. Niirnberg, and twelve other free
cities, entered a solemn protest against the Popish reso
lution. They were called PROTESTANTS. The
name, as is customary with names that- felicitously
express and embody facts, was caught up in Germany
and passed into every country in Europe and the world.
In the course of four centuries it has been garlanded
with associations of no ignoble kind ; and all, to this
hour, who claim that truth shall be unveiled, and that
no Pope, no Kaiser, shall congeal the ever-advancing
stream of progress and improvement, may take an
honourable pride in tracing their spiritual descent to
the intrepid Philip and the magnanimous and simple-
hearted John.

CHAPTER V.
THE MARBURG CONFERENCE — LUTHER AND ZWINGLI.
So far Philip and his noble-minded associates had been
successful. The Emperor — meaning well, almost heroic
in his highest moods, yet never quite rising out of the
region of grandiose halfness into steadfast vision of the
whole, the good, the true — and the subtle, scheming,
worldly-minded Pope, as they worked out their agree
ment of Barcelona, might- perceive, dimly arising in the
distance, like the cliffs of a grand new country showing
through mist, the organised and embattled power of
Protestant Germany.
But another and still more difficult, delicate, ideally
noble enterprise shaped itself before the ambition of
Philip — an enterprise in which even partial success
would entitle him to higher praise than the most
dazzling feats of warlike puissancy and prevalence.
An enterprise, we may add, which brings him and his
ambitions — his friends, opponents, and entire environ
ment — more closely home to us, in these last years of
the nineteenth century, than his strictly political and
military activities could possibly do. The problem of
Christian harmony is a problem of to-day ; the problem
of Protestant concord, apart from the larger question,

488 MARTIN LUTHER.
awaits solution at this hour ; and Philip of Hesse stands
forth among the men of his generation crowned with
the high honour of first erecting the banner of union
amid the clamour and clash of the great Protestant
awakening, and practically asking whether those who
professed themselves the servants and soldiers of Christ
might not be at peace with one another.
Between the formal presentation of the Protestant
claims at Spires, and the actual carrying out of the
Papal and Imperial machinations foreshadowed in the
Treaty of Barcelona, there intervened a breathing space
of several months. This breathing space it was that
Philip seized upon for his grand attempt to realise a
common programme for all who adhered to the Reform
ation cause. " Come," said he in effect, with the glow
of ingenuous hope and ardour on his young brow, " you
Luther, who are the captain of God's host in Germany,
and you Zwingli, who have answered so intrepidly from
the Alps to the German appeal, will you not, with
candid earnestness, face to face, compose your differ
ences, so that we laymen may exult in the light and
leadership of you both?" Could anything be more
reasonable ? And yet there were difficulties in the way.
For grave dissensions had arisen in the Protestant
ranks. The spiritual view of the Lord's Supper, as the true
and potent antidote to the pseudo-sacrificial manducation
of Christ's body and blood, met with assent so wide
spread and deliberate, and numbered among its adherents
divines so fervently religious, so evangelically zealous,

THE MARBURG CONFERENCE. 489
so scripturally learned, that the idea of branding it
with the name of heresy might well seem intolerable.
Philip's proposal was that the foremost representa
tives of the respective opinions should meet in confer
ence in his Hessian town of Marburg, and there,
candidly explaining, candidly questioning and answer
ing, endeavour, under his friendly and impartial
auspices, to arrive at agreement, or, were that impos
sible, to beat out, at least, a music to which both
parties might march in the Reformation campaign.
Luther had no heart for the scheme. Philip, nearly
twenty years his junior, struck him as an unquiet young
man whose impulsive activity was not duly ballasted
with judgment. The project of a grand anti-Papal
coalition he looked on with suspicion. From anything
like an appeal to the sword he now as always shrank,
telling Philip, as he had told Sickingen and Hutten,
that the weapons of the heavenly kingdom were not
carnal. Though sceptical, however, as to the probability
of success, he did not refuse to comply with Philip's
invitation to a conference. Frankly informing the
Landgrave that he expected little from the meeting,
he said, as frankly, that he would not put it in the
power of the Zwinglians to say truly that he was less
willing than they were for peace and amity. He made
warm acknowledgment, at the same time, of the noble
ness of Philip's motive in aiming at conciliation.
In the opening days of October, in the year 1529,
there was buzz of interest and excitement in Marburg.
The town, in which Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia had

490 MARTIN LUTHER.
once dwelt, is described by Carlyle's graphic pen as
" straggling up its rocky hill-edge towards its old
castles and edifices on the top in a not unpicturesque
manner; flanked by the river Lahn and its fertile
plain." Thither had wended Zwingli and (Ecolampa
dius from Switzerland, Bucer and Hedio from Stras
burg, Luther, Melanchthon, and Jonas from Wittenberg,
Myconius from Gotha. The magnanimous Philip took
them all into his castle, and gave them princely enter
tainment. Seldom has reigning personage played a part more
illustrious than that of Philip of Hesse on this occasion.
He enthusiastically appreciated and loyally honoured
Luther. But he felt that, since the Book of world-
religion had been thrown open to all readers, it would
be infinitely sad if men of reverence, men of sober
minds, men ingenuously desirous of knowing the truth,
could not help quarrelling about its meaning. And
though he did not presume to take up a dogmatic
position against the Lutheran divines, or experience any
difficulty in adjusting himself to acquiescence in the
tenet of a bodily presence, there is no reason to doubt
that the lucidity, simplicity, common sense of the
purely spiritual interpretation of Christ's words had
made a strong impression on his mind. Such was
Philip of Hesse ; one who deserved Zwingli's lofty
praise "as a most pious hero and Christian prince."
Luther, we may presume, appeared before Philip in
the black coat for which he had thanked the Elector
John in the previous August. A word may be due to

THE MARBURG CONFERENCE. 491
that letter as we pass. John had sent his dear Doctor
a present of clothes whose quality had seemed to the
latter almost incompatible with the homeliness befitting
a preacher's wear. Some friend of Luther's seems to
have asked the Elector to send those clothes, impelled
probably by the Doctor's threadbare appearance. In
the letter Luther begs the Elector to pay no attention
to people who say that he is in want of necessaries, but
¦ to wait until he himself applies. If officious friends
cut in between him and the Elector, he will become,
he says, shy to beg on behalf of others, far worthier of
help .than he. How beautiful in its antique honour
and goodness is this !
In relation to the main object of the gathering,
Luther's mood was harsh and hopeless. Not only was
he peremptory and dogmatic in condemning the views
of the Zwinglians on the sacrament, but disposed to
cherish suspicion of their general orthodoxy. Melanch
thon, too, was cautious, timorous — not frank and con
fiding, as one who felt himself among friends. Philip,
with generous craft, strove to bring the opponents
together in social intercourse, so that some of the
angular antagonism might be rubbed down. The
Switzers were disposed to be perfectly frank and cordial.
Haunted as he was by suspicions and misgivings,
Luther was a passionate lover of clearness and fairness,
and his first object was to ascertain the exact limits of
difference between Zwingli and himself. Seizing his
pen, therefore, he wrote down, in compact, diamond-
clear propositions, fourteen in number, the essential

492 MARTIN LUTHER.
verities of the Christian faith, as believed by the Saxon
Reformers. Were the Switzers prepared to accept
these? The answer was distinct. Yes, they were.
With a magnanimous frankness, and a freedom from
scrupulosity, and vain conceit, and wiredrawing sub
tlety, exemplary to controversialists for ever, Zwingli,
(Ecolampadius, and their colleagues declared that, apart
from the one point of the Eucharist, Luther's theology
was theirs. ' Some of the articles drafted by him were not
precisely such as Zwingli would have himself set down.
Firm in his assent to the body of catholic dogma, it is
certain that, both in his doctrine of the Triune God
and in his doctrine of sin, Zwingli would have preferred
expressing himself in terms less rigidly Augustinian,
and more in harmony with the modern development of
Protestant theology, than those of Luther. There was
a Dantesque grimness in Luther's view of sin ; Zwingli
dwelt more upon the weakness and imperfection of
humanity : but in .their exultant apprehension of the
power and radiancy of grace, burning up sin in the
soul by the life of a present Christ, they were at one.
Therefore, with the consciences of men and heroes, not
of scrupulous pedants, Zwingli and his associates ac
cepted the main canons of Luther's faith as theirs.
Philip, therefore, has already had some reward for
his. pains. It is well to know that, on all but one
point, the Reformers of Wittenberg and the Reformer
of Zurich agree. But the point of difference remains,
and neither Philip nor his guests have any thought of
evading it. After much gently guileful generalship on

THE MARBURG CONFERENCE. 493
the part of Philip, and preliminary tentative colloquies
of Melanchthon with Zwingli and of (Ecolampadius
with Luther, the two chiefs confronted each other.
A table, covered with a black velvet cloth, divided
Luther and Zwingli. Melanchthon flanked the one,
(Ecolampadius the other. Before a word was spoken,
Luther rose up, and, taking a piece of chalk, wrote on
the velvet, in Latin, the words, " This is my body."
It was an intimation that he had steeled his heart
against argument. Zwingli, with the lucidity that
characterised his thinking, quietly observed that Luther
was begging the question. In respect of logical form
this is incontestable. There was no dispute as to the
presence of those words in Scripture ; the difference
turned wholly on their interpretation : and it was
obviously a petitio principii on Luther's part to affirm,
before proving, that the- interpretation must be his own.
Unless he meant this, he meant nothing ; for the words
had as much significance in their place in Scripture as
they could have when chalked by him on velvet.
But it would be unfair to Luther to say that he
confined himself to doggedly maintaining that the
words in themselves precluded discussion. Such was
indeed his main contention, but he did not scruple to
adduce considerations tending to prove the literal inter
pretation to be the right one. The literal sense, he was
particularly careful to say, did not exclude a spiritual
eating and drinking of Christ. The spiritual receiving
he strongly insisted upon, not admitting for one moment
that his opponents did more justice to the spiritual

494 MARTIN LUTHER.
receiving than he. But there was a corporeal eating
besides ; Christ, he urged, had distinctly said so.
Zwingli pointed out that if matter, as distinguished
from spirit, admits of definition, it is in the nature
of things impossible that one and the same body can
be at one and the same time in two different places.
Christ, when on earth, had never been in two places
at once; how could the bodily Christ, at God's right
hand in heaven, be manducated, at one and the same
moment, in a hundred places ? Luther declined all
explanation. Mathematics could not overrule the
ipsissima verba of Scripture. He derived, in truth,
great consolation from the arguments from natural
impossibility relied upon by the Zwinglians, for they
helped him to persuade himself that the whole difficulty
arose from their yielding to subtle temptation by the
devil of rationalism.
He was much more concerned to answer the argu
ments which Zwingli brought forward from the Bible
itself. In the sixth chapter of John we learn that
Christ spoke of His disciples eating His flesh and drink
ing His blood. The expressions caused surprise and
offence. An explanation was asked for and given.
That explanation afforded, said Zwingli, the manifest
key to the corresponding expressions used with refer
ence to the bread and wine in the supper. " It is the
spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing : the
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they
are life." The force of this seems so irresistible, and
Luther's attempts to controvert it are so weak, that one

THE MARBURG CONFERENCE. 495
pauses in amazement. The words, said Luther, were
not spoken with reference to the eating and drinking in
the Supper. True, to this extent, that they were not
spoken on the occasion when the Supper was instituted.
But if Christ had once clearly stated a principle, and
elucidated its application, was it necessary for Him on
every occasion when it came to be applied to guard
against mistake in the application ? By a singularly
strained exegesis Luther argued that the flesh referred
to in the clause, " the flesh profiteth nothing," was not
the flesh of Christ but the flesh of sinful men. The
admonition, he would have it, was to avoid eating the
flesh of Christ in a fleshly manner. Would it not, he
asked, be blasphemy to say that the flesh of Christ did
not profit ? And so the imaginary spectre of blasphemy
was evoked to frighten men back into the caverns of
superstition. The eating of man's flesh must of neces
sity be either cannibal eating, when all spiritual signifi
cance is swallowed up in horror, or metaphorical eating,
when it is expressive in the highest possible degree, as
an inculcation of no mere outward discipleship, but of
inward acceptance, of unreserved affection, of assimila
tion, of identification.
But, as Zwingli, with brave candour, admitted, and
Luther boastfully proclaimed, the metaphorical sense
could not be demonstrated ,- that is to say, the argument
in behalf of it could not be cast into compulsory logical
form. Christ did not in so many words apply the
principle that flesh profiteth nothing . to the institution
of the Supper. Metaphorical language affects different

496 MARTIN LUTHER.
minds in different ways, and some minds are curiously
incompetent to discriminate between metaphorical and
literal expressions. Luther trumpeted loudly, and no
doubt sincerely believed, that the Zwinglians had
nothing better than metaphysical quibbles and cobwebs
to depend on. Dragging from the table the velvet
cloth inscribed with the words " This is my body," he
held it up in sign of final defiance, and of announce
ment that the combat had concluded. Ending as he
had begun, as lucid Zwingli said, with a petitio
principii !
Agreement in all points of dogma, then, between
the Saxon and the Swiss reformers, is impossible. What
next ? The question of Christian union amid difference
remains ; a question as freshly interesting at this hour
as it was in the castle of Marburg on those October
days of 1529.
Mark the position. The open Bible has been
appealed to. Men of moral and intellectual quality far
above the average of the race, men of religion unfeigned
and honesty unimpeachable, Martin Luther and Ulrich
Zwingli, have compared their reading of it. They
cannot agree as to its meaning. Shall they, recognising
their common loyalty to and love for Christ, conclude
that they are at liberty to obey His commands as they
read and understand them, calling each other Christian
brethren, and working together for the salvation of
^mankind ?
The Switzers, ardently seconded by Philip of Hesse,
reply in the affirmative. It is a memorable, most

THE MARBURG CONFERENCE. 497
significant fact, which cannot be pressed too forcibly on
the consideration of religious persons, that the reason
able party proved also to be the party of union. Zwingli
was willing to leave the question of a corporeal presence
to the individual conscience, as instructed by Scripture,
and to join in fellowship with those who answered it in
Luther's way. But Luther set his face as a flint
against compromise. The corporeal presence was, in his
view, part of God's truth, and to enter into fellowship
with those who rejected it would be sin. To hear this
from those lips drew hot tears from the eyes of Zwingli.
To speak it, we may be very sure, cost Luther pain.
" We are not able," he cried,, " to accept you as brethren,
but we hold out to you the hand of charity." Had
there been any baseness in Zwingli's heart — any nag
ging worm of egotism or meanness of vulgar pride —
he would have repelled this minor proposal as too con
descendingly civil. But he feared God, and he could
not be angry with Luther for having done as his fear of
God compelled him tp do. Therefore Zwingli took
joyfully the proffered hand, and there was cordial
greeting and embracing between the Swiss and the
Saxon. It had been better if Luther and Zwingli, Melan
chthon and (Ecolampadius, with the glad acquiescence
of magnanimous Philip, had made the crested ridge of
Marburg for ever illustrious by proclaiming it, as a first
principle of Christian union, that in all cases where
honest men, of sound brain and faith unfeigned, can
didly differ as to the sense of Scripture, no denial or
9 9

498 MARTIN LUTHER.
curtailment of Christian fellowship shall be adjudged
by or to any. If Luther and Zwingli had agreed
to this they would have reached a higher level of
spiritual and ethical attainment than has been reached
by Christendom at this day. But they attained to the
virtual, if not the articulate, admission, that Christians
who believe in one way possess no right to subject to
constraint Christians who believe in another way. The
Papacy, in theory and in practice, arrogated to itself the
right to compel acceptance of its dogmas under penalty
of death by fire.

CHAPTER VI.
THE WITTENBERG POPE.
Though he had no adequate conception of the value of
what had been effected at Marburg, Luther makes it
clear from the tone of his letters that the forebodings
he had entertained as to Philip's attempt, gave place,
when ull was over, to mild satisfaction not without a
spice of surprise. It was no slight gain, he remarked
in a note of 4th October, 1529,* that the antagonist
parties, whose strife had formerly been acrimonious,
would henceforth live in peace and charity with each
other. They might be enemies, but they had looked
into each others' eyes, and knew what, even as enemies,
was due from each to each. They had bound themselves
to no league of pusillanimous silence, they would argue
and confute like brave truth- seekers, but " without in
vective." A thing more easy to intend than to realise,
but surely a humane and chivalrous as well as most
reasonable arrangement.! " I am glad, my Amsdorf,"
he writes, "that you are so glad about our Marburg
synod, diminutive indeed in appearance, but in the
heart of the matter efficacious." J
The immensity of the subject matter on which they
agreed, as contrasted with ille reliquus scrupulus, their
* De Wette, 1154. f De Wette, 1156. J De Wette, 1162.
9 9 2

500 MARTIN LUTHER.
one point of difference, could not but make an impression
on Luther. He allowed to another correspondent that
the Switzers had been " humble and modest enough," *
and that the extent to which they harmonised with
him had exceeded his hopes. The Prince of Hesse, he
observes to a third,- had treated the theologians " with
magnificent and- splendid hospitality."
A day or two before leaving Marburg he wrote to
Katie in happy mood. " Dear Master or Lord -Kate,"
he calls her, a form of address which may be taken as a
genial hint that she had developed powers of domestic
government. " Our friendly talk at Marburg is at an
end, and in almost all things we are at one." Zwingli's
best argument was, he says, the impossibility of body
being in more than one place at once. (Ecolampadius
dwelt on the symbolic sense of the sacrament. " We
are all fresh and well, and live like princes. Kiss
Lenschen and Johnny for me." f Lenschen was his in
fant daughter, Magdalena.
In tracing his public career we have lost sight of
the incidents that varied the quiet tenor of his domestic
life. On the 10th of December, 1527, a daughter had
been born to him, whom he named Elizabeth. In
August of the following year he tells Hausmann that
his " little Elizabeth " is dead. He is distressed to an
extent that amazes himself ; his heart is crushed like a
woman's ; he never could have believed that a parent's
heart so yearned towards his offspring.! In May, 1529,
Magdalena had been born ; and the little girl Magdalen,
* De Wette, 1159. f De Wette, 1155. J De Wette, 1021.

THE WITTENBERG POPE. 501
though last come, takes precedence, we observe, in the
order of kissing, of Johnny the son and heir.
Casting a retrospective glance into that household,
where Papa Luther sits pen in hand in his study, while
Herr Katie either sits beside him or promotes indus
trious order in the kitchen quarters, we perceive not a
little on which it is pleasant for the eye to rest and for
the mind to dwell. We see an heroic life, instinct with
perennial nobleness, not without veinings of Heaven's
beauty, tones of Heaven's music, under the simplest
conditions of a German home. Luther was sore
smitten at times, both by illness that brought him
to what seemed the very gates of death, and by tempta
tions that wrapped his mind in gloom, but he never
sank into despair, never failed to emerge, after a little
while, into the clear light of trust and hope. His in
vincible courage was a positive protection against the
frequently recurrent plague of the period, and that not
only to himself, but, through the contagion of his example
and the stimulus of his voice, to others also. While
feebler and more cowardly natures crouched in terror,
like birds fluttering in the grass while hawk or eagle
sails above, he boldly faced the terror, refused to quit
Wittenberg when university professors and well-to-do
citizens took flight, and thus, to a really surprising
extent, secured the safety of himself and those imme
diately round him. The medicinal virtue of a daunt
less mind was never displayed more finely, or with
more practical instruction for the scientific student of
medicine, than by Martin Luther. Perhaps the most

502 MARTIN LUTHER.
signal of the instances in which he put the courage-cure
in practice was that of the frightful " English plague,"
or sweating sickness, which swept over Germany in the
year of the Marburg Conference. The true disease was
incurable ; but the mere terror and horror of it over
powered many who were uninfected, and who died from
sheer " pusillanimity." In Magdeburg from eight
hundred to a thousand persons were oppressed with fear
and began to sweat. Between twenty and thirty actually
died, from the violence of the heat into which the
paroxysms threw them ; but the others regained com
mand of their nerves and convinced themselves that
they had been the absurd victims of their own fear.
Luther gives the names of four whom, among others,
he and his friends had managed to save by encouraging
them to shake off the illusion. " They are now' laugh
ing at themselves and saying, that, had they not been
wakened up, they might have been in their graves."
There was not a trace, however, of bravado or stage-
heroism in his attitude towards the plague. Those
who, consistently with duty, could fly from the infec
tion, were, he taught, not only permitted but bound to
do so. His own place, as a pastor, was among his
flock, and most of all when they were in peril or in
sickness. Not only, therefore, in the case of the sweat
ing sickness, but in that of other plagues by which
towns were constantly being desolated in the sixteenth
century, he refused to budge. The plague shrank from
him, account for it as we choose. Possibly Katie may
have been an ally against the prototypes of typhus and

THE WITTENBERG POPE. 503
cholera, though not living under the eye of a sanitary
inspector. Cleanliness, order, and health have been
sisters in all generations.
But there were cheerful times — in fact, they
were the generally prevalent times — in the Luther
household. Friends could not be lacking to the
friendliest and most open-handed of men. Gifts
of golden apples, of toys for Johnny, of a clock,
whose mechanism gave great delight to our Papa, came
in. Luther's mind, for all his contempt of Zwingli's
science, as against the letter of Scripture, was of a most
inquisitive, scientifically-curious character, and he had
much pleasure in prying into and fingering the clock.
He liked working with tools, gardening tools and hus
bandman's tools especially ; and his man-of-all-work,
Wolfgang, was a present help on such occasions.
Nor was the modest home unvisited by persons of
distinction. One day there alighted at the door, after
a ride of two hundred miles from the Culmbach and
Voigtland regions, far south, the Markgraf George of
Anspach, whom we saw helping Philip of Hesse to
induce the Protestant Powers of Germany to take hand
in support of the common cause. George had come in
a very quiet way, attended by but six horsemen, for a
word of counsel from Dr. Luther, Having zealously
embraced the new doctrines, he was bent upon prosecut
ing in his own territories the enterprise of reformation.
But there were difficulties — there was, in fact, the
recurrent difficulty of introducing the new without deal
ing too harshly with the old. George was but one of a

504 MARTIN LUTHER.
hundred who consulted Luther on the problem. The
details of the consultation we do not possess ; but
Carlyle is doubtless correct as well as vivid in his
sketch of its nature and result. " Luther cleared the
doubts of George ; George returned with a resolution
taken ; ' Ahead then, ye poor Voigtland Gospel popu
lations ! I must lead you, we must on ! ' And perils
enough there proved to be, and precipices on each hand.
But George eagerly, solemnly attentive, with ever new
light rising on him, dealt with the perils as they came ;
and went steadily on, in a simple, highly manful and
courageous manner."
Another of the great ones who came to have his
doubts cleared by Dr. Luther was a brother of George,
Albert, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, who
abandoned the whole monkish business, and declared
himself the Protestant Duke of Prussia. Luther, con
sulted by Albert, had given decisive advice. The
Teutonic Order, like all monastic orders whatever, was
in his view an organised attempt to substitute the
priest's false chastity, renunciation of marriage, for
God's true chastity, faithfulness in married life. To
quit monkery and take a wife was Luther's counsel.
Albert obeyed. He and the Knights who adhered to
him went boldly into the Protestant movement, he
becoming Hereditary Duke of Prussia, they continuing
to serve under him. The Order did not as- a whole
adhere to Albert ; the Popish part continued in posses
sion of substantial properties ; but at this point the Order
of Teutonic Knights ceases to be a real factor in history.

THE WITTENBERG POPE. 505
Thus from the quiet fireside of Papa Luther, in
grey Wittenberg, which in these years has been
getting itself girdled about with fortifications, did words
go forth that entered as living forces into the evolu
tionary course of things. Quickened by his inspiration,
princes felt themselves empowered to become evan
gelists. Ladies of royal strain had from the first been
well inclined to his cause. Charles's sister, the widowed
Queen of Hungary, and Francis the First's sister, the
Queen of Navarre, gave ear to him as to an oracle of
God. On the 28th of March, 1528, we find him in a
letter to Link * chronicling that flight from Berlin of
the Marchioness of Brandenburg, wife of the Elector
Joachim, on which Carlyle picturesquely touches in his
"Life of Frederick the Great." She had partaken of the
Sacrament in both kinds, and one of her daughters had
whispered the fact to Joachim, who was for maintaining
the old forms and ceremonies. Palace rumour, exagge
rating the wrath of Joachim, put the lady in fear of being
imprisoned for life. With the assistance of her brother,
Christian II., the ex-King of Denmark, she effected her
escape in the night. " On the dark road her vehicle
broke down ; a spoke given way — ' Not a bit of rope to
splice it,' said the improvident groom. ' Take my lace
veil here,' said the poor Princess ; and in this guise she
got to Torgau." Prince John of Saxony, generous and
manly always, invited her to occupy " the fine Schloss
of Lichtenberg." There she continued to reside for
many years, in frequent intercourse with Luther, and
* De Wette, 965.

506 MARTIN LUTHER.
permitted by the relenting Joachim, who however did
not urge her to return, to see her children. These were
strongly in sympathy with her in her evangelical ten
dencies. " She saw Luther's self sometimes ; ' had him
several times to dinner ; ' he would call at her mansion
when his journeys lay that way. She corresponded with
him diligently ; nay once, for a three months, she herself
went across and lodged with Dr. Luther and his Kate ;
as a royal lady might with an heroic sage."
But royal and princely personages, male or female,
occupy a markedly unimportant place in the corre
spondence of Luther, as compared with the ordinary
and everyday objects of his ministerial attention ; the
poor and needy, or those who were plunged in spiritual
anguish. Never had the poor a more persistent advo
cate. To plead for the fatherless and the widow, to
help the helpless, was a divine service always being
carried on in the house of this Christian Papa. In
cases of domestic disagreement and difficulty his advice
was always obtainable, always prompt, clear, and wise.
We saw how he dealt with such as voluntarily en
tangled themselves in the net of speculative theology,
attempting by force of intellectual subtlety to wriggle
out of their difficulties, and succeeding only in
wriggling more deeply into the inextricable coil. But
when the broken in spirit applied to him with a practi
cal purpose, when the modest and humble-minded told
him that God had forsaken them, and that their portion
was despair, then his method was tender as well as
simple. We have a letter which he wrote in July,

THE WITTENBERG POPE. 507
1528,* to one whose case had been laid before him
by a friend. The sufferer had been driven to the
verge of self-slaughter by ruminating on the idea that
God might have foreknown his perdition and that
his salvation might therefore be impossible. Those
who recollect the uncompromising sternness- with which
Luther maintained against Erasmus the absolute sove
reignty of God may be astonished at the fountain-like
freedom and fulness with which he now, in God's name,
makes the offer of salvation. Without reserve he adheres
to the grand Biblical principle enunciated, he says, by
Ezekiel : " God wills not the death of the sinner, but
rather that he should turn and live " (sic). To this
corresponds, in his view, the Gospel promise : " The
righteousness of God by faith in Christ is in all and
upon all men." He instructs the troubled applicant
that if any wind of evil comes moaning to his soul
with suggestion that these words are not for him, he is
to know it for a devil's message, a blast from hell.
Calling on God for acceptance, he is to dismiss all fear
and doubt, to fix his thoughts not on perdition but on
salvation, and to give ear to no curious questionings.
" You have a good, sound, direct road " — this is the gist
of Luther's counsel — " why should you go off in long,
roundabout vagrancies ? God the Father has with His
finger pointed to Christ, and with His voice cried, ' This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased : hear
Him.' If you are too deaf to hear these words, and in
your despair cannot lift your eyes to the Father in the
* De Wette, 1016.

508 MARTIN LUTHER.
heights of Heaven, why do you not see and hear the
Son, who stands in the meeting of the ways, where
every one must pass by, and in like manner, nay, much
more vehemently, with a sound as of a trumpet, pro
claims : ' Come, come, whither would you wander with
your distracted questionings ? You will never attain
salvation through these vain dreams. Come, all who
are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'
He says not only come, but come all. No one is shut
out, be he who he may ; even if he were the vilest
of miscreants. The harlots and the sinners are ac
cepted — they rather than the self-righteous worldlings
who make parade of their unspotted garments."
Not by any means obsolete, though trite enough in
sound, are these sentiments of the Protestant Pope.
Among the presumptions and plausibilities that are
urged, now with grave pathos, now with flippant' pert-
ness, against Christianity, none perhaps turns up more
frequently than this — that the liberality of its promises
is belied by the niggardliness of its reservations.
" Many are called, but few are chosen." What is the
use of obeying the call unless you know that it has not
been cancelled by the withholding of the choice?
Luther deems this a fatuous question, confident that if
a man honestly accepts the Gospel offer God will over
come all difficulties in making it good. Only believe,
and all things are possible unto you. If God's name
is on the cheque, trust Him to honour it, though you
do not understand the arrangements made for payment
in the Bank of the Universe.

THE WITTENBERG POPE. 509
But then emerges sharply the other and opposite
objection — in debate, especially when religion is at
tacked, it is the fashion to smite first on the right
cheek and then on the left. Does not Luther, in
thus bidding publicans and harlots believe and be
saved, divorce religion from morality, and make the
acceptance of an intellectual dogma the price of heaven ?
In a letter written apparently within six or eight
weeks of the one in which he bids the afflicted soul
rejoice in the plenitude of Divine grace, Luther has
occasion to touch upon the question of making the grace
of God vassal to licentiousness. One of the boldest of
the Evangelical preachers, John Agricola, was located
at this time, September, 1528, in Eisleben. In him, as
in few, Luther recognised a kindred spirit ; but now, to
his distress and amazement, a gravely authoritative
report reached him that Agricola was putting forth
strange views, and seeming to deny that pure morality
was essential to salvation. Without delay he writes to
Agricola,* in a tone of alarm and remonstrance. He
has heard, he says, that his friend teaches " that there
can be faith without works." Against an error so
poisonous he warns Agricola as an obvious temptation
of the devil. The remonstrance was for the time
successful. The most amicable relations were pro
visionally restored between the correspondents.
But the agreement was temporary and illusive. It
became indubitable that there had been fire where there
was smoke. Agricola stood forth as ringleader of a
* De Wette, 1030.

510 MARTIN LUTHER.
theological faction that pressed the Pauline doctrine of
grace through faith to an un-Pauline extreme which
is condemned by the practical apostle, James. They
were called Antinomians. Under colour of exalting the
Gospel they degraded the law, and maintained that
though one were living in known sin, yet if he had
faith he was in a state of salvation. This error was
assailed by Luther with as vehement repugnance as he
displayed in respect of any dogma of the Papacy.
One other word, and we turn the page on the letters
of this opulent period. Wenzel Link had written
asking him whether it was lawful for the magistrate to
slay false prophets. It was a question that touched
Luther on his weak side, for his soul had been vexed,
ever since the Wartburg days, by a succession of per
versities and distractions vouched for by men who
vaunted themselves the prophets of God. Was he
still prepared to stand by the glorious heterodoxy of
which he had been accused at Worms, and to maintain
that the heretic ought not to be put to death ? He
replies that he is averse to the judgment of blood even
when the false prophet richly deserves death. Pointing
to the Jewish dispensation, he notes that in process of
time it came about that only " true prophets and inno
cent persons " were executed as deceivers of the people.
" Wherefore," he concludes, "I can on no account admit
that false teachers ought to be slain." * The words were
written in July, 1528, and are to be received as the
unalterable decision of Luther on this cardinal question.
* De Wette, 1013.

CHAPTER VII.
Clement's hopes and wishes — luther's father's
illness — the start for coburg.
Meanwhile the infallible and enthroned " servant of the
servants of God " has been going on his prosperous
way in what seems to the world, and is not far from
being in reality, cordial understanding and alliance
with Emperor Charles. When the Emperor appeared in
Italy, in the autumn of 1529, there were grand doings
at Bologna ; a contrite Kaiser kissing the feet of
Christ's Vicegerent, an exalted Pope setting the crown
upon the head of Charles, as King of Lombardy and
Emperor of the Romans. The wish nearest the heart
of Clement now was that he might enlist the whole
will and energy of Charles to put down this offensive
revolt of the Germans against Papal authority.
There is, happily or unhappily, no doubt as to the
nature of the Holy Father's intentions respecting his
erring children in Germany. If they listened to his
voice and asked forgiveness, well and good. They
would be pardoned ; but if they proved stubborn they
must perish. " Fire and sword " were to eradicate
" this poisonous growth." In the instructions of
Cardinal Campeggio, the Pope's managing man in the

512 MARTIN LUTHER.
matter of the German Protestants, which instructions
Herr von Ranke saw in a contemporary copy of
undoubted authenticity, the method in which the
heretics are to be treated is frankly outlined. Their
property is to be confiscated. They are to be placed
under the surveillance of Inquisitors, who will deal with
them as the Spanish Inquisitors deal with the Moors.
The University of Wittenberg is to be proscribed.
Heretical books are to be burnt. The emancipated
monks and nuns are to be sent back to their cloisters.
No heretic is to be permitted to show face at any court.
The treasuries of the Emperor are to be filled with the
sums extorted from Protestants. In short, " every
word,'' says Ranke, "breathes oppression, blood, and
robbery." When ambassadors from the Protestant
princes of Germany presented themselves before Charles
at Bologna they met with a reception fitted to inspire
the gravest apprehension as to the result of the
Emperor's projected journey to Germany with a view to
terminate the troubles. Nor were they permitted to
return, but either put under arrest or bidden to form
part of his retinue.
The danger, however, was hardly so great as the
Protestants feared and as Clement hoped. Charles
was incapable of the strenuous fire-and-sword prose-
lytism of the successor of St. Peter. His faith in the
infallibility of the Papal See was not implicit, nor was
he sure that the Protestants were wholly in the wrong.
He suggested, therefore, to Clement that the calling of
a General Council would be the likeliest way to restore

CLEMENT'S HOPES AND WISHES. 513
harmony. In his heart Clement detested the idea of a
General Council. It represented for him the most for
midable and regular opposition to which the Papacy
had in the course of its history been exposed. Clement,
moreover, was a good financier ; always had money in
his purse ; and was therefore sensitively alive to influ
ences affecting the market for Papal wares. The mere
whisper that words favourable to the calling of a
General Council had passed the lips of the Emperor
sent down the price of every office, every benefice, in
the gift of the Pope. But Clement knew his Macchi-
avelli too well to meet what he saw to be a strong wish
of his august ally with frank resistance. He made as if
he gave way to the Imperial suggestion, but interposed
conditions and diplomatic preliminaries. Meanwhile
the Pope and the Emperor took different paths, Charles
turning his face towards Germany, Clement attending to
his many concerns in Italy.
The Diet of Augsburg, whieh met in the summer of
1530, and at which Charles played a prominent part,
marks an epoch in the history of Luther and of Protest
antism ; but while the year is still only in its second
month it falls to us to chronicle a matter of little con
sequence to the great world, but of much to Martin
Luther. In those cold February days he heard from
his brother James that old John Luther was sinking
into an illness that threatened to be his last. The
intelligence moved Martin greatly. Next to God he
had reverenced and obeyed his father, and he justly held
that in the main development of his own character and
h h

514 MARTIN LUTHER.
career his father's influence had been profound. His
first impulse now seems to have been to hurry to his
father's bedside. But this was impracticable. He had
recourse, therefore, to his pen, and addressed to his
father a noble and characteristic letter.* He entreats
both his parents to come to Wittenberg to be cherished
by himself and Katie. The latter joined her entreaties
to his "with tears." For the rest, the letter is occupied
with such considerations as suggest themselves to a
faithful pastor and a loving son, specialised by the cir
cumstance that the son has been a world-moving
reformer in religion, and that the father has intensely
sympathised with him in his innovations. Martin
thanks God that his father has emerged from the
" gross darkness and error " of the " former " time, and
has listened to the voice of Christ, calling him to accept
the grace of God, and to look forward to an everlasting
joy. His father, like himself, has had, he says, the seal
of Divine approval in form of " calumny, shame, scorn,
derision, contempt, hatred, and danger." These he takes
for the true signs that we suffer with Christ and shall
be partakers also of His glory. He depicts the consola-
lations which the Gospel affords to those that near the
verge of life, thus curtaining the sick-bed of his father
with visions as beautiful as ever crowded round the
pencil of Angelico. Christ, he says, has for the sufferer
conquered death and abolished sin ; Christ and all holy
angels look upon him, watching for the hour when his
spirit will take flight. * De Wette, 1185.

CLEMENT'S HOPES AND WISHES. 515
Luther sent this letter to Mansfeld by his nephew
Cyriack, who had come thence to study at the uni
versity, and was an inmate of the convent home.
John Luther's weakness was too great to permit of his
undertaking the journey to Wittenberg; and the father
and son never met again.
Public affairs were pressing their claims upon
Luther. The Emperor was on his way to Germany,
and the Diet was summoned for the 8th of April.
The Elector John, the Landgrave of Hesse, the pious
George of Culmbach, were keenly observing the situa
tion, and meditating on the multitudinous matters
that had to be arranged. For the scrupulously con
scientious, like John and George, it was a preliminary
question of vital importance whether it could in any
case be lawful to resist the Emperor. John applied
to Luther in March, 1530, for light upon this point,
and the answer was in accordance with those high
views of the Divine right of emperors which Luther
always entertained. The princes and Protestants in
general, if persecuted by Charles, were to take joy
fully the spoiling of their goods. But Luther at
this time harboured confident hopes that the Emperor
would not be a tool of the Pope, or deny reasonable
terms to the reformers.
About the middle of March the Elector invited
Luther, Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and Bugenhagen to
confer with him at Torgau, on the subject of the
approaching Diet. On the 3rd of April, at the head
of 160 horsemen, accompanied by the four theologians
h h 2

516 MARTIN LUTHER.
from Wittenberg, Prince John started from Torgau
for Augsburg. Luther's hymn had already begun to
make itself a home in the hearts of Protestants ; and
as the cavalcade proceeded along the road, bound on a
solemn errand, the stirring words and grave, sweet
melody of Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott rose into the
air. As they advanced by Altenburg, Weimar, and
Saalfeld, Luther preached every day. On Easter Eve
they arrived at Coburg.

CHAPTER VIII.
COBURG  CROWS AND THEOLOGIANS.
Around Coburg town and fortress linger memories
enough of Luther. Next after Wittenberg, Worms,
and the Wartburg, Coburg is perhaps the best remem
bered of his places of sojourn. The tourist, inspecting
the old castle, is shown a Reformation room, on whose
walls, on gold ground, are painted the best known
figures of the Reformation time. Here, says tradition,
erringly, Luther composed his great hymn. The piece
was written before, but he may very well have inscribed
it, or one or two of its stanzas, on the wall. His own
peculiar room is shown, whence he looked over exten
sive woods. From the eastern tower, highest of all, he
could behold a mountain landscape.
It was thought advisable to leave Luther in the ¦
fortress of Coburg, while the Elector, with Melanchthon
and the others, went on to Augsburg. The ban of the
Worms Edict was still upon Luther, and to ignore it
would have been to treat the Emperor with too easy
contempt. It was now, moreover, known to all men,
and half acknowledged by Luther himself, that he
did not possess gifts of conciliation. At Coburg,

518 MARTIN LUTHER.
on the actual frontier of Saxony, he would occupy an
advance post of observation on the Diet, and his in
fluence would be more sensibly felt than it could have
been if he had remained at Wittenberg. He made no
serious opposition to the arrangement, though he did
not like it. He knew that he had "an unruly
tongue " * in his head.
A power of adjusting himself to circumstances,
however, he possessed beyond most men ; and learning
that the Emperor had pulled up at Mantua, thus ren
dering it probable that his own stay in Coburg would
be for some time, he took stock briefly of the advan
tages of his situation, and made up his mind promptly
as to how he should employ himself. To landscape
aspects we know him to have been by no means in
different, and he describes the place to Melanchthon in
one of those Latin superlatives which express the
ultimate possibilities of beauty and delightfulness —
amcenissimus. He pronounces Coburg most convenient
also for study. The palace towers, he says, above the
whole citadel, and of every room he holds the keys.
Upwards of thirty men break bread within its walls,
twelve of them being told off for night duty, and two
being posted in the highest turrets as watchmen.
He tells Melanchthon that he will employ himself
with the Psalms, the Prophets, and, partly in playful
earnest, partly in earnest play, with iEsop. He had a
strong idea that lessons of value in the practical wisdom
of life might be conveyed to his beloved Germans
* De Wette, 1203.

COBURG. 519
through the ministry of iEsop. Of fables, proverbs,
and folk-lore in general, he was very fond, and Matthe-
sius, who, a little before this time, had begun his long
and somewhat Boswell-like intercourse with the prophet-
sage whom he adored, gives us the curiously interesting
item that he, Matthesius, has seen Luther taking to
table with him Reineke Fuchs. That there was in
Luther a vein of humour we needed no Matthesius to
make us aware, but it is a fresh and piquant trait that
he could enjoy the mad frolic, the world-irony, the
flings and freaks and manifold questionabilities of the
great scamp-epic of the Middle Ages.
What charmed him most, however, in his new en
vironment, was the immense colony of birds which filled
the air with its clamours immediately under his window.
His early letters are full of this. In a moment he
discerns the analogy between the assemblage of jackdaws
and the assemblies of divines and diplomatists, princes and
statesmen, that meet and dispute at Diets of Augsburg
and the like. He has, he says, a Diet under his
window, where crows and jackdaws transact their noisy
businesses. Night as well as day — or at least from
earliest glimpse of dawn until after sunset — they cease
not from the tumult. What a cry they do raise ! Age
croaking against youth, youth chattering down age, as
if drink were in the heads of all. What a- rushing
along there is, not in clumsy carriages, but on wheels of
glossy wings, that scornfully evade the shot of the
huntsman! Their Kaiser he cannot distinguish, but
their nobles and big swells (grosse Hansen) strut about

520 MARTIN LUTHER.
and grandly swing their tails. Their garb is indeed
uniform, but richly black; and they have glittering
eyes of the sky-grey (grau-augig cceruleis) tint. They
show not the smallest respect to great palace and re
ception room, " for their own hall is vaulted with the
fair, wide heaven ; their floor is the open field, their
furniture the pretty green branches, their boundary-
walls the ends of the world." They are great men
and mighty captains ; and though he has not been able
to interpret the particular import of their debates, he
has gathered that they purpose to make war upon
wheat, barley, oats, and all kinds of grain.
But we should err greatly did we fancy that this
sunny and sportive interest in the garrulous birds was
anything else than the sparkle of sunlight on deep
water. The month of April is not past — or hardly past
— when we find him strenuously at work, preparing,
with his old instinctive power of setting to the mark,
of doing the right thing at the right moment,, an
admonition, or paper of cqunsel, for those assembled in
Diet at Augsburg. A momentary surprise may be
occasioned by his addressing it to the Geistlichen, as if
he spoke only to the ecclesiastics attending the Diet,
but he appends, as motto, the words of the second
Psalm, " And now, ye kings, be wise ; be taught, ye
judges of the earth." As he explicitly, and to the
most practical effect, believed that kings and all in
authority were God's ministers, and were bound to
safeguard God's truth, he may be held to include among
the Geistlichen all God's official servants, crowned and

COBURG. 521
uncrowned, who had come, or were fast coming, to
Augsburg to discuss the spiritual interests of Christen
dom. The piece is ruggedly characteristic of its writer.
We have no Erasmian delicacy and deprecation — no
elaborate show of humility or subtle flattery of the
reader. He dashes into the heart of the business ;
paints with broad masses of colour which must arrest
the most cursory eye ; describes what he and his move
ment have done ; and appeals to the rulers and judges
of Christendom, not to take it upon them to patronise
or prop up God Almighty's work, but to own that it
has been a good work, and to lay no hand of violence
upon it. He does not dwell separately on the point
of doctrine, but sketches the practical reforms that have
been introduced, and the abuses that have been over
thrown or abated. Indulgences, auricular confession,
traffic in masses, extravagances of saint- worship, celi
bacy of clergy, spurious chastity of monk and nun,
Mary-worship carried to the pitch of sheer idolatry,
figure in the list. This roll of reform embraces upwards
of forty particulars, of which a considerable proportion
are merely named. Having thus made the move
ment speak for itself, he asks the adversaries why
they should harden themselves in their pride, yield
nothing, make room for nothing, but insist on carrying
all before them by sheer violence. What, he cries,
is the aim and end of all Christian government but
improvement? Has God appointed government as a
tyranny or as a service? If they must snatch the

522 MARTIN LUTHER.
weapons of the persecutor, they will rush upon damna
tion, and their blood will be on their own heads.
Of strictly theological argument there is, in this
treatise, a minimum ; but Luther does not fail to bring
out, in his own way, the vital difference between the
Papal system and that which he received direct from
Paul. In the one, a sacerdotal caste propitiated God.
" My own consecrating Bishop," he cries, " when he set
me apart for the ministry and gave the cup into my
hand, spoke thus, and not otherwise than thus : Receive
the power of sacrificing for the living and the dead." The
words now appear to him horrible beyond expression.
" That the earth did not swallow us both was the
partial and all-too-great patience of God, unrecht und
allzugrosse Gottesgeduld." In the other, the Pauline
system, salvation was neither through sacrificing priest
nor mystic sacrament, but by the grace of God.
The intense application with which he held himself
to the composition of this treatise, and the stubborn
industry with which he pushed on in the translation of
so difficult an author as Ezekiel, now brought on an ill
ness. He tells Melanchthon that his bodily man had
fallen down fainting, while his inner man impetuously
forced the pace. His head was tormented first with a
tintinnabulation as of bells, then with a pealing and a
rattling as of thunder. Had he not suddenly suspended
all work, thus taking the pressure off' the over-tasked
brain,, he would have fallen into syncope. His escape
was narrow and difficult ; for two days he trod as on
the edge of the grave. " It is now the third day," he

COBURG. 523
says, " since I have looked at a syllable, or could do so.
No more shall I work as of old ; I hear the advancing
step of age." Not without contrition does he think of
his over- exertion, nor does he scruple to make of him
self a deterrent example for the benefit of his dear
Philip. "I lay my command upon thee, and I call
upon our whole brotherhood to unite with me in com
pelling you, under penalty of anathema, to take care of
that body-kin of yours, and not to do deadly mischief
to yourself, and afterwards pretend that it was done in
obedience to God. He is served by rest, and by nothing
better than by rest. That was why He ordained the
rigid observance of the Sabbath." * What a beautiful
heroism, tender and true, in these words !
The Admonition was getting printed in Wittenberg ;
the identification of Gog and Magog with the Pope and
the Turk had been, to Luther's satisfaction, established
from Ezekiel ; and the din in his ears had begun, we
may hope, to yield to rest, when he heard that his father
was dead. John Luther died on the 29th of May,
1530. He expired without suffering, in perfect tran
quillity of trust in Christ. Martin shut himself into
a room and wept. He was not one to yield to his
feelings in public ; but his letters bear witness to the
depth of his sorrow. Somewhat curiously, he refers to
John Luther as not only the dearest, but the gentlest,
suavissimus, of fathers, and speaks of the infinite sweet
ness of his conversation. Through his father, he says,
God had given him all he has and all he is.
* De Wette, 1211

521 MARTIN LUTHER.
Within the same month of June, 1530, in which he
tells Melanchthon of the death of his father, he writes
to Jerome Weller, a Wittenberg student, who was
undertaking the private tuition of his son. And the
letter to the tutor was promptly followed, perhaps
accompanied, by a letter to son Johnny himself. It
is nice to have letters of so entirely domestic a nature
welling up among the theological correspondence in which,
from Coburg, he almost fiercely exhorted Melanchthon
and his other friends at Augsburg to defy and repel the
Babylonish adversary. He had heard from Weller that
Johnny was an industrious pupil, but he had also been
told that Weller was himself afflicted with melancholy
thoughts ; and, therefore, after a word of gratified
allusion to his son, he passes to the tutor, and gives
him a series of admirably shrewd and practical hints on
the subject of his mental trouble. "A sorrowful
spirit," he says in Scriptural language, " dries the
bones," and is everywhere condemned and proscribed by
the Spirit that is Divine. Joy is the duty of youth,
and sadness is to be rooted out of the heart. The first
thing, therefore, to be done by one vexed by despond
ency is to lay it absolutely down that sadness is of
the devil, and that God is a God of solace and joy ful
ness — a God, as Christ said, not of the dead, but of the
living. " What, indeed, is life but joyfulness in the
Lord ? " The battle may be hard, but others have fought
and conquered. It is a maxim of maxims in this conflict
never to brood, never to pry into your own thoughts,
never to follow the track into which they tempt you.

COBURG. 525
" No ! the right way is to scorn and pass them by like
the hissing of a goose." You cannot help the inrush
of distracted fantasies, but you can refuse to harbour
them. " You cannot keep birds from flying over your
head, but you can look out that they do not make their
nests in your hair." It is useful and innocent to have
recourse to the delights of social intercourse ; nor ought
such to be permitted to leave any sting of conscience
behind : for God does not like vain and vapid despond
ency. Then follows the one expressly theological touch
in the letter. There is a sadness, no doubt, appropriate
to sin ; but it ought to be " brevis simul et jucunda,
brief, and not untouched with the burning joy vouch
safed in promissione gratice et remissionis peccatorum,
in the promise of grace and forgiveness." * Nothing
more splendidly true, more unwitherably fresh, has ever
been written on the practical treatment of the mind.
Along with the letter to Weller goes the more
celebrated one which he wrote to his son. Perhaps
the sprighthness, the brilliant child -heartedness, of
Johnny's letter may have been in part occasioned by
the recollection, on Luther's part, that his tutor had
tendencies to despondency. At all events, it is as gay
as an extract from a fairy tale; and though there is
religion in it, not a touch or trace can be found of that
insistence on the depravity of human nature which
played so important a part in the theology of the Re
formation. He is glad to hear that Johnny "learns
well and prays diligently " ; when he returns home, he
* De Wette, 1227.

526 MARTIN LUTHER.
will bring him a pretty present. And then he launches
out into a description of a fair and pleasant garden
which he knows, where many children play, clad in
little coats of gold, eating bright apples under the trees,
and pears, cherries, plums big as eggs, or small ones if
preferred. They sing, they leap, they frolic about.
They have lovely little horses too, with golden bridles
and silver saddles. These, said the man to whom the
garden belonged, were dutiful and pious children, who
did their tasks cheerfully, and loved to say their prayers.
" Then, said I, dear man, I have, a son called Johnny
Luther; might he too come into the garden, and eat the
beautiful apples and pears, and ride the little horses,
and play with the children? He replied, If he loves
his prayers, and is a docile and pious child, he will be
welcome in the garden, with his young friends 'Lippus
and Jost also ; and when they are all there, they shall
have pipes, drums, flutes, and stringed instruments.
They will dance also, and shoot with little cross-bows."
Not only Melanchthon's and Jonas's children, but Aunt
Lena, who was presumably indispensable to Master
Johnny's felicity, will be admitted. It is worthy of
note that Luther gives dancing so prominent a place
among the amusements of pious children.*
* De Wette, 1228.

CHAPTER IX.
LUTHER'S HOPES OF CHARLES.
Meanwhile, the Elector of Saxony, with his Melanch
thon, Jonas, and Spalatin, had been showing front to
the Papal foe in Augsburg. Melanchthon, whom
Luther had often magnanimously referred to as the wise
and calm theologian, whose -patiently perfect methods
were to follow upon his rough hacking and hewing in
the jungle of error and abuse, was the acknowledged
spokesman of the Protestants. Reverencing Luther,
and sincerely accepting him as the captain of the Lord's
host, Melanchthon, in his operations at Augsburg,
worked upon those theological lines which at Marburg
and elsewhere had been laid down under the eye of
Luther. He thus drew up, with what has been recog
nised from 1530 until now as an exquisite combination
of linguistic precision and theological mastery, the
celebrated Confession of Augsburg. It was ready, at
latest, in the beginning of May, and Luther, to whom
it was sent, scanned it, in his high tower at Coburg,
with an eager intensity of interest which the reader
can imagine. On the 15th of the month, in a letter
to the Elector, he pronounces on its merits. " It
almost entirely pleases me. I can point to nothing in

523 MARTIN LUTHER.
it that I could improve or alter. And it would not do
for me to try, as I cannot step so warily and softly." *
That is to say, he admits it to be in all essential respects
right, nay, exquisitely right, and yet it is not quite
what he would have made it.
In the same letter, replying to Prince John's in
quiry whether the Evangelicals at Augsburg may
without sin submit to the will of Charles in the matter
of ceasing to preach until a settlement has been arrived
at, Luther, always more ready for concessions to kings
than to priests, and forgetful, apparently, of what had
been written by himself on his return journey from
Worms, in vindication of his persistent preaching, gives
it as his opinion that if Charles insists he must be
obeyed. "The Kaiser is our master; the town and all
is his." In the last resort, "his might is our right" ;
not, of course, to the extent of enforcing surrender of
the Gospel of God, but to that of temporarily prohibit
ing its pulpit proclamation.
The tone of his exhortation to the Augsburg divines,
and the extraordinary length of concession to which, in
this letter, he consents to go, prove that he now
cherished high hopes of an accommodation with the
Emperor. Nor was it surprising that, in the summer
of 1530, he might think it possible that Charles should
break with the Pope, and permit reformation to be
carried out on Evangelical lines. He knew that Pope
and Kaiser had for years been engaged in sanguinary
strife. He knew that Rome had been pillaged by an
* De Wette, 1213.

LUTHER S HOPES OF CHARLES. 529
Imperial army. He knew that the policy of Charles
had, in the meanwhile, been one of conciliation towards
the German Protestants, and that the settlement
arranged at the first Diet of Spires had placed them
practically on a platform of public recognition. He
did not know, however, what had passed since then in
private colloquy between the Emperor and the Pope.
He could not estimate with comprehensive accuracy
the change in the situation resulting from the Pope's
consciousness of being vanquished, and the Emperor's
consciousness of being victor. Charles was studiously
conciliatory in his demeanour to the Protestants, and
carefully avoided giving them offence. Luther was
prepared to trust him, and to put the most favourable
interpretation upon his proceedings. When the heads
of the German Popish party, Duke George, Joachim of
Brandenburgh, and the Dukes of Bavaria, on their
hastening to meet him at Innspruck, were received
with marked coldness, Luther noted the fact with ex
ultation. Two or three letters written by the Kaiser
to the Elector in a tone of clemency* fanned his hopes.
The Imperial Chancellor, Mercurinus, he observes, has
declared against violent counsels, and may, he adds,
prove a Naaman raised up by God in the Court of
Charles to work for the spiritual Israel. " Only let
us pray," he fervently exclaims; "our prayers have
begun to be heard ; let us not . cease to pray." f So
late as the 19 th of June he again applies to the
Emperor his phrase of affectionate admiration, das
* De Wette, 1217. t De Wette, 1217.
i i

530 MARTIN LUTHER.
fromme edele Blut Carolum, the pious, noble Charles, de
scribing him as a sheep among wolves.* A curiously
and pathetically interesting study in character is pre
sented by these letters of Luther, in their almost
childlike innocence of affectionate admiration for his
Kaiser, as contrasted with their abhorrent scorn of
Pope Clement on the one hand, and their lamentable
injustice to the Zwinglians on the other. He finds
time to write from Coburg to the Count of Friesland,
earnestly urging him not to tolerate sects — ne patiatur
sectas- — in his territory.! So imperfect a thing is human
nature even in the noblest men !
Hoping all things, believing all things, of the
Emperor, he is fierce in his repulsion of Rome. On
the 25th of June, in a letter to Nicholas Hausmann,]:
he speaks of the Kaiser as seeming to be guarded by a
good angel sent from God. Two days later he writes
to Melanchthon in terms of positive rebuke, on account
of his anxiety to effect reconciliation with the Papists :
" If the cause is false, let us recant ; if it is true, why
do we make Him a liar who tells us to be of easy and
slumbering mind — esse animo otioso et dormienti — casting
our care upon the Lord?" It is on Melanchthon's
weakness of faith and rationalistic proclivities that he
casts the blame. " It is your philosophy that is the
source of your vexation, not your theology." Suppose
the worst come to the worst, "What more can the
devil do to us than kill us? And what then, Quid
inde ? " There is One that will not die. " Christ died
.* De Wette, 1225, t De Wette, 1718. J De Wette, 1233.

LUTHER'S HOPES OF CHARLES. 531
once for sin ; but for justice and truth He will not die,
but lives and reigns." * Two other days having passed,
he writes to his friend in a gentler mood, confessing
that, brave as are his words, he himself " does not sit
among roses." His peremptory dismissal of all pro
posals for concession to the Pontifical party is again
placed side by side with his recognition of a special
claim to concession on the part of the Emperor. " I
wonder what you want, what you ask for, what and
how much you think ought to be conceded to the priest
party. As for the Prince.f it is another question what
ought to be conceded to him, if danger impends on this
side." This is the first hint we have of a dawning per
ception on Luther's part that the Kaiser, as well as the
Pope, may stand in the way of the Gospel.
Towards the end of the letter his tone becomes
grandly seer-like, as he chides Melanchthon for seeking
to clear up all difficulties in his theology, and to make
visible to human eyes the ways and methods of God.
" He who attempts, as you do, to render visible,
apparent, comprehensible, the unseen things of God,
will have cares and tears as the reward of his labour, as
you have." " The Lord has announced that He will
dwell in clouds, and make darkness His pavilion. Let
who will have it otherwise ; I shall not. Had Moses
* De Wette, 1234.
f De Principe est alia qussstio quid iili concedendum sit, si huic
periculum impendeat. — De Wette, 1236. With curious obtuseness— for
surely the thing is clear enough — De Wette reads huic, suggesting below
that Luther meant to write ei. But no danger could impend on Charles,
and Luther writes both what he means and what is good sense, when we
read hinc, hence, i.e., from Charles.
i i 2

532 MARTIN LUTHER.
made up his mind to solve the problem of escaping
Pharaoh's army, Israel might have been in Egypt at
this day."
On the 30th of June we have a perfect cataract of
letters, the whole lit up with the splendour of his zeal
for the Gospel and his faith in God. Kostlin finely
remarks, and the letters of this period abundantly
attest, that in surveying from his watch-tower, and
directing and animating, the battle for truth and
freedom, Luther's own soul became more calm and
joyful than before. The spiritual temptations which had
vexed him subsided, falling away into peace and silence,
like stormy waves or demons in the presence of Christ.
His study of the Bible was perpetual, and he men
tions an eminently healthy and practical quality in his
Scripture reading : namely, the rejuvenescence of his
interest in the Mosaic morality underlying the Chris
tian life. He tells Jonas, with enthusiasm, how he
hangs again with boyish delight over the Decalogue. He
begins, he says, to be of opinion that " the Decalogue is
the logic of the Gospel, and that the Gospel is the
rhetoric of the Decalogue. Christ has all that is in
Moses, but Moses has not all that is in Christ."*
With this practical mood may be associated his in
terest in the education of the young. He composed in
the Coburg fortress, and issued to Germany, a sermon
on the duty of sending children to school. As of old,
he bathed his spirit in the sacred songs of Israel,
especially the 118th Psalm. * De Wette, 1232.

LUTHER'S HOPES OF CHARLES. 533
But it was. by faith and prayer, above all, that, amid
agitations from Augsburg and tormenting personal
maladies, he preserved the heavenly atmosphere of his
soul. Veit Dietrich, his companion at Coburg, writing to
Melanchthon at the same time when Luther's letters of
appeal and encouragement were going forth, gives us a
sketch of his habits and demeanour. " I have no words
to express my wondering admiration for the surprising
steadfastness, the serenity, the faith, the hope, under
circumstances so trying, of this man ; but he sustains
these by diligent and unintermittent converse with the
Word of God. No day passes without his spending at
least three hours, and these the best hours, in prayer.
One time I had the happiness to overhear him pray.
Thou good God ! what faith was in his words ! With
such reverence does he beseech God, and with such faith
and such hope, that you think he is speaking to a father
and a friend. ' I know,' says he, ' that Thou art our
God and Father ; I am therefore certain that Thou wilt
bring the persecutors of Thy children to shame. If
Thou dost not so, the danger is Thine as well as ours ;
for the whole affair is Thine ; we entered upon it because
we were constrained ; therefore wilt Thou defend it.' My
heart too burnt mightily within me while, standing
afar, I heard him so confidentially, so earnestly, so
reverently, speak with God, urging the promises in the
Psalms, in the tone of one who was certain that all he
prayed for would come to pass." * His prevailing
thought at Coburg was that of the whole world lying
* Quoted, by Kostlin in his larger work.

534 MARTIN LUTHER*
in the arms of God, good and evil dominated by His
will, physical nature and the heaven of heavens de
pendent alike on His power. As he looks from the
high tower out into the night sky it is of God he
thinks. " The great vault of immensity, long flights of
clouds sailing through it — dumb, gaunt, huge — who
supports all that ? ' None ever saw the pillars of it,
yet it is supported.' God supports it. We must know
that God is great, that God is good ; and trust where
we cannot see." This, though finely coloured by Car-
lyle's genius, is a substantially correct translation of a
passage occurring in Luther's letter of August 5th to
Chancellor Briick. It affords a glimpse into his deepest
nature, and shows what a high, reverent, and poetical
man he was.

CHAPTER X.
THE DIET OF AUGSBURG.
" Appearance rules the world," said Schiller, and every
one feels that the words denote a fact ; but it is not
less true, though it might escape the flashing glance of
the poet, that in critical conjunctures of history it is
not always the broad and apparent facts of a situation
that determine the course of events, but often some
essential element which lurks unseen behind superficial
appearances. We now, looking from a serener coign
of vantage even than that of Luther in Coburg tower,
can see that in order to effect a pacification of Christen
dom, in the sense in which it was sought by Melanch
thon and the Protestant Princes and Estates at Augs
burg in 1530, nothing less was necessary — inexorably
necessary — than that Charles should have ceased to take
counsel with Clement, formally or practically deposing
him from the Popedom, and should have carried out the
Reformation on lines traced by Luther. Had Luther
been ambitious, even nobly ambitious, and had health
ful ambition been associated in him with gifts of
honourable diplomacy, it is not impossible that he
might have become Pope. In the then disposition of
Europe, it was not impossible that, ascending the Papal

536 MARTIN LUTHER.
throne, he might have made that grand renunciation
of authority over God's Word, and lordship over the
Church, which, as a Reformer, he virtually demanded of
the Pope. That indeed might have been the salvation of
the Papacy. His modesty, however, and his lack of am
bition, prevented him from saying to his most trusted
adherent, or even whispering to himself in the depths of
his heart, that the negotiation ought to be compressed
into the question whether Charles would or would not
make him, Luther, instead of Pope Clement, ecclesiastical
Prime Minister for Europe. But his practical instinct
told him that on any other terms reconciliation between
Papists and Protestants was an insoluble problem.
Melanchthon's unutterable solicitude, therefore, to
minimise the differences between the Evangelical
position and the Popish was in his eyes hopeless and
pitiful. He expressed himself, indeed, in accents of
grateful exultation with reference to the fact that,
in the Confession of Augsburg, as presented by
Melanchthon to the Diet, he and his friends had been
honoured of God to set forth the truth clearly, forcibly,
and fully. The Confession, he said, was a sermon
grander and weightier than any of those which these
many years they had been addressing to the Germans.
But when Eck and the other Popish champions alleged
that they had no great objection to the doctrine of sal
vation by grace and faith, as stated by the Protestants,
he distrusted their sincerity, and (in his correspondence)
accused Eck of lying.* And he was vividly conscious
* De Wette, 1289.

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 537
that if there were agreement in dogma, the claim of
Pope and Church to rule over conscience, through
authoritative interpretation of Scripture, would bar the
way to reconciliation.
This final and fatal divergence is admirably ex
hibited by Winer, in his book on the Confessions of
Christendom. The Protestants and the Romanists
alike admitted the supremacy of Scripture. But the
Romanists, at every stage of the controversy, main
tained that the Pontiff possessed authority to inter
pret Scripture : jus interpretandce sanctce Scriptures. The
Lutheran theologians rejected this claim, and laid down
this antithesis to the Roman Catholic position : " Sacred
Scripture is its own lawful interpreter." The per
spicuity of sacred Scripture rendered, they held, an
exegetico-dogmatic tribunal superfluous.*
The discerning reader will perceive the immense
importance of this word perspicuity, in characterising
the Protestant view. If there was no infallible inter
preter of Scripture upon earth — if Christ had committed
to no ecclesiastical or civic tribunal the authority to fix
the sense of the Bible — then it became practically a
necessity to maintain that Scripture was too clear
and precise to be liable to honest misunderstanding.
Centuries were to elapse ; a hundred schools of Pro
testant theology were to arise ; Calvinism, Arminianism,
Socinianism, Puritanism, Wesleyanism were each and
all to make appeal to Scripture, before the general
mind could apprehend how wide are the limits of
* Winer : " Confessions of Christendom."

538 MARTIN LUTHER.
honest diversity of opinion which it is necessary to
recognise as compatible with the perspicuity of Scrip
ture. Luther, and the Augsburg Protestants who
had been quickened into spiritual life by his teaching,
confidently insisted on the sun-clear perspicuity of God's
Word. It was the perspicuity of the Bible that Luther
thanked for relief from the distinctions and dubitations
of the schoolmen ; it would have wrung his heart with
intolerable anguish to be forced to admit that even in
Scripture there was no such diamond-like clearness as
precluded sincere diversity of opinion. Herein we have
the key to much that was gravely censurable in his
polemical behaviour. To refuse to accept what he
believed to be the manifest sense of Scripture was for
him a wilful moral offence. Papists were devils who
stubbornly shut their eyes to the blaze of heaven's light
on the Bible page. The Zwinglians were perverse here
tics. He told them with a steel-hard, steel-cold re-
pulsiveness, which brought tears into their eyes, that
they were of a different spirit from that of himself and his
friends. He looked with impatient half-approval upon
commentaries and theological treatises, even when on the
right side, as if they encroached upon the province of
Scripture, and countenanced the diabolical pretension
that the Scripture trumpet could give an uncertain sound.
The silence of universal acquiescence in Bible truth
was, of course, an impossible dream of Luther's.
Fretting and chafing while he wrote, he himself pro
duced enough theological literature for the reading of
half a lifetime. And his followers, while fired with

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 539
his zeal for the supreme authority of Scripture, found
also — as he found — that it was practically impossible
to abstain from theological discussion. Augsburg in
the summer of 1530 swarmed with princes who were
experts in theological science, adepts in theological
debate. John the Steadfast, head of the Protestant
interest, had his retinue of professional theologians, and
Duke George, chief of the anti-Lutheran party, was
encircled by Eck, Cochlseus, and other champions of the
old order. The fervency of enthusiasm with which the
Protestants watched the labours of Melanchthon, and
gloried in the Confession in which he embodied their
testimony to freedom and to truth, can be but faintly
imagined by the present generation.
The Diet of Augsburg was opened on the 20th of
June, 1530, and on the 25th of the month the Saxon
Chancellor, Briick, read to the assemblage, in German,
the Protestant Confession, which was then, in Latin
and German, handed to the Emperor. Some violent
Popish prelates suggested that it should be treated as
an acknowledgment of heretical and seditious crimi
nality, and answered with the sword ; but the general
impression produced by its promulgation was very
different. Its moderation of tone, and its patent accord
ance with the central body of Catholic doctrine, drew
from some of the princes an avowal that they had
hitherto misjudged the Protestants, and that they found
nothing in the Confession precluding the attainment of
a firm basis of union.* Charles, however, did not
* Hase.

540 MARTIN LUTHER.
commit himself to an acceptance of the Confession, but
called upon the leading theologians of the Papal party,
Eck, Cochlseus, Faber, and Wimpina, to draw up a
counter-statement. On the 2nd of August this was
read to the Diet, and "its pitiful weakness, Klaglichkeit,"
says Hase, " raised the courage of the Protestants."
With infinite patience, infinite pains, rebuked by
Luther, though he knew the nobleness of his motives,
Melanchthon strove to heal the wound of Christendom.
There was naming of larger committees, of smaller
committees; conference succeeded conference; mani
festoes and counter-manifestoes, apologies and counter-
apologies, hurtled in the air. Luther saw that no calm
could issue out of such a conflict of the winds, and took
occasion to accentuate his antagonism to the Papacy
by sending out from his Coburg tower treatises on
Purgatory and the Keys of the Church. Philip of
Hesse, profoundly desirous of union where there was true
enthusiasm for freedom and the Word — heartily advo
cating a league of brotherhood with Zwingli and his
brave associates — speedily discerned the hopelessness of
Melanchthon' s enterprise, and decided to withdraw his
countenance from projects of conciliation which could
be effected only by sacrificing, under more or less of
disguise, the essentials of spiritual freedom. On the
6th of August he withdrew from the Diet and the
town. Luther's general sympathy with Philip was
severely qualified: first, by Philip's leaning to the
Zwinglians, secondly, by the fiery promptitude with
which he struck at injustice with the sword; but on

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 541
the point of unequivocal and uncompromising rejec
tion of the Papal authority Luther and Philip shook
hands. By the 21st of August Melanchthon and the Popish
controversialists had brought the work of accommodation
so far that agreement seemed possible on the chief doc
trinal positions of the Protestant Confession. But a
multitude of practical questions, such as the participa
tion of the sacrament by the laity in both kinds, the
sanction of private masses, the enforcement of celibacy
on the priesthood, the permission of monastic vows, and
the acceptance of the jurisdiction of bishops — not to
mention that of the chief of bishops — remained. For
light and leading in conducting the negotiation on these
points, the Elector of Saxony addressed himself to
Luther, and in a letter of the 26th of August * Luther
replied. His counsel amounts to a comprehensive re
fusal to retreat from the position taken up by the Pro
testants. He had previously f laid down the principle
that no innovation is to be introduced into Divine
worship without Scriptural warrant : Cultus Dei novus
sine Verbo non est erigendus. He now applies this prin
ciple to the refusal to grant the cup to laymen, and
similar matters. The administration of the sacrament
in one kind has, he says, no shadow of Scriptural
authority. The administration, in both kinds is " ap
pointed in bright, clear words of God : mit hellen klaren
Worten Gottes bestdtiget." He will not admit that what
Scripture thus determines can be lawfully treated as
* De Wette, 1287. f De "Wette, 1268.

542 MARTIN LUTHER.
indifferent. And with what grace, he asks, can the Papists
now speak of the point as indifferent; — they who have
persecuted, have driven into exile, have branded and
burnt as heretics, men who partook of the sacrament in
the Scriptural manner? Of private masses he has to
say the same thing. They are human devices. Admit
one human device — teach, in one instance, as a Divine
doctrine, what is but a commandment of men — and you
are logically forced to admit any number. He claims
no right, on the part of the Protestants, to forbid Papists
to indulge in private masses, but he asserts their right
to withhold all approval from the practice. As for the
mere externals and mechanical accompaniments of wor
ship — ceremonies, costumes, gestures, fasts and festivals
— they are indeed indifferent, and may be lawfully fixed
by the secular authorities. They may indeed be safely
left to common sense, with which the Bible is not likely
to fall out. But Luther adds a curiously roundabout
and metaphysical-looking reason, formally derived from
Scripture, for handing over these externals to the civil
power. They are, he says, an earthly affair : ein irdisches
Ding. "And all this kind of thing has been placed
under the rule of reason through that word, Have
dominion over the earth. Seeing, then, that secular
government is the highest work of reason, the civil
magistrate can do and direct in this province." It is
not often that our Doctor is so far-fetched in his
citation of Biblical authority.
On the same day on which he wrote this letter to
John the Steadfast he wrote also to Spalatin, to

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 543
Melanchthon, and to Jonas. To each and all of them
his impassioned cry is to abandon the palpably hopeless
task of conciliation. He tells Spalatin that he hears it
was without much heart or hope in the business (non
libenter) that he, Spalatin, had entered on the task of
making friends of the Pope and Luther. Neither the ¦
Pope nor Luther want anything of the kind ; and if
Spalatin brings his work to perfection, he, Luther, will
undertake a conciliatory arrangement between Christ
and Belial. To Melanchthon he is almost savage in his
sarcastic bluntness. " As if we could cast down the
Pope ! Or as if, unless the Papacy were laid in the
dust, we could safeguard our doctrine ! " " You write
that Eck has been forced by you to confess that we are
justified by faith : would you be good enough to prevail
on him not to tell lies ? " In the letter to Jonas he is
as fierce against Campeggio, the distinguished Cardinal
who has of late been doing the high diplomatic work of
the Pope in Augsburg, as in the letter to Melanchthon
he is against Eck. Campeggio is "a great and dis
tinguished devil : magnus etinsignis diabolus." His fierce
ness reaches a climax, both of intensity and of coarseness,
when, in a letter to Spalatin, without date, but written
probably within the few remaining days of the month,
he avows that if the Augsburg theologians allow the
Gospel eagle to be mewed up in a Papal cage, he,
Luther, will come in person to set it free ; and when,
with reference to a proposal that the Protestants should
petition the Pope and Campeggio to say what they will
please to grant, he implores Spalatin to put in its stead

544 MARTIN LUTHER.
a proposal, addressed to those high personages, of a
kind which the biographer of Luther can neither ignore
nor quote.* It is fair to add that he asks Spalatin to
excuse his " levity," on the ground that it is wrung
from him by fury.
Under these circumstances it was a pleasant incident
for him when Prince John Frederick, son of the Elector,
accompanied by Count Albert of Mansfeld, on their
return from Augsburg, looked suddenly and unex
pectedly in upon him at Coburg. Writing to Melanch
thon next day, the 15th of September, he says he
was glad to see them escaped from the crowd, and
expresses the hope that the rest of the would-be peace
makers may soon follow. He mentions that the Prince
has presented him with a gold ring. On putting it on,
however, he found that, "as if to show that he was not
born for wearing gold," it slipped from his finger to the
ground. The departure of the Elector from Augsburg, by
permission of the Emperor, on the 23rd of September,
excited his liveliest satisfaction, being accepted by him
as a proof that no attempt would be made to detain
the Protestants in the town until they came to
terms with the Pope. Now, he thought, they will all
return, and give up the hopeless business. With
characteristic stubbornness of adhesion to ideas once
formed, he continued at this juncture to think well of
the Emperor. " Charles our Kaiser is a most excellent
man, and hopes that he will make concord and peace."
* De Wette, 1294.

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 545
But so many demons lay siege to him — obsessus tot
monstris dcemonum — that Luther knows not whether he
will succeed. The credit of a sincere desire for concilia
tion was unquestionably due to Charles ; but we cannot
praise Luther for being incapable of imputing to the
Pope and his legate any motives but those of tyrants
and devils.* On the day of the Emperor's departure
from Augsburg he announces to Katie that she will
soon have him back again. He was nothing daunted
when the news of the Elector's leaving Augsburg was
followed by that of the promulgation of a decree of the
Diet, in which the proposals of the Protestants were
decisively rejected, and a general command issued that
there should be a falling back on the old Roman lines.
In tones of great solemnity, faith, and fortitude, he
addresses the Elector, assuring him that the doctrine
was not man's, but God's — that God had begun and
carried on the work — and that it was safe in His hands. f
This letter to John the Steadfast was penned on the
3rd of October. On the following day he wrote what
seems to have been his very last letter from Coburg,
one, namely, to Ludwig Senfel, chief musician to the
Dukes of Bavaria, in which he requests Senfel to send
him a copy of his composition, " I will both lay me down
in peace," from the Fourth Psalm, and at the same
time expresses his enthusiastic delight in music. The
Dukes of Bavaria were prominent in the Popish party,
and their chief musician was presumably of their mind.
But Luther says frankly that any misgivings he might
* De Wette, 1308. f De Wette, 1316.
J j

546 MARTIN LUTHER.
have entertained as to the reception his letter would on
this account meet with had been over-ruled by his con
fidence in the genial nature of music. " The love of
music, with which I saw you to be gifted and adorned,
conquered this fear." The Dukes of Bavaria have been
unpropitious to him, but he will vehemently extol their
practice of cherishing and honouring music. "Nor,''
he proceeds, " is it doubtful to me that there are many
seeds of virtue in those minds which are affected by
music, while those who are insensible to its influence I
. look upon as most like to stocks and stones." Does not this
remind us pleasantly of those familiar lines ?—
" The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."
On the 18th of October we find him dating from
Wittenberg. And Clement went on his own way, scared by the
spectre of a General Council which he dared not face,
and from which the Emperor refused to relieve him —
scared and daunted, but not driven to, despair, and
always putting his trust in that " ambiguous, super-
subtle policy " * which was his bane. He had splendid
successes ; allied himself by family ties both with the
Emperor and with Francis ; but, on the whole, failed
utterly. The Reformation surged on in ever-widening
billows, the closing years of his popedom being marked
by the advance of the deluge over Wurtemburg,
Brandenburgh, Denmark, and Pomerania. When a
* Zweideutige allzufeine Politik. — Von Ranke.

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG. 547
prisoner in Charles's hands he had held out, as we saw,
hopes to Henry VIII. in the matter of his divorce, but
this only added to the fierce resentment of Henry when
another turn of fortune's wheel made Clement believe
it to be his interest to disappoint him. In spite, there
fore, of his subtlety, in spite of his accomplished lying,
England was rent by its monarch from the Papal alle
giance. " The most unfortunate Pope," Ranke calls
Clement, " that ever sat upon the Roman chair." Say
rather that he was the Pope- who exercised perhaps
more unscrupulously than any predecessor or any
successor the Papal claim to release men from their
oaths and promises.

1 J

0 Ok XV.
THE END.
1534—1546.

3S00& XW.
THE END

CHAPTER I.
contareni's mission.
The elevation of Cardinal Farnese, Paul III., to the
Papal throne is a turning-point in modern history. The
mediaeval Papacy died with Clement ; and when this
has been said the reader is prepared for the addition
that Martin Luther's work was done. The Babylon he
assailed was the Babylon of Alexander VI. and of
Julius II., of Leo X. and of Clement VII. The
Roman power, as represented by these men, was what
he called Antichrist. He was not an old man when
Clement died, and he had more than ten years of life
before him, but his whole scheme and habit of thought
were fixed ; and never did the conception of a Papacy
different from that of Leo and Clement pass the gates
of his mind. Therefore, it is possible to give account
of all that the last section of Luther's life contributed
to world-history within extremely narrow bounds.
The change which took place in the Papacy after
the time of Clement was twofold. In the first place, the
character of the institution, as represented by the Popes,

552 MARTIN LUTHER.
was altered. " To the debauchees, the poisoners, the
atheists, who had worn the tiara " in that Papacy
against which Luther fought " had succeeded," says
Macaulay, with but slight exaggeration, " Popes who,
in religious fervour and severe sanctity of manners,
might bear a comparison with Cyprian or Ambrose."
Of Paul III. it cannot be said, as it can of Paul IV.,
that he wore day and night, " under his gorgeous vest
ments, the hair shirt of a simple friar," or that he found,
"even in the midst of his most pressing avocations, time
for private prayer ; " but it is no more than the truth
that he was a sincerely religious man, and that he was
bent not more upon extending the renown or augment
ing the prowess of the Papacy than upon reforming it
from within. Assuredly, however, the Popes of the
Catholic Restoration did not modify their claim to a
' Divinely-appointed supremacy in the Church and a lord
ship over conscience. But the Church of Paul III. had
this second difference from the Church of Leo or of
Clement : that it contained, not here and there in monks'
cells and humble parsonages, but in the high places of
the Church, in the entourage of the Pope, men who in
their heart of hearts set more store by the Word of God
even than by the authority of the Popes, and were pre
pared to accept a scheme of reconciliation between the
two sections of divided Christendom of which the prin
ciple — -the indispensable pre-requisite — should be, not
the Divine right of the Papacy, but the clear enuncia
tion and acceptance of Gospel truth. The most con
spicuous representative of this Evangelical party in the

CONTARENI'S MISSION. 553
heart of the Papacy was Cardinal Contareni. But
Luther, though one might have expected him to find
his natural allies in those men, made no sign to them,
evinced no sympathy with them.
When the Elector of Saxony, asked by the new Pope
to co-operate in bringing together a Council to discuss the
grand problems of reconciliation and reform, applied to
Luther for advice in August, 1535, the reply was a con
fession of scepticism as to the bona fides of the Pontiff.
"It is my prayer and my wish," he said, "that they
should honestly take in hand a free and Christian
Council." * But like Thomas, he would believe only
after he had ocular and tangible proof. " God could
touch their hearts : " he believed that, but no more.
Accordingly, when, in the autumn of the same year,
Vergerius, the Pope's legate, made his appearance in
Wittenberg, and invited Luther to friendly confer
ence, he declined to treat the matter seriously. There
was no formal interview or regular discussion, but
Vergerius and he met at breakfast, and we may fairly
infer, from a letter of his to Justus Jonas, written a
few days after, that his demeanour to the legate was
calculated to justify the latter in saying that Luther
had treated him rudely. Legatum egi verbis verdriess-
licissimis,\ writes Luther, extemporising a Latin bar
barism to indicate that he had twitted and teased the
legate to his heart's content. And yet, Mr.
Worsley tells us, Vergerius " subsequently became a
Lutheran." The probability, therefore, seems great
* De Wette, 1655. f De Wette, 1680.

554 MARTIN LUTHER.
that he was one of those Papists who at this time
profoundly sympathised with Luther.
But it was in 1541, at the Diet of Ratisbon, other
wise called Regensburg, that the most elaborate and
earnest effort was made by the friends of union on both
sides to avert the final disruption of Christendom. Paul
III. chose for his representative Cardinal Contareni : a
fact which, to put it at the lowest, proves him to have
desired amity with Luther as much as could be reason
ably expected of a Pope. For we cannot believe that
Paul, who had himself offered the Cardinal's hat to
Contareni, was in the dark as to the Evangelical cast of
his theology. Contareni believed in salvation by faith
only, as sincerely as Luther. The Emperor Charles,
though he no doubt wished for political support from
the Protestants, was not without higher motives, and de
sired, with about as much ardour as his nature made
him capable of desiring anything, to see harmony and
unity of faith restored throughout his dominions.
Gropper and Pflug, men of known moderation, were put
forward by him to conduct the case on the Popish side ;
and though Eck, the. veteran champion, could not be
excluded from the lists, his influence was not great.
The Protestant theologians were the invincibly hopeful
and lucid Melanchthon and the patient, persuasive
Bucer. Contareni took the lead, and did so with signal and
surprising boldness. His instructions were to secure, in
the first place, that the primacy of the Pope should pass
unchallenged. But he took the liberty to ignore his

CONTARENI' S MISSION. 555
instructions, and to propose that the question of agreement
in the essentials of doctrinal truth should be taken first.
Morone, Bishop of Modena, Tomaso, master of the
sacred palace, both of whom agreed with him in his
views on justification, supported him. The result
might well send a thrill of intensest gratitude and joy
ful hope to all hearts that yearned for peace in Christ
endom. On the nature of man, on original sin, on
redemption, and even upon justification, it was found
that Papists and Protestants could agree. Contareni
declared for justification by faith alone — not, indeed, an
unproductive, dead faith, but a faith that produced good
works. Melanchthon was content. Bucer exultantly
proclaimed that the agreement covered everything
required for the living of a blessed, righteous, and holy
life before God and the congregation. On the Popish
side there was equal satisfaction. The Bishop of Aquila
professed his belief that the reconciliation of Christen
dom was at hand. Cardinal Pole wrote to Contareni
that the news had filled him with deeper joy than he
had ever experienced from a strain of sweetest music,
adding that the articles of agreement formed the basis
of the whole Christian faith.
"What had been resolved upon at Regensburg,"
says Ranke, whose account of Contareni's mission is
one of the finest passages in his most celebrated book,
" required ratification, on the one side from the Pope,
on the other from Luther." Paul III. hesitated — per
haps the word is too weak — to sanction Contareni's sub
lime audacity in reversing his, Paul's order, and putting

556 MARTIN LUTHER.
the claim of God first, the claim of the Pope second.
But there were influences on Contareni's side so mighty
— his view of salvation by faith alone had a hold on so
many in the Imperial Court, possibly even upon
Charles — that if there had been unanimity among the
Protestants the Pope himself might have failed to
stem the tide of Evangelical reform, surging, amid the
acclamations of Christian mankind, over the battlements
of Rome. We turn, therefore, to Luther. A special embassage
was despatched to him, consisting of the Princes John
and George of Anhalt, with two others. They told him
of the agreement of the parties in the Diet on the four
points which have been mentioned — an agreement which;
if confirmed by him and universally accepted, would, it
was believed, render it a comparatively easy matter to
form an arrangement, on questions of minor importance.
Luther's replyof the 12th of June, 1541, *marks a supreme
moment in his history and in that of the modern world.
He refuses to ratify the agreement. On the question of
questions — that of justification by faith — the formula
accepted by the Diet cannot, he says, be approved. It
is rather — this is, in effect, his position f — a joining
together of two definitions which, apart from explana
tion, do not form a unity, than a single and sound defi*
nition. The truth stands clearly and completely stated
in the Third of Romans. "A man is justified by faith
without the deeds of the law." This, he says, was not
* De Wette, 1994.
f Compare with the above letter that to the Elector John — De Wetfe,
1987.

CONTARENTS MISSION. 557
enough for the Popish party, and therefore they added,
from the Fifth chapter of Galatians, the words, " faith
that worketh by love." These words, he contends,
are not to the purpose ; or rather, they would, in this
connection, be understood to imply that faith justifies
by love: that is to say, by the sanctified affections
and meritorious works of those in a state of grace,
not wholly and solely by the merits of Christ. Since
theology .has become in England, for all but a few
experts, a lost science, it would be useless to enlarge on
the stupendous consequences which Martin Luther de
duced from what will now to the great body of readers
seem an almost unintelligible divergence of opinion.
Suffice it to say that, by turning the eye of the believer
upon what was wrought in him, as the ground of his
salvation, and not insisting on its being fixed upon what
Christ did for him, the Popish view opened the way
once more, according to Luther, to all the evils of self-
wrought salvation, to monkish introspection, infinite
worry about one's frames and affections, with enhance
ment of the value of sacerdotal assistance. But the
express form in which Luther put his objection was to
say that, by artificially linking together two passages of
Scripture, both true, the reconcilers practicallyneutralised
both, in so far as definition of doctrine was concerned,
and produced, not a true definition, but a composite
statement, which might give both parties the right
to hold their own opinion.* Elaborate semblance
* Zuletst haben sie beide Notel zusamen gereimet und gekeimet:
daraus ist diesse weitlauftige geflickte Notel komen, darin sie Recht, und
wir auch Recht habeni — De Wette, 1987.

558 MARTIN LUTHER.
of union, like this, was for him a sham, and his
fierce wrath was awakened by it. He thought of Prince-
Archbishop Albert and his life-long see-sawing between
Pope and Gospel ; of Henry VIII., with his wish to
have, like Antiochus, a religion of his own ; and pro
nounced the work over which there had been such
melodious gratulation at Regensburg sheer falsehood,
mere "English" show and shine — eitel Falsch, und leicht
englischer Schein. Glowing in his anger as he thought
of the Emperor, from whom he seems to have expected
a decidedly Evangelical course, he told Melanchthon *
that he had given up hope in that quarter. "There
has been enough praying for the Kaiser. If he will not
have blessing, let him bear the curse." Pope and
Kaiser alike have to settle with God before they give
peace to Christendom. " To put it in plain German
words, they have first to make their own peace with
God, openly confessing what kind of business they have
made of it in the past : the Pope leading souls, in their
myriads, to destruction for six hundred years, the Kaiser,
in these last twenty, burning, drowning, murdering
pious people, or letting it be done through his edicts."!
But amid Luther's fury — the word is his own — the
intellectual' self-possession and the inextinguishable
practicality of the man survived ; and he earnestly
counselled that, though complete agreement was im
possible,, yet upon those four points on which, with reci
procal explanations, the two parties had come to an under
standing, there should on both sides be zealous preaching.
* De Wette, 1995. f De Wette, 2000.

CONTARENrS MISSION. 559
And thus the last and most promising of the
schemes for the reunion of Christendom vanished like
a beautiful dream. They must be coarse and common
natures that do not feel the pathos of this fact ; but if
a real union, a concord potent enough to blend all dis
cords in resultant harmony, was in very truth not
attainable, then the man who clearly discerned and
frankly accepted the situation was a greater man than
those who saw it through the golden and roseate haze
of devout illusion.

CHAPTER II.
PHILIP OF HESSE'S TWO WIVES.
A few words are inexorably required, and very few
words will happily suffice, for the treatment of a sub
ject which interests the wise world more than theology :
the double marriage, to wit, of Philip of Hesse, and
the connection of Luther and Melanchthon therewith.
Readers may remember that Luther, before the date of
the Peasants' War, had made up his mind that no abso
lute injunction of monogamy can be produced from
Scripture. Monogamy he recognised as the normal
state ; but under peculiar circumstances the patri
archs had been allowed a multiplicity of wives ; and
no word in the New Testament announced that, under
whatever stress of necessity, the liberty conceded to
patriarchs to have more than one wife was sin for
Christians. Luther and Melanchthon refused to sanc
tion Henry VIII. when he proposed to divorce his
wife because she had been his brother's widow ; but
they let him know — a similar hint had reached him
from the Pope * — that he might solve his problem by
taking a second wife. Among Luther's avocations as
pastor, one that constantly emerged was the giving of
* Kostlin.

PHILIP OF HESSE'S TWO WIVES. 561
advice in cases of ill-adjusted marriage ; and some of
his letters, unfitted for reproduction in an English
dress, bring the fact graphically before us. It was,
therefore, natural that Philip of Hesse, when he wanted
advice respecting womankind, should send his friend
and theologian, Bucer, to consult Luther on the subject.
Philip was one of the noblest men of his time. He
sprang at once, with native intrepidity and the instinct
of a high soul for the true and the right, to the side
of Luther when the ban of the Empire was pronounced
against him at Worms. He had then been a mere
stripling ; he was now in the noontide of his years ;
and his life had been a succession of struggles in good
causes. Wrong and injustice he could not see without
attempting redress, and his restoration of the expelled
Duke of Wurtemburg to his duchy was as splendid a
bit of work as adorns the annals of chivalry. Keen,
bright, and brave of spirit, Philip was portly also and
stout in person, and when he rode his great battle-
charger was a sight for the eye of an Emperor. *
Like King David of Israel in quick and impassioned
response to generous impulses, Philip resembled the
son of Jesse also in this : that to him might with three
fold or tenfold emphasis be applied the divine canon
of Eden, that it is not good for man to be without
woman. With the thoughtless impetuosity of a youth
of nineteen, he had hurried into matrimony, to find that
he was ill-matched. His wife, indeed, bore him children,
* Mit Bewunderung und Vergnugen sah ihn der Kaiser auf seinem
prdehtigen Hengst, kraftig wie der. — Ranke.
k k

562 MARTIN LUTHER.
but her person was repulsive to him, and she developed
an afflictive propensity to the bottle. And here, if
we dared to do justice to Philip at all hazards, it would
be incumbent on us to give patient audience to physio
logical science ; but English refinement is too tyrannous
in the delicacy of its sensibilities to allow us to put
physiology into the witness-box on his behalf. Verbum
sat. Philip was a sincerely religious man, but his re
ligion failed to guard him on his vulnerable side. He
bowed down in the temple of Rimmon. In one word,
though tormented by conscience, he lived in unfaithful
ness to his wife. Such had been the state of things
for many years when he saw Margaret von der Saal,
one of the ladies-in-waiting to his sister, and be
came on the instant supremely enamoured of her.
The vision of a purer and, in the best sense, a happier
life rose upon him. His wife was such to him only
in name ; his vagrant profligacies were but a mitigation
of misery, with added sting of sin ; in Margaret, if she
were but joined to him in a bond sacredly distinguished
from that of free-love, or even of selectest concubinage,
he would at last possess the essential blessedness of a
wife. His own Christine — honest woman — cheered by
the friendly bottle, scrupled not to signify in black and
white that she did not object to the arrangement. All
this and much more the persuasive Bucer rounded into
the ears of Luther and Melanchthon when he asked
them to pronounce an opinion on Philip's affair. It
was late in the autumn of 1539.
Luther and Melanchthon made a statement to the

PHILIP OF HESSE'S TWO WIVES. 563
effect that marriage, in its normal, divinely appointed
shape, was the union of one man with one woman. But
in individual cases, and under stress of necessity, the
taking of more than one wife had been permitted in the
Old Testament, and was not forbidden in the New. It
would be better for Philip to take a second wife than to
live in random profligacy. Since, however, the pro
priety of the arrangement depended on grounds personal
to Philip, the marriage ought to be secret, and the fact
of its having taken place ought to be concealed.
On the theology of this decision no opinion need be
offered. It is at least indisputable that Popes have
granted similar dispensations. But the secrecy of the
transaction sticks more deeply in the modern imagina
tion ; and the reader, therefore, unless he will do cruel
injustice to Luther, is bound to attend to the ground
on which the frank Doctor defended the concealment
practised in the affair. Be it clearly understood
that Luther's case was not that of one who did a sly thing
and was ashamed of it, and tried to hide it. The
secrecy was, in his view, an integral part of the business.
He was dealing with a case of the personal conscience,
and, unless the application of his judgment were con
fined to the personal conscience — unless, that is to say,
it were prevented from becoming a precedent for general
observance — the tightness of it would be vitiated. The
necessity of one would, in that event, become law for all
—a result to be deprecated. In the exquisite pre
cision with which Luther draws the distinctions fitted
to the occasion, evidence may be found that if old
k k 2

564 MARTIN LUTHER.
John Luther had had his way, his son might have
made a famous jurist. " It does not hold," he says,
" that what you do from necessity I may do of right.
A man steals to avoid starvation, a man smites his
neighbour dead in self-defence. Neither is punished;
and yet theft and murder are punishable. Necessity
over-rides right and precedent, but it constitutes no
right or precedent. Necessitas frangit legem, sed non
facit legem; necessity breaks all laws, but makes none."*
Therefore, if you will avert the frightful peril involved
in converting necessity into rule, you are bound by
duty, reason, and common sense to seclude the indi
vidual case from the general gaze.
This is strong thinking as well as fine. Luther
could say, in relation to Philip's concern as well as to
the other incidents of his career, " I am not one who
simulates or dissimulates." He was deeply annoyed, it
is true, at the idea, correctly or incorrectly entertained,
that Philip had not been perfectly open and ingenuous
with him ; but I am not aware that he ever expressed
contrition for his own conduct. The affair almost broke
the heart, almost ended the life, of Melanchthon. But
while Melanchthon lay moaning at death's door, Luther
exhorted him — nay, commanded him — to be of good
courage, and prayed for his life in his sick chamber so
earnestly, rubbing God's ears, as he said, with His*
own promises, that the dying man awoke, and there
ensued such a marvel of restoration that Luther
himself spoke of it as miraculous.
* De Wette, 2516.

CHAPTER III.
Magdalene's death and luther's.
We saw that Luther, who had for all tender and help
less creatures the warm affection that has often charac
terised men of iron build, was melted to a passion of
grief that surprised himself by its intensity when his
daughter Elizabeth, not yet a year old, was taken from
him. He then first felt, not without a sense of wonder,
how terrible is the hold that nature gives to a child
on the heart of its parent. But the place of Elizabeth
had been filled, in May, 1529, by Magdalene, and all
the love that had yearned for the first daughter en
circled the second. She passed the years of childhood,
was mentioned in words of praise by Melanchthon, and
now, a gentle, sweet, universally beloved girl of thirteen,
was dear to her father, who said she had never once
angered him, as the apple of his eye. She and Johnny
had played together as brother and " little sister " —
George Eliot has helped us to realise what that means.
Whether the parting from Johnny, who was sent to
school at Torgau, and his continued absence, preyed
upon her mind, we are not informed, but she fell ill, and
in September, 1 542, it was evident that her end drew
near. She longed intensely to see her brother. Luther

566 MARTIN LUTHER.
sent off a carriage to Torgau to bring him, not for
getting to caution the master, Marcus Crodel, against
startling the boy by telling him the cause of the sudden
summons. " They loved each other much," he said.
Johnny came, and we may believe that some brightening
or abatement of symptoms took place in consequence,
for Luther, when he sent the carriage, had manifestly
thought she might not live to see her brother, and
yet she survived his arrival eleven days. She was old
enough, and self-possessed enough, to have a perfect
idea of her situation ; and when, at the last, Luther said
to her, " My own Magdalene, you are willing, are you
not, to remain with your father here, or to go to your
heavenly Father ? " she calmly replied, " Yes, dear, dear
father, whichever God wills." She fell asleep in his arms,
and he knew that he was putting a saint into the arms
of Christ ; but the conflict between his two reigning
passions, submission to God and love for his children,
shook his nature to its foundations, and prayer could
not staunch his burning tears. In a letter to Justus
Jonas he used words, descriptive of his own and Katie's
distress, which have seldom been equalled, and certainly
never surpassed, in the intensity of their expressiveness.
His dearest Magdalene, he says, has been re-born into
Christ's eternal kingdom, and he and her mother ought
to rejoice that, by a happy passage and a blissful end, she
had escaped all danger and all sorrow ; " and yet, such
is the force of natural affection, that without sobbinp-
and groaning of heart, nay, without killing and mighty
anguish (sine grandi necrosi), we cannot do it. Indelibly

MAGDALENE'S DEATH AND LUTHER'S. 567
engraven in the depths of our hearts are the face, the
words, the gestures, as she lived and as she died, of the
most obedient and most reverent of daughters, so that
not even the death of Christ — in comparison of which,
what are all other deaths ? — can turn our thoughts, as
it ought, into another channel."
He had himself been for many years a sufferer from
painful and depressing maladies. The giddiness, the
ringing in the ears, the racking headaches, which tor
mented him during his residence in Coburg, returned at
intervals, and other not less afflictive disorders made
him their victim. His incessant labour of brain, with
perpetual strain on the emotions, could not but draw
heavily on the stores of life. At one time he underwent
agonies from a suppuration of the ear, which had a good
effect in ridding the head of malignant humours, but
left the hearing impaired. At another he complained
of failing eyesight. There were symptoms of a distress
ing kind in throat and chest, and occasionally he was
agonised by the stone. But all these pains, though they
quickened in him what had long been his settled wish,
to enter the heavenly kingdom, never extorted from him
one complaint against the dispensations of Providence,
one hard or faithless thought of God. Psychology, no
doubt, in its rigorously scientific mood, will admit that
profoundly unconscious as he was of the fact, his indig
nation against Pope, Turk, Jew, and Sectary, which
burned like a furnace in his closing years, was due in
part to fevered pulse and tortured nerve. The glow
of passionate fury always relieved him — no man ever

568 MARTIN LUTHER.
knew the gaudia certaminis better than he — and he says
that even in the paroxysm of his distress at the bedside
of Magdalene he was sensible of a drop of mitigation in
the fierceness of his anger against death. The Pope, in
those years, served frequently as a block into which,
like Maggie Tulliver with her fetish, he drove another
nail when the twinges of physical anguish became
intolerably severe.
But neither ceaseless toil nor bodily pain could
quench the spirit or depress the buoyancy of Luther,
or dry up the fountains of joy in his soul, or turn his
sunny and genial humour into acrid spleen or sullen
silence. He could appreciate the good gifts of God
that were left him, rejoice in his wife and children, and
cherish as priceless treasures his friends. Three boys,
John, Martin, and Paul, and one daughter, Margaret,
grew up around him. A genuine bit of nature in all
things, he admitted that he felt himself drawn by a
special affection to the younger children — the little ones —
as they appeared. Paul, the youngest, was in some sense
a second Johnny, and derived additional interest in his
father's eyes from having been called by him after that
Apostle whom, of created beings, he valued highest. All
his sons he wished to be experts in theology, but Paul,
he fondly hoped or dreamed, would be a fighter not in
the windy arena of controversy, but in actual steel battle,
defending Europe against the Turks. John and Martin
were common-place men ; Paul rose to eminence as a
physician; but on all of them the guidance of their
father, conscientiously firm yet gentler, deliberately

MAGDALENE'S DEATH AND LUTHER'S. 569
so, than his own had been, and accompanied by his ex
ample qf sincere and undefiled religion, told favourably.
That moral radiance which was a halo for Luther from
his youth attended them all; and Herr Kostlin ob
serves that not even a Jesuit has sullied with one
aspersion the whiteness of their fame.
Elector Frederick had checked Luther considerably.
Elector John checked him a little. Elector John Frede
rick, who succeeded his father in 1532, and survived
Luther, checked him not at all, but regarded him with
fervent enthusiasm, and bid him share all he had. Yet
there was no abjectness in John Frederick's admira
tion, and he took a much severer view of Philip of
Hesse's double marriage than Melanchthon and Luther.
In one word, Luther was on terms of perfect amity
and concord with his sovereign prince. As the world
measures riches, he was still a poor man. Katie said
he might have been rich if he had been like other
people ; but he knew that the coin of Croesus could not
have made him an atom richer in the means of true
enjoyment. His nominal yearly income was never more
than about four hundred florins, but he got many
presents, and on all occasions when special demands
were made on his hospitality, a hint procured him
venison or wild boar from his high friends. He was
able to surround himself with some garden ground in
Wittenberg, and for the last fifteen years of his life he
was the possessor of Zuhlsdorf, a small farm which
a brother of Katie, who had fallen into reduced cir
cumstances, sold to him for six hundred and ten

570 MARTIN LUTHER.
florins.* Whether the place was. worth, the money has
been doubted, but it was the delight of Katie, the most
enthusiastic and energetic of managers, who made
business a pleasure amid her cattle, pigs, horses, poultry,
bee-hives, and fish-ponds.
In the end of 1545 Luther was applied to by the
Counts of Mansfeld — two brothers who had fallen out
— to lend them his aid for the restoration of peace and
goodwill between them. A family quarrel had arisen,
money being the apple of discord ; and in no man did
the disputants repose such trust, as sure to judge wisely
and decide justly between them, as in Luther. For him
such a request brought with it a sacred obligation ; and
in the dead of winter, January, 1546, he undertook a
journey from Wittenberg to Eisleben, where he was to
meet the brothers. On the 25th of the month he had
reached Halle, and thence he wrote, in high spirits, to
his wife. Between Wittenberg and Halle he had crossed
the Mulda, which, so far as appears, was not then in
flood ; but the Saal rose to stay his onward journey, and
the Mulda flooded his backward path. "We entered
Halle," he wrote, " to-day at eight o'clock, but have not
proceeded to Eisleben. For a huge Anabaptist met
us, with billowy waves and great ice-masses, which
covered the land, and threatened us with second baptism.
Nor could we turn back, on account of the Mulda. We
must therefore lie still at Halle, between the waters."
After three days' delay he pushed on. The Counts of
Mansfeld, with upwards of a hundred horsemen, escorted
* Kostlin.

MAGDALENE'S DEATH AND LUTHER'S. 571
him into Eisleben. On the 1st of February he writes
one letter to Melanchthon, and another to Katie, and in
both mentions a notable incident of his journey from
Halle to Eisleben. To Katie his tone is jocular. As
he sat in the carriage, and was passing a village peopled
by Jews, a blast of cold wind — Katie, he thinks, might
say it was sent by the Jews or their God — struck upon
his head with such intense frigidity that he felt as if
his brain had turned to ice. This had probably some
thing to do with a giddiness that followed, but he
was now well again. To Melanchthon he is more
minutely communicative, and his tone is more grave.
He had been walking, he says, and had exerted him
self above his strength, so that he had broken into a
sweat. On resuming his place in the carriage the
sweat grew cold on him, and the chill was so great that
the muscles of .his left arm were benumbed. There fol
lowed " compressio cordis et quasi suffocatio spiritus : a
tightness of the chest and, as it were, suffocation of
the breath." He speaks of syncope — a hint that the
giddiness mentioned to Katie was probably a faint.
The seizure was obviously most serious, and suggests to
an unprofessional eye a premonitory attack of angina
pectoris. At first the business of reconciliation which had
brought him to Eisleben went prosperously. But new
difficulties arose, and Luther experienced bitter vexa
tion, both on account of the covetous spirit betrayed
by the disputants, and of the equivocating and hair
splitting of the lawyers. The worry can have had none

572 MARTIN LUTHER.
other than a bad effect on his health. Cautious as he
had been, Katie became alarmed, and he wrote in
playful tone, yet with earnest intent, urging her to put
her trust in God. " Read your St. John and the little
Catechism, of which you once said, ' Everything in this
book is said of me.' You will take care for your God,
forsooth. As if He were not Almighty, and could
not raise up ten Dr. Martins if this old one were
drowned in the Saal." " Let me alone with your care,
for I have a better guardian than you and all angels.
He lies in a manger, He hangs on a virgin's breast; and
yet He sits at the right hand of the Almighty Father.
Be therefore at rest." On the 14th, he tells her with
great joy that he hopes to be at home within the
week. Once more, and conclusively, there has been a
brightening of the horizon in the matter of the Counts.
The brothers are ready to call themselves brothers again.
The young people of the families go out sledging to
gether, and make presents to each other. In the glad
ness of her heart the Countess Albert has presented
him with some trout, which he sends on to Katie. That
his mind was not so much at rest as to his state of
health as might from this letter be inferred is proved
by his writing to Melanchthon on the same day, and
particularly enjoining him to send a messenger to meet
him with the corrosive which he had used to keep open
an issue in his leg. That issue had closed. Luther
doubtless knew that this was dangerous.
On the 16th and the morning of the 17th the nego
tiation between the Counts was brought to a satisfactory

MAGDALENE'S DEATH AND LUTHER'S. 573
conclusion. On the evening of the 17th, pain and
oppression on the chest, resembling those of the attack
on his journey, suddenly returned. He soon felt that a
crisis was approaching. He bethought him that he
had been born in Eisleben ; " and how should it be," he
said, " if I were to die here ? " The symptoms, in
spite of rubbing with hot towels and the administration
of remedies, became rapidly worse. " Oh, my God," he
cried, " how agonised I am ! Dear Dr. Jonas, I think
that here in Eisleben, where I was born and baptised, I
shall die." Sweat broke out upon him, and his friends
exclaimed that it was a wholesome sign, and he would
get better. It was, he said, the cold sweat of death.
He prayed aloud with great earnestness, thanking God,
in this supreme hour, for having made him an instrument
to preach Christ and maintain His cause against the
Pope. " Lord Jesus Christ, accept my soul. 0 heavenly
Father, though I must leave this body and be torn from
life, yet I, know for sure that I shall abide eternally
with Thee, and that no one can take me out of Thy
hands." Three times he repeated, " Father, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me,
Thou faithful God." His eyes closed, he ceased to
speak, consciousness was all but suspended. Then Dr.
Jonas and another of the bystanders cried loudly,
" Reverend father, do you remain fixed in faith in
Christ,, and in the doctrine that you have preached ? "
He distinctly replied, "Yes." Then, turning on his
right side, he sank into deepening slumber, and in a
quarter of an hour had ceased to breathe. One of his

574 MARTIN LUTHER.
favourite passages was that in which Christ promises
that those who have faith in Him shall not taste death ;
and those who looked upon Luther's face, when the lips
stiffened and the cheeks grew white, bore testimony that
in his case death had been a calm glowing and awakening
into diviner life, rather than any crisis of severance or
distress. Amid the reverent sorrow of the noble and the rich,
and the heartfelt weeping of the poor, they carried the
body into Wittenberg, and laid it in a grave under the
floor of that church on whose door he had posted the
Theses. His friend Melanchthon delivered a funeral
oration, in which, without fulsome praise or veiling of
defects, he recognised the unique honour pertaining to
this man as God's prophet- and chariot-driver in the
great spiritual revolution that had begun in Germany
and the world.* Had the age in which he lived been
one of those ages in which sublime and perennial truths
of religion dawn in poetry, his career would have fur
nished forth an Iliad of wonders. For his discernment
of occasion was like the glance of supernal power,
and the tightness of aim and force of stroke with which,
at exactly the right moment, in the right place, in the
right way, he delivered his attacks, gave them the effect
of miracle. He spoke, and a whole cluster, of towers,
cresting the walls of Babylon, came crashing down.
Such work was dear to his heart ; but dearer still was
that of kindling a lamp of moral illumination in every
parish pulpit in Saxony, of restoring to the pastor his
* Walch, Matthesius, Zimmermann, Kostlin.

MAGDALENE'S DEATH AND LUTHER'S. 575
wife, of gathering children into schools and putting into
their hands simple catechisms, teaching them to obey
God their Father, and love Christ their Brother. Mr.
Matthew Arnold, a witness whose competence will be
acknowledged in all halls of culture, and who is not
prejudiced in favour of Protestant dogma, has told us
that the work of Luther still lasts in the schools of
Germany, and is worthy to be preserved. Defective
or not, his character was as sincere as that of any man
named in history ; and as we reflect on this fact we are
almost persuaded to accept Carlyle' s position, that every
sincere man is a hero. He believed in Christ, and he
gave his life to the enterprise of raising men to spiritual
and eternal salvation through union with God in Christ.

INDEX.

Abrahamism, i. 22
Adrian, Pope, ii. 246
iEmler, Luther's friendship for, i. 89
Agricola, ii. 139, 157, 301, 509
Agriculture, Luther on, ii. 55
Albany, John. Stuart, Duke of, ii. 448
Albert the Dominican, i. 129
Albert of Hohenzollern, i. 305, 387,
457, 461 ; ii. 189
Albert, Count of Mansfeld, i. 424 ; ii.
129, 189, 301, 311, 333, 544
Aleandro, Girolamo, ii. 83 ; his attack
on Luther, 88, 103, 120
Amsdorf, i. 404; ii. 37, 97, 130, 139,
147, 205, 327, 333, 499
Anhalt, Prince of, ii. 486, 556
Antinomianism, ii. 159
Aquila, Bishop of, ii. 555
Aquinas, i. 40, 227 ; studied by Luther,
228; ii. 391
Aristotle, influence of, on mediaeval
theology, i. 128 ; Luther's con
demnation of, 254, 443 ; ii. 53
Arius, i. 157
Arnold, Matthew, on the temper of
controversy,!. 12; his definition of
religion, 17 ; on spiritual crises,
173 ; 575
Arnold of Usingen, i. 131, 155, 190,
340
Athanasius, i. 157, 475
Augsburg, The Diet of, i. 381 ; ii. 535
Augustine, St., i. 283
Augustinian convent, Luther enters,
i. 143 ; account of, 148 ; the class-
feeling of the Brotherhood, 156
Aver, Dr. John, i. 386

B.

Bacon, i. 51 ; the correspondence of
his attitude with Luther's, 35, 52

Barnim, Duke of Pomerania, i. 482
Baumgartner, Jerome, ii. 326
Berlepsch, John von, ii. 132
Bernard, St., i. 194
Bernhard, i. 218 ; ii. 393
Bible, the, Effect on Luther of, i.
190 ; authority of, preached by
Staupitz, 191
Bibraeh, Von, Bishop of Wiirzburg,
ii. 101
Bonaventura, i. 465
Bora, Catherine von, ii. 323 ; is mar
ried to Luther, 333 ; birth of her
eldest son, 459
Bossenstein, i. 402
Brandenburgh, Bishop of, i. 461
Brandenburgh, Marchioness of, ii. 505
Braun, John, Luther's friendship with,
i. 118 ; Luther's letter to, 163
Brenz, John, i. 337
Briick, ii. 86, 270
Brunswick, Duke of, ii. 486
Bucer, Martin, i. 337 ; ii. 490, 561
Bugenhagen, ii. 332, 515
Bull against Luther, The, ii. 64
Burns, ii. 296
Burckhard, George — see Spalatin

C.
Cajetan, Cardinal, i. 233 ; appointed
by the Pope to admonish Luther,
383 ; holds an inquiry at Augsburg,
387 ; attempts to confute Luther,
397 ; is worsted in argument, 399 ;
bids Luther recant, 401 ; lays the
matter before Frederick of Saxony,
406; writes to the Elector, 434;
ii. 8
Calvin, i. 9, 505 ; ii. 238
Campeggio, ii. 511, 544
Capito, ii. 197, 241

578

INDEX.

Cardanus, Hieronymus, i. 65
Carlstadt, Letter to, i. 404 ; 470, 479,
485; his disputation with Eck,
496 ; ii. 12, 27, 169, 215, 219, 241,
266, 271 ; banished from Saxony,
274; 307, 318, 461
Carlyle on Luther quoted, i. 6, 8 ; his
view of the Reformation, 33 : on
spiritual crises, 174; on Luther as
a leader, ii. 284 ; 348, 505
Cassiodorus, i. 475
Charles, King of Spain, i. 380 ; made
Emperor, ii. 18; 81, 107, 113, 120,
144, 478, 528, 545
Chieregati, ii. 248, 354
Clement VII., Pope, ii. 445, 477 ; re
jects Henry VIII.'s application for
divorce, 482; 512, 547
Clergy, Celibacy of the, ii. 46, 170
Coburg, ii. 516 ; Luther's stay at, 517
Cochlseus, ii. 102, 540
Columbus, i. 51
Comte, ii. 476
Confession, Luther on, ii. 175
Constance, The Council of, ii. 113
Constantinople, The fall of, i. 49
Contareni, Cardinal, ii. 554
Copernicus, i. 51, 180
Cortona, Cardinal di, ii. 478
Cotta, "Ursula, i. 109 ; her kindness to
Luther, 110; her death, 122
Cranach, his portrait of John Luther,
i. 76 ; his portrait of Margaret
Luther, 80 ; ii. 122, 324
Crodel, Marcus, ii. 566
Crotus, ii. 98
Cuspinian, ii. 110
Cyprian, i. 284

D.
D'Aubigne quoted, i. 302, 347
Death by fire, ii. 51
Defender of the Faith, title conferred
on Henry VIII., ii. 371
De Leyva, Antonio, ii. 447
Des Pres, Josquin, ii. 416
De Wette, ii. 393
Dietrich, Veit, ii. 533
Divine Right of the Pope, i. 466 ; of
the Church, 480
Draco, ii. 140
Dressel, Michael, Prior at Neustadt,
i. 276
Diirer, Albrecht, meets Luther at
Nuremberg, i. 384

E.
Eck, Dr., i. 233, 326, 464, 470, 478,
485 ; his disputation with Carl
stadt, 496 ; the idol of Leipzig,
516; ii. 26, 64, 540
Eck, John, ii. 108
Eckhart, i. 328
Egranus, Luther's letter to, i. 332
Eisenach, Description of , i. Ill
Eisleben, Luther's birthplace, i. 63 ;
his death at, ii. 573
Emser, ii. 147
Erasmus, referred to by Luther, i.
314, 316, 318, 442, 450, 458, 493
ii. 13, 22, 83, 200, 257, 329, 421
his controversy with Luther, 425
507
Erfurth, University of, i. 123 ; its
position in 1502, 125
Eric, Duke of Brunswick, ii. 118
Ernst, Count of Mansfeld, ii. 313
Esch, John, ii. 411 ¦

Faber, ii. 540
Faith, Definition of, i. 202
Farnese, Cardinal, becomes Paul III.,
ii. 561
Feldkirch, Bishop of Kemberg, ii. 169
Feilitsch, Philip von, i. 397 ; ii. 103
Ferdinand, ii. 390
Ferrara, Duke of, ii. 477
Forster, W. E., his estimate of Luther,
i. 6
Francis I., King of France, ii. 19, 446
Frankfort, The Diet of, ii. 20
Frederick of Saxony, i. 184 ; invites
Luther to Wittenburg, 213 ; his
sagacity, 216 ; is appealed to by
Luther, 379 ; his loyalty to Luther,
444 ; writes to Cajetan, 447 ; at
Worms, ii. 103 ; his anxiety to
quiet Luther, 127 ; 218, 241, 245,
271, 282; his death, 306
Friends, The Society of, ii. 294
Frobenius, i. 487
Fuggers, The, of Augsburg, i. 308 ;
ii. 55
Frosch, Johannes, i. 427

G.
Galatians, Dedication of the Epistle to
the, ii. 5
Gauricus, Lucas, i. 65

INDEX.

579

George, Duke of Dresden, i. 263 ;
offended by Luther's sermon, 266,
478, 507
George, Markgraf of Anspach, ii. 486,
503
George, Squire, the alias of Luther, ii.
136
Gerbel, Nicholas, ii. 499
Gibbon, ii. 164, 422
Ginkel, i. 443
Glapio, ii. 85, 106, 120
Glatz, Dr., ii. 327
God and Mammon, i. 295
Goethe quoted, i. 294, 491 ; ii. 210,
296
Giinther, The Counts, i. 94

H.
Hamilton, Dr. James, ii. 421
Harrison, Mr. Frederic, ii. 476
Hausmann, Nicholas, ii. 418, 458, 530
Hedio, ii. 490
Hegel on St. Peter's at Rome, i. 299
Heidelberg, The Conference at, i. 336
Heine quoted, i. 232
Helfenstein, The Count of, ii. 300
Hellenism, Christian, Spirituality of,
i. 200
Henry VTIL Of England, ii. 19, 164,
372, 445, 478
Hesse, Eoban, i. 133 ; ii. 98
Hilarius, i. 475
Hildebrand, ii. 173
Hilten, i. 135
Hoogstraten, i. 245, 313
Hoyer, Count, ii. 189
Hubmeier, ii. 299
Hund, Burkhard von, ii. 132
Hundred Grievances, ii. 248
Huss, Luther reads his sermons, i.
160; 377, 442, 460, 507, 512; ii.
80, 114
Hussites, The, i. 82, 508
' Hutten, Ulrich von, i. 246, 307, 442 ;
ii. 30, 59, 253

I.

Indulgences_sold by Tetzell, i. 288
ISgoTastadt, i. 468 J.
Jaeger, John, i. 1 33
Joachim of Brandenburgh, ii. 196

John, Elector of Saxony, ii. 344, 466,
486, 505, 515, 527, 543
John. Frederick, Elector of Saxony,
ii. 569
Johnson, Dr., ii. 340
Jonas, ii. 129, 332, 432, 460, 490, 515,
527, 532, 573
Julius, Pope, i. 184, 234
Junctinus, F., i. 65
Jiirgens, i. 114; on the Schoolmen,
139 ; his praise of Wittenberg,
222, 314
Juterbog, The convent of, i. 463
K. '
Kessler, John, ii. 223
Kestner, John, i. 384
Kostlin, i. 347
Kiihne, Dr., the Franciscan, i. 157
L.
Lang, John, i. 516
Lange, John, i. 133; Luther's letter
to, 253; 268, 275, 280, 282, 321,
336, 337, 481 ; ii. 5, 92
Langemantel, Christopher, i. 386, 423
Lasphe, John von, Bishop of Branden
burgh, i. 164
Lannoy, ii. 447
Lautrec, ii. 481
Leipzig Disputation, The, i. 488 ; its
importance, 510
Lenin, Lord Abbot of, i. 310
Leo X., Pope, i. 233, 308; Luther's
letter to, 345 ; 349 ; his treatment
of the Theses, 365 ; summons
Luther to Rome, 378; consents to
Luther's trial in Germany, 382.;
Letter from, ordering Luther's re
moval to Rome, 423, 442 ; sends von
Miltitz as his Envoy, 455 ; ii. 18,
144, 166, 212 ; his death, 214
Lewis, King of Hungary, ii. 464
Link, Wenzel, i. 375, 384, 397, 409,
419, 441, 469 ; ii. 256
Locke, John, ii. 426
Loescher, i. 65
Lombard, Peter, i. 40 ; the Sentences
of, 226
Louise of Savoy, ii. 447
Louvain, University of, ii. 252
Loyola, Ignatius, i. 42
Lunenburg, Duke of, ii. 486
Luther, Fabian, i. 70
Lather, John, i. 68 ; was he a

580

INDEX.

murderer p 71 ; his hard life, 78 ; his
day of prosperity, 81 ; councillor
at Mansfeld, 82; his severity to
wards Martin, 83 ; his views for
Martin's career, 124 ; his wrath at
Martin's becoming a monk, 145 ; is
reconciled to his son, 163
Luther, Magdalene, Death of, ii. 566
Luther, Margaret, i. 63 ; her maiden
name, 79
Luther, Martin, his face, i. 5 ; Car-
lyle's estimate of, 6 ; W. E. For-
Bter's estimate of, 6 ; the King of
Protestants, 10 ; contrasted with
Voltaire, 14 ; influence of his
preaching on the Church, 24 ; his
appeal to the past, 27 ; his Teu
tonic qualities, 32 ; his appeal to
the Bible, 48 ; the initiator of de
mocracy, 51 ; his birth, 63 ; myths
concerning his birth, 65 ; his bapt
ism, 77 ; his vein of poetry, 85 ; his
early religious instruction, 86 ; his
schooldays, 89 ; is sent to Magde
burg, 101; falls ill, 105; sets out
for Eisenach, 107; pressed by want,
109 ; taken into Ursula Cotta's
house, 110; is taught Latin by
Trebonius, 116; his love for Virgil,
117; his friendship with John
Braun and Conrad, 118 ; his
conservative instincts, 121 ; joins
the University of Erfurth, 123
studies Aristotelian philosophy, 128
obtains his Bachelor's degree, 132
becomes a Master of Arts, 136
intended by his father for a legal
career, 138; visits Mansfeld, 141;
returns to Erfurth and enters the
Augustinian convent, 143 ; takes
the full vows of the Order, 153;
his ordination as a priest, 164; his
spiritual crisis, 174 ; advised by
Staupitz to read the Bible, 190 ;
learns Greek, 192; his views on
pardon and faith, 201 ; transcen
dentalism of his theology, 203 ; his
enthusiasm for reform, 210 ; ap
pointed Professor of Philosophy at
Wittenberg, 220 ; his dislike for
Wittenberg, 223 ; his journey to
Rome, 233 ; returns to Wittenberg,
241 ; takes his Doctor's degree,
242 ; his letter on the Reuch-
lin controversy, 247 ; condemns
Aristotle, 253 ; opposes Staupitz's
appointment to a bishopric, 256 ;

his "power as a preacher, 257 ;
preaches at Dresden, 263 ; sub
mits his tenets to the University of
¦ Erfurth, 268 ; his decision in the
case of Michael Dressel, 276 ; posts
his Ninety-five Theses on the
church at Wittenberg, 289 ; appeals
to Albert of Hohenzollern, 305 ;
publishes a commentary on his
Theses, 314 ; is supported by the
students of Wittenberg, 322 ; his
journey to Heidelberg, 334 ; his
return to Wittenberg after the
conference, 341 ; publishes a treatise
on the Theses, and appeals to the
Pope, 343 ; replies to the arguments
of Prierias, 368 ; his swiftness of
composition, 369 ; is summoned to
Rome, 378 ; claims to be tried in
Germany, 379 ; goes to Augsburg
to meet Cajetan, 386 ; rejects
Serralonga's overtures, 391; re
plies to Cajetan, 398 ; sends a letter
of apology to Cajetan, but refuses
to recant, 416 ; leaves Augsburg,
423 ; makes an appeal to Frederick,
437 ; his gratitude to Frederick for
his support, 449 ; his letter to
Reuchlrn, 450 ; is attacked by the
Barefooters of Juterbog, 463 ; his
reply to them, 465 ; goes to Leip
zig, 482 ; counsels Carlstadt in his
disputation with Eck, 496 ; replies
to Eck, 501 ; his opposition to
Rome, ii. 4 ; his irony, 8 ; com
poses a treatise for the Elector, 11 ;
his estrangement with Staupitz, 15;
his letter to Albert, 23 ; declares
war against Rome, 31 ; his address
to the Emperor, 36 ; publishes two
tracts, 62 ; Bull issued against, 64 ;
burns the Bull, 67 ; consents to
appear at the Diet of Worms, 79 ;
is summoned thither, 96 ; received
with acclamation, 97 ; is questioned
before the Diet, 108 ; refuses to
recant, 115 ; is commanded to leave
Worms, 121 ; his opinion of the
Emperor, 126 ; is carried off to the
Wartburg, 131 ; his life on the
Wartburg, 136 ; is visited by Satan,
151 ; writes to Melanchthon on
clerical celibacy, 170 ; his views
on marriage, 181 ; attacks the mass,
186 ; visits Wittenberg, 205 ; his
translation of the New Testament,
208 ; his conduct towards the rising

INDEX.

581

of the peasants, 264; letter to
Briick on' polygamy, 270 ; his
views on Carlstadt, 274; attempts
to restrain Miinzer, 289 ; exhorts
the peasants to peace, 301 ; preaches
against . the insurrection, 305 ;
shelters Carlstadt, 318 ; marries
Catherine von Bora, 332 ; his mar
ried life, 336 ; on the right of
private judgment, 359; his reply
to Henry VIII., 373 ; suggests that
convents should be used for muni
cipal purposes, 380 ; his general
views on the Church, 402 ; his
modification of the mass, 404 ; his
hymns, 412; his controversy with
Erasmus, 422 ; attends the con
ference at Marburg, 490 ; confers
with the Elector John at Torgau,
515 ; his love of folk-lore, 519 ; his
address to those attending the Diet
of Augsburg, 521 ; is opposed to
conciliation, 543 ; refuses to ratify
the Agreement of the Diet of
Ratisbon, 556 ; his opinion on
Philip of Hesse's second marriage,
564 ; adjusts a dispute between the
Counts of Mansfeld, 570 ; his
death, 573
Luther's Well, i. 222M.
Macaulay, Lord, on the Reformation,
i. 35 ; his life of Bunyan, 173 ; ii.
159, 340, 423
Magdeburg, Luther sent to, i. 101
Maimbourg, ii. 87, 329, 334
Mansfeld, The Luther family at, i.
78 ; description of its neighbour
hood, 91
Marburg, Conference at, ii. 489
Marriage, Luther's opinion on, ii. 181 ;
564
Mary, Queen of Hungary, ii. 464
Mass, the, Luther's views on, ii. 186
Matthesius, i. 65, 141, 152; ii. 101,
333, 519
Maurice, F. D., on the Catholic system,
i. 41
Maximilian, The Emperor, i. 380;
ii. 18
Mayence, Cardinal of, ii. 143
Medici, Alexander de, ii. 483
Medici, Cardinal Julius, ii. 213, 246
Meissen, The Bishop of, ii., 93, 244
Melanchthon, his inquiries as to the
date of Luther's birth, i. §4, 304 ;

his appearance at Wittenberg, 354 ;
his friendship with Luther, 35-5 ;
letter to, 402 ; 432, 451, 481, 494,
496, 515; ii. 13, 16, 28; his mar
riage, 59 ; 75, 137, 141, 155, 159, 166,
170, 185, 194, 218, 220, 301, 331,
348, 392, 460, 490, 515, 527, 530,
541, 560, 564, 571
Mercurinus, ii. 529
Merseburg, The Bishop of, ii. 22, 32, 93
Metanoia, translated in Latin by
paenitentia, i. 199
Migne on Peter Lombard, i. 226
Miltitz, Charles von, i. 455, 461, 469.
478
Minkwitz, John von, ii. 106
Miracle shrines, ii. 48
Mohacz, Battle of, ii. 465
Mohr, Martin, ii. 219
Mohra, the cradle of the Luther family,
i. 68
Morley, Mr. John, on the Christian
Ideal, i. 14 ; on Protestantism, 35 ;
ii. 433
Mosaism contrasted with Abrahamism,
i. 23
Mosellanus, Peter, i. 493
Miinzer, Thomas, ii. 218, 241, 266,
279, 287, 290, 299 ; condemned to
death, 314 ; his hatred of Luther,
316
Myconius, ii. 490 N.
Nathin, John, Attack made on Luther
by, i. 250
Naumann, Emil, ii. 416
Neander, Opinion of, on Thomas
Aquinas, i. 229
New Testament, Translation of the,
ii. 208
Newman, Dr., resemblance to Luther,
i. Ill ; referred to, 138, 177, 191 ;
ii. 355, 423, 475
Nicholas of Basle, i. 328
Null Brothers, The School of the,
i. 102 O.
GScolampadius, ii. 461, 490
Origen, ii. 153, 391 P.
Pappenheim, Ulrich von, ii. 106
Paul III., ii. 551

582

INDEX.

Pavia, Battle of, ii. 449
Peasantry, Condition of the, ii. 260 ;
Rising of, 299
Pelagianism, ii. 65
Penitence, Luther's opinion of, i. 197
Pescara, ii. 447
Petsensteiner, ii. 96, 130
Peutinger, Dr. Conrad, i. 386
Pfefferkorn, i. 246
Pfeffinger, i. 319, 335
Pfeiffer, ii. 281, 300
Philip of Hesse, ii. 120, 255, 310, 474,
484, 541, 560
Pistoris, Simon, i. 492
Pole, Cardinal, ii. 555
Pollich, Martin, physician to Frederick,
i. 219 ; rector of the University
of Wittenberg, 224
Polygamy, Luther's opinion on, ii.
270.
Pope, the, Arraignment of, i. 297 ;
Pretences of, ii. 45 ; Dispensations
of, 50
Prateolus, Gabriel, i. 65
Premsel, i. 443
Prierias, Silvester, his attempted de
molition of the Theses, i. 367 ;
- questions Luther's motives, 371,
440
Priesthood, a celibate, Dangers of, ii.
340
Printing-press, the, Power of, i. 50
Probus, i. 157
Proles, i. 135
Protestants, ii. 486

R.

Ranke, quoted, ii. 213, 251, 512, 547,
555
Ratisbon, Diet of, ii. 554
Ratseberger, Dr., i. 105
Rechenberg, John von, ii. 396
Reformation, The, its beginning, i.
28 ; its introduction of reason and
moderation, 31 ; Carlyle's view of,
33 ; Macauiay's ' tribute to, 35 ; its
violence of speech, 38; reaction
against, 42 ; system of Papacy
before, 2 1 1 ; not designed by Luther,
213
Reichenbach, ii. 324
Reineck accompanies Luther to Mag
deburg, i. 101
Religion, its power, i. 17 ; the mischief
done in its name, 18; compared

with fire, 18, 19 ; the law of its
progress, 21 ; its relation to reason,
31
Repentance, The spirituality of, i. 292
Semlutiones, i." 314
Reuchlin, John, i. 245 ; represents the
advanced party, 246 ; Luther's let
ter on, 247; 307, 442, 450, 513
Rome, Celibacy and the confessional in
the Church of, i. 46 ; Luther's
journey to, 233 ; impression pro
duced on Luther by, 236
Riihel, ii. 333

S.

Saal, Margaret von der, ii. 662
Sahla, Barbara von der, i. 265
Salzburg, Bishop of, i. 458
Schalbensian Collegians, The, i. 119
Schleusner, Dominic, ii. 30
Schoolmen, The, opinion on salvation
of, i. 180; condemned by Luther,
231 ; letter to Lange against, 253
Schulenburg, Matthias von, ii. 556
Schurff, ii. 242, 331
Schwertfeger, i. 432
Scotus, Alesius, ii. 556
Senfel, Ludwig, ii. 416, 546
Serralonga, Urban of, envoy of Caje
tan, i. 388 ; attempts, to persuade
Luther to withdraw his Theses,
390, 405
Severian, ii. 140
Servetus, The burning of, i. 9
Shakespeare, i. 52 ; his use of Biblical
allusions and phrases, 53 ; his in
sight into Luther's doctrine, 56 ;
Luther's ally, 60
Sickingen, ii. 59, 143, 253
Sigismund, The Emperor, ii. 394
Simler, James, i. 336
Solyman, The Sultan, ii. 244
Spalatin, i. 96, 133; his "Life of
Frederick the Wise," 134; 217, 257,
266, 282, 304, 313, 315, 319, 335,
340, 354, 359, 367, 379, 383, 403,
423, 425, 428, 440, 445, 461, 471,
478, 497, 516; ii. 10, 16, 24, 27,
31, 33,59, 67, 78, 85, 100, 129, 138,
142, 146, 155, 158, 167, 189, 192,
200, 206, 242, 256, 309, 333, 363,
390, 400, 459, 527, 543
Spenlein, John, Luther's letter to, i.
269
Speratus, Paul, ii. 414
Spires, Diet of, ii. 484

INDEX.

583

Staupitz, John von, Vicar of the Au
gustinian monks, i. 183 ; his in
fluence on Luther, 187 ; Letter of
Luther to, 195 ; his friendship with
Luther, 209 ; recommends Luther
to Frederick of Saxony, 216 ; Pro
fessor of Theology at Wittenberg,
22"4 ; proposes to Luther to become
a doctor, 241 ; his appointment to a
bishopric opposed by Luther, 256 ;
sends Luther to Dresden, 263, 269,
319, 327, 331, 345, 379, 409 ; his
interview with Cajetan, 411; leaves
Augsburg, 420, 473 ; ii. 13, 33, 59,
90, 323, 357, 377
Stigmata of St. Francis, The, ii. 15
Storch, Nicholas, ii. 218
Stuart, John, Duke of Albany, ii. 448
Stubner, Mark, ii. 218
Sturm, Caspar, ii. 96, 106
Sturm, Claus, Burgomaster of Magde
burg, i. 102
Swanen, Peter, ii. 97

Table Talk, Luther's, quoted, i. 228 ;
ii. 149, 150, 211, 321, 346, 350
Tauler, The mysticism of, i. 203, 230,
284, 327, 353, 513
Tetzell, vendor of indulgences, i. 287 ;
his defenders, 295, 309, 313; prints
counter-theses, 322 ; 405, 456, 463 ;
ii. 22
Theses, Th.e Ninety-five, i. 289
Thomas, Mark, ii. 218
Thomas the Franciscan, i. 129
Thorn, Lambert, ii. 411
Thur, ii. 333
Tomorri, Paul, ii. 465
Trebonius, Luther's teacher, i. 116
Trent, Council of, ii. 114
Treves, Archbishop of, ii. 255
Truttvetter, Professor at Erfurth, i.
130, 191 ; at Wittenberg, 224 ; 338,
364 U.
Universities, their position in the six
teenth century, i. 124

University Reform, ii. 52
Urbino, Duke of, ii. 477

V.
Valla, Laurentius, ii. 30, 33, 366, 384
Veit, Professor, i. 432
Vergerius, ii. 553
Virgil, Luther's love for, 117
Voes, Henry, ii. 411

W.
Waldshut, The rising at, ii. 299
Wartburg, Castle of the, ii. 131
Wehe, ii. 120
Weinmann, i. 135
Weller, Jerome, ii. 524
White, Rev. Edward, ii. 191
Wickliffe, i. 468, 512; ii. 114, 165,
374
William of Anhalt-Bernburg, Prince,
i. 102
Wimpina, ii. 540
Winer, ii. 537
Witsel, i. 71
Wittenberg, Collection of relics at, i.
218; foundation of its University,
219
Wolfgang, ii. 503
Wolfgang, The Prince Palatine, i. 336
Wolsey, ii. 165
Wordsworth, Bishop, on Shakespeare's
use of Biblical allusions and phrases,
i. 53
Worms, Diet of, ii. 83
Worship, Object of, i. 202 ^
Wurtemburg, Duke of, ii. 561

Zecharias, Argument of, against Huss,
i. 161
Zimmermann, ii. 348
Zwickauers, The, ii. 218
Zwilling, Gabriel, ii. 217, 369
Zwingli, ii. 238, 262, 488

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