Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  “Believe me,” he says in a letter of that time to Nicholas Gerbel of Strasburg, “in the quiet of my hermitage I am exposed to the attacks of a thousand devils. It is far easier to fight against men, who are devils incarnate, than against the ‘spirits of wickedness dwelling in high places’ (Eph. vi. 12). I fall frequently, but the right hand of the Lord again raises me up.”

  The distaste which was growing up within him for the vow of chastity which he had once esteemed so highly, did not appear to him to come from the devil, for he congratulates the same friend that he has forsaken the “unclean and in its nature damnable state of celibacy,” in order to enter the “married state ordained by God.” “I consider the married state a true Paradise, even though the married couple should live in the greatest indigence.” At the same time he privately informs Gerbel, that, with the co-operation of Melanchthon, he has already started “a powerful conspiracy with the object of setting aside the vows of the clergy and religious.” He is here alluding to the tract he was then writing “On Monastic Vows.” “The womb is fruitful, and is soon due to bring forth; if Christ wills it will give birth to a child [the tract in question], which shall break in pieces with a rod of iron (Apoc. xii. 5) the Papists, sophists, religiosists [defenders of religious Orders] and Herodians.” “O how criminal is Antichrist, seeing that Satan by his means has laid waste all the mysteries of Christian piety.... I daily see so much that is dreadful in the wretched celibacy of young men and women that nothing sounds more evil in my ears than the words nun, monk and priest.”

  Hence, at the beginning of November, 1521, when he was engaged on the momentous work “On Monastic Vows,” he believed he had found decisive biblical arguments against the state of chastity and continence, recommended though it had been by Christ and His Apostles.

  Previously the case had been different, when Carlstadt and others first began to boggle at vows; Luther was then still undecided, seeking for ostensibly theological arguments with which to demolish the difficulty. At that time he had been troubled by such plain biblical words as those of the Psalmist, “Vow ye and pray to the Lord your God” (Ps. lxxv. 12). Even in August, 1521, he had confided his scruples to Spalatin from the Wartburg: “What can be more perilous than to invite so large a number of unmarried persons to enter into matrimony on the strength of a few passages of doubtful meaning? The consequence will only be that consciences will be still more troubled than they are at present. I, too, would fain see celibacy made optional, as the Gospel wills, but I do not yet see my way to proving this.” We likewise find him criticising rather unkindly Melanchthon’s reasons, because they took a wrong way to a goal after which he was himself ardently striving, viz. the setting aside of the vow of celibacy. He was suffering, he admits, “grievous pain through being unable to find the right answer to the question.”

  Such efforts were naturally crowned with success in the end.

  Five weeks later he was able to inform Melanchthon: “It seems to me that now I can say with confidence how our task is to be accomplished. The argument is briefly this: Whoever has taken a vow in a spirit opposed to evangelical freedom must be set free and his vow be anathema. Such, however, are all those who have taken the vow in the search for salvation, or justification. Since the greater number of those taking vows make them for this reason, it is clear that their vow is godless, sacrilegious, contrary to the Gospel and hence to be dissolved and laid under a curse.”

  Thus it was the indefinite and elastic idea of “evangelical freedom” which was finally to settle the question. Concerning his own frame of mind while working out this idea in his tract, he says to Spalatin, on November 11, in a letter of complaint about other matters: “I am going to make war against religious vows.... I am suffering from temptations, and out of temper, so don’t be offended. There is more than one Satan contending with me; I am alone, and yet at times not alone.”

  The book was finished in November and sent out under the title, “On Monastic Vows.” The same strange argument, based on evangelical freedom, recurs therein again and again under all sorts of rhetorical forms; the tract is also noteworthy for its distortion of the Church’s teaching, though we cannot here enter in detail into its theology and misstatements. The very origin of the book does not inspire confidence. Many great and monumental historical works and events have originated in conditions far from blameless, but few of Luther’s writings have sprung from so base a source as this one; yet its results were far-reaching, and it was a means of seducing countless wavering and careless religious, depicting the monasteries and furthering immensely the new evangelical teaching. While writing the book Luther had naturally in his mind the multitude he was so desirous of setting free, and chose his language accordingly.

  But what were his thoughts concerning himself at that period, when the idea of matrimony had not yet dawned upon him?

  In the letter to Melanchthon just referred to, he says of himself: “If I had had the above argument [concerning evangelical freedom] before my eyes when I made my vow, I should never have taken it. I too am, therefore, uncertain as to the frame of mind in which I did take it; I was rather carried away than drawn, such was God’s will; I fear that I too made a godless and sacrilegious vow.... Later, when the vows were made, my earthly father, who was angry about it all, said to me when he had calmed down: ‘If only it was not a snare of Satan!’ His words made such an impression on me that I remember them better than anything else he ever said, and I believe that through his mouth God spoke to me, at a late hour indeed, and as from afar, to rebuke and warn me.”

  Very closely connected with his own development is the fact that at that time, on several occasions, he described most glaringly and untruthfully the moral corruption in which the Papists were sunk, owing to the vow of chastity and the state of celibacy. It seems to have been his way of quieting his conscience. So greatly does he generalise concerning the evil which he attributes with much exaggeration to his fellows in the religious state, representing it as an inevitable result of monastic life, that, strange to say, he forgets to except himself. Only at a much later date did he casually inform his hearers that, through God’s dispensation, he had preserved his chastity.

  As to whether he himself had any intention then of dissolving his vow by marriage, we may put on record what he had said at an earlier date in a written sermon intended for the general public: “I hope I have got so far that, with God’s grace, I may remain as I am,” but he adds: “though I am not yet out of the wood and dare not compare myself to the chaste hearts, still I should be sorry and pray God graciously to preserve me from it.” The “chaste hearts” are the “false saints” whom he is assailing in that particular section of his sermon. To the “false saints” he opposes the true ones, much as in his earliest sermons at Wittenberg he had attacked the stricter monks and their observance, describing them opprobriously as little saints and proud self-righteous by works. The connecting link between the two, i.e. his erroneous opposition to all good works and renunciation of sensuality, here, and again and again elsewhere, is clearly Luther’s starting-point.

  He fancies he hears those who were desirous of faithfully keeping the vow they had made to God reproaching him with his sensuality, “how they open their jaws,” and say, “alas, poor monk, how he must feel the weight of his cowl, how pleased he would be to have a wife! But let them blaspheme,” such is his answer, one typical of his language on the subject, “let them blaspheme, these chaste hearts and great saints, let them be of iron and stone as they feign to be; but as for you, beware of forgetting that you are a man of flesh and blood; leave it to God to judge between the angelical and mighty heroes and the despised and feeble sinners. If you only knew who they are who make a show of such great chastity and discipline, and what that is of which St. Paul speaks, Ephesians v. 12: ‘For of the things that are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak,’ you would not esteem their boasted chastity fit even for a prostitute to wipe her boots on. Here we have the perversion th
at the chaste are the unchaste and deceive all that come in contact with them.”

  Yet the pious religious who were true to their vows would certainly have been the last to deny that they were mere flesh and blood; they did not pretend to be made of “iron,” nor did they vaunt their “boasted chastity,” but prayed to God, did humble penance, and so acquired the grace necessary for keeping what they had cheerfully vowed in the fear of the Lord and in the consoling hope of an eternal reward. On the other hand, we hear but little of Luther’s praying in the Wartburg, and still less of his having performed penance. And yet those walls were full of the memory of that great Saint, Elizabeth of Hungary, whose life was a touching example of zealous prayer and penance.

  Luther, during his stay in the Castle, accused himself in very strong terms, which, however, he did not intend to be taken literally, of gluttony and luxurious living, and also of idleness. “I sit here all day in idleness and fill my belly,” he says in hyperbolical language on May 14, 1521, in a letter to Spalatin, soon after his arrival at the Wartburg. Already before this, at Wittenberg, in a letter to Staupitz, he had reproached himself with drunkenness.

  If, however, the “luxury” with which he reproached himself was no graver than his “idleness,” then Luther is not really in such a bad case, for his “idleness” was so little meant to be taken literally, that, in the same letter, he immediately goes on to speak of his literary projects: “I am about to write a German sermon on the freedom of auricular confession [this duly appeared and was dedicated to Sickingen]; I also intend to continue the Commentary on the Psalms [a plan never realised]; also my postils as soon as I have received what I require from Wittenberg [the German postil alone was published]; I am also awaiting the unfinished MS. of the Magnificat [this also was published later].”

  It was not in his nature to be really idle.

  His chief German work, which was to render him so popular, viz. his translation of the Bible, was commenced in the Wartburg, where he started with the translation of the New Testament from the Greek. We shall speak elsewhere of the merits and defects of this translation. The general excellence of its style and language cannot hide the theological bias which frequently guides the writer’s pen, nor can its value as a popular work allow us to overlook the fact that he was often carried away by the precipitation incidental to his temperament.

  Another work which he finished within those quiet walls treated of the Sacrifice of the Mass. His thoughts early turned with aversion from this centre of Catholic worship; indeed, he seemed bent on robbing the Church of the very pearl of her worship. He appears to have said Mass for the last time on his way to Augsburg to meet Cardinal Cajetan. In the Wartburg he refused to have anything to do with the “Mass priest” living there. On August 1, 1521, he wrote to Melanchthon, that the renewal of Christ’s institution of the celebration of the Supper, proposed by his friends at Wittenberg, agreed entirely with the plans he had in view when he should return, and that from that time forward he would never again say a private Mass.

  The work just mentioned, which appeared in 1522, is entitled, “On the Abuse of the Mass.” He dedicated it in the Preface “to the Augustinians of Wittenberg,” his dear brethren, because he had heard in his solitude, so he says, “that they had been the first to commence setting aside the abuse of Masses in their assembly [congregation].” He is desirous of fortifying their “consciences” against the Mass, because he is anxious lest “all should not have the same constancy, and good conscience, in the undertaking of so great and notable a work.” In the same way as he in his struggle had attained to assurance of conscience, so they, too, must act “with a like conscience, faith and trust, and look on the opinion of the whole world as nothing but chaff and straw, knowing that we are sent to a death-struggle against the devil and all his might, yea, against the judgment of God, and, like Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 28), can only overcome by our strength of faith.”

  To despise the protests of the world was not so difficult, but to pay “no heed to the devil and the solemn judgment of God” was a harder task.

  It would seem that some of the Augustinians were not capable of this, and had become uneasy concerning the innovations. He is thereupon at pains to assure them that he is an expert in the matter; he declares that he has learnt from experience how “our conscience makes us out to be sinners in God’s sight and deserving of eternal reprobation, unless it is well preserved and protected at every point by the holy, strong and veracious Word of God.” This “stronghold” he would fain open to them by demonstrating from the Word of God the horrors of the Sacrifice of the Mass.

  Hence he begins by overthrowing, with incredible determination, everything that might be advanced against him and in favour of the Mass in general by the “doctrine and discipline of the Church, the teaching of the Fathers, immemorial custom and usage,” commandments of men and theological faculties, Saints, Fathers, or, in fine, the “Pope and his Gomorrhas.” The utter unrestraint of his language here and there is only matched by the extravagance of his ideas and interpretation of the Bible.

  All men are priests, he declares; as to Mass priests there should be none. “I defy the idols and pomps of this world, the Pope and his parsons. You fine priestlings, can you point out to us in all the gospels and epistles a single bit of proof that you are or were intended to act as priests for other Christians?” Whoever dares to adduce the well-known passages in the Bible to the contrary he looks on as a “rude, unlettered donkey.” Why? Because he would not otherwise defend the “smeared and shorn priesthood.” “O worthy patron of the shaven, oily little gods,” he says to him with mocking commiseration. We are the persecuted party, we, who, whilst acknowledging Christ’s presence in the Sacrament, will have nothing to do with the sacrificial character of the Supper. For whoever holds fast simply to Christ’s institution is scolded as a heretic by the Pope. “There they sit, the unlettered, godless hippopotami, on costly, royal thrones, Pope, Cardinal, bishop, monk and parson with their schools of Paris and Louvain, and their dear sisters Sodom and Gomorrah.” As soon as they see the poor, small, despised crew [the opponents of the Mass] they wax wroth, “frown, turn up their noses, hold up their hands in horror, and cry: ‘The heretics do not observe the usage and form of the Roman Church’”; but they themselves are “unlearned dunces and donkeys.”

  The author, whose very pen seems steeped in ire, goes off at a tangent to speak of the Pope and of celibacy.

  He is never tired of explaining “that the abominable and horrid priesthood of the Papists came into the world from the devil”; “the Pope is a true apostle of his master the hellish fiend, according to whose will he lives and reigns”; he has dropped into the holy kingdom of the priesthood common to all like the “devil’s hog he is, and with his snout” has befouled, yea, destroyed it; with his celibacy he has raised up a priesthood which is “a brew of all abominations.” The devil himself does not suffice to make Luther’s language strong enough for his liking, and he is driven to his imagination for other ugly pictures.

  “I believe, that, even had the Pope made fornication obligatory, he would not have given rise to and furthered such great unchastity [as by celibacy].” “Who can sufficiently deplore the fury of the devil with his godless, cursed law?” The “Roman knave” wishes to rule everywhere, and the “universities, those shameless brothels, sit still and say nothing.... They, like obedient children of the Church, carry out the commands of the whoremaster. Every Christian ought to resist him at the risk of his life, even though he had a thousand heads, because we see how the poor, simple, common folk who stand in terror of his childish, shameful Bulls, do, and submit to, whatever the damned Roman rogue invents with the help of the devil.”

  Many of his contemporaries may well be excused for having felt that such language was the result of the Pope’s Bull; the curse of the Church had overtaken Luther, in the solitude of the Wartburg it had done its work, and now the spirit of evil and darkness had gained complete mastery.

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��So great,” he cries, “is God’s anger over this vale of Tafet and Hinnan that those who are most learned, and live most chastely, do more harm than those who learn nothing and live in fornication.” “O unhappy wretches that we are, who live in these latter days among so many Baalites, Bethelites and Molochites, who all appear so spiritual and Christian, and yet have swallowed up the whole world and themselves desire to be the only Church; they live and laugh in their security and freedom, instead of weeping tears of blood over the cruel murder of the children of our people.”

  In conclusion, he gives his open approval to the Wittenbergers, that “Mass is no longer said, that there is no more organ-playing,” and that “bleating and bellowing” has ceased in the Church, so that the Papists say: “They are all heretics and have gone crazy.” It seems to him that Saxony is the happiest of lands, “because there the living truth of the Gospel has arisen”; surely the Elector Frederick must be the Prince, foretold by prophecy, who was to deliver the Holy Sepulchre; himself he compares to the “Angel at the Sepulchre,” or to Magdalene who announced the Resurrection.

  His self-confidence and arrogance had not been shaken by the many weary hours of lonely introspection in the Wartburg, but, on the contrary, had been nourished and inflamed. That was the period of his “spiritual baptism”; he felt volcanic forces surging up within him. He believed that a power from above had commanded him to teach as he was doing. Hence he called the Wartburg his Patmos; as the Apostle John had received his revelation on Patmos, so, as he thought, he also had been favoured in his seclusion with mysterious communications from above.

  The idea of a divine commission now began to penetrate all his being with overwhelming force.

  When the ecclesiastical troubles at Wittenberg necessitated his permanent return thither, he declared to the Elector, who had hitherto never heard such language from his lips, “Your Electoral Grace is already aware, or, if unaware, is hereby apprised of the fact, that I have not received the Gospel from man, but from heaven only, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I might already have accounted myself and signed myself a servant and evangelist, and for the future shall do so.” We must also refer to the days of his Saxon Patmos — which exercised so deep an influence on his interior life — the remarkable mystical utterance to which his pupils afterwards declared he had given vent at a later date, viz. that he had been “commanded,” nay, “enjoined under pain of eternal reprobation (‘interminaretur’) not to doubt in any way of these things [of the doctrines he was to teach].”