Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  What Luther, however, was most sensitive to was that some of the Wittenberg lawyers, conformably with the traditional code, declared the marriages of priests, and consequently his own, to be invalid in law, and the children of such unions to be incapable of inheriting. He keenly felt the blow which was thus directed against himself and his children. His displeasure he gave vent to in some drastic utterances. If what the lawyers say is correct, he continues in the writing above referred to addressed to the Elector, “then I should also be obliged to forsake the Evangel and crawl back into the frock [the religious habit] in the devil’s name, by power and virtue of both ecclesiastical and secular law. Then Your Electoral Highness would have to have my head chopped off, dealing likewise with all those who have married nuns, as the Emperor Jovian decreed more than a thousand years ago” [and as the law still stood in the codes then in use].

  Thoughts such as these, on the reprobation of his union with Bora by the law of the Church and of the Christian Roman Empire, stood in glaring contrast to the pleasant moods of domestic life to which he so gladly gave himself up. He sought to find solace from his public cares and conflicts in his family circle, and some compensation for the troubles which the great ones of the earth caused him in the domestic delights in which he would have wished all other fallen priests to share. He succeeded, to an extent which appeared by no means enviable to those who followed a different ideal, in forgetting his priestly state and its demands. In one of the letters just mentioned he writes as a father to Spalatin, who also had had recourse to marriage: “May you live happily in the Lord with your rib [i.e. your wife]. My little Hans sends you greetings; he is now in the month of teething and is beginning to lisp; it is delightful to see how he will leave no one in peace about him. My Katey also sends you her best wishes, above all for a little Spalatin, to teach you what she boasts of having learnt from her little Hans, i.e. the crown and joy of wedded life, which the Pope and his world were not worthy of.”

  What Canon Law said of the high calling of the priest and religious and of the depth of the fall of those who proved untrue to it, no longer made the slightest impression on him. It would have been in vain had a St. Jerome of olden days, a mediæval St. Bernard or a Geiler of Kaysersberg championed the cause of Canon Law against Luther and his nun in the glowing language they knew so well how to use. Luther’s own words quoted above concerning the death penalty decreed by Jovian the Christian Emperor against anyone sacrilegiously violating a nun, illuminate as with a lightning flash the antagonism between antiquity and Luther’s doings.

  He asserts himself proudly because he considers his heavenly calling to expound the new Evangel, and his Divine mission, had been questioned by the lawyers who represented the authority of the State. When, in defiance of their objections against the legitimacy of his family, he drafted his celebrated will, he was careful to inform them that, for its validity, he has no need of them or of a notary; he was “Dr. Martinus Luther, God’s Notary and Witness to His Gospel,” and was “well known in heaven, on earth and in hell”; that “God had entrusted him with the Gospel of His Dear Son and had made him faithful and true to it,” for which reason, “in spite of the fury of all the devils,” many “in the world regarded him as a teacher of truth.”

  3. The Question of the Religious War; Luther’s Vacillating Attitude. The League of Schmalkalden, 1531

  After the Diet of Augsburg, Luther, as we have shown (vol. ii., p, 395 f.), proclaimed the war of religion much more openly than ever before. His writings, “Auff das vermeint Keiserlich Edict” and “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” bear witness to this. The proceedings taken by the Empire on the ground of the resolutions of Worms, and the attitude of the Catholic Princes and Estates, appeared to him merely a plot, a shameful artifice on the part of the “bloodhounds” who opposed him.

  In his writing against the Assassin, i.e. Duke George of Saxony, he expounds his politico-religious standpoint in a way which became his rule for the future. Cain and Abel, the devil and the righteous, stand face to face. “The world belongs either to the devil or to the Children of God. The devil’s realm conceals a murderer and bloodhound, Abel, a pious and peaceable heart.” Abel stands for the Lutherans, Cain and the devil for the Papists. It is a “veracious opinion, founded on Scripture and proved by the fruits of the Papists, that they are ever on the watch and lie in wait day and night to destroy us and root us out.” “If the Emperor or the authorities purpose to make war on God [i.e. Luther’s Evangel], then no one must obey them.” In this case everyone must resist, for it is no “disobedience, rebellion or contumacy to refuse to obey and assist in shedding innocent blood.”

  Opposition and violent resistance to the lawful authority of the empire and its legitimate action is here justified by the argument that to fight for the Evangel is no revolt.

  The defiant resolve to proceed to any extreme regardless of others or of the public weal, finds its strongest expression in Luther’s words during and after the Diet of Augsburg: “Not one hair’s breadth will I yield to the foe,” he wrote from the fortress of Coburg, with a hint at the wavering attitude of Melanchthon and Jonas. This it was which led up to the statement already quoted: “If war is to come, let it come.” “God has delivered them up to be slaughtered.”

  Luther on Armed Resistance, until 1530.

  If we glance at Luther’s former attitude towards open resistance, we find that it would be unjust to say that he preferred religious war to peaceful propaganda. He perceived the danger which it involved. At an earlier period he several times had occasion to intervene when warring elements threatened to estrange the German Princes. We find statements of his where he speaks against armed resistance and points out (to use his later words) what a “blot upon our teaching” a “breach or disturbance of the peace of the land would be.” There is no question that such utterances preponderate with him until 1530. From the very first years of his public career he was anxious to impress on all, particularly on his own Sovereign, that the Word alone must work all; he eliminates as far as possible every prospect of a struggle with the Emperor or the other rulers, which was what the Elector really dreaded. He also frequently expounds theoretically, more particularly in his booklet “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” (1523), the duty of Christians not to resist the authorities, because the Kingdom of God means yielding, humility and submission; every true believer must even allow himself to be “fleeced and oppressed”; he must indeed confess the evangelical faith, but be willing to “suffer” under an authority hostile to the faith (cp. vol. ii., f.). When occasion offered he was ready to quote numerous passages from Holy Scripture in order to show that violent revolt and armed intervention on behalf of the Gospel are forbidden, and that the German Princes had nothing to fear from him in this regard.

  None the less, his enterprise was visibly drifting towards the employment of force and towards war.

  How deeply he felt the premonition of civil war is plain, for instance, from the following:

  “There will be no lack of breaches of the peace, and of war only too much,” he wrote in 1528 to the Elector Johann. He and Melanchthon together also wrote in the same strain to the Crown-Prince of Saxony, Johann Frederick, in 1528; “Time will bring enough fighting with it which it will be impossible to avoid, so that we should be grateful to accept peace where we are able.” As early as 1522 he had given to the Elector Frederick one of his reasons for leaving the Wartburg and returning to Wittenberg: “I am much afraid and troubled because I am, alas, convinced that there will be a great revolt in the German lands, by which God will chastise the nation.” The Evangel was well received by the common people, but some were desirous of extinguishing the light by force. And yet “not only the spiritual, but also the secular power, must yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise, as all the accounts contained in the Bible sufficiently show.... I am only concerned lest the revolt should begin with the Lords, and, like a national calamity, engulf the priesthood.”

  Neverthel
ess he is determined to be of good cheer; even should the war ensue, his conscience is “pure, guiltless and untroubled, whereas the consciences of the Papists are guilty, anxious and unclean.” “Therefore let things take their course and do their worst, whether it be war or rebellion according as God’s anger decrees.”

  This gives redoubled weight to his determination to press forward relentlessly. “Let justice prevail even though the whole world should be reduced to ruin. For I say throw peace into the nethermost hell if it is to be purchased at the price of harm to the Evangel and to the faith.”

  It has been admitted on the Protestant side that “Luther adhered to this view throughout his life, viz.: that his doctrine must be preached even though it should lead to the destruction of all.” In confirmation of this, another passage taken from Luther’s writings is quoted: “It has been said that if the Pope falls Germany will perish, be utterly wrecked and ruined; but how can I help that? I cannot save it; whose fault is it? Ah, they say, if Luther had not come and preached, the Papacy would still be on its legs and we should be at peace. I cannot help that.”

  When the same author urges in Luther’s defence that, “he was not really indifferent to the evil consequences of his actions in ecclesiastical and political matters,” we naturally ask whether the author of the schism did not at times feel bitterly his heavy responsibility for these results, and whether he should not have exerted himself in every possible way to ward off the “evil consequences.” His own admissions, to be given elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxii.), concerning his inward struggles, disclose how frequently he was troubled with such reproaches and what difficulty he had in ridding himself of them.

  To the inflammatory invitations already given we may subjoin a few others.

  “It were better,” Luther says in his Church-postils, “that all the churches and foundations throughout the land were uprooted and burnt to powder — and the sin would be less even though done out of mere wantonness — than that a single soul should be seduced and corrupted by this [Papistical] error.” And, further on: “Here you see why the lightning commonly strikes the churches rather than any other buildings, viz.: because God is more hostile to them than to any others, because in no den of robbers, no house of ill-fame is there such sin, such blasphemy against God, such murder of the soul and destruction of the Church committed as in these houses” [i.e. in the churches where the Catholic worship obtained]. Elsewhere, at an earlier date he had said: “Would it be astonishing if the Princes, the nobles and the laity were to hit Pope, bishop, priest and monk on the head and drive them out of the land? It has never before been heard of in Christendom, and it is abominable to hear now, that the Christian people should openly be commanded to deny the truth.” — Besides these, we have the fiery words he flung among the people: “Where the ecclesiastical Estate does not proceed in the way of faith and charity [according to the Evangel], my wish is not merely that my doctrine should interfere with the monasteries and foundations, but that they were reduced to one great heap of ashes.” — In fine: “A grand destruction of all the monasteries and foundations would be the best reformation, for they are of no earthly use to Christendom and might well be spared.... What is useless and unnecessary and yet does such untold mischief, and to boot is beyond reformation, had much better be exterminated.” The word here rendered as “destruction” is one of which Luther frequently makes use to denote violent annihilation, for instance, of the devastation of Jerusalem and its Temple, nor can we well explain it away in the above connection; he certainly never pictured to himself the “grand destruction of all the monasteries and foundations” otherwise than as a general reduction to ruins. The excuse brought forward in modern times in extenuation of Luther is a very strange one, viz.: that, when giving vent to such expressions, he frequently added the qualifying clause “if the Catholics do not change their opinions,” then violence will befall them; hence only in the event of their final refusal to accept the new teaching was the destruction so vividly described to overtake them! Presumably his contemporaries should have shown themselves grateful for this saving clause. The mitigation conveyed by the clause in question in reality amounted to this: Only if the whole world becomes Lutheran will it be saved from destruction.

  It is psychologically worth noticing that Luther, in his zeal, seems never to have perceived that the argument might just as well be turned against himself. The Emperor and the Catholic powers of the Empire, with at least as much show of reason, might have urged as he did, that no power, without being doomed to “destruction” and to being “burnt to ashes,” could stand against the Gospel. The Gospel which they defended was that handed down by the Church, whereas Luther’s Evangel, to mention only one point, was novel and hitherto unheard of by theologians and faithful laity alike. On the one occasion when this thought occurred to him, he had the following excuse ready: We are sure of our faith, hence we may and must demand that everything yield to it; the Emperor and his party on the other hand have no such assurance and can never reach it. “We know that the Emperor is not and cannot be certain of it, because we know that he errs and seeks to oppose the Evangel. We are not obliged to believe that he is certain because he does not act in accordance with God’s Word, whereas we on the other hand do; for it is his bounden duty to recognise God’s Word!” Otherwise, Luther adds, “every murderer and adulterer might also plead: ‘I am right, therefore you must approve my act because I am certain I am in the right.’”— “It was with arguments like these that the Protestant Estates were to justify their overthrow of the ancient faith and worship, and to demonstrate the wickedness of the Emperor’s efforts to preserve the faith and worship of his fathers.”

  Of the various memoranda which Luther had to draw up for his Sovereign on the question of armed resistance, that of February 8, 1523, prepared for the Elector Frederick, must be mentioned first. In this the Prince’s attention is drawn to the fact, that publicly he had hitherto preserved an attitude of neutrality concerning religious questions, and had merely given out that, as a layman, he was waiting for the triumph of the truth. Hence it was necessary that he should declare himself for the justice of Luther’s cause if he intended to abandon his attitude of submission to the Imperial authority. In that case he might have recourse to arms in the character of a stranger who comes to the rescue, but not as a sovereign of the Empire. Further, “he must do this only at the call of a singular spirit and faith, short of which he must give way to the sword of the higher power and die with his Christians.” Should he, however, be attacked, not by the Emperor, but by the Catholic Princes, then, after first attempting to bring about peace, he must repel force by force.

  When, in 1528, the false reports were circulated, of which we hear in the history of the Pack negotiation, to wit, that the Catholic Princes of the Empire were on the point of falling upon the Protesters, Luther sent a letter to Johann, his Elector, regarding the question of law. What was to be done if the Catholic powers, without the authorisation of the Emperor, attacked the Lutheran party? Luther’s verdict was that such an act on the part of “scoundrel-princes” must be resisted by force of arms “as a real revolt and conspiracy against the Empire and His Imperial Majesty,” but that “to take the offensive and anticipate such an action on the part of the Princes was in no wise to be counselled.”

  On this occasion he manifested serious apprehension of the mischief which might be caused by a precipitate armed attack on the part of his princely patrons. It was a very different matter to look forward to a mere possibility of war and to find himself directly confronted with an outbreak of hostilities. “May God preserve us from such a horror! This would indeed be to fish with a draw-net and to take might for right. No greater blame could attach to the Evangel, for this would be no Peasant Rising but a Rising of the Princes, which would destroy Germany utterly to the joy of Satan.”

  The above memorandum had dealt with the question of an attack by the Princes of the Empire. But what was to be done if the Emperor himself inter
vened?

  The Lutheran Princes and Estates were anxious to exercise the utmost caution and restraint with regard to the Emperor personally, and in this Luther agreed with them. At Spires, in 1526, they had decided to behave “in such a way as to be able to answer for it before God and the Emperor,” which, however, did not prevent them from establishing the “evangelical” worship in contravention of the decrees of Worms. It was hoped that the Emperor, hampered by his foreign policy, would not take up arms. When, accordingly, the protesting Princes, at the time of the Pack business, commenced warlike preparations against the Catholic party in the Empire, they solemnly declared at Rotach, in June, 1528, that they “excepted” the Emperor. In the same way they desired that their action at Spires in 1529, where they “protested” against the Emperor, should be looked upon as an appeal to the Emperor “better instructed.” When the Emperor, on account of the protest, began to take a serious view of the matter, any scruples which the sovereigns of Hesse and the Saxon Electorate may have felt concerning the employment of armed resistance against him soon evaporated. In Saxony it was held that a closer alliance of the Princes favourable to the innovations ought not to be “shorn of its meaning and value” by this “exemption of the Emperor”; the exemption, it was argued, was only of the person of the Emperor, not of his mandataries. A Saxon memorandum at the end of July, 1529, practically made an end of the exemption; “resistance, even to the Emperor, the most dangerous of our foes, belongs to the natural law of humanity.” This was the opinion of the Margrave of Brandenburg, and even more so of the Landgrave of Hesse. At Nuremberg, however, Lazarus Spengler sought to persuade the Council to negative this resolution; he was still entirely under the influence of Luther’s earlier teaching, that the spirit must be ready to endure and suffer under the secular authorities.