Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  At any rate, all his efforts after a settlement were ruled by the “Proviso of the Gospel” as propounded by Luther to his friends in his letters from the Coburg. According to this tacit reservation no concession which in any way militated against the truth or the interests of the Evangel could be regarded as valid. “Once we have evaded coercion and obtained peace,” so runs Luther’s famous admonition to Melanchthon, “then it will be an easy matter to amend our wiles and slips because God’s mercy watches over us.” “All our concessions,” Melanchthon wrote, “are so much hampered with exceptions that I apprehend the bishops will suspect we are offering them chaff instead of grain.”

  A letter, intended to be reassuring, written from Augsburg on September 11 by Brenz, who was somewhat more communicative than Melanchthon, and addressed to his friend Isenmann, who was anxious concerning the concessions being offered, may serve further to elucidate the policy of Melanchthon and Brenz. Brenz writes: “If you consider the matter carefully you will see that our proposals are such as to make us appear to have yielded to a certain extent; whereas, in substance, we have made no concessions whatsoever. This they plainly understand. What, may I ask, are the Popish fasts so long as we hold the doctrine of freedom?” The real object of the last concession, he had already pointed out, was to avoid giving the Emperor and his Court the impression that they were “preachers of sensuality.” The jurisdiction conceded to the bishops will not harm us so long as they “agree to our Via media and conditions”; they themselves will then become new men, thanks to the Evangel; “for always and everywhere we insist upon the proviso of freedom and purity of doctrine. Having this, what reason would you have to grumble at the jurisdiction of the bishops?” It will, on the contrary, be of use to us, and will serve as a buffer against the wilfulness of secular dignitaries, who oppress our churches with heavy burdens. “Besides, it is not to be feared that our opponents will agree to the terms.” The main point is, so Melanchthon’s confidential fellow-labourer concludes, that only thus can we hope to secure “toleration for our doctrine.”

  When Melanchthon penned this confession only a few days had elapsed since Luther, in response to anxious letters received from Augsburg, had intervened with a firm hand and spoken out plainly against the concessions, and any further attempts at a diplomatic settlement.

  In obedience to these directions Melanchthon began to withdraw more and more from the position he had taken up.

  The most favourable proposals of his opponents were no longer entertained by him, and he even refused to fall in with the Emperor’s suggestion that Catholics living in Protestant territories should be left free to practise their religion. The Elector of Saxony’s divines, together with Melanchthon, in a memorandum to their sovereign, declared, on this occasion, that it was not sufficient for preachers to preach against the Mass, but that the Princes also must refuse to sanction it, and must forbid it. “Were we to say that Princes might abstain from forbidding it, and that preachers only were to declaim against it, one could well foresee what [small] effect the doctrine and denunciations of the preachers would have.” “The theologians,” remarks Janssen, “thus gave it distinctly to be understood that the new doctrine could not endure without the aid of the secular authority.” Hence, at that decisive moment, the Protestant Princes proclaimed intolerance of Catholics as much a matter of conscience as the confiscation of Church property. To the demand of the Emperor for restitution of the temporalities, the Princes, supported by the theologians, answered, that “they did not consider themselves bound to obey, since this matter concerned their conscience, against which there ran no prescription” (on the part of those who had been despoiled).

  Thus, with Melanchthon’s knowledge and approval, the two principal factors in the whole Reformation, viz. intolerance and robbery of Church property, played their part even here at the turning-point of German history.

  On his return from the Coburg to Wittenberg, as already described ( f.), Luther in his sermons showed how the Evangel which he proclaimed had to be preached, even at the expense of war and universal desolation: “The cry now is, that, had the Evangel not been preached, things would never have fallen out thus, but everything would have remained calm and peaceful. No, my friend, but things will improve; Christ speaks: ‘I have more things to say to you and to judge’; the fact is you must leave this preaching undisturbed, else there shall not remain to you one stick nor one stone upon another, and you may say: ‘These words are not mine, but the words of the Father.’” (cp. John viii. 26).

  Yet, at the time of the Diet of Augsburg, Luther, for all his inexorable determination, was not unmindful of the temporal assistance promised by the Princes. He hinted at this with entire absence of reserve in a letter, not indeed to Melanchthon, who was averse to war, but to Spalatin: “Whatever the issue [of the Diet] may be, do not fear the victors and their craft. Luther is still at large and so is the Macedonian” (i.e. Philip of Hesse, whom Melanchthon had thus nicknamed after the warlike Philip of Macedonia). The “Macedonian” seemed to Luther a sort of “Ismael,” like unto Agar’s son, whom Holy Scripture had described as a wild man, whose hand is raised against all (Gen. xvi. 12). Luther was aware that Philip had quitted the Diet in anger and was now nursing his fury, as it were, in the desert. “He is at large,” he says in biblical language, “and thence may arise prudence to meet cunning and Ismael to oppose the enemy. Be strong and act like men. There was nothing to fear if they fought with blunted weapons.” Philip’s offer of a refuge in Hesse had helped to render Luther more defiant.

  Exhortations such as these increased the unwillingness of his friends at Augsburg to reach any settlement by way of real concessions. All hopes of a peaceful outcome of the negotiations were thus doomed.

  The Reichstagsabschied which finally, on November 19, 1530, brought Parliament to an end, witnessed to the hopelessness of any lasting peace; it required, however, that the bishoprics, monasteries, and churches which had been destroyed should be re-erected, and that the parishes still faithful to Catholicism should enjoy immunity under pain of the ban of the Empire.

  Looking back at Melanchthon’s attitude at the Diet, we can understand the severe strictures of recent historians.

  “We cannot get rid of the fact,” writes Georg Ellinger, Melanchthon’s latest Protestant biographer, “that, on the whole, his attitude at the Diet of Augsburg does not make a pleasing impression.” “That the apprehension of seeing the realisation of his principles frustrated led him to actions which can in no wise be approved, may be freely admitted.” It is true that Ellinger emphasises very strongly the “mitigating circumstances,” but he also remarks: “He had no real comprehension of the importance of the ecclesiastical forms involved [in his concessions], and this same lack of penetration served him badly even later. The method by which he attempted to put his plans into execution displays nothing of greatness but rather that petty slyness which seeks to overreach opponents by the use of ambiguous words.... He had recourse to this means in the hope of thus arriving more easily at his goal.” His “little tricks,” he proceeds, “at least delayed the business for a while,” to the manifest advantage of the Protestant cause. He candidly admits that Melanchthon, both before and after the Diet of Augsburg, owing to his weak and not entirely upright character, was repeatedly caught “having recourse to the subterfuges of a slyness not far removed from dissimulation.” In proof of this he instances the expedient invented by Melanchthon for the purpose of evading the conference with Zwingli at Marburg which was so distasteful to him. “The Elector was to behave as though Melanchthon had, in a letter, requested permission to attend such a conference, and had been refused it. Melanchthon would then allege this to the Landgrave of Hesse [who was urging him to attend the conference] ‘in order that His Highness may be pacified by so excellent an excuse.’” Ellinger, most impartially, also adduces other devices to which Melanchthon had recourse at a later date.

  The conduct of the leader of the Protestant party at the Die
t of Augsburg, more particularly his concern in the document addressed to the Legate Campeggio, is stigmatised as follows by Karl Sell, the Protestant historian. “This tone, this sudden reduction of the whole world-stirring struggle to a mere wrangle about trifles, and this recognition, anything but religious, of the Roman Church, comes perilously near conscious deception. Did Melanchthon really believe it possible to outwit diplomats so astute by such a blind? In my opinion it is unfair to reproach him with treason or even servility; what he was guilty of was merely duplicity.” Campeggio, Sell continues, of these and similar advances made by the Protestant spokesmen, wrote: “They answer as heretics are wont, viz. in cunning and ambiguous words.”

  Even in the “Theologische Realenzyklopädie des Protestantismus” a suppressed note of disapproval of Melanchthon’s “mistakes and weaknesses” is sounded. His attitude at the Diet, the authors of the article on Melanchthon say, “was not so pleasing as his learned labours on the Augsburg Confession”; “a clear insight into the actual differences” as well as a “dignified and firm attitude” was lacking; “this applies particularly to his letter to the Papal Legate.”

  We can understand how Döllinger, in his work “Die Reformation,” after referring to Melanchthon’s palpable self-contradictions, speaks of his solemn appeal to the doctrine of St. Augustine as an intentional and barefaced piece of deception, an untruth “which he deemed himself allowed.” Döllinger, without mincing matters, speaks of his “dishonesty,” and relentlessly brands his misleading statements; they leave us to choose between two alternatives, either he was endeavouring to deceive and trick the Catholics, or he had surrendered the most important and distinctive Protestant doctrines, and was ready to lend a hand in re-establishing the Catholic teaching.

  Luther, so far as we are aware, never blamed his friend, either publicly or in his private letters, for his behaviour during this crisis, nor did he ever accuse him of “treason to the Evangelical cause.” He only expresses now and then his dissatisfaction at the useless protraction of the proceedings and scolds him jokingly “for his fears, timidity, cares and lamentations.” No real blame is contained in the words he addressed to Melanchthon: “So long as the Papacy subsists among us, our doctrine cannot subsist.... Thank God that you are having nothing from it.” “I know that in treating of episcopal authority you have always insisted on the Gospel proviso, but I fear that later our opponents will say we were perfidious and fickle (‘perfidos et inconstantes’) if we do not keep to what they want.... In short, all these transactions on doctrine displease me, because nothing comes of them so long as the Pope does not do away with his Papacy.” A fortnight later Luther cordially blessed his friend, who was then overwhelmed with trouble: “I pray you, my Philip, not to crucify yourself in anxiety over the charges which are raised against you, either verbally or in writing [by some of ours who argue], that you are going too far.... They do not understand what is meant by the episcopal authority which was to be re-established, and do not rightly estimate the conditions which we attach to it. Would that the bishops had accepted it on these conditions! But they have too fine a nose where their own interests are concerned and refuse to walk into the trap.”

  Melanchthon, the “Erasmian” Intermediary.

  A closer examination of the bent of Melanchthon’s mind reveals a trait, common to many of Luther’s learned followers at that time, which helps to explain his attitude at Augsburg.

  The real foundations of theology were never quite clear to them because their education had been one-sidedly Humanistic, and they had never studied theology proper. They were fond of speaking and writing of the Church, of Grace and Faith, but their ideas thereon were strangely subjective, so much so that they did not even agree amongst themselves. Hence, in their dealings with Catholic theologians the latter often failed to understand them. The fruitlessness of the conferences was frequently due solely to this; though greatly prejudiced in Luther’s favour, they still considered it possible for the chasm between the old and the new to be bridged over, and longed earnestly for such a consummation to be secured by some yielding on the Catholic side; they were unwilling to break away from the Church Universal, and, besides, they looked askance at the moral consequences of the innovations and feared still greater confusion and civil war.

  That this was the spirit which animated Melanchthon is evident from some of the facts already recorded.

  He had nothing more at heart than to secure the atmosphere essential for his studies and for the furtherance of intellectual, particularly Humanistic, culture, and to smooth the way for its general introduction into Germany. His knowledge of theology had been acquired, as it were, incidentally through his intercourse with Luther and his study of Scripture; the latter, however, had been influenced by his Humanism and, speaking generally, he contented himself in selecting in the Bible certain general moral truths which might serve as a rule of life. He indeed studied the Fathers more diligently than Luther, the Greek Fathers proving particularly attractive to him; it was, however, chiefly a study of form, of culture, and of history, and as regards theology little more than mere dilettantism. His insight into the practical life of the Church left much to be desired, otherwise the Anabaptist movement at Zwickau would not have puzzled him as it did and left him in doubt as to whether it came from God or the devil. His ignorance of the gigantic intellectual labours of the Middle Ages in the domain of theology made itself felt sensibly. He knew even less of Scholasticism than did Luther, yet, after having acquired a nodding acquaintance with it in its most debased form, he, as a good pupil of Erasmus, proceeded to condemn it root and branch. Every page of his writings proves that his method of thought and expression, with its indecision, its groping, its dependence on echoes from the classics, was far removed from the masterpieces of learning and culture of the best days of the Middle Ages. Yet he fancies himself entitled to censure Scholasticism and to write in Luther’s style with a conceit only matched by his ignorance: “You see what thick darkness envelops the commentaries of the ancients and the whole doctrine of our opponents, how utterly ignorant they are of what sin really is, of the purpose of the law, of the blessings of the Gospel, of prayer, and of man’s refuge when assailed by mental terrors.” The “mental terrors,” referred to here and elsewhere, belonged to Luther’s world of thought. This touch of mysticism, the only one to be found occasionally in Melanchthon’s works, scarcely availed to render his theology any the more profound.

  Hence, in fairness, his attempts at mediation when at the Diet of Augsburg may be regarded as largely due to ignorance and to his prejudice against Catholic theology.

  We must, however, also take into consideration the Humanist phantom of union and peace for the benefit of the commonweal and particularly of scholarship; likewise his frequently expressed aversion for public disorder, and his fears of a decline of morals and of worse things to come. Then only shall we be in a position to understand the attitude of the man upon whose shoulders the burden of the matter so largely rested. The trait chiefly to be held accountable for his behaviour, viz. his peculiar, one-sided Humanistic education, was well described by Luther later on when Melanchthon was attacked by Cordatus and Schenk for his tendency to water down dogma. Luther then spoke of the “Erasmian intermediaries” at whose rough handling he was not in the least surprised.

  2. Disagreements and Accord between Luther and Melanchthon

  Luther had good reason for valuing highly the theological services which Melanchthon rendered him by placing his ideas before the world in a form at once clearer and more dignified. Points of theology and practice which he supplied to his friend as raw material, Melanchthon returned duly worked-up and polished. Luther’s views assumed practical shape in passing through Melanchthon’s hands.

  At the outset the latter readily accepted all the doctrines of his “præceptor observandissimus.” In the first edition of the “Loci” (December, 1521) he made his own even Luther’s harshest views, those, namely, concerning man’s unfreedom a
nd God’s being the author of evil. The faithful picture of his doctrine which Luther there found so delighted him, that he ventured to put the “Loci” on a level with the canon of Holy Scripture (vol. ii., ).

  Disagreements.

  As years passed by, Melanchthon allowed himself to deviate more and more from Luther’s teaching. The latter’s way of carrying every theological thesis to its furthest limit, affrighted him. He yearned for greater freedom of action, was desirous of granting a reasonable amount of room to doubt, and was not averse to learning a thing or two even from opponents. It was his Humanistic training which taught him to put on the brake and even to introduce several far-reaching amendments into Luther’s theories. It was his Humanism which made him value the human powers and the perfectibility of the soul, and thus to doubt whether Luther was really in the right in his denial of freedom. Such a doubt we find faintly expressed by him soon after he had perused the “Diatribe” published by Erasmus in 1524. Luther’s reply (“De servo arbitrio”), to which Melanchthon officially accorded his praise, failed to convince him of man’s lack of freedom in the natural order. In 1526, in his lectures on Colossians (printed in 1528), he openly rejected the view that God was the author of sin, stood up for freedom in all matters of civil justice, and declared that in such things it was quite possible to avoid gross sin. In his new edition of the “Loci” in 1527 he abandoned determinism and the denial of free-will, and likewise the severer form of the doctrine of predestination, such as he had still championed in the 1525 edition, but which, he had now come to see, was at variance with the proper estimate of man and human action.

  Neither could Melanchthon ever bring himself to speak of human reason, as compared to faith, in quite the same language of disrespect as Luther.