Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Again, in 1541, in the evening of his days († 1543), in an eighth edition of the “Enchiridion” dedicated to Cardinal Alexander Farnese, while urging him to increased efforts for the bringing about of a Council, he could point to his own three-and-twenty years of incessant conflict with heresy. “O God,” he cries at the sight of the extent to which the evil had grown, “what times are ours!” “Every bulwark against arbitrary private judgment has been torn down; Luther has taught all how to dare all things. Since he has overthrown the authority of the Councils, the Popes, the Holy Fathers and all the Christian Universities, every man, no matter how mad or hair-brained he may be, is free to teach his new fancies to mankind.”

  Yet the author seeks to revive hope and confidence in his own mind and in that of his Catholic readers, and, to this end, quotes on the last page the saying of St. Jerome, which he applies to the misfortunes of his own day: “During the years of persecution the priests of the Church must tell the faithful boldly and confidently: Your churches will be rebuilt; have no fear, peace and unity will once more enter in. — Yes truly, by God’s Mercy there will come an end to the heresies of Luther, Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Blaurer, Osiander, Schnepf and all their ilk, and the olden truth of faith will flourish again. Grant this, Good Jesus, and grant it speedily!” Invocations such as these accord well with the exhortations to pray for the erring which Eck was fond of introducing in this as well as in his other books.

  Eck’s writings in defence of the faith include learned as well as popular works, and he was also indefatigable in his labours in the ministry.

  Johann Cochlæus, who like Eck was one of the more famous of Luther’s opponents, had a keen and versatile mind († 1552). He first made Luther’s personal acquaintance at Worms, and entered the lists against him in 1522 with his “De gratia sacramentorum”; from that time forward he kept a watch on all that Luther wrote, so as to be in readiness to reply to or refute it as occasion arose. He himself gives us the long list of his publications against Luther, in his “Commentaria de actis ... Lutheri,” the work in which he sums up his recollections of the struggles of his time.

  From these “Commentaria” of Cochlæus, despite the disparaging treatment accorded them by Sleidanus, “more is to be gleaned concerning the history of the Reformation than from many bungling Protestant eulogies.” Such, at least, is the opinion of C. Krafft, himself a Protestant.

  The writer sought after the truth and wrote with honest indignation. In spite of disappointments, and even privations, he remained faithful to the Church, making during his career many a sacrifice for his cherished convictions; he himself relates how he could not find a printer for his works against Luther and was forced himself to defray a part of the expense of publication, whereas every press was eager to print Luther’s books owing to the demand anticipated.

  If, in Cochlæus’s writings, too great passion is often apparent, this may well have been due to that depraved humanism and neo-classicism under the influence of which, more perhaps than any other Catholic man of letters, he stood. We have an instance of this in his “Seven-headed Luther,” which he composed in 1529 at Dresden, whither he had been summoned on Emser’s death. This book, like his later “Commentaries,” denotes the climax of his polemics. In the dedication he says that the seven-headed monster could not have been born either of God or of Nature, since neither God nor Nature was capable of such an abortion; rather, it must be an offspring of the evil one, who had deceived man and worked him harm, in Paradise under the guise of a serpent, and, often later, under the form of fauns, satyrs, Sileni and various enchantments. In Africa, according to the ancients, there had been a dragon with three or four heads, and Geryon, whom Hercules slew, had also had three heads. But a monster with seven heads, such as was Luther with his sevenfold doctrine, had never been ushered into the world by any country, but must be a creation of the devil. The wicked, perverse, insane apostate monk, long since destined to damnation, had no scruple in deceiving and assailing every upright man with lies, mockery, blasphemy and every kind of nastiness, or in pouring forth seditious falsehoods and insults like an infuriated lioness. The seven-headed hoodman, or hooded dragon, was causing all too much confusion in Germany with his seven heads and was polluting it all with his deadly poison. King Saul, he continues, had sinned in not rooting out the people of Amalek. But to whom did the name of Amalek apply more aptly than to the Lutherans? For Amalek’s was a bestial nation, living bestially according to the flesh, just as the Lutherans — particularly their idol, viz. this monk with his nun — were now doing. In this mad devil’s minister not one crumb of any kind of virtue remained, etc.

  Apart from his too rhetorical and acrimonious tone other unsympathetic features met with in Cochlæus are his frequent petitions to high dignitaries of the Church, in Germany and even in Rome, for material assistance; his complaints that he was not taken seriously enough; his too great eagerness, during the first years of the struggle, to hold a disputation with Luther; too much pushfulness and sometimes a certain credulity, not to speak of occasional lapses into a frivolity which, like his rhetoric, recalls the more blatant faults of Humanism and ill beseemed a man anxious to censure the morals of his opponents. He deemed it right and proper, for instance, to write under an assumed name a work against the Reformers’ wives and matrimonial relationships, where, in colloquial form and in a manner highly offensive, he introduces much that was mere tittle-tattle and quite without foundation. His authorship of this “Private Conversation” has been proved up to the hilt in recent times.

  Among the ranks of the opponents of Lutheranism Johann Faber and Frederick Nausea, both of them bishops of Vienna, hold a high place. The efforts of these two theologians to elucidate controverted points and to refute Luther were much appreciated in the Catholic circles of that day.

  In the more popular field quite a number of good speakers and writers belonging to various Religious Orders, particularly the German Dominicans, distinguished themselves for their zeal in the campaign against Lutheranism. Johann Mensing, who became a licentiate at Wittenberg in 1517 and was Luther’s best-hated opponent, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; so also was Augustine von Getelen, of whose sermons the Lutheran preacher Martin Undermark admitted, that, “with his tongue he was able to sway the people as he pleased”; Matthias Sittardus, Johann Dietenberger and Ambrosius Pelargus were also all Dominicans, nor did they confine themselves to preaching, but were all of them authors of publications suited to the times. Michael Vehe, another Dominican, was renowned for his ability to wield the pen in German not less than for his Latin discourses from the pulpit. His brother friar, Johann Fabri, earned praise as a preacher and as a clever popular writer. The Protestant preacher H. Rocholl wrote of him: “The turn of what he writes gives proof of great eloquence and his language is oratorically fine; his exhortations are also from an homiletic point of view quite excellent.” Antonius Pirata of the Dominican friary at Constance received the following encomium from Erasmus in a letter to Laurinus: “He is a respected man of good morals and profound learning, who displays in his sermons an eloquence truly wonderful.” Conrad Köllin and Jacob Hoogstraaten also adorned the Dominican Order in Germany at that time with their learning, though their interest lay more in scholastic theology than in popular works.

  All the above belonged to the German province of a single Order, and, altogether, quite thirty Dominicans might be enumerated who engaged in controversy with Luther. Amongst the polemists hailing from other Orders and deserving honourable mention was the zealous and scholarly Franciscan Caspar Schatzgeyer, also another Franciscan, Thomas Murner, to whom we shall return immediately, the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister and the Carmelite Eberhard Billick.

  The reason that the old Orders, with the exception of the Dominicans, did not furnish more controversialists was in great part due to the disastrous effect of the apostasy on their houses. Many of their subjects, deluded by Lutheranism, forsook their cells, and those who remained were frequently ex
posed to severe persecution. Many monasteries were not only deprived of their means of subsistence, but, owing to the new spirit of the age and the material difficulties of the monastic life, the supply of novices began to run short.

  During this period of the German Church’s distress the secular clergy were not behindhand in furnishing tried combatants, though the influence of the new ideas and the decline in morals, particularly during the preceding thirty or forty years, had brought ecclesiastical life and learning to an even lower level than before. There were, however, still some cheering examples to be met with. Conspicuous amongst the veterans who opposed Luther’s teaching and innovations, were, in addition to those already mentioned, Michael Helding, auxiliary bishop and preacher at Mayence (later bishop of Merseburg), and Conrad Wimpina of Leipzig and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, the author of a good Latin collection of works against Luther entitled “On the sects and errors,” etc. (1528). The Lutheran cause suffered considerably at the hands of these writers.

  Thomas Murner, the famous Alsatian preacher and writer, a new Sebastian Brant even mightier than the former, entered the lists against Luther and made full use of the satirical style he had cultivated even earlier. Even Protestants have admitted his principal work against Luther (1522) to be a highly incisive and significant production, whilst a recent editor of his works describes him as the most weighty of Luther’s literary opponents in Germany. There is certainly no question of his “wanton, cheerful, nay, bacchantic humour,” and of his wealth of caustic irony; he enters into Luther’s arguments and proofs, and refutes them, more particularly those taken from the Bible. Murner speaks a very simple and pithy language, though not loath to have recourse occasionally to coarse words, of which an example has been given above (). Luther paid him out by “amusing his readers with an account of the lice on Murner’s cowl, and by circulating a lampoon alleged to have been sent him from the Rhine, but, at any rate, printed at Luther’s own instance.”

  Not one of those who took the field against Luther and pitted their strength against his was really a match for him in energy, in ability to handle the language, in wealth of fancy or in power over the people. To every clear-sighted observer it must have been apparent that truth and logic were on the side of the Catholic controversialists, but, unfortunately, not one of them was able to rival in effectiveness the writings of the Wittenberg Professor.

  Here and there, in certain ruder passages, we can easily see how his opponents are clumsily endeavouring to retort upon their readier and more inventive foe in language almost identical with his own. Luther, however, stands alone in the originality of his abuse. But if his adversaries, as was too often the case, overstepped the bounds of moderation of language, we must bear in mind their pain and indignation at the unspeakable injustice done to the Church of their fathers. In those rude encounters people were only too apt to forget that, according to Christ’s command, charity must be displayed even towards those who err. Yet the Church had received as part of her heirloom the injunction set by her Founder against the practice of the Jewish synagogue and its saying, “Hate thy enemy” (Mt. v. 42). “But I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.”

  It was on principles such as these that, for all his glowing zeal for the glory of God, Bl. Pierre Favre (Faber) acted, that gentle and enlightened preacher of the true Catholic reformation, who, since 1540, had been labouring in the dioceses of Spires, of Mayence and of Cologne. It was on these principles that he formed his gifted pupil Bl. Peter Canisius, the first German Jesuit, who completed the Exercises under him at Mayence, and, three years before Luther’s death, on May 8, 1543, joined the Society which had now been approved by the Church. Of the followers of the new religion, Favre expresses himself as follows: “May Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, Who knows that His written Word does not suffice to touch the human mind, soften and move their hearts by His divine Grace.” “No other arguments promote their conversion better than good works and self-sacrifice, even to laying down one’s life.” “I never cease grieving,” so he wrote to Ignatius, the General of the Order, “at the fall of the noble German nation, once the incomparable pearl of the Church and the glory of Christendom.” Through the head of the Society he sought to convince its members that his own way of dealing with the apostasy was the best. “Those who wish to be of service to the false teachers of to-day,” he writes, “must above all be distinguished by charity and real esteem for their opponents, and banish from their minds every thought that might in any way lessen their regard for them.”

  When Pierre Favre set about his work for the preservation of the German Church, Luther was already at the heyday of his success. Favre accompanied the Spanish ambassador Ortiz to the religious Conference at Worms in 1540, and to the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541. Those two years bore convincing witness to the fact, that the progress of the innovations could no longer be checked by the authority either of Church or State.

  But, before proceeding to examine Luther’s work at its zenith, we must scrutinise his doctrine a little more closely.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  THE NEW DOGMAS IN AN HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL LIGHT

  1. The Bible text and the Spirit as the “True Tests of Doctrine”

  Luther’s theological opinions present an attractive field to the psychologist desirous of studying his character. They are in great part, as has been several times shown, the result of his experiences, inward or outward, and appear peculiarly suited to meet his own case. Hence an examination of his doctrines will be of great value, particularly towards an understanding of his inner history.

  The specifically Lutheran doctrine of the Bible as sole judge in matters of faith, i.e. the old, so-called “formal principle” of Protestantism, deserves to be considered first, though, in point of time, it was not the first to be reached by Luther. Actually it was first broached by the author of the schism only when the opposition between his newly discovered views and the Church’s teaching determined him to set aside both her claim to act as judge, and all other outward authority on doctrine. Refusing to be bound by the Church, in place of the teaching office with its gift of infallibility, which, according to the belief of the ancient Church, guards the treasure of revelation and therefore also decides on the sense of Holy Scripture, Luther set up as supreme arbiter the letter of the Bible. From this source, so he teaches, the faithful draw the doctrines of the faith, each one according to his ability and enlightenment.

  The interpretation of the Sacred Books, in his view, takes place under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, and such an illumination he claimed first and foremost for himself. “Any believer who has better grounds and authority from Scripture on his side, is more to be believed than the Pope or a whole Council.”

  Liberty for the Examination of Scripture and Luther’s Autonomy.

  Luther only gradually reached his teaching concerning the supremacy of Holy Scripture.

  His examination at Augsburg drew forth from him his first statements on this subject. In the postscript to his own report of the interview he places Holy Scripture first amongst the theological sources, adding that it was merely being corrupted by the so-called sacred Decrees of the Church; in his appeal to the Council he also places the Bible and its decision (i.e. his interpretation) above the Pope. Even then, however, he admitted the authority of the Council side by side with that of the Bible only in so far as he confidently looked to the Council for a decision in his favour. The fact that about this time he fancied he could descry Antichrist in the Pope reveals at once the wide gulf he was about to create between all ecclesiastical authority and Scripture privately interpreted. — Without having as yet formally proclaimed the new principle on Holy Scripture, he nevertheless declared at the Leipzig Disputation, that Scripture ranked above a Council, and that Œcumenical Councils had already erred in matters of faith. Only when driven into a corner by his defence of the heresy of Hus, and after fruitless evasions, were th
ese admissions wrung from him by Eck. Any light thus thrown on the matter by the Catholic speaker was, however, at once obscured by the following ambiguous clause added by Luther: “Councils have erred, and may err, particularly on points which do not appertain to faith.”

  Immediately after the Leipzig Disputation, in a letter addressed by himself and Carlstadt to the Elector, Luther lays it down that “a layman with the Scripture on his side is more to be believed in than the Pope and a Council without Scripture.” Then, in the “Resolutiones super propositionibus Lipsiæ disputatis,” he gives utterance to an assertion behind which he seeks to shelter his views: “Faith does not originate in authority but is produced in the heart only by the Holy Ghost, though man is indeed moved to faith by word and example.”

  Yet, as though he himself wished to demonstrate the perils his new principle involved, not merely for the interpretation of the Bible but even for the integrity of the Sacred Books, he makes in the very same writing, on ostensibly intrinsic grounds, his famous onslaught on the Epistle of St. James which had been urged against him. Because this canonical Epistle tells against his doctrine of Justification, he will have it that, “its style is far beneath the dignity of an Apostle and is not to be compared with that of Paul.” Already at the Leipzig Disputation he had attacked the second Book of the Machabees, which did not suit his views, again for intrinsic reasons and because it ran counter to true doctrine; the Church had indeed admitted it into the Canon, but “she could not raise the status of a book nor impart to it a higher value than it actually possessed.”