Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  He accused them of being responsible for the disastrous consequences, but forgot to seek the real cause in the doctrine itself. According to him not only did no two preachers agree in their preaching, so that the people complained they did not know which religion to follow, but too many were in the habit of speaking, “as though it were possible without doing penance and without any contrition or sorrow for sin to believe Christ’s Gospel and rest secure in the proffered forgiveness.” They gave vent to utterances such as these: “Our works are no good and stink in God’s nostrils. He does not want them. They only make hypocrites. Faith alone does all. If only you believe, you will become pious and be saved.”

  In 1535 he had recourse to the pen in order to impress on the preachers “How to speak with caution,” as the title of his work runs. In this tract, published in German and Latin, he attempts to show from a number of instances “how the preachers run off the track on one side or the other,” and how many of them “merely destroy and fail to build.” Anxious to drive home Luther’s doctrine of good works, in the chapter devoted to this subject, he mentions six different ways in which good works were profitable, which the preachers were not to forget. In all six, however, the real advantage and necessity of good works is not established on its true foundation. The curious tract was an imitation and enlargement of a work published in 1529 under the title: “Anweisung wie und was wir Ernst von Gots Gnaden Hertzog zu Braunswick und Leuneburg unseres Fürstenthumbs Pfarhern und Predigern zu predigen befohlen.” The secular rulers were often obliged, as in this instance, to intervene in order to safeguard the new faith from preachers who were either thoughtless, or too logical, or in some cases half crazy.

  The complaints current among Luther’s friends about the bad effects of the doctrine of justification were even heard long after the tumults of the earliest religious struggles were over.

  For this reason we are not justified in making out the decline which followed in the train of the new system of faith to have been merely an episode in the history of civilisation and simply the inevitable after-effect of the great upheaval in the intellectual world. It has been argued that far-reaching and disturbing changes in public life are usually accompanied by an increase of immorality among the masses, and also that the disorders dating from Catholic times bore fruit only when brought in contact with the new religion. Unfortunately in the present case we have to do with conditions which, as later witnesses show, persisted even when tranquillity had once more been restored and when the fruits of the new ideas should already have ripened. “What is here disclosed,” justly remarks Döllinger, “was the result of a system already firmly established, no mere after-effect of former conditions, but a true home produce continuing to flourish even when the thousand ties which had once linked human life and consciousness with the olden Church had long been torn and rent asunder, and when the memory of the doctrines, imagery, practices and institutions of that Church had either been completely forgotten by the people, or were known to them only through controversial references made in the pulpits and in the manuals of religious instruction.”

  Andreas Hyperius, Professor at the University of Marburg and the best theological authority in Hesse († 1564), in view of the low religious and moral standards of the Protestants which he had had occasion to notice during his many journeys, declared that it was necessary, particularly in the pulpit, to be more reticent on the article of Justification by faith alone. Not indeed that he was unwilling to have this preached, yet he did not consider it advisable to continue to “declaim to the masses with such violence on faith alone,” as had hitherto been done. The state of the Church most urgently required that the people, who already troubled themselves little enough about doing good, should be spurred on to good works and, as far as possible, brought back to a faith productive of fruit. Elsewhere he describes with indignation the generally prevailing indifference towards the poor; this annoyed him all the more, as he was well aware of the loving care displayed towards them by both clergy and laity in the past.

  In a document dealing with Luther’s (or rather Flacius’s) doctrine of man’s passivity in the work of conversion, the theologians of Leipzig and Wittenberg, in 1570, attributed to it the prevailing corruption. “The masses,” they said, “have been led into a wild, dissolute and godless life.... There is hardly a spot to be found in the whole world where greater modesty, honesty and virtue are not to be met with than amongst those who listen daily to God’s Word.”

  Thirty years later Polycarp Leyser, the Wittenberg Professor and Superintendent, who stood for the strictest form of Lutheranism, declared: “The moral corruption to-day is so great everywhere that not only pious souls but even nature herself gives vent to uneasy groans”; as the cause of it all he mentions the delusion under which many members of the new Church laboured, viz. of fancying themselves excellent Christians so long as they boasted loudly of faith and repeated Scripture passages concerning the unspeakable mercy of God Who received sinners into His favour without any co-operation on their part, even though meanwhile they led the most shameful life.

  “All these people have ever the faith in their mouths,” wrote Wolfgang Franz, the Wittenberg professor of theology, in an admonition to the Lutheran preachers (1610); “they are ever prating of faith and of nothing but faith, and yet no one can adequately describe how brimful they are of vice and sin.” For this the preachers were chiefly to blame, because they dinned Justification by faith alone into the people’s ears without further explaining it; hence many of their hearers, who did not even know the Our Father, could discourse on faith more learnedly than St. Paul; they fancied that if only they protested now and then during their lifetime that they believed in Jesus Christ, their salvation was assured; they thought that if a murderer who died after committing his crime had only time to confess Jesus with his lips he would at once soar up to heaven.

  Johannes Rivius, Rector of Freiberg, and a personal friend of Luther’s, declared the very year after Luther’s death that his experience had shown him that the Lutheran peasants knew neither what they should believe nor how they ought to live, and troubled themselves little about it; the people might well be taken for Epicureans were they not perpetually boasting of their faith in Christ. He bewailed his times, distinguished as they were beyond all past ages by their immorality; corruption of morals had indeed grown so bad that ungodliness and Epicureanism had quite ousted Christianity. — Not long after, in another writing, he continued his description of the moral decay, and again and again points to the cause, viz. the false ideas of faith, law and works. “By far the greater number of people to-day take not the slightest pains to restrain the lusts of the flesh; ... they indulge in every kind of impiety, while at the same time boasting of faith and bragging of the Gospel.... When the people hear nowadays that there is no other satisfaction for sin than the death of the Redeemer, they fancy they can sin with impunity and give themselves up to luxury.... How many are there who practise real penance though making so brave a show of faith?... They say: ‘Even should you be stained with every vice, only believe and you will be saved; you need not be scared by the Law, for Christ has fulfilled it and done enough for men!’ Such words [which Luther himself had used] give great scandal to pious souls, lead men astray into a godless life and are the cause of their continuing to live hardened in vice and shame and without a thought of amendment; thus such views only serve to encourage the ungodly in vice and deprive them of every incentive to amend their lives.”

  If the leaders of the innovations could speak in such a way then yet stronger charges against the doctrine of Justification and its effects may be expected from Luther’s opponents.

  Johann Haner of Nuremberg, who there, in 1534, turned his back on the new faith, wrote a small book on the interpretation of Scripture which is accounted among the best and calmest of the period. The Preface shows that it was the sight of the immoral outcome of Luther’s views on faith and grace which led him to revert to Catholicism. Without men
tioning Luther’s name he tells us that in his book he is going “to withstand all false, fleshly confidence,” “all freedom of the spirit which leads to destruction”; the object of his attack is that faith which is “a mere presumptuous laying claim to grace, and that Evangel which opens the door to licence of every kind,” while “telling us to trust solely in an alien righteousness, viz. the righteousness of Christ”; “these anti-Evangelicals, as they ought to be called, by their roguery and their carnal mind had turned topsy-turvy the teaching which led to true piety.”

  To Wicel the convert Haner wrote a letter which was one of the causes of his expulsion from Nuremberg by the preachers and the magistrates. Here he said: “By the worthless dogma of Justification by faith alone, which is their alpha and omega, they have not merely loosed all the bonds of discipline in the Church, but also abolished all penance towards God and all unity and friendship among the brethren. Never since the earliest heresies in the Church has there been seen so poisonous and noxious a dogma, the effect of which has been none other than to make the word of the Cross foolishness to us, and to cause both charity towards the brethren and the spirit of repentance towards God to wax cold.”

  From Protestant Nuremberg it also was that Willibald Pirkheimer the patrician, as early as 1528, after his own return to the Church, wrote to a friend at Vienna, the architect Tschertte, “I confess that in the beginning I was a good Lutheran, just like our departed Albert [Dürer]. For we hoped that the Roman knavery and the roguery of the monks and priests would be amended. But now we see that matters have become so much worse, that, in comparison with the Evangelical scoundrels, those other scamps are quite pious.” The Evangelicals with their “shameful and criminal behaviour” wished nevertheless “not to be judged by their works,” and pointed to their faith. But “when a man acts wickedly and criminally he shows thereby that he is no honest man, however much he may boast of his faith; for without works faith is dead, just as works are dead without faith.... The works show plainly that there is neither faith nor truth there, no fear of God, or love of our neighbour, but a discarding of all honesty and clean living, art and learning.... Almsgiving has ceased, for these knaves have so abused it that no one will give any longer.”

  A few years before this, Othmar Luscinius, an Alsacian theologian, then one of the most weighty scholars of Germany, who, save for having taken a passing fancy for Luther, remained true to the Church, described the “rude Christians,” “whom really we ought to pity, who of the articles necessary for Justification take those only that please them and are sweet, viz. faith and the Evangel, arguing: ‘I have only to believe and I shall be saved’; as for the other, which is bitter and far from easy, viz. the putting to death of the old Adam, that they take good care to leave alone.”

  The above is sufficient to show that there was a consensus of opinion in tracing back the moral decadence to the Lutheran doctrine of works. As against this there is a certain strangeness in the explanation variously given by Protestants of this real retrogression: The complaints of Luther and his preachers, so they aver, only prove that they were dissatisfied, as it was their right and duty to be, with what had been achieved in the moral order. — At any rate, the distressing results of the doctrine of faith alone proved strikingly how ineffectual had been all Luther’s exhortations to good works.

  Luther’s Utterances in Favour of Good Works.

  Many and earnest are Luther’s exhortations to prove our faith by works of love towards God and our neighbour; to sinners he frequently speaks of the path of penance which they must tread; conversion he wishes to be accomplished with lively faith and the state of grace preserved by practical piety. It was assuredly not the lack of such counsels which occasioned the decline described above; this was rather due to the system itself, combined with the evil effects of the general overthrow of the old ecclesiastical law and practice which safeguarded morals, and with the contempt aroused for the sacraments, for public worship and the spiritual authorities. History must, however, allow Luther’s exhortations on behalf of good works and the keeping of the commandments to speak for themselves.

  We may begin with his thesis: “We are bound to bring our will into entire conformity with the Divine Will.” In accordance with this, in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” he does not fail to speak agreeably with the teaching of the olden Church of the assistance God gives for the zealous keeping of the commandments. “If you desire to keep all the commandments, to be rid of your evil lusts and of sin as the commandments enjoin and demand, then believe in Christ, for in Him I make bold to promise you all grace and righteousness, peace and freedom. If you believe, then you have it; if you do not believe, you have it not. For what is impossible to you with all the works of the Law, of which there must be many though all to no profit, will be short and easy to you by faith.... The promises of God give both the command and the fulfilment.” What he means to say is, that, by faith, we receive grace in order to wage a successful “conflict with sin.” Grace is, however, equivalent to faith. “Without grace,” he had already taught before, “man cannot keep God’s commandments.” “The old man ... is led by concupiscence.” “But to faith all things are possible through Christ.”

  Elsewhere he clearly teaches that faith alone is not nearly enough; to rely exclusively on this must indeed be termed “folly”; with the assistance of grace man must also keep the Law.

  In spite of all he has to say against Moses and his harsh and terrifying “Law” — the Ten Commandments inclusive — when he is busy exalting the Evangel, he nevertheless has occasionally high praise for the Decalogue on account of its agreement with the law of nature. His exposition of it contains much that is worth taking to heart. Faith, he points out, shows us whence the strength for keeping the Ten Commandments is to be drawn.

  The Christian, according to a lengthy and beautiful passage in the Church Postils (in a sermon for the Feast of the Conception), must “struggle and fight” against his lusts and must seek to resist the darts of the wicked one. “If we have been baptised and believe, we have received grace, and this contends with the evil inclinations within us and expels and destroys original sin; then good and honest desires for humility, chastity, longanimity and all the virtues awaken in us, and at once good works begin to be performed with a cheerful heart. All this is done by the grace which we receive in baptism by faith in Christ; it is impossible for such grace to remain idle, but it must needs bring forth good works.”

  Emphatic admonitions to preserve chastity and a reminder of the religious means to be employed are also frequent with him, for instance, in his “Von guten Wercken,” written in 1520 at Spalatin’s instigation, to repel the charge that his teaching was antagonistic to any striving after virtue, to morality or Christian works. He dedicated the writing to Duke Johann, the brother of the Saxon Elector. Chastity, he there says, is indeed a hard matter, but it must be acquired. “Even were no other work commanded besides chastity we should all of us have enough to do, so dangerous and furious is the [contrary] vice.... To get the better of all this requires labour and trouble, and in fact all the commandments of God teach us how important is the rightful performance of good works, nay that it is impossible of our own strength even to plan a good work, let alone commence and accomplish it.... This work of chastity, if it is to be preserved, impels us to many other good works, to fasting and temperance, in order to resist gluttony and drunkenness, to watching and early rising, in spite of our laziness and love for slumber, to strive and to labour in overcoming idleness. For gluttony and drinking, too much sleep, idleness and loitering are the weapons of unchastity.... These exercises, however, must not be carried further than is necessary to subdue unchastity, not to the extent of damaging our frame. The strongest weapons of all are prayer and the Word of God.... Thus you see that each one finds enough to do in himself and good works in plenty to perform. Yet now no one makes use of prayer, fasting, watching and labour for this purpose, but looks upon these works as an end
in themselves, though the performance of these works of the Law ought to be regulated daily so as to be ever more and more purified [the sentence contains Luther’s usual perversion of Catholic doctrine and practice]. Other things also have been mentioned as to be avoided, such as soft beds and clothing, unnecessary adornments, the society, sight and conversation of men or women, and much else conducive to chastity. In all this no one can lay down a fixed rule and measure. Each one must decide for himself what things and how many are helpful to chastity, and for how long.” Here he even pays a tribute to the monasteries founded in bygone ages to teach the “young people discipline and cleanliness.” Finally he insists that “a good, strong faith” “helps greatly in this work,” since “faith ever liveth and doth all our works.”

  The ravings of the fanatics repeatedly furnished him with an occasion to emphasise good works more strongly and even to speak of a faith working by love.

  His dislike for their lawless behaviour and their praise of the Spirit, to some extent directed against ordinary works, called him into the arena. To call back the disturbers to a more moral life and to the considerations of charity, he appealed to them to “exercise themselves in the faith that worketh by charity” (Gal. v. 6). Even the Epistle of James now appeared to him good enough to quote, particularly the verse (i. 22): “Be ye doers of the the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”; from this Epistle he also borrows the comparison of a dead faith, viz. of a faith not made living through charity, with the face as seen in a glass, which is merely the semblance of a countenance and not the reality.

  It was the fanatics again who in 1530 drew from him some eloquent statements in favour of good works, because, so he said, they had misrepresented his doctrine that “Good works neither make a man pious nor blot out sin.” They said “they would give their good works for a groat,” and that all good works were not worth a peppercorn. Here he professes to see great danger in contempt for good works and the perversion of his teaching by the “devil’s lying tongue.” Good works, according to him, are rather to be esteemed very highly because they are God’s own. “If it is a good work, then God has wrought it in and by me”; “it was done for the honour and glory of God and for the profit and salvation of my neighbour.” He himself had been far from questioning this and had merely taught that works did not conduce to piety, i.e. “to justify the soul and to placate God”; this, on the contrary, was “entirely the work of the One true God and of His grace.”