Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  In the above instances the Catholic could find support for his conscience in the infallible authority of the Church. It was this authority which forbade him Luther’s writings as heretical, and, in the case of contrition — which Luther also brings forward — it was likewise his religious faith, which, consonantly with man’s natural feeling, demanded such sorrow for sin. In earlier days authority and faith were the reliable guides of conscience without which it was impossible to do. Luther left conscience to itself or referred it to his own words and his reading of Scripture, though this again, as he himself acknowledged, was not an absolute rule; thus he leaves it a prey to a most unhappy uncertainty — unless, indeed, it was able to “find assurance” in the way he wishes.

  Quite early in his career he also gave the following instruction to those of the clergy who were living in concubinage on how to form their conscience; they were “to salve their conscience” and take the female to their “wedded wife,” even though this were against the law, fleshly or ghostly. “Your soul’s salvation is of more account than any tyrannical laws.... Let him who has the faith to take the risk follow me boldly.” “I will not deceive him,” he adds apologetically, but at least he had “the power to advise him regarding his sins and dangers”; he will show them how they may do what they are doing, “but with a good conscience.” For as Luther points out in another passage, even though their discarding of their supposed obligation of celibacy had taken place with a bad conscience, still the Bible-texts subsequently brought forward, read according to the interpretation of the new Evangelist, avail to heal their conscience. At any rate, so he tells the Teutonic Knights when inviting them to break their vow of chastity: “on the Word of God we will risk it and do it in the teeth of and contrary to all Councils and Churches! Close eyes and ears and take God’s Word to heart.” Better, he cries, go on keeping two or three prostitutes than seek of a Council permission to marry!

  These were matters for “those to risk who have the faith,” so we have heard him say. In reality all did depend on people’s faith ... in Luther, on their conviction that his doctrine and his moral system were right.

  But what voice was to decide in the case of those who were wavering?

  On the profoundest questions of moral teaching, it is, according to Luther, the “inward judgment” that is to decide what “spirit” must be followed. “For every Christian,” he writes, “is enlightened in heart and conscience by the Holy Ghost and by God’s Grace in such a way as to be able to judge and decide with the utmost certainty on all doctrines.” It is to this that the Apostle refers when he says: “A spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor. iii. 15). Beyond this, moreover, Scripture constitutes an “outward judgment” whereby the Spirit is able to convince men, it being a “ghostly light, much brighter than the sun.” It is highly important “to be certain” of the meaning of the Bible, though here Luther’s own interpretation was, needless to say, to hold the field. The preachers instructed by him were to say: “I know that the doctrine is right in God’s sight” and “boast” of the inward certainty they shared with him.

  Luther’s rules for the guidance of conscience in other matters were quite similar. Subjectivism becomes a regular system for the guidance of conscience. In this sense it was to the person that the final decision was left. But whether this isolation of man from man, this snatching of the individual from dutiful submission to an authority holding God’s place, was really a gain to the individual, to religion and to society, or not rather the reverse, is only to be settled in the light of the history of private judgment which was the outcome of Luther’s new principle.

  Of himself Luther repeats again and again, that his knowledge and conscience alone sufficed to prove the truth of his position; that he had won this assurance at the cost of his struggles with conscience and the devil. Ulenberg, the old writer, speaking of these utterances in his “Life of Luther,” says that his hero mastered his conscience when at the Wartburg, and, from that time, believed more firmly than ever that he had gained this assurance by a Divine revelation (“cœlesti quadam revelatione”), for which reason he had then written to his Elector that he had received his lead solely from heaven.

  In matters of conscience wherever the troublesome “Law” comes in we can always trace the devil’s influence; we “must come to grips with him and fight him,” only the man who has been through the mill, as he himself had, could boast of having any certainty: “The devil is a juggler. Unless God helps us, our work and counsel is of no account; whether we turn right or left he remains the Prince of this world. Let him who does not know this just try. I have had some experience of this. But let no one believe me until he too has experienced it.”

  Not merely in the case of his life-work in general, but even in individual matters of importance, the inward struggles and “agonies” through which he had passed were signs by which to recognise that he was in the right. Thus, for instance, referring to his hostile action in Agricola’s case, Luther says: “Oh, how many pangs and agonies did I endure about this business. I almost died of anxiety before I brought these propositions out into the light of day.” Hence it was plain, he argued, how far he was from the palpable arrogance displayed by his Antinomian foe, and how evidently his present conduct was willed by God.

  The Help of Conscience at Critical Junctures

  It was the part played by subjectivism in Luther’s ethics that led him in certain circumstances to extend suspiciously the rights of “conscience.”

  In the matter of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse he soothed the Elector of Saxony by telling him he must ignore the general outcry, since the Landgrave had acted “from his need of conscience”; in his “conscience” the Prince regarded his “wedded concubine” as “no mere prostitute.” “By God’s Grace I am well able to distinguish between what by way of grace and before God may be permitted in the case of a troubled conscience and what, apart from such need of conscience, is not right before God in outward matters.” In his extreme embarrassment, consequent on this matrimonial tangle, Luther deemed it necessary to make so hair-splitting a distinction between lawfulness and permissibility when need of conscience required it. The explanation — that, in such cases, something must be conceded “before God and by way of grace” — which he offers together with the Old-Testament texts as justifying the bigamy, must look like a fatal concession to laxity.

  He also appealed to conscience in another marriage question where he made the lawfulness of bigamy depend entirely on the conscience.

  A man, who, owing to his wife’s illness was prevented from matrimonial intercourse, wished, on the strength of Carlstadt’s advice, to take a second wife. Luther thereupon wrote to Chancellor Brück, on Jan. 27, 1524, telling him the Prince should reply as follows: “The husband must be sure and convinced in his own conscience by means of the Word of God that it is lawful in his case. Therefore let him seek out such men as may convince him by the Word of God, whether Carlstadt [who was then in disgrace at Court], or some other, matters not at all to the Prince. For if the fellow is not sure of his case, then the permission of the Prince will not make him so; nor is it for the Prince to decide on this point, for it is the priests’ business to expound the Word of God, and, as Zacharias says, from their lips the Law of the Lord must be learned. I, for my part, admit I can raise no objection if a man wishes to take several wives since Holy Scripture does not forbid this; but I should not like to see this example introduced amongst Christians.... It does not beseem Christians to seize greedily and for their own advantage on everything to which their freedom gives them a right.... No Christian surely is so God-forsaken as not to be able to practise continence when his partner, owing to the Divine dispensation, proves unfit for matrimony. Still, we may well let things take their course.”

  On the occasion of his own marriage with Bora we may remember how he had declared with that defiance of which he was a past master, that he would take the step the better to withstand the devil and all his foes. (Vol. ii.,
ff.)

  A curious echo of the way in which he could set conscience at defiance is to be met with in his instructions to his assistant Justus Jonas, who, as soon as his first wife was dead, cast about for a second. Luther at first was aghast, owing to Biblical scruples, at the scandal which second marriages on the part of the regents of the Church would give and entreated him at least to wait a while. When he found it impossible to dissuade Jonas, he warned him of the “malicious gossip of our foes,” “who are ever eager to make capital out of our example”; nevertheless, he goes on to say that he had nothing else to urge against another union, so long as Jonas “felt within himself that spirit of defiance which would enable him, after the step, to ignore all the outcry and the hate of all the devils and of men, and not to attempt, nay, to scorn any effort to stop the mouths of men, or to crave their favour.”

  The “spirit of defiance” which he here requires as a condition for the step becomes elsewhere a sort of mystical inspiration which may justify an action of doubtful morality.

  Granted the presence of this inspiration he regards as permissible what otherwise would not be so. In a note sent to the Elector of Saxony at the time of the Diet of Augsburg regarding the question whether it was allowed to offer armed resistance to the Emperor, we find this idea expressed in remarkable words. Till then Luther had looked upon resistance as forbidden. The predicament of his cause, now endangered by the warlike threats of the Emperor, led him to think of resistance. He writes: If the Elector wishes to take up arms “he must do so under the influence of a singular spirit and faith (‘vocante aliquo singulari spiritu et fide’). Otherwise he must yield to superior force and suffer death together with the other Christians of his faith.” It is plain that there would have been but little difficulty in finding the peculiar mystical inspiration required; no less plain is it, that, once this back door had been opened “inspiration” would soon usurp the place of conscience and justify steps, that, in themselves, were of a questionable character.

  Conscience in the Religious Question of the Day

  The new method of dealing with conscience is more closely connected with Luther’s new method of inducing faith than might at first sight appear.

  The individualism he proclaimed in matters of faith embodied the principle, that “each one must, in his own way, lay hold on religious experience and thus attain religious conviction.” Luther often says, in his idealistic way, that only thus is it possible to arrive at the supreme goal, viz. to feel one’s faith within as a kind of inspiration; our aim must ever be to feel it “surely and immutably” in our conscience and in all the powers of our soul. Everything must depend on this experience, the more so as to him faith means something very different from what it means to Catholics; it is, he says, “no taking it all for true”; “for that would not be Christian faith but more an opinion than faith”; on the contrary, each one must believe that “he is one of those on whom such grace and mercy is bestowed.” Now, such a faith, no matter how profound and immutable the feeling be, cannot be reached except at the cost of a certain violence to conscience; such coercion is, in fact, essential owing to the nature of this faith in personal salvation.

  What, according to Luther, is the general character of faith? Fear and struggles, so he teaches, are not merely its usual accompaniments, but are also the “sure sign that the Word has touched and moved you, that it exercises, urges and compels you”; nay, Confession and Communion are really meant only for such troubled ones, “otherwise there would be no need of them” — i.e. they would not be necessary unless there existed despair of conscience and anxiety concerning faith. It was a mistaken practice, he continues, for many to refrain from receiving the Sacrament, “preferring to wait until they feel the faith within their heart”; in this way all desire to receive is extinguished; people should rather approach even when they feel not at all their faith; then “you will feel more and more attracted towards it” — though this again, according to Luther, is by no means quite certain.

  The “inward experience of faith” too often becomes simply the dictate of one’s whim. But a whim and order to oneself to think this or that does not constitute faith as the word is used in revelation, nor does a command imposed on the inward sense of right and wrong amount to a pronouncement of conscience.

  Though Luther often held up himself and his temptations regarding faith, as an example which might comfort waverers, Protestants have nevertheless praised him for the supposed firmness of his faith and for his joy of conscience. But was not his “defiant faith” really identical with that imposition he was wont to practise on his conscience and to dignify by the name of inspiration?

  Yet, in spite of all, he never found a secure foundation. “I know what it costs me, for I have daily to struggle with myself,” he told his friends in 1538. “I was scarcely able to bring myself to believe,” he said in a sermon of the same year, “that the doctrine of the Pope and the Fathers was all wrong.” His faith was as insecurely fixed, so he quaintly bewailed on another occasion, “as the fur trimming on his sleeve.” “Who believes such things?” he asks, wildly implicating all people in general, at the conclusion of a note jotted down in a Bible and alluding to the hope of life everlasting. In 1529 he repeatedly describes to his friends how Satan tempts him (“Satanas fatigat”) with lack of faith and despair, how he was sunk in unspeakable “bitterness of soul,” and, how, for this reason as he once says, he was scarce able “with a trembling hand” to write to them.

  Calvin, too, was aware of the frequent terrors Luther endured. When Pighius, the Catholic writer, alleged Luther’s struggles of conscience and temptations concerning the faith as disproving his authority, Calvin took good care not to deny them. He boldly replied that this only redounded to Luther’s honour since it was the experience of all devout people, and particularly of the most famous divines.

  Was it possible, according to Luther, to be conscientiously opposed to his teaching on faith and morals? At least in theory, he does go so far in certain statements as to recognise the possibility of such conscientious scruples. In these utterances he would even appear to surrender the whole weight and authority of his theological and ethical discoveries, fundamental though they were to his innovations. “I have served the Church zealously with what God has given me and what I owe to Him. Whoever does not care for it, let him read or listen to others. It matters but little should they feel no need of me.” With regard to public worship, it is left “to each one to make up his conscience as to how he shall use his freedom.” “I am not your preacher,” so he wrote to the “Strasburg Christians,” who were inclined to distrust his exclusiveness; “no one is bound to believe me; let each man look to himself”; all are to be referred “from Luther,” “to Christ.”

  Such statements, however, cannot stand against his constant insistence on his Divine mission; they are rather of psychological interest as showing how suddenly he passes from one idea to another. Moreover, his statement last mentioned, often instanced by Protestants as testifying to his breadth of mind, is nullified almost on the same page by the solemn assurance, that, his “Gospel is the true Gospel” and that everything that contradicts it is “heresy,” for, indeed, as had been foretold by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), “heresies” must needs arise.

  And, in point of fact, those teachers who felt themselves bound in conscience to differ from him and go their own way — for instance, the “Sacramentarians” in their interpretation of the words of consecration — were made to smart. Of this the example of Schwenckfeld was a new and striking proof.

  The contradiction presented on the one hand by Luther’s disposition to grant the most absolute freedom of conscience, and on the other by his rigid exclusiveness, is aptly described by Friedrich Paulsen: “In the region of morals Luther leaves the decision to the individual conscience as instructed by the Word of God. To rely on human authority in questions of morals appeared to him not much better than blasphemy.... True enough, however, this very Luther, at a lat
er date, attacked those whose conscience found in God’s Word doctrines at all different from those taught at Wittenberg.”

  Hence, neither to the heretics in his own camp nor to the adherents of the olden faith would he allow the right of private judgment, so greatly extolled both by himself and his followers. Nothing had been dearer to the people of mediæval times, who for all their love of freedom were faithful children of the Church, than regard and esteem for the rights of personality in its own domain. Personality, denoting man’s unfettered and reasonable nature stamped with its own peculiar individuality, is assuredly something noble. The Catholic Church, far from setting limits to the development of personality, promoted both its real freedom and the growth of individuality in ways suited to man’s nature and his supernatural vocation. Even the monastic life, so odious to Luther, was anything but “hostile to the ideal of personality.” An impartial observer, prepared to disregard fortuitous abuses, could have seen even then, that the religious life strives after the fairest fruits of ethical personality, which are fostered by the very sacrifice of self-will: Obedience is but a sacrifice “made in the interests of personality.” Mere wilfulness and the spirit of “defiance,” ever ready to overstep the bounds set by reason and grace, creates, not a person, but a “superman,” whose existence we could well spare; of such a being Luther’s behaviour reminds us more than once.