Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Three charges of a general character were made by Luther against Catholic worship. First, “the Word of God had not been preached ... this was the worst abuse.” Secondly, “many unchristian fables and lies found their way into the legends, hymns and sermons.” Finally, “worship was performed as a work whereby to win salvation and God’s grace; and so faith perished.”

  Of these charges it is hard to say which is the most unjust. His assertion that the Word of God had not been preached and that there was no Bible-preaching, has been refuted anew by every fresh work of research in the history of preaching at that time. Nor was the Bible-element in preaching entirely lacking, though it might not have been so conspicuous. The truth is, that, in many places, sermons were extremely frequent.

  Luther’s second assertion, viz. that Catholic worship was full of lying legends, does not contain the faintest trace of truth, more particularly there where he was most radical in his work of expurgation, i.e. in the Canon. The Canon was a part of the Mass-service, which had remained unaltered from the earliest times. It was only into the sermons that legends had found their way to a great extent.

  If finally, as seems likely, Luther, by his third charge, viz. that the olden Church sought to “win salvation and God’s Grace” through her worship, means that this was the sole or principal aim of Catholic worship, here, too, he is at sea. The real object had always been the adoration and thanksgiving which are God’s due, offered by means of the sublime sacrifice united with the spiritual sacrifice of the whole congregation. Adoration and thanksgiving found their expression above all in the sublime Prefaces of the Mass. The thought already appears in the “Sursum corda, Gratias agamus, etc., Dignum et iustum est,” whereupon the priest, taking up again the “Dignum et iustum est,” proceeds: “Æquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere ... per Christum Dominum nostrum.” It is not without significance that “dignum,” “iustum” and “æquum” stand first, and that “salutare” comes after; praise and thanksgiving are what it becomes us first of all to offer in presence of God’s Majesty, but they are also profitable to us because they render God gracious to us.

  The ritual of the Catholic sacrifice, dating as it does from the Church’s remotest past, expresses adequately the highest thoughts of Christian ethics, viz. the adoration of the Creator by the creature through the God-man Christ, Who alone worthily honours Him. To this idea Luther’s attempt at a liturgy does not do justice.

  10. Schwenckfeld as a Critic of the Ethical Results of Luther’s Life-work

  Caspar Schwenckfeld, the Silesian nobleman (see above, ff.), is a type of those men who attached themselves to Lutheranism with the utmost enthusiasm, but, who, owing to the experience they met with and in pursuance of those very principles which Luther himself had at first advocated, came to strike out new paths of their own.

  In spite of his pseudo-mystical schemes for the establishment of a Church on the Apostolic model; in spite of his abandonment of doctrines to which Luther clung as to an heirloom of the ancient Church; regardless of his antagonism to Luther — which the latter repaid with relentless persecution — this cultured fanatic expressed in his numerous writings and letters his lasting gratitude to, and respect for, Luther on account of the services which the latter had in his opinion rendered in the restoration of truth. He extols his “wonderful trumpet-call,” and without any trace of hypocrisy, says: “What Martin Luther and others have done aright, for instance in the expounding of Holy Scripture ... I trust I will, with God’s help, never underrate.”

  At the same time, however, he is not slow to express it as his conviction, that, “At the beginning of the present Evangel the said [Lutheran] doctrine was far better, purer and more wholesome than it is now.” “Dr. Martin led us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, and there he left us to lose ourselves on the rough roads; yet he seeks to persuade everybody that we are already in the Promised Land.” This he said in 1528.

  “Although Luther has written much that is good,” “that has been and still may be profitable to believers, for which we give praise and thanks to God the Lord, still he has also written much that is evil, and in the end it will be proved that his and his people’s doctrine or theologia was neither apostolic, nor pure, nor perfect ... which certainly might have been seen long since by its fruits.”

  His criticisms of Luther, which, in spite of his harsh treatment at the latter’s hands, are throughout temperately expressed and with a certain aristocratic reticence, deal on the one hand with the fruits of the Wittenberg Reformation, and, on the other, with certain main features of the ethical teaching of his master and one-time friend; his strictures thus form a recapitulation of what has gone before.

  On the hoped-for Moral Revival

  “The reformation of life has not taken place,” this is what Carl Ecke, Schwenckfeld’s latest biographer, represents as the honest conviction of the “apostolic” preacher of the faith in Silesia. “The religion of Lutheranism as it then was did not, in Schwenckfeld’s opinion, as a whole reach the standard of Bible Christianity.” “The greater part of the common herd,” says Schwenckfeld, “who are called Lutherans do not know to-day how they stand, whether with regard to works, or in relation to God and to their own conscience.”

  Schwenckfeld’s own standard was certainly somewhat one-sided and his own Apostolic Church, so far as it ever saw the light, fell considerably short of the ideal. His insight into the ethical conditions and doctrines was, however, keen enough and his judgment was at least far calmer and clearer than that of Carlstadt and Luther’s other more hot-headed antagonists. He was also able to base his definite and oft-repeated statements on the experience he had gained during his wide travels and in intercourse with all sorts of men.

  Thus he writes: “If by God’s grace I see the great common herd and the poor folk on both sides, as they really are, then I must fain admit, that, under the Papacy and in spite of all its errors, there are more pious, godfearing men than in Lutheranism. I also believe that they might more easily be improved than some of our Evangelicals who are now trying to hide themselves and their sinful life behind Holy Scripture, nay, behind a fictitious faith and Christ’s satisfaction, and in whom no fear of God is left.”

  Many of Schwenckfeld’s more specific complaints are supported by other witnesses. We may compare what Luther himself and his friends report of the conditions at Wittenberg with what Schwenckfeld says a little later: “It is credibly asserted concerning their Church at Wittenberg, that there such a mad, dissolute life prevails as is woeful to see; there is no discipline whatever, no fear of God, and the people are wild, impudent and unmannerly, particularly Philip’s students, so that even Dr. Major not long since (1556) is himself said to have complained of it there in a sermon, saying: Our Wittenberg is so widely talked of that strangers fancy there are only angels here; when, however, they come they find only devils incarnate. If Philip, who sends out his disciples as Apostles ‘in omnem terram’ does not found any better Churches than these, he has but little to boast of before God.”

  “What harm and damage to consciences such Lutheran teaching has brought into Christendom it is easier to bewail with many tears than to describe.” Though Luther’s “Evangel and office has discovered and made an end of much false worship and a great apostasy, for which we give thanks to God the Lord,” yet “it has but little of the power of grace, of the Holy Spirit, or of blessing, for bringing sinners to repentance and true conversion.”

  “Thus we have Schwenckfeld’s witness that he had seen nothing of any real awakening or revival among the people generally. Whole classes, the merchant class, for instance, remained inwardly untouched by the glad tidings; even where the ‘Word’ was preached, there the bad sermons, of which Schwenckfeld had complained as early as 1524, often produced evil fruits.” Thus writes Ecke. Schwenckfeld, however, does not lay all the blame on the preachers, but rather directly on the ethical principles resulting from Luther’s doctrines, which had
filled the utterances of the new preachers with so much that was dangerous and misleading. “Oh, how many of our nobles have I heard say: ‘I cannot help it,’ ‘it is God’s Will,’ ‘God does all, even my sin, and I am not answerable’; ‘if He has predestined me I shall be saved.’” “How many have I heard, who all appealed to the Wittenberg writings, and, who, alas, to-day, are ten times worse than before the Evangel began to be preached.”

  Whenever he exhorted his Lutheran co-religionists to conversion and holiness of life, so he declares in 1543, he always received some reply such as the following: “We are poor sinners and can do nothing good.” “Faith alone without works saves us.” “We cannot keep God’s law”; “have no free-will.” “Amendment is not in our power.” “Christ has done enough for us; He has overthrown sin, death, hell and the devil; that is what we have to believe.” When he preached sanctification he was dubbed a “Papist.” “That the Lutherans accuse me of being more a Papist than a Lutheran is due mainly to good works and the stress I lay on them.”

  Even in 1524 he had published an essay on practical ethics entitled, “An Exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry Articles of the Evangel, etc.” (Above, 79 f.) In 1547 he found it necessary to publish another work on the “Misuse of the Evangel.” To this misuse he attributes most of the above excuses of his “Lutheran co-religionists.” Luther himself, so he declares here, was much to blame for the confusion that prevailed. He quotes many passages from Luther’s Church-postils, from the edition printed at Wittenberg in 1526 with prefaces by Luther and Stephen Roth. He also makes use of the same work in another book, “On Holy Scripture,” which he also wrote in 1547. Many of the incriminated passages were “wickedly omitted” in the next editions of the Church-postils.

  Further Complaints of Schwenckfeld’s. The Ethical Doctrines

  Schwenckfeld, in his strictures on Luther’s preaching and its results, deals with the ethical side of the new teaching concerning the Law and the Gospel.

  Luther had said, that, with the law, God “wished to do no more than make us feel our helplessness, our weakness and our sickness.” The critic asks: “Why not also to make us eschew evil and do good, 1 Peter iii.?” On the other hand, Luther will have it that the “Law makes all of us sinners so that not even the smallest tittle of these commandments can be kept even by the most holy.” “Such is in short Luther’s doctrine concerning the Law and the Commandments of God. There he lets it rest, as though the ground and contents of the Law and God’s intention therein — which was centred on Christ — were nothing.... Of this doctrine, particularly, the common people can make nothing save that God has given us His commandments, not in order that we may keep them by means of His Grace, but only that we may thereby come to the knowledge of sin.”

  “Why should we hate our life in this world ... and follow Christ? Nay, why take pains at all to enter in at the narrow gate and to seek the strait way to life everlasting (Mt. vii.) if it is possible to reach heaven along the broad way on which so many walk who are called Lutherans, and to enter in through the wide gate which they make for themselves!”

  Two other points of doctrine which in the same connection Schwenckfeld censures in the strongest terms as real stumbling blocks in ethics, are the preaching of predestination and the denial of free-will.

  How, at the outset, the “learned had soared far too high” with their article of predestination “and, by means of their human wisdom, reached a philosophical, heathen conception [presumably the ancient ‘fatum’] can readily be seen from their books, especially from Luther’s against free-will and Melanchthon’s first Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.”

  “Luther writes that no one is free to plan either good or evil, but only does as he is obliged; that, as God wills, so we live.... Item, that the man who does evil has no control over himself, that it is not in man’s power to do evil or not, but that he is forced to do it, ‘nos coacti facimus.’” “God,” so Philip tells us, “does all things by His own power.”

  “They have treated of predestination in accordance with heathen philosophy, forgetful of Christ and the Grace of the Gospel now made manifest; they wrote of it from a human standpoint; and though Luther and Philip, after they had seen the evil results, would gladly have retracted it, yet because what they had formerly taught was very pleasing to the flesh, it took root in men’s hearts so deeply that what they afterwards said passed almost unheard.”

  “This aberration,” says Ecke, “was to Schwenckfeld a further sign that their method of reformation was not that of good missionaries.”

  Schwenckfeld complains rightly: “Instead of beginning, after the Apostles’ example, by preaching penance in the name of Christ ... they preferred vehemently to urge such lofty matters as predestination and the Divine election together with the denial of free-will.”

  The universal priesthood as commonly preached and understood by the people furnishes Schwenckfeld with a further cause for grumbling. “They have also been in the habit of preaching and shouting to the multitudes that all of them were already Christians, children of God and spiritual kings and princes. What corruption of conscience and abuse of the Evangel has resulted from all this we see and hear to-day from many ... who thereby have fallen into a bold and godless manner of life.”

  Finally there was Luther’s ethical attitude towards sin. “Look at the second sermon for Easter Day in Luther’s Church-sermons [where he says]: ‘Where now is sin? It is nailed to the cross.... If only I hold fast to this, I shall have a good conscience of being, like Christ Himself, without sin; then I can defy death, devil, sin and hell.’”

  Schwenckfeld continues: “And again: ‘Seeing that Christ allowed Himself to be put to death for sin, it cannot harm me. Thus does faith work in the man who believes that Christ has taken away sin; such a one feels himself to be without sin like Christ, and knows that death, devil and hell have been conquered and cannot harm him any more.’ Hæc ille. This has proved a scandal to many.”

  He is angered by what Luther says in his sermon for the 8th Sunday after Trinity, that “no work can condemn a man, that unbelief is the only sin, and that it was the comfort of Christians to know that sins do not harm them. Item, that only sinners belong to the Kingdom of God.” — He is much shocked at such sayings as, “If you but believe you are freed from sin.... If we believe then we have a Gracious God and only need to direct our works to the advantage of our neighbour so that they may be profitable to him.”

  Such a form of neighbourly love does not suffice to reassure Schwenckfeld as to the method of justification taught by Luther. “We see here that repentance, the renewal of the heart and the crucifixion of the flesh with its lusts and concupiscences, as well as the Christian combat ... are all forgotten.” “How is it possible that such easy indulgence and soft and honeyed sermons should not lead to little account being made of sin, seeing the people are told that God winks at the sins of all those who believe?”

  Again and again he returns to the patent fact that “the result of such shameless preaching and teaching is nothing but a grave and damnable abuse of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, since people now make but little account even of many and great sins.”

  For Luther to point to the Crucified and tell the believer that “sin is nothing but a devilish spectre and a mere fancy,” was to speak “fanatically.” Luther might write what he pleased, but here, at any rate, he was himself guilty of that fanatism of which he was fond of accusing others. Schwenckfeld himself had been numbered by the preachers among the crazy fanatics.

  The Silesian also ruthlessly attacked the imputation of the merits of Christ by means of the Sola Fides.

  The Lutherans, even the best of them, imagine their righteousness to be nothing else “but the bare faith, since they believe God accounts them righteous, even though they remain as they were before.” “They should, however, be exhorted to search Holy Scripture and to ask themselves in their hearts whether such faith and righteousness are not rather a human persuasion,
mere imposition and self-delusion ... which men invent to justify an impenitent life; not a true, living faith, the gift of the Holy Ghost ... which, as Scripture says, purifies the heart, Acts xv. ..., reconciles consciences, Rom. v. ..., and brings Christ into our hearts, Eph. iii., Gal. ii.”

  An instructive parallel and at the same time a severe censure on Luther’s method of building up “faith” on inward assurance is afforded by Schwenckfeld’s account of the experiences and spiritual trials on which he himself had founded his faith. The preachers, insisting on the outward Word, urged that he had no right to appeal to his mere feelings; yet, as he points out, this very thing had been proclaimed from Wittenberg as the right, nay the duty of all.

  “In addition to all this they reject the ghostly feeling and that inward sense of the Grace of God which Luther at the outset ... declared to be necessary for salvation, writing that: ‘No one can rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he has it direct from the Holy Ghost.’ No one, however, can receive it from the Holy Ghost unless he experiences it, makes trial of it and feels it; in this experience the Holy Ghost is teaching us as in His own school, outside of which nothing is learned but all is mere delusion, words and vapouring.”

  “How would Dr. Luther’s own gloss stand,” Schwenckfeld asks elsewhere, “which he gives on the words of the New Testament, 1 Cor. xi.: ‘Let a man prove himself,’ and where he says: ‘to prove oneself is to feel one’s faith,’ etc.? But the man who feels his faith will assuredly by such a faith — which is a power of God and the very being of the Holy Ghost — have forgiveness of sins and bear Christ in his believing heart.”