Nor would it by any means be right were Luther’s opponents to attribute the above favourable traits in his writings exclusively to the influence of the Catholic past. It is true that it is the latter which is mainly responsible for the elements of truth found in his writings, and also, not seldom, for the attractive and sympathetic way in which he presents his matter to the reader; but to deny that the author’s peculiar talent for speaking to the people and his rare gift of adapting himself to his German readers had also its share, would be to go too far. Luther, who hailed from among the lower class and had ever been in touch with it, knew the German character as well as any man (see vol. iii., ff.). In his style he embodied to some extent the nation’s mode of thought and speech. Hence his success with the Germans, whom he drew by the strongest ties, viz. those of nationalism, into circles where the motherly warnings of the Church were no longer heard.
We are, however, unable to discern in his writings the mystical qualities which some of his admirers find everywhere. Echoes of the sayings of the olden mystics, such as we have had occasion to quote from his earlier works, obviously do not suffice to prove his own mystic gifts. Moreover, these echoes tend to become feebler as time goes on, and the nearer his literary labours draw to their close the less can they be considered to bear the character of true mystical productions. Certain leanings met with in Luther at the beginning, and even later, we have already had to characterise as the outcome of an untheological pseudo-mysticism.
In his Exposition of the Magnificat (1521), for instance, we meet with trains of thought expressed in words which by their beauty recall those of the mystics of old. One cannot read without being edified what he says at the commencement of this little work, of the love of God which makes “the heart overflow with joy,” or of the glories of Mary; of her, nothing greater can be said than that she was the Mother of God, “even had one as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, blades of grass in the field, stars in heaven, or grains of sand on the sea-shore.” — Akin to this is the touching conclusion of his little writing on the Our Father, where he pictures the soul as pouring forth its desires to God the Father. Such jewels are, however, not offered to his readers as frequently as his talent in this respect would have rendered desirable.
To what good account he put this gift in his earlier years is well seen even in his controversial “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen” (1520), where he is at pains to expound the sum of the Christian life, though “only for the plain man.” Our present subject invites us to return once more to this side of the writing.
Of works of charity Luther there speaks as follows: “The inward man is at one with God, is joyful and merry by reason of Christ Who has done so much for him, and all his joy is in wishing to serve God in return freely and out of pure love. In his flesh, however, he finds a will which is quite other and which wishes to serve the world and to seek what it pleases. But this, faith cannot bear, and it sets vigorously to work to check and restrain it. As St. Paul says, Rom. vii.: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and ensnaring me in the law of sin.”
Later, coming to the works imposed upon man by self-restraint, he says: “So much of works in general, such as it suits a Christian to practise against his own flesh. Now we have to speak of works which he does for other men. For on this earth man does not live by himself but among other folk. Hence he cannot live without performing works for them, for he has to speak and have dealings with them.... Look how plainly Paul makes the Christian life to consist in works done for the good of our neighbour.... He instances Christ as our example and says [Phil. ii. 6-7]: ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal to God, and yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,’ and doing and suffering all things for our sakes alone. In the same way the Christian man, though he is free, ought willingly to become a slave in his neighbour’s service, and treat him as God through Christ has treated us, and all this, too, without reward; to seek nothing thereby but to be well-pleasing to God, and to think thus: See, God in and through Christ has bestowed on me, unworthy and guilty wretch that I am, without any merit, and solely out of pure mercy, an abundance of riches, piety and salvation.... Hence, in my turn, I will readily, gladly and without reward do what is well-pleasing to such a Father Who has heaped upon me His unspeakable riches, and be a Christ to my neighbour as Christ was to me; only what I see him to need and what is useful and profitable to him, will I do, now that, by my faith, I myself have all things abundantly in Christ. See, how joy and love of God spring from faith, and, how, from love comes a ready, willing, cheerful life of service towards our neighbour.”— “It is thus that God’s gifts must flow from the one to the other and become common to all, so that each one cares as much for his neighbour as he does for himself. They flow to us from Christ, Who, in His life, took us on Him as though He had been what we are. From us they should flow to those who need them.”
Though, intermingled with such excellent matter, we find ever-recurring allusions to his peculiar doctrine of justification by faith alone, and though he fails to see the true organic connection between good works and the life of faith and thus condemns to inanity all works not performed out of perfect charity, yet it cannot be gainsaid that certain aspects of neighbourly love are here admirably portrayed.
Later on we often miss this sympathetic tone, for it was blighted by his polemics. As for his aptitude for instructing the people he retained it, however, to the end.
In the Exposition of the Our Father, of which the dialogue of the soul with God forms a part, he lays down at the outset in striking, popular guise the need of prayer, the value of the simple Paternoster, the profit to be derived from weighing well its contents, and also the beauty of the virtue of humility. His explanation of the Hail Mary, for all its brevity, contains practical and valuable hints as to how God is to be honoured in all.
In a very useful booklet entitled “Einfeltige Weise zu beten” (1534), Luther assumes the garb of an instructor on prayer and attempts to show how the forms in common use, the Our Father, Ten Commandments and Creed, provide matter for prayer even for busy laymen, and how the latter, by meditating on each separate word or clause, may rise to perfect prayer. “When good thoughts press in upon us,” he says, for instance, explaining the latter practice, “then the other prayers may be neglected and all our attention given to such thoughts which should be listened to in silence and on no account be thwarted, for then the Holy Ghost Himself is preaching to us; one word of His sermon is far better than a thousand prayers of ours. And I, too,” he adds, “have often learnt more in one such prayer than I could from much reading and composing.”
In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,” exhorting all to pray for the public needs, he speaks alluringly and with great religious fervour. Urging his readers to pray for the divine assistance, he takes one by one, as was indeed his wont, the thoughts suggested by the Our Father. “Our comfort and defiance, our pride, our daring and our arrogance, our insistence, our victory and our life, our joy, our honour and our glory are seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. There, devil, just you touch a hair of His!” The power of his words is heightened by his references to the nearness of the Last Day, the advent of which was foreshadowed in the downfall of both Papal and Turkish power. He even declares that the certainty of being heard depended on the spiritual struggle being waged in defence of the Evangel against the popish “blasphemers, persecutors and God-forsaken children of the devil”; where these had their way and were fighting, there nothing was to be looked for save ruin; there God’s “angry hand was raised in vengeance against all the devils and Turks, against Mahmed, Pope, Meinz, Heinz and all the miscreants.” Hence, even in a tract intended as an exhortation to prayer and to promote a great work of Christian charity, quite other sentiments gain for the time the upper hand.
This brings us back to the remark we have frequently ha
d to make when describing other writings of Luther’s meant for the common people.
All too often his exhortations are disfigured by unmeasured vituperation or uncalled-for controversy of the most bitter kind. In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,” referred to above, Luther is seen at his worst in the excursion he makes therein against the abuses — then indeed very bad — of the usurers, particularly because they had ventured to say that “Luther does not even know what usury is.” He, altogether forgetful of meekness, also attacks the ungrateful Evangelicals in a highly unseemly manner, because they refused to submit to the stern reproofs of their preachers: “Let them fare to the devil and die like pigs and dogs, without grace or sacrament, and be buried on the carrion-heap.... Those men who wish to go unreproved thereby admit that they are downright rogues.... They deserve to hear Mahmed, the Turk, the Pope and the devil and his mother rather than God. Amen, Amen, if they will have it so.” Of the Catholics he says in the same “Vermanunge,” that the foes of the Evangel among the Catholic princes, “traitors, murderers and incendiaries that they are,” knew full well that his was the “true Word of God,” yet, instead of accepting it, they would “much prefer to behave towards us like Turks, or were it possible, like very devils, not to speak of their being ready to serve, aid, counsel and abet the Turks”; they said, “If God in heaven won’t help us, then let us call in all the devils from hell.... This I know to be true.”
It was no mere passing fit of temper that induced him in his old age so to disfigure his exhortations. In another pious writing, the “Circular Letter to the Pastors,” sent around two years previous, and also dealing with the war against the Turks, he says: “The Papists do not pray and are so bloodthirsty that they cannot pray”; hence let us pray, he says; “but, when they start with their bloodthirsty designs against the Evangel, then all must fall upon them as upon a pack of mad dogs.” Such words scattered broadcast over Germany could not possibly serve to promote union or to strengthen the resistance to be offered to the danger looming from the East. They merely throw a lurid light on the chasm Luther cleft in the heart of the nation, and on the internal dissensions which were weakening the Empire and making it an object of ridicule to the Turkish unbelievers.
In the preface to his Church-Postils (1543), Luther exhorts the pastors to leave those, who “wish to be left unpunished,” to “die like dogs”; the rooks and ravens, jackdaws and wolves would sing the best vigils and dirges for the souls of such proud wiselings. He not only wishes them to fulminate against such men but also desires, that, in the sermons, “certain instances of the Papal tyranny under which we once groaned in misery be introduced.”
Such was his anger with his foes that Luther even goes so far as to say in his exposition of the Hail Mary, that the Papists “cursed” instead of blessed, the fruit of Mary’s womb. — In the tract “How to pray” “Peter Balbier” is warned to bear in mind the “idolatry of the Turk, the Pope and all false teachers”; nor is ridicule of the praying priestlings wanting; he then exhorts Peter in the most pious of language to imitate his example, viz. “to suck at the Paternoster like a baby, and to eat and drink it like a man,” “never wearying of it”; he was also “very fond of the Psalter,” turning “the whole as far as possible into a prayer,” and, when he had “grown cold and disgusted with saying prayers,” would take his “little Psalter and escape into his own room,” etc. — But even his homely exposition of the Our Father is not free from a polemical bias.
With the beautiful and useful thoughts contained in his preface to the Larger Catechism, to the annoyance of the thoughtful reader, he mingles abuse of the “lazy bellies and presumptuous saints” of his own party, to say nothing of the inevitable outbursts against Catholic practices. Here, too, the thought of the devil, by which he is ever obsessed, makes him represent Satan’s wiles as the best and most powerful incentive to the study of the Catechism.
Even his earlier Exposition of the Magnificat is spoilt by a controversial colouring, and, moreover, is overclouded by the circumstance that he wrote it at the very time when the menace of the Diet of Worms was at its worse. Looking out for a powerful protector, he dedicated his writing to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony, the future Elector, who had wished him luck in his crusade against the Papal Ban. Luther extols the Duke’s piety at the beginning of the work. But was he not anxious to make a good impression himself by his Exposition of the Magnificat? To impress his readers that he was a man enlightened by God and living in union with Him? We may notice how pathetically he depicts the righteous man (and we naturally think of him) submitting to be persecuted for the Word of God, and awaiting with heavenly resignation succour from on high, without in the least striving to protect himself. He who is persecuted, he writes, “must humble himself before God as unworthy that such great things should be done through him and commend everything to His mercy with prayer and supplication.”
Another motive which inspired the publication of his works of edification was, as he himself admits, to wrest the Catholic prayer-books from the people’s hands. It is true, he says, his intention is “simply and honestly” to supply the people with spiritual food. But he also alludes to the “manifold wretchedness arising out of confession and sin,” and the “unchristian stupidity found in the little prayers offered to God and His Saints,” which he is obliged to assail. Even where his peculiar doctrine makes no appearance in his instructions he is not oblivious of its interest, even though he assures us, seemingly with the utmost sincerity, that he was going to see whether, by his writings, “he could not do his very foes a service. For my object is ever to be helpful to all and harmful to none.” He saw well of what help the mere existence of pious books would prove to his party; the more pious and innocent they were, the more they would promote his cause and smooth the way for him. The simplicity of the dove thus openly flaunted, nevertheless contrasts unpleasantly with the wisdom of the serpent which is only too apparent.
As to what is lacking in Luther’s religious writings: Any reader familiar with the manuals of instruction and piety in use towards the close of the Middle Ages will at once perceive a great difference between the importance they attach to self-denial, self-conquest and the struggle against the evil inclinations of nature and that attached to them by Luther.
In the “Imitation of Christ,” for instance, the great stress laid on self-denial gives an effective spur to every inward virtue. In Luther, with his twin ideas of faith alone and the irresistible power of grace, this main feature of the religious warfare falls decidedly into the background. Is it a mere coincidence that in the Larger Catechism self-denial and penance are not mentioned among the means for preserving chastity? Chastity itself is there dealt with in a curiously grudging fashion. The so-called Evangelical Counsels, which fell from our Lord’s own lips and had been eagerly pursued in the past by those seeking to lead a life of perfection, are naturally altogether ignored by Luther. With him, too, the wholesome incentive to good provided by the hope of supernatural merit for heaven had also, owing to his theory, to be set aside. The appeals to the motive of holy fear which he makes are too rare and too powerless to be of much avail. He had clipped with a rude hand the two wings of the spiritual life, viz. fear and the hope of reward, which bear it upwards and without which man cannot rise above the things of sense.
In Luther’s works of edification, as pointed out above, we miss the school of virtue, the advance from one step of virtue and perfection to another, such as had grown up into a wise and recognised system, thanks to the experience of antiquity and the Middle Ages. With him everything begins with a rash breach with the past. Even the use made of the example of the Saints is painfully defective. An easy-going tendency hides the poverty of the aims and a shallow mediocrity lames the upward flight. Here, again, the fact that the author turns his back so rudely on the traditions of the earliest ages and the holy practices of his fathers, brings its own punishment. For a multitude of inspiring and perfectly legitimate acts of prayer
and virtue in which the Christian heart had found strength and gladness are passed over by him in dead silence, or else scoffed at as mere “holiness-by-works.” While this is true of his practice, his theory, too, was wanting in that clear and solid justification and development which the theology of the older divines had enabled them to introduce into their teaching.
Lovers of Luther can, however, claim that in him two qualities were united which are rarely to be found combined, and possibly belong to no other popular religious writer of the age, viz. first, a wealth of ideas suggested by reminiscences, now of the Bible, now from the pages of human life; secondly, the writer’s wonderful imagination, which enables him to clothe all things in the best dress in order the more easily to win his way into the hearts of his readers.
In consequence of this his writings will always find approving friends, not only in Lutheran circles but also among those who for literary or historical reasons are interested in a form of literature bearing so individual a stamp, and know how to overlook their imperfections. The reasons, however, are sufficiently obvious why the Church by a general prohibition (though it does admit of exceptions) has set up a barrier against the study of any of Luther’s works by her children, and why she bids her faithful to seek spiritual food only in those books of instruction and edification which she sanctions.
The Catechism
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 829