Luther now finished his exposition of the Magnificat, which, with loving devotion to the subject, he had intended for Prince John Frederick. He resumed also his work on the Sunday Gospels and Epistles. The first part of it he had already published in Latin. But he gave it now a new, and for the Christian people of Germany, a most important character, by writing in German his comments on these passages of Scripture, including those already dealt with in Latin, which formed the text of the sermon for the day. Thus arose his first collection of sermons, the 'Church-Postills.' By November he had already sent the first part to the press, though the work progressed but slowly. In a simple exposition of the words of the Bible, without any artificial and rhetorical additions or ornament, but with a constant and cheerful regard to practical life, with an unceasing attention to the primary questions of salvation, and in pithy, clear, and thoroughly popular language, he began to lay before his readers the sum total of Christian truth, and impress it on their hearts. The work served as much for the instruction and support of other preachers of the gospel now newly proclaimed, as for the direct teaching and edifying of the members of their flocks. It advanced, however, only by degrees, and Luther after many years was obliged to have it finished by friends, who collected together printed or written copies of his various sermons.

For the special comfort and advice of his Wittenberg congregation Luther wrote an exposition of the thirty-seventh Psalm. Nor with less energy and force did he wield his pen during June, in a vigorous and learned polemical reply in Latin to the Louvain theologian, Latomus.

And yet Luther all this while continued to lament that he had to sit there so idly in his Patmos: he would rather be burnt in the service of God's Word than stagnate there alone. The bodily rest which took the place of his former unwearied activity in the pulpit and the lecturer's chair, together with the sumptuous fare now substituted for the simple diet of the convent, were no doubt the cause of the physical suffering which for a long time had grievously distressed him and put his patience to the test, and which must have weighed upon his spirits. In his distress he once thought of going to Erfurt to consult physicians. Some strong remedies, however, which Spalatin got for him, gave him temporary relief.

He took exercise in the beautiful woods around the castle, and there, as he related afterwards, he used to look for strawberries. In August he had news to give Spalatin of a hunt, at which he had been present two days. He wished to look on at 'this bitter-sweet pleasure of heroes.' 'We have,' he says, 'hunted two hares and a few poor little partridges; truly a worthy occupation for idle people!' But among the nets and hounds he managed, as he says, to pursue theology. He saw in it all a picture of the devil, who by cunning and godless doctrines ensnares poor innocent creatures. Graver thoughts still were suggested to his mind by the fate of a little hare, which he had helped to save, and had rolled up in the long sleeve of his cloak, but which, on his putting it down afterwards and going away, the dogs caught and killed. 'Thus,' he says, 'do the Pope and Satan rage together, to destroy, despite my efforts, souls already saved.'

At that time too he fancied he heard and saw all kinds of devil's noises and sights, which long afterwards he frequently described to his friends, but which he took at the time with great calmness. Such, for instance, were a strange continual rumbling in a chest in which he kept hazel nuts, nightly noises of falling on the stairs, and the unaccountable appearance of a black dog in his bed.

Of the well-known ink-stain at the Wartburg we hear nothing either from those or after-times; and a similar spot was shown in the last century at the Castle of Coburg, where Luther stayed in 1530.

In the outer world, meanwhile, the great movement that emanated from Luther continued to advance and grow, in spite of his disappearance. It was apparent how powerless was his enforced absence to suppress it. Soon too it was to be seen how much on the other hand it depended on him that the movement should not bring real danger and destruction.

At Wittenberg his friends continued labouring faithfully and undisturbed. Much as Melancthon troubled himself about Luther and longed for his return, Luther relied with confidence upon him and his efforts, as rendering his own presence unnecessary. With joyful congratulations to his friend he acknowledged his receipt at the Wartburg of the sheets of his work—the Loci Communes—wherein Melancthon, whilst intending at first only to proclaim the fundamental principles and doctrines of the Bible, and especially of the Epistle to the Romans, actually laid the foundation for the dogma of the Evangelical Church.

Just at this time new forces had stepped in to further the work and the battle. Shortly before Luther's departure to Worms, John Bugenhagen of Pomerania had appeared at Wittenberg,—a man only two years younger than Luther, well trained in theology and humanistic learning, and already won over to Luther's doctrines by his writings, and more especially by his work on the Babylonish Captivity. He had made friends with Luther and Melancthon, and soon began to teach with them at the university. John Agricola from Eisleben had already taken part in the biblical lectures at the university, which was then the chief place for the exposition of evangelical doctrine. This man, born in 1494, had lived at Wittenberg since 1516. He had from the first been an adherent of Luther, and had won his confidence, as also that of Melancthon. He was now their fellow-lecturer at the university, and since the spring of 1521 had been appointed by the town as catechist at the parish church, charged with the duty of teaching children religion. Wittenberg had also gained the services of the learned Justus Jonas, so conspicuous for his high culture, and a staunch and open friend of Luther. Shortly after his journey with Luther from Erfurt to the Diet of Worms, he obtained, by grant of the Elector, the office of provost to the church of All Saints at Wittenberg, and became a member also of the theological faculty at the university. The excommunication under which Melancthon had fallen with Luther did not deter the mass of students from their cause. The academical youth who had assembled here from the whole of Germany, and from Switzerland, Poland, and other countries, were renowned for the exemplary unity in which, unlike their brethren in most of the universities in those days, they lived together and devoted themselves to the purest and most elevating studies. Everywhere students might be seen with Bibles in their hands; the young nobles and sons of burghers applied themselves diligently to self-discipline; and the drinking-bouts practised elsewhere, and so destructive to the muses, were unknown among them.

Luther, by his behaviour at Worms in particular, had fastened upon himself the eyes of all Germany. The proceedings before the Diet, made known, as they would be nowadays, by the newspapers, were then published abroad by means of fugitive pamphlets of a longer or shorter kind. Luther's speech in particular was circulated from notes made partly by himself, partly by others. Day after day, and especially during the sittings of the Diet, a number of other short tracts and fly-sheets set forth, mainly in the form of a dialogue, a popular discussion and explanation of his cause. His fate at Worms was immediately proclaimed in a book called 'The Passion of Dr. Martin Luther,' the title of which sufficiently indicated the analogy suggested. Then came the stirring and disquieting news of his sudden kidnapping by the powers of darkness; rumours which only served to stimulate him further in his concealment to speak out and march forwards with undaunted courage and assurance.

As writers who now began to labour for the cause in a similar spirit to Luther's and in a similarly popular style and manner, we must not omit to name the following. First and foremost was Eberlin of Gunzburg, formerly a Franciscan at Tubingen; next, the Augustine monk Michael Stifel of Esslingen, who came himself to Wittenberg and joined there the circle of friends; and lastly, the Franciscan Henry von Kettenbach at Ulm. The authors of some other influential works, such as the dialogue 'Neu Karsthans' (Karsthans being a name for peasants), are not known with certainty. In these men and their writings, ideas and thoughts already made their appearance, going beyond the intentions of Luther, and into a territory which, from his standpoint of religion, he would rather have seen more exactly defined, and taking up weapons which he had rejected. Thus 'Karsthans' contains the advice to break off, after the example of the Hussites in Bohemia, from most of the Churches, as being tainted with avarice and superstition; and a rising against the clergy is contemplated, in which the nobles and peasants should combine. Eberlin, with his extraordinary energy, not content with the most comprehensive and far-reaching schemes of ecclesiastical reform, plunged into questions affecting the wants of municipal, social, and political life, which Luther, in his Address to the German Nobility, had only briefly alluded to, and had carefully distinguished from his own particular work in hand. To the dealings of the great merchants he showed himself more hostile even than Luther; and put forward such proposals as the establishment by the civil authorities of a cheaper tariff of prices for provisions, the appointment to magisterial offices by election, for which peasants also should be qualified, and free rights of hunting and fishing.

The Edict of Worms, intended to proscribe and suppress throughout Germany the heretic and his writings, was published in the different states and towns by the princes and magistrates; but the power, and partly also the will, was wanting to enforce its execution. At Erfurt, shortly after Luther's passage through the town upon his way to Worms, the interference of the clergy against a member of a religious institution which had taken part in the ovation accorded to the Reformer, gave the first occasion to violent and repeated tumults. Students and townspeople attacked upwards of sixty houses of the priests, and demolished them. Luther told his friends at once, that he saw in this the work of Satan, who sought by this means to bring contempt and legitimate reproach upon the gospel.

Elsewhere, and above all at Wittenberg, his followers busied themselves in his absence with putting into practice what he had defended with his words. Calmly and with mature deliberation and courage, Luther took part in their labours from the solitude of his watch-tower. He had a very lively and, as he himself confesses, often painful consciousness of his own responsibility, as the one who had put the first match to the great fire, and whose first duties lay with his Wittenberg brethren, as their teacher and pastor.

Shortly after his arrival at the Wartburg, he received the news that Bartholomew Bernhardi of Feldkirchen, provost in the little town of Kemberg near Wittenberg, had publicly, and with the consent of his congregation, taken a wife. He was not the first priest who had ventured to break the unchristian prohibition of marriage by the Romish Church. But he was the most distinguished of such offenders hitherto, besides being a particular disciple of Luther and a man of unimpeachable integrity. Luther wrote about it to Melancthon, saying: 'I admire the newly married man, who in these stormy times has no fears, and has lost no time about it. May God guide him.'

At Wittenberg it was now demanded, not without violence, that monasticism should be abolished, and that the mass and the Lord's Supper should be changed in conformity with the institution of Christ. It seemed as if here, in the place of Luther, who had gone before with the simple testimony of the Word and doctrine, two other men were now to step in as practical and energetic Reformers. One of them was Luther's old colleague, Carlstadt, who had returned in July from a short visit to Copenhagen, whither the King of Denmark had invited him to promote the new evangelical theology at the university, but had soon again dismissed him, and who now assumed the lead at Wittenberg with a passionate and ambitious, but undeterminate zeal. The other was the Augustine monk, Gabriel Zwilling, who had introduced himself to notice as a fiery preacher in the convent church, and in spite of his unattractive appearance and weak voice had drawn together a large congregation from the town and university, and fascinated them with his eloquence. A young Silesian wrote home from the university of Wittenberg about him, saying: 'God has raised up for us another prophet; many call him a second Luther. Melancthon is never absent when he preaches.'

For the clergy Carlstadt sought, by a perverse interpretation of Scripture, to make the married state into a law. Only married men were to be appointed to offices in the Church. For monks and nuns he claimed the liberty of renouncing their cloistered and celibate life, if they found its moral requirements insupportable; but the biblical evidence that he adduced in support of this doctrine was unhappily chosen; and he still declared the renunciation of vows to be a sin, though justified by the avoidance thereby of a still greater sin, that of unchastity in monastic life. Luther had required that at the Lord's Supper the cup, in accordance with the original institution of Christ, should be given to the laity. Carlstadt and Zwilling, however, wished to make it a sin for a person to partake of the Communion without the cup being given to the communicants. Other changes also were now demanded in the mode of administering the elements, conformably with the Holy Supper held by Jesus Himself with His twelve disciples. Zwilling would have twelve communicants at a time partake of the bread and wine. It was further insisted that, like as at ordinary meals, the elements should be given into the hand of each individual to partake of, and not put into his mouth by the priest. The sacrifice of the mass Zwilling would abolish altogether, but Carlstadt thought it necessary, in dealing with so important a feature of the old form of worship, to proceed with caution.

Upon these questions and proceedings Luther expressed his opinion early in August to Melancthon, who was keenly excited about them, but on many points was unsettled in his mind. The project of restoring at Wittenberg the celebration of the Lord's Supper, as originally instituted, with the cup, met with Luther's full approval; for the tyranny which the Christian congregations had hitherto endured in this respect had been acknowledged there, and there was a general wish to resist it. He declared further, with regard to private masses, that he was resolved never to say any more while he lived. But compulsion he would not dream of: if any who still suffered from this tyranny partook of the Communion without the cup, no man durst account it to him as a sin. As for the troubles of the monks and nuns, under their self-imposed vows, his sympathy for them was no less acute than that of his friends at Wittenberg, but the arguments by which they sought to help them to liberty he did not consider sound. He gave now this subject a more searching and deeper consideration, and shortly addressed a series of theses on celibacy to the bishops and deacons of the church at Wittenberg. He attacked vows in general, and assailed them at the very root. Inasmuch, moreover, as the vows of chastity, he said, and of other monastic observances were commonly made to God with the intent and purpose of working out one's own salvation by one's own works and righteousness, these were not vows in accordance with the will of God, but denials of the faith. And even though a man should have made a vow in a spirit of piety, he placed himself at all events, by his own will and act, under a restraint and yoke at variance with the gospel and the liberty which faith in Christ bestows. Luther went still farther, and declared that the chastity enjoined upon the monk was only possible if he possessed the special gift of continence spoken of by St. Paul. How dare a man make a vow to God, which God must first endue him with the power to keep? A man, therefore, in vowing chastity, makes a vow which it is not really possible for him to keep, whilst true chastity is made possible for him by God in the married life which he condemns. These vows, accordingly, are radically vicious and displeasing to God, and cease to be binding on a Christian who has been made free in faith, and has recognised the true will of God.

Personally concerned as Luther was, as an Augustine monk himself, in these questions which he discussed, he treated the liberty, which inwardly he knew himself to possess, as quietly and coolly as possible. On receiving the news from Wittenberg, he wrote to Spalatin, 'Good Heaven! our Wittenbergers will allow even the monks to have wives, but they shall not force me to take one.' And he asks Melancthon jokingly, if he was going to revenge himself upon him for having helped him to get a wife; he would know well enough how to guard against that.

At Wittenberg there was great excitement, particularly on account of the mass. In the Augustinian convent there, the majority of the monks held with Zwilling; they wished to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in strict accordance with the institution of Christ. Their prior, Conrad Held, took the opposite side, and adhered to the ancient usage. Justus Jonas, the provost, expressed his views with equal ardour in the convent church attached to the university, and met with violent opposition from other members of the foundation. A committee, composed of deputies from the university and chapter of canons, from whom the Elector in October demanded a formal opinion on the subject, expressed by their majority the same view, and requested the Elector himself to abolish the abuse of the mass. But Frederick utterly rejected the idea of decreeing on his own authority innovations which would constitute a deviation from the great Christian Catholic Church, more especially as opinions were not agreed on them even at Wittenberg. He would do no more than give free scope and protection to the new testimony of biblical truth, until it should be properly sifted by the Church. In the church of the Augustinian convent, the mass and the Lord's Supper were now both suspended.

Men set to work now in earnest to give effect to the new principles applied to monachism. Thirteen Augustine monks, about a third of the then inmates of the convent at Wittenberg, quitted that convent early in November, and cast away their cowls. Some of them took up at once a civil trade or handicraft. This step increased the growing feeling of hostility to the monks among the students and inhabitants of the town. All kinds of enormities ensued: monks were mocked at in the streets; the convents were threatened; and even the service of the mass was disturbed by rioters who forced their way into the parish church.

Meanwhile Luther went on, in the quietness of his seclusion, to teach the Christian truth about vows and masses, to explain and establish his newly-acquired knowledge and convictions, and to prepare by that means the way of ultimate reform. He composed a tract, in Latin and German, 'On the Abuse of Masses,' and another, in Latin, 'On Monastic Vows.' The latter he dedicated to his father, taking note of his protest against his entering the convent, and telling him with joy that he was now a free man, a monk, and yet no longer a monk. As for his brethren's desertion of the convent, however, he disapproved the manner of it. They could, and should, have parted in peace and amity, not as they did, in a tumult. These two works he completed in November, and sent them to Spalatin, to have them printed at Wittenberg.

In this manner Luther occupied himself from the summer to the winter, continuing all the while his biblical studies and the composition of his Church-Postills. But he was also preparing to deal a heavy blow at the Cardinal Albert. This prelate had abstained as yet, with great caution, from taking any stringent measures to prevent the spread of Lutheran preaching in his diocese. But he was in want of money. To supply this want, he published a work, giving news of a precious relic, which he had placed for view at Halle, his town, and inviting pilgrimages to see it. A multitude of other rich and wondrous relics had been collected there; not only heaps of bones and entire corpses of saints, with a portion of the body of the patriarch Isaac, but also pieces of the manna, as it had fallen from heaven in the desert, little bits of the burning bush of Moses, jars from the wedding at Cana, and some of the wine into which Jesus there had changed the water, thorns from the Saviour's crown, one of the stones with which Stephen was stoned, and a multitude of other, in all nearly 9,000, relics. Whoever should attend with devotion at the exhibition of these sacred treasures in the Collegiate Church at Halle, and should give a pious alms to the institution, was to receive a 'surpassing' indulgence. The first exhibition of this kind took place about the beginning of September. Albert also had not scrupled to cause one of the priests who wished to marry to be imprisoned, though it was notorious how he himself made up for his celibacy by his loose living.

Luther now, as he wrote to Spalatin on October 7, 1521, could not restrain himself any longer from breaking out, in private and in public, against his 'Idol of indulgences' and his scandalous whoredoms. He took no thought of the fact that his own pious Elector, only a few years before, had arranged a similar, though less showy exhibition of relics at the convent church at Wittenberg, and was thus indirectly assailed by reproaches now no longer deserved. By the end of the month Luther had a pamphlet ready for publication. But an attack of such a kind on a magnate like Albert, the great prince of the Empire, Elector of Mayence, and brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, was not to Frederick's taste, and he informed Luther, through Spalatin that he forbade it. He would not sanction anything, he said, which might disturb the public peace. Luther told Spalatin, in his reply, that he had never read a more disagreeable letter than Frederick's. 'I will not put up with it,' he indignantly broke out; 'I will rather lose you and the prince himself, and every living being. If I have stood up against the Pope, why should I yield to his creature?' He wished only to show his pamphlet first to Melancthon, and submit a few alterations in it to the judgment of his friend. For this purpose he sent it to Spalatin, requesting him to forward it. Then, on December 1, he wrote a letter to Albert himself. Its tone and contents indicate pretty plainly what the pamphlet itself contained. In clear vigorous German, and without any circumlocution, he submits to the Cardinal his 'humble request,' to abstain from corrupting the poor people, and not to show himself a wolf in bishop's clothing. He must surely know by this time that indulgences were sheer knavery and trickery. He was not to imagine that Luther was dead: Luther would trust cheerfully in God, and carry on a game with the Cardinal of Mayence, of which not many people were yet aware. As for the priests who had wished to marry, he warned the Archbishop that a cry would be raised from the gospel about it; and the bishops would learn that they had better first pluck out the beam from their own eyes, and drive their own mistresses away. Luther concluded by giving him fourteen days for a 'proper' answer; otherwise, when that time expired, he would immediately publish his pamphlet on 'The Idol at Halle.' All this while, the news from Wittenberg kept Luther in a state of constant anxiety. The distance and the difficulty of correspondence had become quite insupportable. A few days after his letter of December 1, he suddenly re-appeared there among his friends. In secret, and accompanied only by a servant, he had gone thither on horseback in his knight's dress. He stayed there for three days with Amsdorf. Only his most intimate friends were allowed to know of his arrival. His meeting with them again gave him, as he wrote to Spalatin, the keenest pleasure and enjoyment. But it was a bitter sorrow to hear that Spalatin would not look at, or listen to, his pamphlet against Albert, nor his tracts on masses and monastic vows, but had kept them back. What his friends now told him of their efforts and labours he approved of, and he wished them strength from above to persevere. But he had heard already, when on his way, of fresh outrages committed by some of the townspeople and students against the priests and monks, and henceforth he deemed it his nearest duty to warn them publicly against such acts of violence and disorder.



CHAPTER II.

LUTHER'S FURTHER SOJOURN AT THE WARTBURG, AND HIS RETURN TO WITTENBERG, 1522.

In secret, as he had first gone there, Luther returned to the Wartburg, and now set to work with his 'True Admonition for all Christians to abstain from turbulence and rebellion.' He had before his eyes the danger of an insurrection, involving the lives of all the priests and monks who opposed reform, and one in which the common people, in revenge for their many grievances, might fall to laying about them with clubs and flails, as the 'Karsthans' threatened. To the princes, magistrates, and nobles, he had already addressed a demand to put a stop to the corruption of the Church and the tyranny of the Pope. Of the civil authorities and the nobility, he says now that 'they ought to do this, in duty to their ordinary position and power, every prince and lord on his own territory; for what is brought about by the exercise of ordinary power is not to be accounted turbulence.' At the same time, to the masses and to individuals he plainly prohibits a rising by force. Turbulence was the usurpation of justice, and revenge, which God would not suffer, for He said, 'Revenge is Mine.' All turbulence, he said, was wrong, however good might be the cause, and only made bad worse. As for the magistrates, he would not have them kill the priests, as once Moses and Elias had done to the worshippers of idols; they were simply to forbid them from acting contrary to the gospel. Words would do more than was enough with them, so there was no need of hewing and stabbing. We have seen how emphatically Luther expressed himself to the same effect before he went to Worms. The Apostle's words that the Lord should consume the Antichrist with the Spirit of His Mouth, were to be fulfilled, according to Luther, in the words of gospel preaching. It was his own previous experience that had taught him to rely with such lofty confidence on the simple Word; he had done more injury with it alone to the Pope, and the priests and monks, than all the emperors and princes had ever done with all their power. He still looked forward steadfastly to the approach of the Last Day, when Christ by His coming should utterly destroy the Pope, whose iniquity the Word had exposed. As he had done formerly in his treatise on Christian liberty, and had now good reason to do with the Wittenbergers, he exhorts men to a loving and merciful regard to their weaker brethren, whose consciences were still ensnared by the old ordinances respecting fasting and masses. They ought not to be taken unawares, but instructed kindly and, if unable to agree at once, dealt with patiently. 'The wolves,' he says, 'cannot be treated too severely, nor the tender sheep too gently.'

Luther's works on the mass and monastic vows were now actually in print. Cardinal Albert, however, gave the answer demanded by Luther, in a short letter of December 21. He assured him that the subject of his complaint had been removed; that as to himself, he did not deny that he was a miserable sinner, the very filth of the earth, as bad as anyone. Christian chastisement he could well endure; he looked to God for grace and strength, to live according to His will. So abjectly did this magnate quail before the Word, with which Luther threatened to expose his doings. He must no doubt have been ashamed of his traffic in indulgences before all his Humanist friends, and especially Erasmus; and must have expected that the other scandals with which Luther charged him would be laid bare without mercy or regard. At the same time we see in all this, how perfectly free from reproach in this matter of morality must Luther have been, not only in his own conscience, but also in the eyes of Albert. Luther, on receiving this letter, doubted indeed the sincerity of its professions, and even abstained from acknowledging it. But he now finally abandoned, nevertheless, the publication of the pamphlet, intended to expose him, which had hitherto been hindered by the Elector.

But the most important task that Luther now undertook, and in which he persevered with steadfast devotion during his further stay at the Wartburg, was one of a peaceful character, the most beautiful fruit of his seclusion, the noblest gift that he has bequeathed to his countrymen. This was his translation of the Bible—first of the New Testament. 'Our brethren demand it of me,' he wrote to Lange shortly after his return from Wittenberg. And in these words the wish was evidently expressed, or else laid to heart anew. The Bible, it is true, had been translated into German before Luther's time, but in a clumsy idiom that sounded foreign to the people, and not, like Luther's version, from the original text, but from the Latin translation used in the churches. Luther declared that no one could speak German of this outlandish kind, 'but,' he said, 'one has to ask the mother in her home, the children in the street, the common man in the market-place, and look at their mouths to see how they speak, and thence interpret it to oneself, and so make them understand. I have often laboured to do this, but have not always succeeded or hit the meaning.' None the less strictly and faithfully did he seek to adhere to the spirit of the text, and, where necessary, even to the letter. Such an interpretation, he said, required a 'truly devout, faithful, diligent, fearful, Christian, learned, experienced, and practised heart.' Penetrated himself with the substance and spirit of the Scriptures, he understood how to combine in his language, as if by intuition, a dignified tone and a national character. So hard did he work, that he finished the New Testament at the Wartburg in a few months; he then wished to revise it with the help of Melancthon.

Meanwhile, affairs at Wittenberg were assuming so serious an aspect as to make Luther's apprehensions increase from day to day. The question of monastic vows indeed was settled peaceably, and in a manner such as Luther would have desired, by some resolutions (so far as resolutions could settle it), passed by the Augustinian brethren at a chapter held at Wittenberg by Link, the Vicar of the Order. It was there resolved that free permission should be given to leave the convent, but that those who preferred to adhere to the monastic life should remain there in voluntary but strict subordination to their superiors and to the established rules; some of them should be employed in preaching the Word of God, others should contribute by manual labour to the support of the institution. Outside, however, among the people of Wittenberg, Carlstadt, who had shortly before restrained even his own partisans in regard to the question of the mass, and who was neither a regular preacher in the town nor in the possession of any other office, now pressed forward, by his sermons and writings, impetuously in the van, and made hasty strides towards the furtherance of his misty projects of reform. Anticipating a prohibition from the Elector, he celebrated the Lord's Supper at Christmas in the new manner. Even the usual vestments were discarded as idolatrous: Zwilling performed the service in a student's gown. The people were enjoined to eat meat and eggs on fast days; and confession was no longer held before the Communion. Carlstadt went further, and denounced the pictures and images in the churches; it was not enough to desist from worshipping them, nor durst it be hinted that they served as books for the instruction of laymen. God had plainly forbidden them; their proper place was in the fire and not in God's house. Whilst the town-council, at his instance, resolved to have the images removed from the parish church, some of the populace stormed in, tore them down, hewed them to pieces, and burned them.

Luther himself, even with regard to rites and ordinances which he rejected altogether, always counselled moderation and patience towards the weak. He could not believe that the great body of his Wittenberg congregation were already ripe for such changes, or that many conscientious but weaker brethren among them were not in need of tender consideration. People might say that it was only a question of time; well, he did not wish to delay genuine reform for ever, merely to humour the minority. But it was precisely that those members should have proper time allowed them, and every means taken for their instruction and edification, that was to Luther a matter of conscience. External matters, of which the other Reformers made so much, such as eating on fast days, the taking with one's own hands the bread and wine at the Communion, and so forth, he regarded as trifles, the performance or non-performance of which in no way affected the true liberty of the faithful, while grievous wrong was done to the souls of the weaker brethren, if they were compelled to do anything therein against their consciences. 'By acting thus,' he says, 'you have made many consciences miserable; if they had to give an account on their death-beds, or when troubled with temptation, they would not for the life of them know why or how they had offended.' Nay, he accuses a man of corrupting souls, who 'plunges' them carelessly into practices that offend their consciences. 'You wish,' he says, 'to serve God, and you don't know that you are the forerunners of the devil. He has begun by attempting to dishonour the Word; he has set you to work at that bit of folly, so that meanwhile you may forget faith and love.' Thus Luther wrote in a work intended for the Wittenbergers. Even the innovations with regard to pictures and images he numbers among the 'trivial matters which are not worth the sacrifice of faith and love.' Those which represented truly Christian subjects he would preserve at all times, and he valued them highly.

These Wittenberg Reformers, however, with all their desire to assert the higher spiritual character of evangelical Christianity, still remained devotees, in their peculiar 'spirit,' to the externals of worship and, in regard to images, to the letter of the Old Testament law. And yet their conception of the Christian spirit and of Christian revelation produced results of another and still stranger kind. Not only did they repudiate all titles and dignities conferred by the university, on the plea that, in the words of Christ, no man durst call himself Rabbi or master, but Carlstadt and Zwilling now openly expressed their contempt of all human theology and biblical learning. God, they said, has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes; the Spirit from above must enlighten a man. Carlstadt went to simple burghers in their houses, to have passages in the Bible explained to him. He and Zwilling won over to their side the master of the boys' school in the town, and the school was broken up. A new municipal constitution, supported by the magistracy, made strange inroads on the rights of the citizens and the domain of social life; a common chest, containing the revenues of the Church, was utilised for advancing money without interest to needy handicraftsmen, and making loans to other townsmen at a low rate of interest. Meantime the spiritual wants of the community were neglected, and in the hospitals and prisons entirely overlooked.

Such was the direction here taken by the reform for which Luther's preaching had prepared the way. And just at this time, at Christmas, three fanatics came to Wittenberg from Zwickau, with the object of taking part in the movement and furthering the work of God. These were Nicholas Storch, a weaver, Mark Stubner, a former student at Wittenberg, and another weaver, who were now zealously joined by the theologian Martin Cellarius. They boasted of a direct revelation from God, of prophetic visions, dreams, and familiar conversations with the Deity. Compared with these pretensions, Scripture was a thing of small importance in their eyes. They rejected infant baptism, as incapable of imparting the Spirit. For communion and intercourse with God they looked not to faith, which, as Luther taught, accepts submissively what the Word of God reveals to the conscience and the heart, but to a mystic process of self-abstraction from everything external, sensual, and finite, until the soul becomes immovably centred in the one Divine Being. This spirit, seemingly so elevated and pure, broke out nevertheless into fanaticism of the wildest kind, by proclaiming and demanding a general revolution, in which all the priests were to be killed, all godless men destroyed, and the kingdom of God established.

These fanatical displays had begun at Zwickau, no doubt under Bohemian influence, and were characterised by the ravings common to the middle ages. Thomas Munzer, from Stolberg in the Harz country, who was a preacher at one of the churches, took the lead; and he was certainly the most important and most dangerous personage among them. He accounted the civil authorities, with their rights, no more as Christians than he did the clergy and the hierarchy; and began already to prate of universal equality and communism. This novel and exciting doctrine soon won adherents, and propagated the 'spirit of revelation.' Already disturbances were brewing. But the magistrates took vigorous and timely measures. Storch, Stubner, and Cellarius fled to Wittenberg, while Munzer roamed about elsewhere in Germany.

Carlstadt went on with his innovations without allying himself outwardly with these refugees. But the connection of his aims with theirs could not be mistaken, and as time went on, became more and more apparent. Melancthon, with all his refinement and purity of soul, had not sufficient energy and independence to bridle the passions and forces that had been aroused by Carlstadt. The Zwickau prophets, with their visions and revelations, haunted him; he seemed incapable of forming any settled or sober judgment on this strange and sudden phenomenon.

Luther, on the contrary, received the news with calmness and composure. He marvelled at the anxiety of his friend, who in intellect and learning was his superior. He found no difficulty in testing these enthusiasts by the standard of the New Testament. There was nothing, he said, in their words and acts, so far as he had heard anything of them, which the devil might not do or mimic. As for their so-called ecstasies of devotion, there was nothing in all that, even though they boasted of being rapt into the third heaven. The Majesty of God was not wont to hold such familiar converse with men in old time. The creature must first perish before his Creator, as before a consuming fire: when God speaks, he must feel the meaning of the words of Isaiah, 'As a lion, so will he break all my bones.' And yet Luther would not have them imprisoned or dealt with by violence; they could be disposed of without bloodshed and the sword, and be laughed out of their folly.

But his cares for his Wittenberg congregation and the trouble which Carlstadt's doings there were giving him, left him no peace. He could not justify those acts before God and the world: they lay upon his own shoulders, and above all, they brought discredit on the gospel. In January he went back to Wittenberg. He was entreated to do so by the magistrates. In vain did the Elector attempt to detain him, and so prevent his risking an appearance in public. Moreover, the Council of Regency at Nuremberg, which represented the Emperor in his absence, had just demanded of Frederick a strict suppression of the innovations at Wittenberg.

Luther quitted the Wartburg, without leave, on March 1. About his journey thence we only know that he passed through Jena and the town of Borna, lying south of Leipzig. A young Swiss, John Kessler from St. Gallen, who was then on his way with a companion to the university at Wittenberg, has left us an interesting account of their meeting with Luther at the inn of the 'Black Bear,' just outside Jena. They found there a solitary horseman sitting at the table, 'dressed after the fashion of the country in a red schlepli (or slouched hat), plain hose and doublet—he had thrown aside his tabard—with a sword at his side, his right hand resting on the pommel, and the other grasping the hilt.' Before him lay a little book. He invited them in a friendly manner, bashful as they were, to take a seat by him, and spoke to them about the Wittenberg studies, about Melancthon and other men of learning, and as to what people thought of Luther in Switzerland. Discoursing thus, he made them feel so much at ease, that Kessler's companion took up the little book lying before him, and opened it: it was a Hebrew Psalter. At supper, where they were joined by two merchants, he paid for Kessler and his friend, and fascinated them all by his 'agreeable and godly discourse.' Afterwards he drank with his young friends 'one more friendly glass for a blessing,' gave them his hand at parting, and charged them to greet the jurist Schurf at Wittenberg, who was a fellow-countryman of theirs by birth, with the words 'He who is coming, salutes you.' The host had recognised Luther, and told his guests who he was. Early next morning the merchants found him in the stable: he mounted his horse, and rode forward on his way.

At Borna, where he lodged with an official of the Elector, he wrote in haste a long answer to the warning instructions of his prince, conveyed to him by the governor of Eisenach on the eve of his departure. He did not seek to excuse himself, or to beg forgiveness, but to quiet his 'most gracious Highness,' and confirm him in the faith. He had never spoken with greater certainty about what he had to do, nor with a calmer and more joyful, bold, and proud assurance, in view of what lay before him, than now, when he had to encounter, on two contrary sides, opposition and danger. In his resolve and his hopes he threw himself entirely on his God. 'I go to Wittenberg,' he writes to Frederick, 'under a far higher protection than yours. Nay, I hold that I can offer your Highness more protection than your Highness can offer me.... God alone must be the worker here, without any human care or help; therefore, he who has the most faith will be able to give the most protection.' To the question what the Elector should do in his cause, he answered, 'nothing at all.' The Elector must allow the Imperial authorities to exercise their powers in his territory without let or hindrance, even if they chose to seize him or put him to death. The Elector would surely not be called on to be his executioner. Should he leave the door open and give safe-conduct to those who sought to capture him, he would have done his duty quite enough.

Luther rode on undaunted, even through the territory of Duke George, who was now violently exasperated with him and the people of Wittenberg; and on the evening of March 6 he reached his destination and his friends, safe in body and happy in his mind.

On the morning of the following Saturday, Kessler and his companion, on visiting Schurf, found Luther sitting at his house with Melancthon, Jonas, and Amsdorf, and telling them about his doings. Kessler thus describes his appearance. 'When I saw Martin in 1522, he was somewhat stout, but upright, bending backwards rather than stooping; with a face upturned to heaven; with deep, dark eyes and eyebrows, twinkling and sparkling like stars, so that one could hardly look steadily at them.'



CHAPTER III.

LUTHER'S RE-APPEARANCE AND FRESH LABOURS AT WITTENBEBG, 1522.

It was on a Thursday that Luther arrived again at Wittenberg. The very next Sunday he re-appeared in his old pulpit among his town congregation. In clear, simple, earnest, and Scriptural language he endeavoured to explain to them their errors, and to lead them again into the right way. For eight successive days he preached in this manner. The truths and principles he propounded were the same that he uttered from the Wartburg, and, indeed, ever since his career of reformation began. Above all things he exhorted them to charity, and to deal with their faithful fellow-Christians as God had dealt with them in His love, whereof through faith they were partakers. 'In this, dear friends,' he said, 'you are almost entirely wanting, and not a trace of charity can I see in you, but perceive rather that you have not been thankful to God. I see, indeed, that you can discourse well enough on the doctrines of faith and love which have been preached to you, and no wonder: cannot even a donkey sing his lesson? and should you not then speak and teach the doctrine or the little Word? But the kingdom of God does not consist in talk or words, but in deeds, in works and practice.' He taught them to distinguish between what was obligatory and what was free, between what was to be observed or what was not. Charity must be practised, he said, even in essentials, since no man must compel his brother by force, but must let the Word operate on the hearts of the weak and erring, and pray for them. Whatever is free must be left free, so as not to cause vexation to the weak; but against unchristian tyrants a stand must be made for freedom.

Thus, with the sheer power and fervour of his eloquence, Luther prevailed with his congregation, and soon had the conduct of the Church movement again in his hands. Zwilling allowed himself to be reproved. Carlstadt shrank back silently, though sullenly; Luther earnestly begged him not to publish anything hostile and thus compel him to a battle. In his sermons he refrained from all personal references. Of the recent innovations, only one was retained, the omission from the mass of the words relating to the sacrifice of the Body of Christ by the priests. Luther considered them downright objectionable and unchristian; and important as they were in themselves, they were scarcely noticed by the weak and simple, being uttered in Latin, and in a low voice. The sacrament was again administered to the majority in one kind; and only those who expressly desired it could receive it with the lay-cup at an altar set aside for the purpose. The latter form of celebration, however, soon became the general custom, to the exclusion of the former. As regards the vestments to be worn during service, the taking the elements into one's own hand, and such-like matters, Luther maintained that they were too trifling to make a fuss about, or to be allowed to be a stumbling-block to the weak adherents of the old system. Luther himself returned to live at the convent, resumed his cowl, and observed again the customary ordinance of fasting. It was only after two years, when his frock was quite worn out, and he had a new suit made of some good cloth which the Elector had given him, that he laid aside altogether his monk's dress.

The prophets of Zwickau were away from Wittenberg at the moment when Luther returned there. A few weeks after Stubner and Cellarius appeared before Luther. Their real character and spirit were now fully shown him by the arrogance and violence with which they demanded belief in their superior authority, and by their outburst of rage when he ventured to contradict them. He writes thus to Spalatin: 'I have caught them even in open lying; when they tried to evade me with miserable smooth words, I at last bade them prove their teaching by miracles, of which they boasted against the Scriptures. This they refused, but threatened that I should have to believe them some day. Thereupon I told them that their God could work no miracle against the will of my God. Thus we separated.' They then left the town for ever, without having gained any ground there.

Thus Luther, who was accused by his enemies of subverting all ordinances of the Church, began his practical labours of reform by checking, through the firmness and clearness of his principles, the violence of others, and concentrating all his thoughts on the spiritual welfare of his congregation. The preacher of free and saving faith was the foremost to insist, in the practical conduct of the Church, upon the active exercise of brotherly love in the service of true freedom. The great man of the people opposed himself, regardless of popular favour or dislike, to the current which had now become national. Under the influence of his preaching the Elector could now quietly allow matters in Wittenberg and the neighbourhood to shape their further course in quiet. Nevertheless, he permitted the neighbouring bishops to work against the new doctrines by visitations in his country; he only denied them the assistance of magisterial compulsion and temporal penalties. The truth should make its own way.

Luther, immediately on his return to Wittenberg, was impatient to explain in full to German Christendom his position, without the restraints imposed on his words during his residence at the Wartburg. This he did in a letter to the knight Hartmuth von Kronberg, near Frankfort-on-the-Main, which he intended for publication. The latter, son-in-law to Sickingen, a man of upright, honourable, Christian character, had published a couple of little tracts in Luther's spirit. Luther, by his letter wished to 'visit him in spirit and make known to him his joy.' He took the opportunity, at the same time, of speaking his mind plainly, both about the contest he had to wage at Wittenberg, and the hostility to the gospel displayed by Romanists in Germany. But harder yet for the faith than the snares of such enemies, appeared to him 'the cunning game' devised by Satan at Wittenberg, to bring reproach upon the gospel. 'Not all my enemies,' he said, 'have hit me as I now am hit by our people, and I must confess that the smoke makes my eyes smart and almost tickles my heart. "Hereby," thought the Evil One, "I will take the heart out of Luther and weary the tough spirit; this attack he will neither understand nor conquer!"' Fearlessly also, and in a manner which would have been impossible to him at the Wartburg, he spoke out against the grievous 'sin at Worms, when the truth of God was so childishly despised, so publicly, defiantly, wilfully condemned;' it was a sin of the whole German nation, because the heads had done this, and no one at the godless Diet had opposed them. He reproached himself with having, in order to please good friends there, and not to appear too obstinate, smothered his feelings and not spoken out his belief with more vigour and decision before the tyrants, however much the unbelieving heathens might have abused him for answering haughtily. Of one of his 'miserable enemies' he says: 'The chief one is the water-bladder N., who defies Heaven with his high stomach, and has renounced the gospel. He would like to devour Christ, as the wolf does a gnat.' This was an unmistakable allusion to Duke George, who, in his bigoted devotion to the Church, was especially excited by the dangerous influences which threatened his country from the neighbouring Wittenberg, and who shortly before had made violent complaints on that account to the Elector Frederick. Indeed, in a copy of this letter, he was mentioned by name. Duke George afterwards demanded satisfaction, but the matter was prolonged without any result. Luther informs Hartmuth of his return to Wittenberg, but adds that he does not know how long he will remain there. He announces to him the portion of his Postills which had just been published, and states that he had made up his mind to translate the Bible into German. This, he said, was necessary for him, for it would show him his mistake in fancying he was a learned man.

Luther now threw himself into his work in all its branches. He resumed his academical lectures as well as the regular preaching in the town church, and he also preached on week days on the different books of the Bible. These sermons he continued when, in the following year, after the death of the old pastor Heins, for whom he had hitherto acted as deputy, his friend Bugenhagen was appointed to the living. He and Bugenhagen remained from now until the latter died, united by personal friendship and common theological views, and laboured faithfully together in the service of their parochial congregation. Bugenhagen, as town pastor, appears as one of the most prominent figures in the history of Wittenberg at this time. Luther assisted him and his congregation with unselfish affection and friendship, and in turn made confidential use of his services as pastor and father-confessor.



During the busy times of Lent and Easter, 1522, Luther had again undertaken duty among the Wittenberg congregation, and immediately after Easter he visited Borna, Altenburg, Zwickau, and Eilenburg, where the people were longing to hear his preaching, and where he exerted himself to have an evangelical preacher appointed. His eyes indeed were chiefly fixed on Zwickau, where he was resolved to counteract finally by his words the consequences of the recent infatuation. According to a report, made by a state official, 25,000 people assembled to hear Luther, who preached from a balcony of the town-hall to the multitude gathered below. At Borna he preached immediately before a visitation held there by the Bishop of Merseburg, and again on the day after it. During the following autumn he also preached several times at Weimar, whither he had been invited by John, the brother of the Elector Frederick; and likewise before the congregation at Erfurt, to whom during the summer he had addressed an instructive exhortation in writing on the subject of the innovations.

Even at Wittenberg his literary labours, as we have seen from his letter to Kronberg, were still mainly devoted to the Bible. In concert with Melancthon, and with the assistance of other friends, he set about a revision of his translation of the New Testament. He sent the first sheets when printed to Spalatin, on May 10, as a 'foretaste of our new Bible.' With the aid of three presses the printing progressed so rapidly, that already in September the work was ready for publication. September 21, dedicated to St. Matthew, is distinguished as the birthday of the German New Testament. In December already a second edition was called for, though the price of the book, a florin and a half, was a high one at that time.

The work was greedily and thankfully pounced upon by many thousands in all parts of Germany, who had learnt from Luther to distinguish the 'pure Word of God' from the dogmas of the Church, and to honour it accordingly. Nor could any means more powerful than this be found of spreading the doctrine thus founded on the Word of God, and making it the real property of hearers and readers. All the greater was the danger recognised herein by those who adhered to ecclesiastical authority and traditions. Of great significance for both sides are the words of one of the most violent of Luther's contemporary opponents, the theologian Cochlaeus: 'Luther's New Testament was multiplied by the printers in a most wonderful degree, so that even shoemakers and women, and every and any lay person acquainted with the German type, read it greedily as the fountain of all truth, and by repeatedly, reading it, impressed it on their memory. By this means they acquired in a few months so much knowledge, that they ventured to dispute, not only with Catholic laymen, but even with masters and doctors of theology, about faith and the gospel. Luther himself, indeed, had long before taught that even Christian women, and everyone who had been baptized, were in truth priests, as much as pope, bishop, and priests. The crowd of Lutherans gave themselves far more trouble in learning the translation of the Bible than did the Catholics, where the laity left such matters chiefly to the priests and monks.' The Catholic authorities immediately issued orders forbidding the book, and directing it to be delivered up and confiscated. They hastened also to accuse the translation of a number of pretended errors and falsifications, which were mostly corrections of passages mistranslated in the established Latin version from the words of the original Greek text. Cochlaeus brought one particular charge against Luther's translation, that he had ventured to alter the beginning of the Lord's Prayer in contradiction to the Universal, including the German Church, and likewise to the original text, by substituting 'Unser Vater in dem Himmel' for 'Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel.' ('Our Father in Heaven,' for 'Our Father which art in Heaven'). When, some years later, Emser published a rival translation of the New Testament, it was found to be in great part a transcript of Luther's, with only a few corrections according to the old Latin.

Whilst the New Testament was still in the press, Luther set zealously to work on the Old. Here he encountered more difficulties, on account of the language; but he had long been studying Hebrew with devotion and zeal, and moreover he could now get the assistance of his new colleague, Aurogallus, who was especially famous for teaching Hebrew. Before Christmas the five Books of Moses were ready for press; these were to be published by themselves. In 1524 they were followed by two other parts, containing the biblical books (according to the present German order) up to the Song of Solomon. His translation of the prophets, interrupted by other work, was delayed for several years.

Nor was Luther's sharp pen long idle against Rome, as indeed might have been anticipated from his letter to Kronberg. He found his chief occasion for attack in a series of new edicts and other measures of the German bishops against the innovations—the abolition of clerical celibacy, the transgression of the laws of fasting, and so on. For this purpose ecclesiastical visitations were undertaken by the Bishops of Meissen and Merseburg, such as have already been alluded to when Luther went to Zwickau.

Luther's sermons against the abuse of Christian liberty were followed by a small tract entitled 'On the necessity of avoiding human doctrine.' He did not mean it, as he said, for those 'bold, intemperate heads;' but he wished to preach Christian liberty to the poor, humble consciences, enslaved by monkish vows and ordinances, that they might be instructed how, by God's help and without danger, to escape and to use their liberty discreetly. Against the existing Romish episcopacy he declared war to the knife in a treatise 'Against the Order, falsely called Spiritual, of Pope and Bishops.' He who had been robbed of his title of priest and doctor by the displeasure of Pope and Emperor, and from whom, by Papal bulls, the 'mark of the beast' (Rev. xiii. 16) was washed off, confronts the 'popish bishops' now, as 'by God's grace, preacher at Wittenberg.'

Luther's further writings against the Romish Churchdom and dogma do not possess the same interest for us as his earlier ones, inasmuch as they no longer show the progress and development of his own views on the Church. In the violent language he now employs he vents his chief anger in complaining that he, and the truth he represented, 'had been condemned unheard—an unexampled proceeding—unrefuted, and in headlong and criminal haste.'

With reference to the attack he had made on the 'episcopal masqueraders' in the tract above mentioned, Luther remarked in a letter to Spalatin on July 26 that he had purposely been so sharp in it, because he saw how vainly he had humbled himself, yielded, prayed and complained. And he added that he would just as little flatter, the King of England.

King Henry VIII., who later on, for other reasons, broke so entirely with the Church of Rome and began reforms after his own fashion, had at that time gained for himself from the Pope the title of 'Defender of the Faith,' on account of a learned scholastic treatise against Luther's 'Babylonish Captivity.' This treatise had made such a stir, that Luther thought it expedient to answer it in one of his own. The latter, originally written in Latin, gives a carefully considered explanation of the points of doctrine at issue, and proceeds to prove the propositions he had previously advanced. He points out fundamental, and, indeed, irreconcilable variance between his principles and those of the King, by showing how he, Luther, fought for freedom and established it, while the King, on the contrary, took up the cudgels for captivity, without even attempting to justify it by argument, but simply kept talking of what it consists of, and how people must be content to remain in it. In fact, the whole book was a mere reiteration of the dogmas of ecclesiastical authorities, of the Councils, and of tradition, always taking it for granted that these dare not be disputed. 'I do not need,' says Luther,' the King to teach me this.' But the personal tone adopted by Luther against Henry went beyond anything that his expressions to Spalatin might have led one to expect, and was even more marked in a German edition of his treatise, which he published after the royal one had been translated into German. The King had, moreover, set the example of abuse, as coarse and defiant as that of his opponent. Luther did not shrink from an incidental remark at the expense of other princes. 'King Henry,' he says, 'must help to prove the truth of the proverb, that there are no greater fools than kings and princes.'

But the most important among the works which Luther was now led to undertake by his opposition to the Romish Church and her teaching, and by her hostile proceedings against himself, was a treatise on the secular power, which he began in December, as soon as he had finished the translation of the five Books of Moses. It appeared under the title of 'On the Secular Power, and how far obedience is due to it.'

How far obedience is due to it? This was the question provoked by the commands and threats of punishment with which Catholic princes were now endeavouring to aid the spiritual power in suppressing the gospel, the writings on reform, and especially the new translation of the Bible. The question was, how far a Christian was bound to obey.

Nor had Luther to step forward less decisively as the champion of the rights, the Divine authority, and the dignity of the civil power, against the pretensions of the Catholic Church. Words of Jesus such as these lay before him: 'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.' How could these words be reconciled with the fact that the secular arm resisted wrong with force, and raised the sword against the evil-doer? The Church of the middle ages and the School theology maintained that these words were not general moral commands for all Christians, but merely advice for those among them who wished to attain a higher degree of perfection. Hereby the whole civil government with its authorities was assigned a lower grade of ordinary morality, whilst higher morality or true perfection was to be represented in the priestly office and monasticism. On the other hand, friends of Luther, ere now, while taking note that Christ had spoken these words direct to all his disciples, and therefore to all Christians, had been troubled to know how to establish, with regard to Christians, the rights and duties of temporal power.

With respect to this second point in particular Luther now gives his explanation. Those words of Christ were unquestionably commands for all Christians. They demand of every Christian that he should never on his own account grasp the sword and employ force; and if only the world were full of good Christians there would be no need of the, sword of secular authority. But it is necessary to wield it against evil for the general welfare, to punish sin and to preserve the peace; and therefore the true Christian, in order thereby to serve his neighbour, must willingly submit to the rule of this sword, and, if God assigns him an office, must wield this sword himself. This command of Scripture is confirmed by other passages, as for instance by the words of the Apostle: 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. For he is the minister of God to thee for good ... for he beareth not the sword in vain.' (Romans xiii.). Luther thus ranks the vocation of civil government together with the other vocations of moral life in the world. They are all, he said, instituted by God, and all of them, no less than the so-called priestly office, are intended and able to serve God and one's neighbour. These were ideas which laid the foundation for a new Christian estimate of political, civic, and temporal life in general. Thus, later on, the Augsburg Confession rejected the doctrine that to attain evangelical perfection, a man must renounce his worldly calling, as also the theory of the Anabaptists, who would allow no Christian to hold civil office or to wield the sword.

But Luther, while thus determining the province of secular authority, took care to impose limits on its jurisdiction, and to guard against those limits being invaded. The true spiritual government, as instituted by Christ, was intended to make men good, by working upon the soul by the Word, in the power of the Spirit. The temporal government, whose duty it was to secure external peace and order, and to protect men against evil-doers, extends only to what is external upon earth,'—over person and property. 'For God cannot and will not allow anyone but Himself alone to rule the soul.'—'No one can or shall force another to believe.'—'True is the proverb: "Thoughts are free of taxes."' We must 'obey God rather than man,' as St. Peter says: these words impose a limit on temporal power. Luther is aware of the objection, that the temporal power does not force a man to believe, but only outwardly guards against heretics, to prevent them from leading the people astray with false doctrines. But he answers: 'Such an office belongs to bishops, and not to princes. God's Word must here contend for mastery. Heresy is something spiritual, that cannot be hewn with steel nor burned with fire.' And among these invasions of the province and office of the Word, Luther includes the edict to confiscate books. Herein must subjects obey God rather than such tyrannical princes. They are to leave the exercise of outward power, even in this matter, to the civil authorities, they must never venture to oppose them by force; they must suffer it, if men invade their houses, and take away their books or property. But if they attempt to rob them of their Bible, they must not surrender a page or a letter.

These are the most powerful and comprehensive utterances which we possess from the mouth of the Reformer, about the demarcation of these provinces of authority, the independent operation of the Word and the Spirit, and liberty of conscience. It is doubtful, indeed, how far they are consonant with those measures which he afterwards found admissible and advisable for the protection of evangelical communities and evangelical truth against those who attempted to lead them astray.

Amidst such active labours the year of Luther's return to Wittenberg passed away.



CHAPTER IV.

LUTHER AND HIS ANTI-CATHOLIC WORK OF REFORMATION, UP TO 1525

Luther, as we have seen, was able to prosecute his labours at Wittenberg, undisturbed by the act of the Diet. In other parts of Germany as well, the imperial power left wide scope for the spread of his teaching. At the next approaching Diet at Nuremberg no majority could be looked for again, to give effect to the consequences demanded by the Edict of Worms. Any such expectation was the more futile, from the results, already experienced, of Luther's reappearance in public.

The new Pope, Hadrian VI., whilst adhering strictly to the doctrines of mediaval Scholasticism and of Church authority, nevertheless, by his honest avowal of ecclesiastical abuses, and the firmness and earnestness of his personal character, led men to expect a new era of energetic reform for the Romish Church, at least in regard to the discipline of the clergy and monks, and to a conscientious restraint of Church ordinances, so that even men like Erasmus might rest content. And yet, he was the very one who sought now to stamp out with all severity the Lutheran heresy and its innovations. With this object he broke out into low abuse and slander against Luther personally, as a drunkard and a debauchee. Libels of this kind were perpetually repeated by the Romanists, and no doubt Hadrian believed them, though Luther did not trouble himself much about such personal attacks, but in his letters to Spalatin, simply called the Pope an ass. Hadrian also, like so many Romish Churchmen after him, was extremely zealous to impress upon princes that he who despises the sacred decrees and the heads of the Church, would cease to respect a temporal throne.

But the Diet which assembled at Nuremberg in the winter of 1522-23, replied to the demands of the Pope by renewing the old grievances of the German nation, and insisting on a free Christian Council, to be held in Germany.

Nor did even an unfortunate military enterprise, undertaken at this time against the Archbishop of Treves by Sickingen, who, while fighting for his own power and the interests of the German nobles, announced his wish also to break road for the Gospel, produce those disastrous results for the evangelical cause in Germany which its enemies had anticipated and hoped for. Sickingen, indeed, after being defeated by the superior forces of the allied princes, died of the wounds he received, but it was as clear as noonday that Frederick the Wise and his evangelical theologians had had nothing to do with his act of violence. Luther, on hearing of Sickingen's enterprise, remarked that it would be 'a very bad business,' and added, on learning the issue, 'God is a just, but a marvellous judge.'

The next meeting of the Diet, from whom, after Hadrian's early death, his successor, Clement VII.—another modern Pope of Leo's way of thinking—demanded anew the execution of the Edict of Worms, resulted in the imperial decree of April 18, 1524. By this, the states of the Empire agreed to execute that edict 'as far as possible,' but stipulated that the Lutheran and the other new doctrines should first be 'examined with the utmost diligence,' and, together with the grievances presented by the princes against the Pope and the hierarchy, should be made the subject of a representation to the Council now demanded. But the inconsistency that lurked in this decree caught Luther's eye and aroused his suspicion. It was scandalous, he declared in a paper upon it, that the Emperor and the princes should issue 'contradictory orders.' They were going to deal with him according to the Edict of Worms, and proclaim him a condemned man, and persecute him, and at the same moment wait to decide what was good or bad in his doctrines. But the decree was, in fact, a subterfuge, by which they resigned the idea of executing that edict. The Lord's Supper could be celebrated at Nuremberg in the new way before the eyes of the whole Diet. Well might Frederick the Wise hope that men would still, at least in Germany, come gradually to agree in peace about the truth contained in Luther's preaching.

The absent Emperor, indeed, remained insensible to all such influences. In the Netherlands strict penal laws were in force. In a letter addressed to the German Empire he condemned the decree of Nuremberg, and, like Hadrian, compared Luther to Mahomet. Further, a minority of the German princes, including, in particular, Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dukes William and Louis of Bavaria, entered into a league at Ratisbon to execute the Edict of Worms, while agreeing to certain reforms in the Church, according to a Papal scheme proposed by his nuncio Campeggio. They too began to persecute and punish the heretics.

Thus, then, the seed sown by Luther began to germinate throughout the whole of Germany. The number of Lutheran preachers increased, and requests were made in many places for their services. Even Cochlaeus had to confess that, however bad were their ultimate objects, they showed a remarkable unselfishness and industry in their calling, and that they avoided even the appearance of pushing themselves forward in an irregular and arbitrary manner, waiting rather for their appointment in due course by the nobles or the various congregations. Among the treatises and other writings on ecclesiastical and religious questions which inundated Germany at that time, at least ten were written on the Lutheran, one on the Romish side. The complaint was that there were not more numerous and better qualified printers for the work.

Among the nobles who espoused the cause of Luther, the support of Albert of Mansfeld, one of the Counts of Luther's native place, was particularly grateful. It was mainly by the nobles that the movement was represented in Austria.

But the gospel gained most ground in German towns, especially among the burgher class in the free cities of the Empire. Preachers were invited hither, where none already existed, and the mass was publicly abolished. This took place during 1523 and 1524 at Magdeburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Schwabish Hall, Nuremberg, Ulm, Strasburg, Breslau, and Bremen. On Saxon territory also, Lutheran congregations were formed in various towns, such as Zwickau, Altenburg, and Eisenach. In many cases Luther's personal friends took part in the movement, and thus cemented more closely their friendship with the Reformer. He had already some trusted fellow-labourers at Nuremberg. At Magdeburg his friend Amsdorf was pastor. Hess, the first evangelical pastor of Breslau, had formed some years earlier a warm friendship with him and Melancthon. Link, his old friend, and the successor of Staupitz as Vicar-General of the Augustines, held office as a preacher at Altenburg, whence he was recalled, for the same purpose, in 1525, to Nuremberg, his former place of residence. Wherever Luther heard of evangelical communities who seemed to need especial help for their strengthening or consolation under trouble, he addressed to them letters, which were afterwards circulated in print. These were sent, for instance, to Esslingen, Augsburg, Worms; also to his 'beloved friends in Christ' at Wittenberg, who had been harassed by the Romanists, and whose cause he pleaded to the Archbishop Albert. With particular joy he sent greetings to the 'chosen and dear friends in God' in the distant towns of Riga, Reval, and Dorpat; and he sent them also an exposition of the 127th Psalm.

The Word, rejected and condemned as it had been by bishops and priests in Germany, met with singular success beyond the eastern boundary of the Empire, among the Order of Teutonic Knights in Prussia. The Grand Master of the Order, Albert of Brandenburg, brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of Albert, the Archbishop and Cardinal, had kept up communication with Luther, both orally and by letter, and had been advised by him and Melancthon to make himself familiar with the gospel and the principles of the Evangelical Church. And, above all, there were here two bishops who espoused the new teaching, and who were anxious to tend the flocks committed to their charge as true evangelical bishops or overseers, in the sense insisted on by Luther, and particularly to minister to the Word by preaching and by the care of souls. These were George of Polenz, Bishop of Samland since 1523, and Erhard of Queiss, Bishop of Pomerania since 1524. The members of the Order, almost without exception, were on their side: they resolved to establish a temporal princedom in Prussia and to renounce their vows of 'false chastity and spirituality.' The King of Poland, under whose suzerainty the country had long been, solemnly invested the hitherto Grand Master on April 10, 1525, as hereditary Duke of Prussia. Thus Prussia became the first territory that collectively embraced the Reformation, whilst as yet, even in the Electorate of Saxony, no general measures had been taken in its support. It became, in short, the first Protestant country. Luther wrote to the new Duke: 'I am greatly rejoiced that Almighty God has so graciously and wondrously helped your princely Grace to attain such an eminent position, and further my wish is that the same merciful God may continue His blessing to your Grace through life, for the benefit and godly welfare of the whole country.' And to the Archbishop Albert he held the new Duke up as a shining example, in saying of him, 'How graciously has God sent such a change, as, ten years ago, could not have been hoped for or believed in, even had ten Isaiahs and Pauls announced it. But because he gave room and honour to the gospel, the gospel in return has given him far more room and honour—more than he could have dared to wish for.'

The gospel now received its first testimony in blood. With joyful confidence Luther beheld what God had done, but could not refrain from lamenting, with sorrowful humility, that he himself had not been found worthy of martyrdom. In the Imperial hereditary lands, where for some years missionaries, chiefly members of Luther's own Augustine Order, had been actively labouring in the strength of the convictions derived from Wittenberg, two young Augustine monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, on July 1, 1523, as heretics. Luther thereupon addressed a letter to 'the beloved Christians in Holland, Brabant, and Flanders,' praising God for His wondrous light, that He had caused again to dawn. He spoke out even stronger in some verses in which he celebrated the young martyrs; they were published no doubt originally as a broadsheet:

A new song will we raise to Him Who ruleth, God our Lord; And we will sing what God hath done, In honour of His Word. At Brussels in the Netherlands, It was through two young lads, He hath made known His Wonders, &c.

They conclude as follows:—

So let us thank our God to see His Word returned at last. The Summer now is at the door, The Winter is forepast, The tender flowerets bloom anew, And He, who hath begun, Will give His work a happy end.

He was, later on, deeply grieved by the death of his brother-Augustine and friend Henry Moller of Zutphen, who, after having been forced to fly from the Netherlands, had begun a blessed work at Bremen, and was now murdered in the most brutal manner on December 11, 1524, by a mob instigated by monks, near Meldorf, whither he had gone in response to an invitation from some of his companions in the faith. Luther informed his Christian brethren in a circular of the end of this 'blessed brother' and 'Evangelist.' He mentions, with him, the two martyrs of Brussels, as well as other disciples of the new doctrine; one Caspar Tauber, who was executed at Vienna, a bookseller named Georg, who was burnt at Pesth, and one who had been recently burnt at Prague. 'These and such as these,' he adds, 'are they whose blood will drown the popedom, together with its god, the devil.'

With regard to his work of reformation, which had now spread so widely and found so many coadjutors, Luther at present thought as little about the outward constitution of a new Church as he had thought about any outward organisation of the war itself, or an external alliance of his adherents, or of a cleverly devised propaganda. Just as here the simple Word was to achieve the victory, so his whole efforts were devoted solely to restoring to the congregations the possession and enjoyment of that Word in all its purity, that they might gather round it, and be thereby further edified, sustained, and guided.

Wherever this privilege was denied to Christians, Luther claimed for them the right, by virtue of their universal priesthood, to ordain a priest for themselves, and to reject the ensnaring deceits of mere human doctrine. He declared himself to this effect, in a treatise written in 1523, and intended in the first instance for the Bohemians—that is to say, for the so-called Utraquists who were then the leading party in Bohemia. These sectaries, whose only ground of estrangement from Rome was the question of administering the cup to the laity, and who had never thought of separating themselves from the so-called Apostolical succession of the episcopate in the Catholic Church, Luther then hoped, albeit in vain, to win over to a genuine evangelical belief and practice of religion. In this treatise he went a step beyond the election of pastors by their congregations, by maintaining that a whole district, composed of such evangelical communities, might appoint their own overseer, who should exercise control over them, until the final establishment of a supreme bishopric, of an evangelical character, for the entire national Church. But of any such ecclesiastical edifice for Germany, wholly absorbed as he was in her immediate needs, he had not yet said a word. Congregations of such a kind, and suitable for such a purpose, could only be created by preaching the Word; nor had Luther yet abandoned the hope that the existing German episcopate, as already had been the case in Prussia, would accept an evangelical reconstruction on a much larger scale. With regard to individual congregations, moreover, it was the opinion of Luther and his friends that, where the local magistrates and patrons of the Church were inclined to the gospel, the appointment of pastors might be made by them in a regular way. A separation of civil communities, each represented by their own magistrate, from the ecclesiastical or religious units, was an idea wholly foreign to that time.

That the word of God should be preached to the various congregations in a pure and earnest manner, that those congregations themselves should be entrusted with the work, should make it their own, and, in reliance thereon, should lift up their hearts to God with prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving,—this was the fixed object which Luther held in view in all the regulations which he made at Wittenberg, and wished to institute in other places. In this spirit he advanced cautiously and by degrees in the changes introduced in public worship,—changes which, as he admits, he had commenced with fear and hesitation. 'That the Word itself,' he says, 'should advance mightily among Christians, is shown by the whole of Scripture, and Christ Himself says (Luke x.) that "one thing is needful," namely, that Mary should sit at the feet of Christ, and hear His Word daily. His Word endures for ever, and all else must melt away before it, however much Martha may have to do.' He points out as one of the great abuses of the old system of worship, that the people had to keep silence about the Word, while all the time they had to accept unchristian fables and falsehoods in what was read, and sung, and preached in the churches, and to perform public worship as a work which should entitle them to the grace of God. He now set vigorously about separating the mere furniture of worship. As to the Word itself, on the contrary, he was anxious to have it preached to the congregation, wherever possible, every Sunday morning and evening, and on week-days, at least to the students and others, who desired to hear it: this was actually done at Wittenberg. Innovations, not apparently required by his principles, he shunned himself, and warned others to do so likewise. Nor was he less diligent to guard against the danger of having the new forms of worship, now practised at Wittenberg, made into a law for all evangelical brethren without distinction. He gave an account and estimate of them in the form of a letter to his friend Hausmann, the priest at Zwickau, 'conjuring' his readers 'from his very heart, for Christ's sake,' that if anyone saw plainly a better way in these matters, he should make it known. No one, he declared, durst condemn or despise different forms practised by others. Outward customs and ceremonies were, indeed, indispensable, but they served as little to commend us to God, as meat or drink (1 Cor. viii. 8) served to make us well pleasing before Him.

In order to enable the congregations themselves to take an active part in the service, he now longed for genuine Church hymns, that is to say, songs composed in the noble popular language, verse, and melody. He invited friends to paraphrase the Psalms for this purpose; he had not sufficient confidence in himself for the work. And yet he was the first to attempt it. With fresh impulse and with the exuberance of true poetical genius, his verses on the Brussels martyrs had flowed forth spontaneously from his inmost soul. They were the first, so far as we know, that Luther had ever written, though he was now forty years of age. With the same poetic impulse he composed, probably shortly after, a hymn in praise of the 'highest blessing' that God had shown towards us in the sacrifice of His beloved Son.

Rejoice ye now, dear Christians all, And let us leap for joy, And dare with trustful, loving hearts, Our praises to employ, And sing what God hath shown to man, His sweet and wondrous deed, And tell how dearly He hath won. etc.

The full tone of a powerful, fresh, often uncouth, but very tender popular ballad no other writer of the time displayed like Luther. And whilst seeking to compose or re-arrange hymns for congregational use in church, he now busied himself with the Psalter, paraphrasing its contents in an evangelical spirit and in German metre.

Thus now, early in 1524, there appeared at Wittenberg the first German hymn-book, consisting at first, of only eight hymns, about half of them, such as that beginning Nun freut euch, being original compositions of Luther, and three others adapted from the Psalms. In the course of the same year he brought out a further collection of twenty hymns, written by himself for the evangelical congregation there: among these is the one on the Brussels martyrs. It was, in fact, the year in which German hymnody was born. Luther soon found the coadjutors he had wished for.

These twenty-four hymns by Luther were followed in after years by only twelve more from his own pen, among the latter being his grand hymn, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, written probably in 1527. Of these later compositions, comparatively few expressed entirely his own ideas; most of them had reference to subjects already in the possession and use of the Christian world, and of German Christians in particular; that is to say, some referred to the Psalms and other portions of the Bible, others to parts of the Catechism, others again to short German ballads, sung by the people, and even to old Latin hymns. In all of them he was governed by a strict regard to what was both purely evangelical, and also suitable for the common worship of God. And yet they differ widely, one from another, in the poetical form and manner in which he now gives utterance to the longings of the heart for God, now seeks to clothe in verse suited for congregational singing words of belief and doctrine, now keeps closely to his immediate subject, now vents his emotions freely in Christian sentiments and poetical form, as for example in Ein' feste Burg, the most sublime and powerful production of them all.

The new hymns went forth in town and country, in churches and homes, throughout the land. Often, far more than any sermons could have done, they brought home to ears and hearts the Word of evangelical truth. They became weapons of war, as well as means of edification and comfort.

In his preface to a small collection of songs, which Luther had published in the same year, he remarks: 'I am not of opinion that the gospel should be employed to strike down and destroy all the arts, as certain high ecclesiastics would have it. I would rather that all the arts, and especially music, should be employed in the service of Him who has created them and given them to man.' What he says here about music and poetry, he applied equally to all departments of knowledge. He saw art and learning now menaced by wrong-minded enthusiasts. For this reason he was particularly anxious that they should be cultivated in the schools.

With great zeal he directed his counsels to the general duty of caring for the good education and instruction of the young, as indeed he had done some time before in his address to the German Nobility. These, above all, he said, must be rescued from the clutches of Satan. He had again in his mind schools for girls. Thus in 1523 he recommended the conversion of the cloisters of the Mendicant Orders into schools 'for boys and girls.' The same advice was offered by Eberlin, already mentioned, who was then living at Wittenberg, and who made the suggestion to the magistrates of Ulm.

But Luther's chief advice was directed to the requirements of the Church and the State, or 'temporal government,' which assuredly were then in need of educated and well-cultured servants. For the training here required, the ancient languages, Latin and Greek, were indispensable, and for the ministers of the Church, Greek and Hebrew in particular, as the languages in which the Word of God was originally conveyed to man. 'Languages,' he says, 'are the sheaths which enclose the sword of the Spirit, the shrine in which this treasure is carried, the vessel which contains this drink.' He insisted further on the study of history, and especially of that of Germany. It was a matter of regret to him that so little had been done towards writing the history of Germany, whilst the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews had compiled theirs with such industry. 'O! how many histories and sayings,' he remarked, 'we ought to have in our possession, of all that has been done and said in different parts of Germany, and of which we know nothing. That is why, in other countries, people know nothing about us Germans, and all the world calls us German beasts, who can do nothing but fight, and guzzle, and drink.' Such were his opinions, as given in 1524, in a public letter 'To the Councillors of all the States of Germany; an appeal to institute and maintain Christian schools.'

The enthusiasm which had recently inspired young men of talent and ambition to study and imitate the ancient classics, and had banded together the leading teachers of Humanism, very quickly died away. The universities everywhere were less frequented. Enemies of Luther ascribed this to the influence of his doctrines, though matters were little better where his doctrines were repudiated. It is not, indeed, surprising that the Humanist movement, with its regard for formal culture and aesthetic enjoyment, and its aristocracy of intellect, should retire perforce before the supreme struggle, involving the highest issues and interests of life, which was now being waged by the German people and the Church. A further cause of this decline of academical studies was to be found, no doubt, in the vigorous, and somewhat giddy bound taken by trade and commerce in those days of increased communication and extensive geographical discovery, and in the striving after material gain and enjoyment, which seemed to find satisfaction in other ways more easily and rapidly than by learned industry and the pursuit of culture. It was from these quarters that came the complaints against the great merchants' houses, the usury, the rise in prices, the luxury and extravagance of the age,—complaints which were re-echoed alike by the friends and foes of the Reformation. The Reformers themselves fully recognised the thanks they owed to those Humanistic studies, and their permanent value for Church and State. In the new church regulations introduced in the towns and districts which accepted the evangelical teaching, the school system then played a prominent part. Nuremberg, some years after, was among the most active to establish a good high school. Luther himself went in April 1525 with Melancthon to his native place Eisleben, to assist in promoting a school, founded there by Count Albert of Mansfeld: his friend Agricola was the head master.