Under such circumstances, and starting with such views, Luther now urged the Elector to take in hand a comprehensive regulation of the Church. As soon as he had discharged his duties at the university and completed his new Church Service in German, he turned his efforts to a general 'Reform of parishes.' This, as he said in a letter at the end of September, was now the stumbling-block before him. On October 31, 1525, the anniversary of his ninety-five theses, he represented to the Elector that, now that the reorganisation of the university and the regulation of public worship had been completed, there still remained two points which demanded the attention and care of his Highness, as the supreme temporal authority in his country. One of these was the miserable condition of the parishes in general; the other was the proposal that the Elector, as Luther had already advised him at Wittenberg, should institute an inspection also of the civil administration of his councillors and officials, about which there were everywhere complaints both in the towns and country districts. With regard to the first point, he went on to explain, on receiving a gracious reply from the Elector, that the people who wished to have an evangelical preacher should themselves be made to contribute the additional income required; and he proposed that the country should be divided into four or five districts, each of which should be visited by two commissioners appointed by the prince. He then proceeded to consider the external maintenance of the parochial clergy, and the means necessary for that purpose. He suggested further that ministers advanced in years, or unfit to preach, but otherwise of pious life and conduct, should be instructed to read aloud, in person or by deputy, the Gospel, together with the Postills or short homilies. With regard to those parishes where the appointment of an evangelical preacher was a matter of indifference or of actual repugnance, he expressed at present no opinion; but in his later proposals he assumed the establishment of evangelical preachers throughout the country. He expresses his conviction that the Elector will give his services to God in these reforms of the Church, as a faithful instrument in His hands, 'because,' as he says, 'your Highness is entreated and demanded to do so by us, and by the pressing need itself, and, therefore, assuredly by God.'

Readily as the Elector John listened to Luther's words and exhortations, he found it difficult, nevertheless, to initiate at once so vast an undertaking as was imposed upon him. Luther was well aware, as he himself told John, that matters of importance might easily be delayed at court, 'through the overwhelming press of business;' and that princely households had much to do, and it was necessary to importune them perseveringly. He knew his prince—that with the best will possible, he was not energetic enough with those about him; and among the latter he suspected that many were indifferent and selfish with regard to matters of religion and the Church. The task, however, that now lay before him, was even more difficult and involved than Luther himself had imagined when first shaping and propounding his idea.

A whole year went by before the project was taken up comprehensively. Only in the district of Borna, in January 1526, was an inspection of parishes effected by Spalatin and a civil official of the prince; and another one was held during Lent in the Thuringian district of Tenneberg, in which Luther's friend Myconius of Gotha, afterwards one of the most prominent Reformers in Thuringia, took an active part. Meantime, however, the clergy in general received directions from the Elector to perform public worship in the manner prescribed by Luther's 'German Mass.'

In the course of the summer the development of the general affairs of the Empire enabled the desired co-operation of the civil authorities in the work of Reformation to be established on a basis of law. And yet, just now, the situation, as regards the Evangelical cause, had become more critical than at any previous time since the Diet of Worms. For the Emperor Charles had terminated, by a brilliant victory, the war with France, which had compelled him to let his Edict remain dormant; and the peace concluded with the captured King Francis, in January 1526, at Madrid, was designated by the two monarchs as being intended to enable them to take up their Christian arms in common for the expulsion of the infidels and the extirpation the Lutheran and other heresies. The Emperor issued an admonition to certain princes of Germany, bidding them take measures accordingly, and a number of them held a conference together on the subject. Against the danger thus threatening, the Evangelical party formed the League of Torgau. But no sooner was King Francis at liberty and back in France, than he broke the peace so solemnly contracted. Pope Clement, to whom this peace had offered such a splendid prospect of purifying and uniting Christendom, set more store by his political interests and temporal possessions in Italy, which formed a subject of such jealous rivalry and contention between himself, the Emperor, and the King. Terrified at the overwhelming power of the Emperor, the Holy Father made use of his Divine credentials to absolve the French king from his oath, and himself concluded a warlike alliance with him against Charles, which went by the name of the 'Holy League.' Myconius remarked of this compact that 'whatever Popes do must be called most holy, for so holy are they that even God, the Gospel, and all the world, must lie at their feet.' Meanwhile, the Turks from the East were advancing on Germany. Thus it came to pass that a Diet at Spires, which seemed originally to have been summoned for the final execution of the Edict of Worms, led to the Imperial Recess of August 27, 1526, wherein it was declared that until the General, or at least National Council of the Church, which was prayed for, should be convoked, each State should, in all matters appertaining to the Edict of Worms, 'so live, rule, and bear itself as it thought it could answer it to God and the Emperor.'

Luther now turned again, on November 22, 1526, to John, 'not having laid for a long while any supplication before his Electoral Highness.' The peasants, he said, were so unruly, and so ungrateful for the Word of God, that he had almost a mind to let them go on living like pigs, without a preacher, only their poor young children, at any rate, must be cared for. He laid down in this letter some important principles concerning the duty of the civil power and the State. The prince, he declared, was the supreme guardian of the young, and of all who required his protection. All towns and villages that could afford the means, should be compelled to keep schools and preachers, just as they were compelled to pay taxes for bridges, roads, and other local requirements. In support of this demand, he appealed to the direct command of God, and to the universal state of destitution prevailing. If that duty were neglected, the country would be full of vagrant savages. With regard to the convents and other religious foundations, he stated that, as soon as the Papal yoke had been removed from the land, they would pass over to the prince as the supreme head; and it would then become his duty, however onerous, to regulate such matters, since no one else would have the power to do so. He particularly warned the Elector not to allow the nobles to appropriate the property of the convents, 'as is talked of already, and as some of them are actually doing.' They were founded, he said, for the service of God: whatever was superfluous might be applied by the Elector to the exigencies of the state or the relief of the poor. To his friends Luther complained with grief and bitterness of some courtiers of the Elector, who after having always shut their ears to religion and the gospel, were now chuckling over the rich spoils in prospect, and laughing at evangelical liberty.

The work now commenced in real earnest. The Elector had the necessary regulations prepared at Wittenberg, at a conference between his chancellor Bruck, Luther, and others. In February 1527 visitors were appointed, and among them was Melancthon. They began their labours at once in the district to which Wittenberg belonged, but of their proceedings here nothing further is known. In July the first visitation on a large scale took place in Thuringia.

Just at this time, however, Luther was overtaken by severe bodily suffering and also by troubles at home, while the visitation and the academical life at Wittenberg had to experience an interruption.

Luther's first year of married life had been one of happiness. Symptoms of a physical disorder, the stone, had appeared, however, even then, and in after years became extremely painful and dangerous.

On June 7, 1526, as he announced to his friend Ruhel, his 'dear Kate brought him, by the great mercy of God, a little Hans Luther,'—her firstborn. With joy and thankfulness, as he says in another letter, they now reaped the fruit and blessings of married life, whereof the Pope and his creatures were not worthy.

Amidst all his various labours in theology and for the Church, and in preparing for the visitation, he took his share in the cares of his household, laid out the garden attached to his quarters at the convent, had a well made, and ordered seeds from Nuremberg through his friend Link, and radishes from Erfurt. He wrote at the same time to Link for tools for turning, which he wished to practise with his servant Wolf or Wolfgang Sieberger, as the 'Wittenberg barbarians' were too much behind in the art; and he was anxious, in case the world should no longer care to maintain him as a minister of the Word, to learn how to gain a livelihood by his handiwork.

Early in January 1527 he was seized with a sudden rush of blood to the heart. It nearly proved fatal at the moment, but fortunately soon passed away. An attack of illness, accompanied by deep oppression and anxiety of mind, and the effects of which long remained, followed on July 6. On the morning of that day, being seized with anguish of the soul, he sent for his faithful friend and confessor Bugenhagen, listened to his words of comfort from the Bible, and with persevering prayer commended himself and his beloved ones to God. At Bugenhagen's advice, he then went to a breakfast, to which the Elector's hereditary marshal, Hans Loser, had invited him. He ate little at the meal, but was as cheerful as possible to his companions. After it was over, he sought to refresh himself with conversation with Jonas in his garden, and invited him and his wife to spend the evening at his home. On their arrival, however, he complained of a rushing and singing noise, like the waves of the sea, in his left ear, and which afterwards shot through his head with intolerable pain, like a tremendous gust of wind. He wished to go to bed, but fainted away by the door of his bedroom, after calling aloud for water. Cold water having been poured upon him, he revived. He began to pray aloud, and talked earnestly of spiritual things, although a short swoon came over him in the interval. The physician Augustin Schurf, who was called in, ordered his body, now quite cold, to be warmed. Bugenhagen too was sent for again. Luther thanked the Lord for having vouchsafed to him the knowledge of His holy Name; God's will be done, whether He would let him die, which would be a gain to himself, or allow him to live on still longer in the flesh, and work. He called his friends to witness that up to his end he was certain of having taught the truth according to the command of God. He assured his wife, with words of comfort, that in spite of all the gossip of the blind world she was his wife, and he exhorted her to rest solely on God's Word. He then asked, 'Where is my darling little Hans?' The child smiled at his father, who commended him with his mother to the God who is the Father of the fatherless and judges the cause of the widow. He pointed to some silver cups which had been given him, and which he wished to leave his wife. 'You know,' he added, 'we have nothing else.' After a profuse perspiration he grew better, and the next day he was able to get up to meals. He said afterwards that he thought he was dying, in the hands of his wife and his friends, but that the spiritual paroxysm which had preceded had been something far more difficult for him to bear.

Luther, after recovering from this attack, still complained of weakness in the head, and his inward oppression and spiritual anguish was renewed and became intensified. On August 2 he told Melancthon, who was then busy with his visitation in Thuringia, that he had been tossed about for more than a week in the agonies of death and hell, and that his limbs still trembled in consequence.

Whilst he was still in this state of suffering, news came that the plague was approaching Wittenberg, nay, had actually broken out in the town. It is well known how this fearful scourge had repeatedly raged in Germany, and how ruinous it had been, from the panic which preceded and accompanied it. The university, from fear of the epidemic, was now removed to Jena.

Luther resolved, however, together with Bugenhagen, whom he was assisting as preacher, to remain loyally with the congregation, who now more than ever required his spiritual aid; although his Elector wrote in person to him saying, 'We should for many reasons, as well as for your own good, be loth to see you separated from the university.... Do us then the favour.' He wrote to a friend, 'We are not alone here; but Christ, and your prayers, and the prayers of all the saints, together with the holy angels, are with us.'

The plague had really broken out, though not with that violence which the universal panic would have led one to suppose. Luther soon counted eighteen corpses, which were buried near his house at the Elster Gate. The epidemic advanced from the Fishers' suburb into the centre of the town: here the first victim carried off by it, died almost in Luther's arms—the wife of the burgomaster Tilo Denes. To his friends elsewhere Luther sent comforting reports, and repressed all exaggerated accounts. His friend Hess at Breslau asked him 'if it was befitting a Christian man to fly when death threatened him.' Luther answered him in a public letter, setting forth the whole duty of Christians in this respect. Of the students, a few at any rate remained at Wittenberg. For these he now began a new course of lectures.

Luther's spiritual sufferings continued to afflict him for several months, and until the close of the year. Though he had known them, he said, from his youth, he could never have expected that they would prove so severe. He found them very similar to those attacks and struggles which he had had to endure in early life. The invasion of the plague, and the parting from all his intimate friends except Bugenhagen, must have contributed to increase them.

He was just now deeply shocked and agitated by the news of the death of a faithful companion in the faith, the Bavarian minister Leonard Kaser or Kaiser, who was publicly burnt on August 16, 1527, in the town of Scherding. Luther broke out, as he had done after Henry of Zutphen's martyrdom, into a lamentation of his own unworthiness compared with such heroes. He published an account of Leonard and his end, which had been sent him by Michael Stiefel, adding a preface and conclusion of his own. About the same time he composed a consolatory tract for the Evangelical congregation at Halle-on-the-Saale, whose minister Winkler had been murdered in the previous April.

In the autumn a new controversial treatise was published against him by Erasmus, which he rightly described as a product of snakes; and he now stood in the midst of the contest between Zwingli and Oecolampadius. He exclaimed once in a letter to Jonas, 'O that Erasmus and the Sacramentarians (Zwingli and his friends) could only for a quarter of an hour know the misery of my heart. I am certain that they would then honestly be converted. Now my enemies live, and are mighty, and heap sorrow on sorrow upon me, whom God has already crushed to the earth.'

The pestilence soon reached his friends. The wife of the physician Schurf, who was then living in the same house with him, was attacked by it, and only recovered slowly towards the beginning of November. At the parsonage the wife of the chaplain or deacon George Rorer succumbed to it on November 2, whereupon Luther took Bugenhagen and his family from the panic-stricken house into his own dwelling. But soon after dangerous symptoms showed themselves with a friend, Margaret Mocha, who was then staying with Luther's family, and she was actually ill unto death. His own wife was then near her confinement. Luther was the more concerned about her, as Rorer's wife, when in the same condition, had sickened and died. But Frau Luther remained, as he says, firm in the faith, and retained her health. Finally, towards the end of October his little son Hans fell ill, and for twelve whole days would not eat. When the anniversary of the ninety-five theses came round again, Luther wrote to Amsdorf telling him of these troubles and anxieties, and concluded with the words: 'So now there are struggles without and terror within.... It is a comfort which we must set against the malice of Satan, that we have the Word of God, whereby to save the souls of the faithful, even though the devil devour their bodies.... Pray for us, that we may endure bravely the hand of the Lord, and overcome the power and craft of the devil, whether it be through death or life. Amen. Wittenberg: All Saints' Day, the tenth anniversary of the death-blow to indulgences, in thankful remembrance whereof we are now drinking a toast.'



A short time afterwards Luther was able to send Jonas somewhat better news about the sickness at home, though he was still sighing with deep inward oppression; 'I suffer,' he said, 'the wrath of God, because I have sinned in His sight. Pope, Emperor, princes, bishops, and all the world hate me, and, as if that were not enough, my brethren too (he means the Sacramentarians) must needs afflict me. My sins, death, Satan with all his angels—all rage unceasingly; and what could comfort me if Christ were to forsake me, for Whose sake they hate me? But He will never forsake the poor sinner.' Then follow the words above quoted about Erasmus and the Sacramentarians.



Towards the middle of December the plague gradually abated. Luther writes from home on the tenth of that month: 'My little boy is well and happy again. Schurf's wife has recovered, Margaret has escaped death in a marvellous manner. We have offered up five pigs, which have died, on behalf of the sick.' And on his return home this day to dinner from his lecture, his wife was safely delivered of a little daughter, who received the name of Elizabeth.

To his own inward sufferings Luther rose superior by the strengthening power of the conviction that even in these his Lord and Saviour was with him, and that God had sent them for his own good and that of others; that is to say, for his own discipline and humbling. He applied to himself the words of St. Paul, 'As dying, and behold we live;' nay, he wished not to be freed of his burden, should his God and Saviour be glorified thereby.

Luther's famous hymn, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, appeared for the first time, as has been recently proved, in a little hymn-book, about the beginning of the following year. We can see in it indeed a proof how anxious was that time for Luther. It corresponds with his words, already quoted, on the anniversary of the Reformation.

With the cessation of the pestilence and the return of his friends, the new year seems to have brought him also a salutary change in his physical condition; for his sufferings, which were caused by impeded circulation, became sensibly diminished.

Since the outbreak, and during the continuance of the plague, the work of Church visitation had been suspended. Melancthon, however, who had followed the university to Jena, was commissioned meanwhile to prepare provisionally some regulations and instructions for further action in this matter, and in August Luther received the articles which he had drafted for his examination and approval.

These articles or instructions comprised the fundamental principles of Evangelical doctrine, as they were henceforth to be accepted by the congregations. They were drawn up with especial regard to the 'rough common man,' who too often seemed deficient in the first rudiments of Christian faith and life, and with regard also to many of those confessing the new teaching, who, as Melancthon perceived, were not unfairly accused of allowing the word of saving faith to be made a 'cloak of maliciousness,' and who filled their sermons rather with attacks against the Pope than with words of edifying purport. Melancthon said on this point, 'those who fancy they have conquered the Pope, have not really conquered the Pope.' And whilst teaching that those who were troubled about their sins had only to have faith in their forgiveness for the merits of Christ, to be justified in the sight of God and to find comfort and peace, nevertheless, he would have the people earnestly and specially reminded that this faith could not exist without true repentance and the fear of God; that such comfort could only be felt where such fear was present, and that to achieve this end God's law, with its demands and threats of punishment, would effectually operate upon the soul.

Luther himself had taught very explicitly, and in accordance with his own experience of life, that the faith which saves through God's joyful message of grace could only arise in a heart already bowed and humbled by the law of God, and, having arisen, was bound to employ itself actively in fruits of repentance; although, in stating this doctrine, he had not perhaps so equally adjusted the conditions, as Melancthon had here done. An outcry, however, now arose from among the Romanists, that Melancthon no longer ventured to uphold the Lutheran doctrine; of course it suited their interests to fling a stone in this manner at Luther and his teaching. But what was far more important, an attack was raised against Melancthon from the circle of his immediate friends. Agricola of Eisleben, for instance, would not hear of a repentance growing out of such impressions produced by the Law and the fear of punishment. The conversion of the sinner, he declared, must proceed solely and entirely from the comforting knowledge of God's love and grace, as revealed in His message to man: thence, further, and thence alone, came the proper fear of God, a fear, not of His punishment, but of Himself. This distinction he had failed to find in Melancthon's Instructions. It was the first time that a dogmatic dispute threatened to break out among those who had hitherto stood really united on the common ground of Lutheran doctrine.

Luther, on the contrary, approved Melancthon's draft, and found little to alter in it. What his opponents said did not disturb him; he quieted the doubts of the Elector on that score. Whoever undertook anything in God's cause, he said, must leave the devil his tongue to babble and tell lies against it. He was particularly pleased that Melancthon had 'set forth all in such a simple manner for the common people.' Fine distinctions and niceties of doctrine were out of place in such a work. Even Agricola, who wished to be more Lutheran than Luther himself, was silenced.

Melancthon's work, after having been subjected by the Elector to full scrutiny and criticism in several quarters, was published by his command in March 1528, with a preface written by Luther, as 'Instructions of the Visitors to the parish priests in the Electorate of Saxony.' In this preface Luther pointed out how important and necessary for the Church was such a supervision and visitation. He explained, as the reason why the Elector undertook this office and sent out visitors, that since the bishops and archbishops had proved faithless to their duty, no one else had been found whose special business it was, or who had any orders to attend to such matters. Accordingly, the local sovereign, as the temporal authority ordained by God, had been requested to render this service to the gospel, out of Christian charity, since, in his capacity as civil ruler, he was under no obligation to do so. In like manner, Luther afterwards described the Evangelical sovereigns as 'Makeshift-bishops' (Nothbischofe). At the same time the instructions for visitation introduced now in the smaller districts the office of superintendent as one of permanent supervision.

In the course of the summer preparations were made for a visitation on a large scale, embracing the whole country. The original intention had been to deal, by means of one commission, with the various districts in rotation. Such a course would have necessarily entailed, as was admitted, much delay and other inconveniences. A more comprehensive method was accordingly adopted, of letting different commissions work simultaneously in the different districts. Each of these commissions consisted of a theologian and a few laymen, jurists, and councillors of state, or other officials. Luther was appointed head of the commission for the Electoral district. The work was commenced earlier in some districts than in others. Luther's commission was the first to begin, on October 22, and apparently in the diocese of Wittenberg.

Luther had already, since May 12, voluntarily undertaken a new and onerous labour. Bugenhagen had left Wittenberg that day for the town of Brunswick, where, at the desire of the local magistracy, he carried out the work of reform in the Church, until his departure in October for the same purpose to Hamburg, where he remained until the following June. Luther undertook his pastoral duties in his absence, and preached regularly three or four times in the week. Nevertheless, he took his share also in the work of visitation; the district assigned to him did not take him very far away from Wittenberg. He remained there, actively engaged in this work, during the following months, and with some few intervals, up to the spring. From the end of January 1529 he again suffered for some weeks from giddiness and a rushing noise in his head; he knew not whether it was exhaustion or the buffeting of Satan, and entreated his friends for their prayers on his behalf, that he might continue steadfast in the faith.

The shortcomings and requirements brought to light by the visitation corresponded to what Luther had expected. In his own district the state of things was comparatively favourable; happily, a third of the parishes had the Elector for their patron, and in the towns the magistrates had, to some extent at least, fulfilled their duties satisfactorily. The clergy, for the most part, were good enough for the slender demands with which, under existing circumstances, their parishioners had to be content. But things were worse in many other parts of the country. A gross example of the rude ignorance then prevailing, not only among the country people, but even among the clergy, was found in a village near Torgau, where the old priest was hardly able to repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, but was in high reputation far and near as an exorcist, and did a brisk business in that line. Priests had frequently to be ejected for gross immorality, drunkenness, irregular marriages, and such like offences; many of them had to be forbidden to keep beer-houses, and otherwise to practise worldly callings. On the other hand, we hear of scarcely any priests so addicted to the Romish system as to put difficulties in the way of the visitors. Poverty and destitution, so Luther reports, were found everywhere. The worst feature was the primitive ignorance of the common people, not only in the country but partly also in the towns. We are told of one place where the peasants did not know a single prayer; and of another, where they refused to learn the Lord's Prayer, because it was too long. Village schools were universally rare. The visitors had to be satisfied if the children were taught the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments by the clerk. A knowledge of these at least was required for admission to the Communion.

Luther in the course of his visitations mixed freely with the people, in the practical, energetic, and hearty manner so peculiar to himself.

For the clergy, who needed a model for their preaching, and for the congregations to whom their pastors, owing to their own incompetence, had to preach the sermons of others, nothing more suitable for this purpose could be offered than Luther's Church-Postills. Its use, where necessary, was recommended. It had shortly before been completed; that is to say, after Luther in 1525 had finished the portion for the winter half-year, his friend Roth, of Zwickau, brought out in 1527 a complete edition of sermons for the Sundays of the summer half-year, and all the feast-days and holidays, compiled from printed copies and manuscripts of detached sermons.

The most urgent task, however, that Luther now felt himself bound to perform, was the compilation of a Catechism suitable for the people, and, above all, for the young. Four years before, he had endeavoured to encourage friends to write one. His 'German Mass' of 1526 said: 'The first thing wanted for German public worship is a rough, simple, good Catechism;' and further on in that treatise he declared that he knew of no better way of imparting such Christian instruction, than by means of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, for they summed up, briefly and simply, almost all that was necessary for a Christian to know.

He now took in hand at once, early in 1529, and amidst all the business of the visitations, a larger work, which was intended to instruct the clergy how to understand and explain those three main articles of the faith, and also the doctrines of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. This work is his so-called 'Greater Catechism,' originally entitled simply the 'German Catechism.'

Shortly afterwards followed the 'Little Catechism,'—called also the 'Enchiridion'—which contains in an abbreviated form, adapted to children and simple understandings, the contents of his larger work, set out here in the form of question and answer. 'I have been induced and compelled,' says Luther in his introduction, 'to compress this Catechism, or Christian teaching, into this modest and simple form, by the wretched and lamentable state of spiritual destitution which I have recently in my visitations found to prevail among the people. God help me! how much misery have I seen! The common folk, especially the villagers, know absolutely nothing of Christian doctrine, and alas, many of the parish priests are almost too ignorant or incapable to teach them!' He entreats therefore his brother clergymen to take pity on the people, to assist in bringing home the Catechism to them, and more particularly to the young; and to this end, if no better way commended itself, to take these forms before them, and explain them word by word.

For the use of the pastors, he added to this Catechism a short tract on Marriage, and in the second edition, which followed immediately after, he subjoined a reprint of his treatise on Baptism, which he had published three years before.

The Catechism met the requirements of simple minds and of a Christian's ordinary daily life, by providing also forms of prayer for rising, going to bed, and eating, and lastly a manual for households, with Scriptural texts for all classes. This ends with the words—

Let each his lesson learn to spell, And then his house will prosper well.

To the clergy, in particular, Luther addressed himself, that they might imbue the people in this manner with Christian truth. But he wished also, as he said, to instruct every head of a household how to 'set forth that truth simply and clearly to his servants,' and teach them to pray, and to thank God for His blessings.

The contents of the Catechism were carefully confined to the highest, simplest, and thoroughly practical truths of Christian teaching, without any trace or feature of polemics. In its composition, as for instance, in his exposition of the Lord's Prayer, and in his small prayers above mentioned, he availed himself of old materials. How excellently this Catechism, with its originality and clearness, its depth and simplicity, responded to the wants not only of his own time, but of after generations, has been proved by its having remained in use for centuries, and amid so many different ranks of life and such various degrees of culture. Except his translation of the Bible, this little book of Luther is the most important and practically useful legacy which he has bequeathed to his people.

The visitations were over when the two Catechisms appeared, although they had not yet been held in all the parishes. Events of another kind and dangers threatening elsewhere now demanded the first attention of the Elector and the Reformers.



CHAPTER III.

ERASMUS AND HENRY VIII.—CONTROVERSY WITH ZWINGLI AND HIS FOLLOWERS, UP TO 1528.

Luther's controversy with Erasmus, the most important of the champions of Catholic Churchdom, had terminated, it will be remembered, so far as Luther was concerned, with his treatise 'On the Bondage of the Will.' To the new tract which Erasmus published against him, in two parts, in 1526 and 1527, and which, though insignificant in substance, was violent and insulting enough in tone, Luther made no reply. Erasmus, nevertheless, to the pleasure of himself and his patrons in high places, continued his virulent attacks on the Reformation, which was bringing ruin, he declared, on the noble arts and letters, and carrying anarchy into the Church, while he himself, in his own mediating manner, and in the sense and with the help of the temporal rulers, was doing his best to promote certain reforms in the Church, within the pale of the ancient system, and on its proper hierarchical basis. On what principles, however, that basis was established, and the Divine rights of the hierarchy reposed, he wisely abstained, now as he had done before, from explaining. In Luther's eyes he was merely a refined Epicurean, who had inward doubts about religion and Christianity, and treated both with disdain.

Luther's letter to Henry VIII., which we have noticed in an earlier chapter, took a long time before it reached the King, and before the latter could send an answer to it. The writing of that answer must have given his royal adversary much satisfaction; it turned out a good deal coarser than even the one from Duke George; Luther's marriage in particular afforded Henry an occasion for insulting language. Emser published it in German early in 1527, adding some vituperations and falsehoods of his own. Luther's only object in replying was to dissipate any impression that he had ever declared to Henry his readiness to recant. His reply consisted of a few but powerfully written pages. He pointed out that in his letter he had expressly excepted his doctrines from any offer of retractation; upon these doctrines he took his stand, let kings and the devil do their worst. Beyond these he had nothing which so encouraged his heart, and gave him such strength and joy. To the personal insults and imputations of sensuality and so forth, which Henry VIII., this man of unbridled passions, had poured upon him, he replied that he was well aware that, in regard to his personal life, he was a poor sinner, and that he was glad his enemies were all saints and angels. He added, however, that though he knew himself to be a sinner before God and his dear Christian brethren, he wished at the same time to be virtuous before the world, and that virtuous he was—so much so that his enemies were not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes. With regard to his letter to Henry he acknowledged that in this, as in his letter to Duke George, and others, he had been tempted to make a foolish trial of humility. 'I am a fool, and remain a fool, for putting faith so lightly in others.'

Luther reverts in this reply to enemies of a different sort, who make his heart still heavier. These are to him his 'tender children,' his 'little brothers,' his 'golden little friends, the spirits of faction and the fanatics,' who would not have known anything worth knowing either of Christ or of the gospel, if Luther had not previously written about it. He alluded, in particular, to the new 'Sacramentarians,' and to Zwingli their leader.

Although this is the first time that Zwingli makes his appearance in the history of Luther, and was never treated by him otherwise than as a new offshoot of fanaticism, it is important, in order to understand and appreciate him aright, to bear in mind the fact that, himself only a few months younger than Luther, he had been working since 1519 among the community at Zurich as an independent and progressive Evangelical Reformer, and had extended his active influence over Switzerland, however little noticed he had been at Wittenberg.

His career hitherto had been made easier for him than was the case with Luther. The Grand Council of the city of Zurich not only afforded him their protection, but in 1520 decreed full liberty to preach the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostles in the sense he ascribed to them, and in 1523 formally declared their acceptance of his doctrines, and abolished all idolatrous practices. No Recess of a Diet was here to disturb or threaten him. The Pope, for political reasons, behaved with unwonted caution and discretion: he delayed in this case for several years the ban of excommunication which he had pronounced so readily against Luther. Even Hadrian, the man of firm character, to whom Luther was an object of abhorrence, had only gracious and insinuating words for the Zurich Reformer. The Zurich authorities, at the same time, acting in concert with Zwingli, adopted severe measures against any intrusion of fanatics and Anabaptists, nor did the entire population of the small republic contain any great number of persons so thoroughly neglected, and so difficult of influence by preachers, as was the case with the country people in Germany. Well might Zwingli press forward with a lighter heart than Luther's in his work.



Personally, moreover, he had never passed through such severe inward struggles as Luther, nor had ever wrestled with such spiritual anguish and distress. The thought of reconciliation with God, and the comforting of conscience by the assurance of His forgiving mercy, were not with Zwingli, as with Luther, the centre and focus of his aspirations and religious interests. He knew not that fervour and intenseness which made Luther grasp at every means for bringing home God's grace to congregations of believers, or to each individual Christian according to his spiritual need. His view, from the very first, extended rather to the totality of religious truth, as revealed by God in Scripture, but sadly disfigured in the creeds of the Church by man's additions and misinterpretations; and he aimed, far more than Luther, at a reconstruction of moral, and especially of communal life, in conformity with what the Word of God appeared to demand. It was easier for him, therefore, to break with the past: critical scruples against tradition did not weigh so heavily on his conscience. His critical faculties, no doubt, were sharpened by the humanistic culture he had acquired. Compared with Luther's peculiar meditative mood, and his half-choleric, half-melancholic temperament, Zwingli evinced, in all his conduct and demeanour, a more clear and sober intelligence, and a far calmer and more easy disposition. His practical policy and conduct was allied with a tendency to judicial severity, in contrast to the free spirit which animated Luther. So rigorous and narrow-minded was his zeal against the toleration of images, that the Wittenberg theologians could not help detecting in him a spirit akin to that of Carlstadt and the other fanatics. In renouncing the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the idea of a sacrifice, Zwingli had rejected altogether the supposition of a Real Presence of Christ's Body at the Sacrament; nay, as he declared later on, he had never truly believed in it. He quoted the words of Christ, 'The flesh profiteth nothing' (St. John vi. 63). He would understand by the Sacrament simply a spiritual feeding of the faithful, who, by the Word of God and His Spirit, are enabled to enjoy in faith the salvation purchased by the death of Christ. He saw no particular necessity for offering this salvation to them by an administration of Christ's Body, which had been given for them, through the visible medium of the bread; nor did he see how by so doing their faith could be strengthened. In Luther's view the practical significance of the Real Presence lay in this, that in this special manner the Christian, who felt his need of salvation, was assured, and became a partaker, of forgiveness and communion with his Saviour. With Zwingli, such a visible communication of the Divine gift of salvation was opposed to his conception of God and the Divine Nature; just as this conception was opposed to that kind of union of the Divine and human nature in Christ Himself, by virtue of which, according to Luther, Christ was able and willing to be actually present everywhere in the Sacrament with His human, transfigured body. Inasmuch, said Zwingli, as this spiritual feeding took place in faith everywhere, and not only at the Sacrament, it was no essential part of the Sacrament; the real essence whereof consisted in this, that the faithful here confessed by that act their common belief in the commemoration of Christ's death, and, as members of His Body, pledged themselves to such belief: he called the Sacrament the symbol of a pledge. Luther himself, as we have seen, had taught from the first that the Sacrament or Communion should represent the union of Christians with the spiritual Body, or their communion of the spirit, of faith, and of love. But with him this communion was a secondary condition; it was the feeding on the Body of Christ Himself which was to promote such communion with one another and, above all, with Christ. Zwingli explained the word 'is' of our Lord, in His institution of the Sacrament, to mean 'signifies.' Oecolampadius preferred the explanation that the bread was not the Body in the proper sense of the word, but a symbol of the Body. In point of fact, this was a distinction without a difference.

Such, briefly stated, was the doctrinal controversy in which the two Reformers, the German and the Swiss, now engaged, and which had first brought them into contact.

About the same time Luther made the acquaintance of another opponent of his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, the Silesian Kaspar Schwenkfeld. He also, like his friend Valentin Krautwald, denied the Real Presence; but sought to interpret the words of institution in yet another manner, connecting with his theory of their meaning deeper mystical ideas of the means of salvation in general, which at least in some quarters and to a small extent, have still survived.

In all of them, however—in Carlstadt, Zwingli, Schwenkfeld, and the rest—Luther, as he wrote to his friends at Reutlingen, perceived only one and the same puffed up, carnal mind, twisting about and struggling, to avoid having to remain subject to the Word of God.

His first public declaration against Zwingli's new doctrine was in 1526, in his preface to the Syngramma or treatise of the fourteen Swabian ministers, written, as his opening words express it, 'against the new fanatics, who put forth novel dreams about the Sacrament, and confuse the world.'

Blow upon blow followed in the battle thus commenced. While Oecolampadius was busy composing a reply to the treatise and its preface, by which he in particular had been assailed, Luther proceeded to follow up the attack. The same year he published a 'Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, against the Fanatics;' and in the following spring a larger work with the title 'A Proof that Christ's Words of Institution, "This is My Body," &c., still stand, against the Fanatics.' He concludes the latter with the wish, 'God grant that they may be converted to the truth; if not, that they may twist cords of vanity wherewith to catch themselves, and fall into my hands.' Just then, however, Zwingli had written against him, and to him, and the missive arrived at the moment when he had issued the last-named work. Zwingli wrote in Latin, entitling his tract, 'A Friendly Exposition of the matter concerning the Sacrament,' and sent it with a letter to Luther. These were followed almost immediately by a reply, in German, to Luther's Sermon, under the title of 'A Friendly Criticism of the Sermon of the Excellent Martin Luther against the Fanatics.' Zwingli had scarcely had Luther's last written work in his hands when he replied to it in a new treatise: 'A proof that Christ's words, "This is My Body which is given for you," will for all ages retain the ancient and only meaning, and that Martin Luther in his last book has neither taught nor proved his own and the Pope's meaning;' the title thus indicating that Luther's and the Pope's meaning were one and the same. Oecolampadius at the same time published 'A fair Reply' to Luther's work. These were the writings of the Sacramentarians which reached Luther during the troublous time of the plague at Wittenberg, and filled him with the pain of which we heard him then complain.

Zwingli's doctrine, from the time of its first announcement, had seemed to Luther nothing but a visionary—nay, 'devilish' perversion of the truth and the Word of God. The progress of the controversy, so far from healing the difference between them, tended only to sharpen and intensify it. From the first hour the two Reformers met in opposition, the gulf was already fixed which henceforth divided Evangelical Protestantism into two separate Confessions and Church communities.

This is not the place to pass judgment on the matter in controversy, or to trace minutely the leading points of dogma involved in the dispute. Regarding it, however, by the light of history, it must be acknowledged and avowed that this was no mere passionate quarrel about words alone or propositions of dogmatic and metaphysical interest, but devoid of any religious importance. Even in the attempts to establish points of detail, reference was constantly made, on both sides, to deep questions and views of Christian religion.

Not only did Zwingli and Oecolampadius, in their anti-literal and figurative interpretation of the words of institution, endeavour to support it by Scriptural analogies, more or less appropriate, but in the practical objections they raised, which Luther treated as over-curious subtleties of human reason, they were actuated in reality by motives of a religious character. In their view, a pure and reverential conception of God was inconsistent with the idea of such an offertory of Divine gifts, consisting of material elements and for mere bodily nourishment. Not indeed that Luther, in accepting the words in their literal sense, had become a slave to the letter, in contradiction to the free and lofty spirit in which he had elsewhere accepted the contents of Holy Scripture. The question with him here was about a word of unique importance—a word used by Christ on the threshold, so to speak, of His death for our redemption; and we have already remarked what value he attached to the actual bodily presence indicated by that word, as assuring and imparting salvation to those who partook at His table in faith. No analogies to the contrary, derived from other figurative expressions, would content him, though of course he never denied that such expressions could and did occur throughout the Bible. The text, 'The flesh profiteth nothing,' on which Zwingli primarily relied, Luther understood as referring not to the flesh of Christ, but to the carnal mind of man; though he was careful to declare that it was not the fleshly presence, as such, of our Saviour which gave the Sacrament its value and importance; nor must the feeding of the communicants be a mere bodily feeding, but that the word and promise of Christ were there present, and that faith alone in that word and promise could make the feeding bring salvation. God's glory was therein exalted to the highest, that from His pitying love he made Himself equal with the lowest.

In the doctrine concerning the person of the Redeemer, a point to which the controversy further led, the Church had hitherto affirmed simply a union of the Divine and human natures, each retaining the attributes and qualities peculiar to itself. Luther wished to see in the Man Jesus, the Divine nature, which stooped to share humanity, conceived and realised with deeper and more active fervour. As the Son of God He died for us, and as the Son of Man He was exalted, with His body, to sit at the right hand of God, which is not limited to any place, and is at once nowhere and everywhere. It is true, Luther does not proceed to explain how this body is still a human body, or indeed a body at all. Zwingli, in keeping the two natures distinct, wished to preserve the sublimity of his God and the genuine humanity of the Redeemer; but in so doing, he ended by making the two natures run parallel, so to speak, in a mere stiff, dogmatic formulary, and by an artificial interpretation and analysis of the words of Scripture touching the One Jesus, the Son of God and man.

The manner, however, in which this controversy was conducted on both sides betrays an utter failure on the part of either combatant to apprehend and do justice to the religious and Christian motives, which, with all their antagonism, never ceased to animate the opposite party. Luther's attitude towards Zwingli we have already noticed. We have seen how his zeal, in particular, prompted him too often to see in the conduct of individual opponents simply and solely the dominating influence of that spirit, from which certain pernicious tendencies, according to his own convictions, proceeded and had to be combated. Thus it was in this instance. It was all visionary nonsense, nay, sheer devilry, and be attacked it in language of proportionate violence. From Zwingli a different attitude was to be expected, from the amicable titles of his treatises and the personal correspondence with Luther which he himself invited. He adopted here for the most part, as in other matters, a calm and courteous tone, and exercised a power of self-restraint to which Luther was a stranger. But with a lofty mien, though in the same tone, he rejected Luther's propositions, as the fruit of ludicrous obstinacy and narrowness of mind, nay, as a retrograde step into Popery. His letter, moreover, embittered the contest by importing into it extraneous matter of reproach, such as, in particular, Luther's conduct in the Peasants' War. Luther had reason to say of him, 'He rages against me, and threatens me with the utmost moderation and modesty.' Zwingli's later replies evince a straightforwardness we miss in the earlier ones, but they are marred by much rudeness and coarseness of language, and display throughout a lofty self-consciousness and a triumphant assurance of victory.

Luther, after reading the last-mentioned treatises of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, resolved to publish one answer more, the last; for Satan, he said, must not be suffered to hinder him further in the prosecution of other and more important matters. At this time he was particularly anxious to complete his translation of the Bible, being now hard at work with the books of the Prophets. His answer to Zwingli grew ultimately into the most exhaustive of all his contributions to the dispute. It appeared in March 1528 under the title of 'Confession concerning the Lord's Supper.' He went over once more all the most important questions and arguments which had formed the subject of contention, expounded his ideas more fully on the Person and Presence of Christ, and explained calmly and impressively the passages of Scripture relating thereto. He concluded with a short summary of his own confession of Christian faith, that men might know, both then and after his death, how carefully and diligently he had thought over everything, and that future teachers of error might not pretend that Luther would have taught many things otherwise at another time and after further reflection.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius hastened at once to prepare new pamphlets in reply, and to publish them with a dedication to the Elector John and the Landgrave Philip. But Luther adhered to his resolve. He let them have the last word, as he had done with Erasmus. They had not contributed anything new to the dispute.

While Luther was writing his last treatise against the Sacramentarians, he found himself obliged to issue a fresh protest against the Anabaptists. This was a tract entitled 'On Anabaptism; to two pastors.' But while denouncing these sectaries, he protested strongly against the manner in which the civil authorities were dealing with them, by the infliction of punishment and even death on account of their principles, even when no seditious conduct could be alleged against them. Everyone, he said, should be allowed to believe what he liked. Similarly he wrote to Nuremberg shortly after, where as we have already mentioned, the new errors were spreading, saying that he could in no wise admit the right to execute false prophets or teachers; it was quite enough to expel them. Luther in this distinguished himself above most of the men of the Reformation. At Zurich, while Zwingli was accusing Luther of cruelty, Anabaptists were being drowned in public.

The foreground is now occupied again by the struggle with Catholicism—in other words, by the contest with the German princes who were hostile to the Reformation, and with the Emperor himself and the majority of the Diet.



CHAPTER IV.

CHURCH DIVISIONS IN GERMANY—WAR WITH THE TURKS—THE CONFERENCE AT MARBURG, 1529.

In the war against the Pope and France an imperial army in 1527 had stormed and plundered Borne. God, as Luther said, had so ordained, that the Emperor, who persecuted Luther for the Pope, had to destroy the Pope for Luther. But Charles V. was not then in a position to break with the Head of the Church. In the treaty concluded with the Pope in November, mention was again made of extirpating the Lutheran heresy. And whilst in Italy the war with France was still going on, the Emperor in the spring of 1528 sent an ambassador to the German Courts, to rouse fresh zeal for the Church in this matter.

But before the threatened danger actually reached the Evangelical party, it was preceded by disquieting rumours and false alarms.

In March 1528 a new Diet was to assemble at Ratisbon. Luther heard in February of strange designs being meditated there by the Papists. His wish was that Charles's brother Ferdinand might be detained in Hungary, where he was occupied in fighting the Turks and their protege, Prince John Zapolya of Transylvania, and that the Diet should be prevented from meeting. Luther's adversaries, on the other hand, feared an unfavourable decision from the Estates, and the Emperor at length peremptorily forbade their meeting.

Just about this time, John Pack, a steward of the chancery who had been dismissed by Duke George of Saxony, came to the Landgrave Philip and informed him of a league concluded with King Ferdinand by the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, the Electors of Mayence and Brandenburg, and several Bishops, to attack the Evangelical princes. The Electorate of Saxony, where John was just then engaged in completing the re-organisation of the Church, was to be partitioned among them, and Hesse was to be allotted to Duke George. John and Philip quickly formed an offensive and defensive alliance, and called out their troops. The whole scheme, as was shortly proved beyond dispute, was an invention, and the pretended treaty a forgery, of Pack, who had been paid a large sum for his revelations. Luther himself had no doubt of the genuineness of the document, and persisted even afterwards in his belief. But while the Landgrave, with his habitual vehemence, was impatient to strike quickly, before their enemies were prepared, both Luther and the other Wittenberg theologians did their utmost to restrain their sovereign from any act of violence. Luther earnestly bade him remember the words: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth' (St. Matt. v. 5),—'As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men' (Rom. xii. 18),—'Those that take the sword, shall perish with the sword' (St. Matt. xxvi. 52). He warned them that 'one durst not paint the devil over one's door, nor ask him to stand godfather.' He feared a civil war among the princes, which would be worse than a rising of the peasants, and utterly ruinous to Germany. Philip accordingly stayed his hand, until the reply of his supposed enemies, from whom he demanded an explanation, puzzled him as to the meaning of Pack's overtures.

A private letter sent by Luther to Link, in which he spoke of George as a fool, and said he mistrusted his promises, led afterwards, on George's learning its contents, to a new and bitter quarrel between the two. The Duke made a violent attack on Luther in a pamphlet, which appeared early in 1521, to which the latter replied with equal violence, denouncing the abuse of 'secret (i.e. private) and stolen letters.' George retorted in the same strain, and persuaded his cousin John, to whom he addressed a formal complaint, to prohibit Luther from printing anything more against him without Electoral permission;—a step which effectually silenced his opponent.

On November 30, 1528, the Emperor summoned a Diet to meet at Spires on February 21 of the following year, in order that decisive and energetic measures should be taken—as recommended once more by the Pope—to secure the unity and sole supremacy of the Catholic Church. The chief subjects named for deliberation were, the armament against the Turks, and the innovations in matters of religion.

As regards the war against the Turks, Luther, who had previously let fall some occasional remarks about certain wholesome effects it would have in checking the designs of the Papacy, let his voice be heard, notwithstanding, in summoning the whole nation to do battle against the fearful and horrible enemy, whom they had hitherto suffered so shamefully to oppress them. Since the latter part of the summer of 1528 he had been engaged upon a pamphlet 'On the War against the Turks,' the publication of which was accidentally delayed till March, when he was busy with his Catechism.

In this pamphlet he spoke to his fellow-Germans, with the noblest fire and in the fulness of his strength, as a Christian, a citizen, and a patriot, and with a clearness and decision derived from convictions and principles of his own. He had no wish to preach a new crusade; for the sword had nothing to do with religion, but only with bodily and temporal things. But he exhorted and encouraged the authority, whom God had entrusted with temporal power, to take up the sword against the all-devouring enemy, with sure trust in God and certain confidence in his mission. By the 'authority' he meant the Emperor, in whom he recognised the head of Germany. He it was who must fight against the Turks; under his banner they must march, and upon that banner should be seen the command of God, which said 'Protect the righteous, but punish the wicked.' 'But,' asked Luther, 'how many are there who can read those words on the Emperor's banner, or who seriously believe in them?' He complained that neither Emperor nor princes properly believed that they were Emperor and princes, and therefore thought little about the protection they owed to their subjects. Further on he rebuked the princes for letting matters go on as if they had no concern in them, instead of advising and assisting the Emperor with all the means in their power. He knew well the pride of some of the princes, who would like to see the Emperor a nonentity and themselves the heroes and masters. Rebellion, he said, was punished in the case of the peasants; but if rebellion were punished also among princes and nobles, he fancied there would be very few of them left. He feared that the Turk would bring some such punishment upon them, and he prayed God to avert it. Finally, he bade them remember not to buckle on their armour too loosely, and underrate their enemies, as Germans were too prone to do. He warned them not to tempt God by inadequate preparation, and sacrifice the poor Germans at the shambles, nor as soon as the victory was won to 'sit down again and carouse until the hour of need returned.'

At Spires, however, the whole zeal of the imperial commissaries and of the Catholic Estates was directed, not against the common enemy of Germany and Christendom, but to the internal affairs of the Church. They succeeded in passing a resolution or article, declaring that those States which had held to the Edict of Worms should continue to impose its execution on their subjects; the other States should abstain at least from further innovations. The celebration of the mass was not to be obstructed, nor was anyone to be prevented from hearing it. The subjects of one State were never to be protected by another State against their own. By these means, not only was the Reformation prevented from spreading farther, but it was cut off at a blow in those places where it had already been in full swing. By the decision respecting the mass, room was given for attempts to reinstate it on Evangelical territory; by the other decision respecting the subjects of different States, power was given to the bishops of the German Empire to coerce, if they chose, the local clergy, as their subordinates. Further steps in the exercise of this power could easily be anticipated.

This resolution of the majority was answered on April 19 by the Evangelical party with a formal protest, from which they received the name their descendants still bear—Protestants. They insisted that the Imperial Recess unanimously agreed on at the first Diet of Spires in 1526 could only be altered by the unanimous consent of the States; and they declared 'that, even apart from that, in matters relating to the honour of God and the salvation of our souls, every man must stand alone before God and give account for himself.' In these matters, therefore, "they could not submit to the resolution of the majority."

The majority, however, as well as Ferdinand, the Emperor's brother and representative, refused to admit their right of opposition. The minority must prepare to submit to coercion and the exercise of force. Against this the Elector and Landgrave concluded, on April 22, a 'secret agreement' with the cities of Nuremberg, Strasburg, and Ulm. The Landgrave was eager that this alliance should be strengthened by the admission of Zurich and the other Evangelical towns in Switzerland. And a similar proposal was made to him by Zwingli, who, in connection with his ecclesiastical labours, was carrying on a bold and high policy, in striving to effect an alliance with the republic of Venice and the King of France against the Emperor, He certainly far overrated the importance of his town in the great affairs of the world, and placed a strangely naive confidence in the French monarch.

Luther, on the contrary, set his face as resolutely now as in the affair of Pack, against any appeal to the sword in support of the gospel. He would have his friends rely on God and not on the wit of man; and, with regard to the last Diet, he was quite content that God had not allowed their enemies to rage even more. He was willing even to trust to the Emperor for relief; the Evangelical party, he said, should represent to his Majesty how their sole concern was for the gospel and for the removal of abuses which no one could deny to exist; how, at the same time, they had resisted the iconoclasts and other riotous fanatics, nay, how the suppression of the Anabaptists and the peasants was pre-eminently due to them, and how they had been the first to bring to light and vindicate the rights and majesty of authority. A representation of this kind, he hoped, must surely have an influence on the Emperor. He flatly rejected any alliance with those,—namely, the Swiss,—who 'strive thus against God and the Sacrament;' such an alliance would disgrace the gospel and draw down their sins upon their heads. This opinion, in which the other Wittenberg theologians, and especially Melancthon, concurred, determined that of the Elector.

The Landgrave did his utmost to remove this obstacle to an alliance with the Swiss. He urged a personal conference between the rival theologians on the question of the Sacrament. Luther and Melancthon were strongly opposed to such a step, inasmuch as the course of the controversy hitherto had not revealed a single point which offered any hope of reconciliation or mutual approach. Luther reminded him how, ten years before, the Leipzig disputation served only to make bad worse. Intrigues, moreover, were apprehended from the other side, lest the Lutherans should be held up to odium as the enemies of unity and obstacles to an alliance, and the Landgrave be alienated from them. Melancthon, indeed, had brought with him from Spires, where he had been staying with Philip, a suspicion that the latter inclined to the Zwinglians, and was right in his conjecture at least so far, that their doctrine did not appear to him nearly so questionable as to the Wittenbergers. But the simple fear of consequences made Luther unwilling and unable to refuse the Landgrave's urgent invitation, backed as it was with the concurrence of the Elector. He wrote to him on June 23, declaring his readiness to 'render him this useless service with all diligence,' and only entreated him to consider once more whether it would do more good than harm. The conference was to take place at the Castle of Marburg on Michaelmas day (1529).

Luther's sentiments in the interval are expressed in a letter which he wrote on August 2 to a distant friend, the pastor Brismann at Eiga. 'Philip (Melancthon) and myself,' he says, 'after many refusals and much vain resistance, have been at length compelled to give our consent, because of the Landgrave's importunity; but I know not yet whether our going will come to anything. We have no hopes of any good result, but suspect artifice on all sides, that our enemies may be able to boast of having gained the victory.... I am pretty well in body, but inwardly weak, suffering like Peter from want of faith; but the prayers of my brethren support me.... That youth of Hesse is restless, and boiling over with projects.... Thus everywhere we are threatened with more danger from our own people than from our enemies. Satan rests not, in his bloodthirstiness, from the work of murder and bloodshed.'

In the same letter Luther tells of the panic caused by a new pestilence—the Sweating Sickness—which had appeared in Germany and at Wittenberg itself. It was a plague, known already many years before, which used to attack its victims with fever, sweat, thirst, intense pain and exhaustion, and snatch them off with fearful rapidity. Luther knew well the danger of it when once it actually appeared. But he watched without terror the supposed symptoms of its appearance at Wittenberg, and remarked that the sickness there was mainly caused by fright. On the 27th he told another friend how the night before he had awoke bathed in sweat, and tormented with anxious thoughts, so much so, that had he given way to them he might very likely have fallen ill like so many others. He named also several of his acquaintances, whom he had driven out of bed, when they lay there fancying themselves ill, and who were now laughing at their own fancies.

The Emperor, meanwhile, concluded a final treaty with the Pope on June 29, and on August 5 made peace with King Francis. By this treaty of Barcelona he pledged himself to provide a suitable antidote to the poisonous infection of the new opinions. By the peace of Cambray he renewed the promise, given in the treaty of Madrid, of a mutual cooperation of the two monarchs for the extirpation of heresy.

At Marburg the meeting now actually took place between the theological champions of that great religious movement which strove to set up the gospel against the domination of Rome, and was therefore condemned by Rome as heretical. It was now to be decided whether the anti-Romanists could not become united among themselves; whether the two hostile parties in this movement could not, at least in face of the common danger, join to make a powerful united Church. Zwingli's political conduct, and the cheerful and submissive readiness with which he had complied with the Landgrave's proposal, afforded ground for expecting that, while steadfastly adhering to his own doctrine, he would embrace such an alliance, notwithstanding their doctrinal differences. Everything now really depended upon Luther.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius met the Strasburg theologians, Butzer and Hedio, and Jacob Sturm, the leading citizen of that town, on September 29, at Marburg. The next day they were joined by Luther and Melancthon, together with Jonas and Cruciger from Wittenberg and Myeonius from Gotha; and afterwards came the preachers Osiander from Nuremberg, Brenz from Schwabish Hall, and Stephen Agricola from Augsburg. The Landgrave entertained them in a friendly and sumptuous manner at his castle.

On October 1, the day after his arrival, Luther was summoned by the Landgrave to a private conference with Oecolampadius, towards whom he had always felt more confidence, and whom he had greeted in a friendly manner when they met. Melancthon, being of a calmer temperament, was left to confer with Zwingli. As regards the main subject of the controversy, the question of the Sacrament, no practical result was arrived at between the parties. But on certain other points, in which Zwingli had been suspected by the Wittenbergers, and in which he partly differed from them—for instance, concerning the Church doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, and the Godhead of Christ, and the doctrine of original sin—he offered explanations to Melancthon, the result of which was that the two came to an agreement.

The general debate began on Sunday, October 2, at six o'clock in the morning. The theologians assembled for that purpose in an apartment in the east wing of the castle, before the Landgrave himself, and a number of nobles and guests of the court, including the exiled Duke Ulrich of Wurtemberg. Out of deference to the audience, the language used was to be German. Zwingli had wished, instead, that anyone who desired it might be admitted to hear, but that the discussion should be held in Latin, which he could speak with greater fluency. The four theologians last mentioned, who were to conduct the debate, sat together at a table. Luther, however, assumed the lead of his side; Melancthon only put in a few remarks here and there. The Landgrave's chancellor, Feige, opened the proceedings with a formal address.

Luther at the outset requested that his opponents should first express their opinions upon other points of doctrine which seemed to him doubtful; but he waived this request on Oecolampadius's replying that he was not aware that such doubts involved any contradiction to Luther's doctrine, and on Zwingli's appealing to his agreement recently effected with Melancthon. All he himself had to do, said Luther, was to declare publicly, that with regard to those doubts he disagreed entirely with certain expressions contained in their earlier writings. The chief question was then taken in hand.

The arguments and counter-arguments, set forth by the combatants at various times in their writings, were now succinctly but exhaustively recapitulated. But they were neither strengthened further nor enlarged. The disputants were constrained to listen during this debate to the oral utterances of their opponents with more deference than they had done for the most part in their literary controversy, with its hasty and passionate expressions on each side.

Luther from the outset took his stand, as he had done before, on the simple words of institution, 'This is my Body.' He had chalked them down before him on the table. His opponents, he maintained, ought to give to God the honour due to Him, by believing His 'pure and unadorned Word.'

Zwingli and Oecolampadius, on the contrary, relied mainly, as heretofore, on the words of Christ in the sixth chapter of St. John, where He evidently alluded to a spiritual feeding, and declared that 'the flesh profiteth nothing.' Honour must be given to God, he said, by accepting from Him this clear interpretation of His Word. Luther agreed with them, as previously, that Jesus there spoke only of the spiritual partaking by the faithful, but maintained that in the Sacrament He had, in his words of institution, superadded the offer of His Body for the strengthening of faith and that these words were not useless or unmeaning, but of potent efficacy through the Word of God. 'I would eat even crab-apples,' said Luther, without asking why, if the Lord put them before me, and said "Take and eat."' He fired up when Zwingli answered that the passage in St. John 'broke Luther's neck,' the expression not being as familiar to him as to the Swiss: the Landgrave himself had to step in as a mediator and quiet them.

In the afternoon Luther's opponents proceeded to argue 'that Christ could not be present with His Body at the Sacrament, because His Body was in heaven, and the body, as such, was confined within circumscribed limits, and could only be present in one place at a time. Luther then asked, with reference to the objection that Christ was in heaven and at the right hand of God, why Zwingli insisted on taking those words in such a nakedly literal sense. He declined to enter upon explanations as to the locality of the Body, though he could well have disputed for a long time on that subject: for the omnipotence of God, he said, by virtue whereof that Body was present everywhere at the Sacrament, stood above all mathematics. Of greater weight to him must have been the argument of Zwingli, which at any rate had a Christian and biblical aspect, that Christ with His flesh became like his human brethren, while they again at the last day are to be fashioned like unto his glorified Body, though incapable, nevertheless, of being in different places at the same time. Luther rejected this argument, however, on the ground of the distinction he was careful to draw between the actual attributes which Christ possessed in common with all Christians, and those which He did not so possess at all, or possessed in a manner peculiar to Himself, and exalting him far above mankind. For example, Christ had no wife, as men have.

The next day, Sunday, Luther preached the early morning sermon. He connected his remarks with the Gospel for the day, and dwelt with freshness and power, but without any reference to the controversy then pending, on forgiveness of sin and justification by faith.

The disputation, however, was resumed later on in the morning. The subject of discussion was still the presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament. Luther persisted in refusing to regard that Body as one involving the idea of limits: the Body here was not local or circumscribed by bounds. The Swiss, on the other hand, did not deny the possibility of a miracle, whereby God might permit a body to be in more than one place at the same time; but then they demanded proof that such a miracle was really; effected with the Body of Christ. Luther again appealed to the words before him: 'This is My Body.' He said: 'I cannot slur over the words of our Lord. I cannot but acknowledge that the Body of Christ is there.' Here Zwingli quickly interrupted him with the remark that Luther himself restricted Christ's Body to a place, for the adverb 'there' was an adverb of place. Luther, however, refused to have his off-hand expression so interpreted, and again deprecated the mathematical argument. The same day, the second of the debate, Zwingli and Oecolampadius sought to fortify their theory by evidence adduced from Christian antiquity. On some points at least they were able to appeal to Augustine. But Luther put a different construction on the passages they quoted, and refused altogether to accept him as an authority against Scripture. That evening the disputation was concluded by each party protesting that their doctrine remained unrefuted by Scripture, and leaving their opponents to the judgment of God, by whom they might still be converted. Zwingli broke into tears.

Philip in vain endeavoured to bring the contending parties to a closer understanding. Just then the news came that the fearful pestilence, the Sweating Sickness, had broken out in the town. All further proceedings were stopped at once, and everyone hurried away with his guests. The Landgrave only hastily arranged that in regard to the points of Christian belief in which it was doubtful how far the Swiss agreed with the Evangelical faith, a series of propositions should be drawn up by Luther, and signed by the theologians on both sides. This was done on the Monday. They are the fifteen 'Articles of Marburg.' They expressed unity in all other doctrines, and in the Sacrament also, in so far as they declared that the Sacrament of the Altar is a Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Christ, and that the 'spiritual eating' of that Body is the primary condition required. The only point left in dispute was 'whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are present bodily in the bread and wine.'



If we compare the manner in which this disputation at Marburg was conducted with the previous character of the contest, in which the one party had denounced their opponents as diabolical fanatics, and the other as reactionary Papists and worshippers of 'a god made of bread,' it will be evident that some results of importance at least had been attained by the discussion itself and the mode in which it had been held. The tone here, from first to last, was more courteous, nay, even friendly in comparison. And the moderation now used by these frank, outspoken men, so passionately excited hitherto, could not have resulted solely from self-imposed restraint. Luther, when he wished to speak very emphatically, addressed his opponents as 'my dearest sirs.' Brenz, who was an eye-witness, tells us one might have thought Luther and Zwingli were brothers. And, in fact, on all the main doctrines but that one they agreed. Finer distinctions of theory, which might have furnished food for argument, were mutually waived. But the essential divergence between them on the one great point of the Sacrament, and the spirit manifested in regard to it, made it impossible for Luther to hold out to Zwingli the right hand of fellowship, which the latter and his party so earnestly desired. Luther held to his opinion: 'Yours is a different spirit from ours.' His companions unanimously agreed with him that though they might entertain sentiments of friendship and Christian love towards them, they dared not acknowledge them as brethren in Christ. In the 'Articles' the only mention made of this matter was that although they had not yet agreed on that point, still 'each party should treat the other with Christian charity, so far as each one's conscience would permit.'

On Tuesday afternoon Luther left Marburg, and set out on his journey homeward. At the wish of the Elector he travelled by way of Schleiz, where John was then consulting with the Margrave George of Brandenburg about the Protestant alliance. They desired of Luther a short and comprehensive confession of evangelical faith, as members of which they wished to enrol themselves. Luther immediately compiled one accordingly, upon the basis of the Marburg Articles, making some additions and strengthening some expressions in accordance with his own views. About October 18 he returned to Wittenberg.

This confession was submitted without delay to a meeting of Protestants at Schwabach. The result was, that Ulm and Strasburg declined to subscribe a compact from which the Swiss were excluded.

Within the league itself, the question was now seriously considered, how far the Protestant States might go, in the event of the Emperor really seeking to coerce them to submission—whether, in a word, they could venture to oppose force to force. Luther's opinion, however, on this point remained unshaken. Whatever civil law and counsellors might say, it was conclusive for them as Christians, in his opinion, that civil authority was ordained by God, and that the Emperor, as the lord paramount of Germany, was the supreme civil authority in the nation. His first consideration was the imperial dignity, as he conceived it, and the relative position and duties of the princes of the Empire. As subjects of the Emperor, he regarded these princes in the same light as he regarded their own territorial subjects, the burgomasters of the towns and the various other magnates and nobles, to whom they themselves had never conceded any right to oppose, either by protest or force, their own regulations, as territorial sovereigns, in matters affecting the Church. Not, indeed, that he required a simply passive obedience, however badly the authorities and the Emperor might behave; on the contrary, he admitted the possibility of having to depose the Emperor. 'Sin itself,' he said, 'does not destroy authority and obedience; but the punishment of sin destroys them, as, for instance, if the Empire and the Electors were unanimously to dethrone the Emperor, and make him cease to be one. But so long as he remains unpunished and Emperor, no one should refuse him obedience.' Nothing, therefore, in his opinion, short of a common act of the Estates could provide a remedy against an unjust, tyrannical, and law-breaking Emperor, while at present it was apparent that Charles and the majority of the Diet were agreed. Hence he refused to recognise the right of individual States to an appeal to force, for his theory of the German Empire involved the idea of a firm and united community or State, and not in any way that of a league or federation, the independent members of which might take up arms against a breach of their articles of agreement. This theory was shared by his Elector and the Nurembergers. Just as these Protestants for conscience sake had refused obedience to the resolution of the Diet at Spires, so they felt themselves bound by conscience to submit to the consequences of that refusal. Luther's opinion, therefore, as to the proper attitude for the Protestant States was the same as he had expressed to the Elector Frederick on his return from the Wartburg. It was their duty, he said, if God should permit matters to go so far, to allow the Emperor to enter their territory and act against their subjects, without, however, giving their assent or assisting him. But he added: 'It is sheer want of faith not to trust to God to protect us, without any wit or power of man.... "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength."'