Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The language of this tract is, for a writer like Luther, extremely moderate and circumspect, for its object was to enlist in his cause the most secret and intimate of all acts, that of the penitent in confession; its apparent reticence made it all the more seductive. In his new guise of an instructor of consciences, Luther here seems fully to recognise the Sacrament of Confession. He has no wish, so he protests, to introduce “strife, disputation and dissension into the holy Sacrament of Confession.”

  The penitent, who is in the habit of reading his works, he tells to beg his confessor in “humble words,” should he question him, not to trouble him concerning Luther’s books. He is to say to his confessor: “Give me the Absolution to which I have a right, and, after that, wrangle about Luther, the Pope and whomsoever else you please.” He encourages his readers to make such a request by explaining that these books, and likewise Luther’s guilt, have not yet been duly examined, that many were in doubt about the Bull, that Popes had often changed their minds upon similar matters and contradicted themselves, and that a confessor would therefore be acting tyrannically were he to demand that the books should be given up; this was, however, the unfair treatment to which he had ever been subjected. There was only one thing wanting, namely, that Luther should have repeated what he had shortly before declared, that, for the sake of peace, he would “be quite happy to see his books destroyed,” if only people were permitted to keep and read the Bible.

  He continues: Since it might happen that some would be conscientiously unable to part with his writings, owing to knowledge or suspicion of the truth, such people should quietly waive their claim to Absolution should it be withheld. They were nevertheless to “rejoice and feel assured that they had really been absolved in the sight of God and approach the Sacrament without any shrinking.” Those who were more courageous, however, and had a “strong conscience” were to say plainly to the “taskmaster” (the confessor): “You have no right to force me against my conscience, as you yourself know, or ought to know, Romans xiv.” “Confessors are not to meddle with the judgment of God, to whom alone are reserved the secrets of the heart.” If, however, communion be refused, then all were first to “ask for it humbly,” “and if that was of no avail, then they were to let Sacrament, altar, parson and Church go”; for “contrary to God’s Word and your conscience no commandment can be made, or hold good if made, as they themselves all teach.”

  Such a view of the functions of a confessor and of his duty as a judge appointed by authority had certainly never been taught in the Church, but was entirely novel and unheard of, however much it might flatter the ears of the timid, and of those who wavered or were actually estranged from the Church. Most of his readers were unaware how shamelessly their adviser was contradicting himself, and how this apparently well-meaning instructor of consciences in the confessional was the very man who in previous polemical tracts had denied that there was any difference between priests and laymen. Towards the close of this Instruction, however, the author reappears in his true colours, and whereas, at the commencement when introducing himself, he had spoken of confession as a holy Sacrament, at the end he describes it as an unjust invention of the priesthood, and, indeed, in his eyes, it was really a mere “human institution.” Towards the conclusion, where he relapses into his wonted threatening and abusive language, he “begs all prelates and confessors” not to torture consciences in the confessional lest the people should begin to question “whence their authority and the practice of private confession came”; as if his very words did not convey to the reader an invitation to do so. “The result,” he prudently reminds them, “might be a revolt in which they [the prelates] might be worsted. For though confession is a most wholesome thing, everyone knows how apt some are to take offence.” He points out how in his case the authorities had driven him further and further, well-intentioned though he was: “How many things would never have happened had the Pope and his myrmidons not treated me with violence and deceit.”

  The Easter confession that year might prove decisive to thousands. The little earnestness shown by too many in the practice of their religion, the laxity of the German clergy, even the apparent insignificance of the question of retaining or perusing certain books, all this was in his favour. In the above tract he set before the devout souls who were “tyrannised” by their confessors the example of Christ and His Saints, who all had suffered persecution; “we must ask God to make us worthy of suffering for the sake of His Word.” The more imaginative, he likewise warned of the approaching end of the world. “Remember that it was foretold that in the days of ‘End-Christ’ no one will be allowed to preach, and that all will be looked upon as outcasts who speak or listen to the Word of God.” Those who hesitated and were scrupulous about keeping Luther’s writings, seeing they had been prohibited by law and episcopal decrees as “blasphemous,” he sought to reassure by declaring that his books were nothing of the kind, for in them he had attacked the person neither of the Pope nor of any prelate, but had merely blamed vices, and that if they were to be described as blasphemous, then the same “must be said of the Gospel and the whole of Holy Scripture.”

  Thus, in this ingenious work, each one found something suited to his disposition and his scruples and calculated to lead him astray. The culmination is, however, in the words already adduced: Nothing against conscience, nothing against the Word of God! The “enslaved conscience” and the “commanding Word of God,” these are the catchwords of which Luther henceforth makes use so frequently and to such purpose. He employs these terms as a cloak to conceal the complete emancipation of the mind from every duty towards a rule of faith and ecclesiastical authority which he really advocates. The “commanding Word of God,” on his lips, means the right of independent, private interpretation of the sacred Books, though he reserves to himself the first place in determining their sense.

  Conscience and the Word of God, words with which Luther had familiarised the masses from the commencement of his apostasy, were also to be his cry at the Diet of Worms in 1521, when he stood before the supreme spiritual and temporal authorities there assembled around the Emperor. Uttered there before Church and Empire, this cry was to re-echo mightily and to bring multitudes to his standard.

  2. The Diet of Worms, 1521; Luther’s Attitude

  The Diet had been assembled at Worms around the Emperor since January 27, 1521.

  Charles V showed himself in religious questions a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church, to which indeed he was most devotedly attached. He was not, however, always well-advised, and the multitudinous cares of his empire frequently blinded him to the real needs of the Church, or else made it impossible for him to act as he would have wished.

  On February 13, 1521, in the presence of the Princes and the States-General of the Empire, Hieronymus Aleander, the Papal Legate accredited to the Diet, delivered the speech, which has since become historic, on the duty of the Empire to take action against Luther as a notorious, obstinate heretic, definitively condemned by the supreme Papal Court. He did not fail to point out, that “it was a fact of common knowledge that Luther was inciting the people to rebellion and that, like the heretics of Bohemia, he was destroying all law and order in the name and semblance of the Gospel.”

  On March 6 Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet at Worms, the Emperor furnishing him with an escort and guaranteeing his safe return. Encouraged by the latter promise, secure in the favour of his own sovereign, and assured of the support of the Knights, he decided to comply with the summons.

  The thought of bearing testimony to his newly discovered Evangel before the whole country and enjoying the opportunity, by his appearance in so public a place, of rousing others to enthusiasm for the work he had undertaken urged him on. Severe bodily ailments from which he was suffering at that time did not deter him. His illness, he declared, was merely a trick of “the devil to hinder him”; on his part he would do all he could to “affright and defy him.” “Christ lives, and we shall enter Worms
in spite of all the gates of hell and the powers of the air.” To Spalatin we owe an echo from one of Luther’s letters at that time: “He was determined to go to Worms though there should be as many devils there as there were tiles on the roofs.”

  The journey to Worms resembled a sort of triumphal progress, owing to the festive reception everywhere prepared for him by his friends, and in particular by the Humanists.

  His arrival at Erfurt was celebrated beforehand by Eobanus Hessus in a flattering poem. On April 6 the Rector of the University, Crotus Rubeanus, with forty professors and a great crowd of people, went out to meet him when he was still three leagues from the city. The address delivered by Rubeanus at the meeting expressed gratitude for the “Divine apparition” which was vouchsafed to them in the coming of the “hero of the Evangel.”

  On the following day Luther preached in the Church of the Augustinians. He spoke of good works: “One erects churches, another makes a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella or to St. Peter’s, a third fasts and prays, wears a cowl or goes barefoot ... such works are of no avail and must be done away with. Mark these words: All our works are worthless. I am your justification, says Christ our Lord, I have destroyed the sins with which you are loaded; therefore believe only that it is I alone who have done this and you will be justified.” Luther fired invectives against the intolerable yoke of the Papacy and against the clergy who “slaughtered the sheep instead of leading them to pasture.” Himself he represents as persecuted by the would-be righteous, the Pope and his Bull, on account of his teaching which was directed against the false self-righteousness arising from works.

  On the occasion of this sermon Luther, as his followers asserted, performed his first miracle, quelling a disturbance excited by the devil during the sermon in the overcrowded church; the interruption ceased when Luther had exorcised the fiend.

  At Erfurt the enthusiasm for his cause became so great that on the day after his departure riots broke out, the so-called “Pfaffensturm” or priest-riot, which will be considered below (xiv. 5), together with other circumstances attending the introduction of the new Evangel at Erfurt. Luther was at the time silent concerning the occurrence. Not long after his arrival at the Wartburg, referring to similar scenes of violence, he says, in a letter to Melanchthon: “The priests and monks raged against me like madmen when I was free; but now that I am a captive they are afraid and have restrained their insane action. They cannot endure the common people who now have them under their heel. Behold the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, Who is working for us while we are silent, suffer and pray.” Nevertheless, when all was over, he protested against the acts of violence committed at Erfurt in a letter to Spalatin, which was found in that courtier’s library.

  On the journey through Thuringia he met the Prior of the Rheinhardsbrunn monastery, whom he exhorted as follows: “Say an Our Father for our Lord Christ that His Father may be gracious to Him. If He upholds His cause, then mine also is assured.” Such was the strange manner in which he expressed his real inward feelings. Those who expected him to recant at Worms did not know their man.

  Reaching Worms on April 16 he was, on the following day, submitted to the first interrogation. To the question whether he was the author of the books mentioned, he replied in the affirmative, and when exhorted to retract his errors he begged for “a respite and time for consideration” that, as he says in his own notes at the time, “as I have to give a verbal answer I may not through want of caution say too much, or too little, to repent of it later,” especially as it was a matter concerning “the highest good in heaven or on earth, the Holy Word of God and the faith.” The respite granted was only for one day. On April 18 he declared boldly, at his second interrogation, that any retractation of the books he had written against the Pope was impossible for him, since he would thereby be strengthening his tyranny and unchristian spirit; the consciences of Christians were held captive in the most deplorable fashion by the Papal laws and the doctrines of men; even the property of the German nation was swallowed up by the rapacity of the Romans. He would repeat what Christ had said before the High Priest and his servants: “If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil”; if the Lord was willing to listen to the testimony of a servant, “how much more must I, the lowest erring creature, wait and see whether any man brings forward testimony adverse to my teaching.” He asks, therefore, to be convinced of error and confuted by the Bible. “I shall be most ready if I am shown to be wrong to retract every error.” He owed it to Germany, his native land, to warn those in high station to beware of condemning the truth. After recommending himself to the protection of the Emperor against his enemies, he concluded with the words: “I have spoken.”

  On returning after this to the inn through the staring crowds, no sooner had he reached the threshold than “he stretched out his arms and cried with a cheerful countenance: ‘I have got through, I have got through.’”

  The Emperor bade him begone from that very hour, but the Estates, who were divided in their views as to the measures to be taken, feared a “revolt in the Holy Empire,” owing to the strength of the feeling in his favour and the threats uttered by his armed friends, should “steps be taken against him so hurriedly and without due trial.” Accordingly an effort was made to persuade Luther by friendly means, through the intermediary of a commission consisting of certain clerical and lay members of the Diet under the Archbishop of Treves, Richard of Greiffenklau. Their pains were, however, in vain.

  Even some of his friends besought him to commit his cause to the Emperor and the Estates of the Empire, but likewise to no purpose. He also refused the proposal that he should submit to the joint decision of the Emperor and certain German prelates to be nominated by the Pope. All he would promise was to hearken to a General Council, but even this promise he qualified with a proviso which rendered his assent illusory: “So long as no judgment contrary or detrimental to the truth is pronounced.” Who but Luther himself was to decide what was the truth? Cochlæus made an offer, which under the circumstances was foredoomed to refusal, that a public disputation should be held with the Wittenberg monk; to this Luther would not listen. Neither would he give an undertaking to refrain from preaching and writing.

  His final declaration at the Diet was as follows: Seeing that a simple and straightforward answer was demanded of him, he would give it: “If I am not convinced by proofs from Scripture or clear theological reasons (‘ratione evidente’), then I remain convinced by the passages which I have quoted from Scripture, and my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract, for to go against one’s conscience is neither prudent nor right.” He concluded this asseveration, after a protest had been raised and caused a tumult amongst the audience, with the words which passed almost unheard: “God help me, Amen!” The tragic and solemn setting which was very soon given to these not at all unusual concluding words, was an uncalled-for embellishment not in agreement with the oldest sources.

  After this, on April 26, in accordance with the command of the Emperor, he was obliged to quit Worms. An extension of the safe conduct for twenty-one days was expressly granted him, coupled, however, with the injunction not to preach or publish anything on the way. Two days later, while on his journey, Luther forwarded a missive to the Emperor and another to the Estates in his own defence, the latter being immediately printed by his friends as a broadsheet. The print depicted Luther with a halo, and the dove or symbol of the Holy Ghost hovering over him.

  The fact that at the time the Diet was sitting a committee of the Estates brought forward, under a new form, the so-called “Gravamina of the German Nation” against the Roman See, was greatly to the advantage of Luther’s cause. They consisted largely of legitimate suggestions for the amelioration of ecclesiastical conditions and the removal of the oppression exercised by the Curia. These were made the subject of debate, and were exploited in Luther’s interests by those desirous of innovations. Those among the Humanists who sided with him, and likewis
e the Knights of the Empire, had taken various steps during his stay at Worms to strengthen his position and to frighten the Estates by hinting at violent action to be undertaken on his behalf.

  Ulrich von Hutten wrote to him from the Ebernburg on April 17: “Keep a good heart ... I will stand by you to the last breath if you remain true to yourself.” He knows how those assembled at the Diet gnash their teeth at him; his fancy indeed paints things black, but his hope in God sustains him. In a second letter of April 20, Hutten speaks to him of trusting not only in God and His Christ, but also in earthly weapons: “I see that sword and bow, arrows and bolts are necessary in order to withstand the mad rage of the devil ... the wisdom of my friends hinders me from a venture, because they fear lest I go too far, otherwise I should already have prepared some kind of surprise for these gentlemen under the walls [of Worms]. In a short time, however, my hand will be free, and then you shall see that I will not be wanting in the spirit which God has roused up in me.” In the same way as in his rhetorical language he ascribes his own mood to the illumination of the Spirit of God, so Hutten also sought to unearth a Divine inspiration in his friend Franz von Sickingen; all this was the outcome of Luther’s pseudo-mysticism, to which his friends were indebted for such figures of speech. Regarding Sickingen, Hutten wrote to Willibald Pirkheimer: “He has, so to speak, drunk in Luther completely; he has his little books read aloud at table, and I have heard him swear that he will never forsake the cause of truth in spite of every danger.” “You may well regard these words as a Divine Voice, so great is his constancy.”