Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Luther would not sanction any actual yielding, but was not averse to a little diplomacy. He replied to Spengler, on August 28: “I have written to him [Melanchthon] about this once before and am now writing to him again, but hope that there is no real need. For though Christ may appear to be somewhat weak, this does not mean that He is pushed out of His seat.... Though too much may have been conceded — as may be the case — still, the cause is not lost, on the contrary, a new struggle has been entered upon that our adversaries may be convinced how honestly they have acted. For nothing may be conceded above and beyond the Gospel, whichever party’s ‘insidiæ’ hold the field; for, in the proviso concerning the Gospel, ‘insidiæ’ are embodied other than those which our adversaries can employ against us. For what is the wisdom of man as compared with that of God? Therefore let your mind be at rest; we can have conceded nothing contrary to the Gospel. But if our supporters concede anything against the Gospel, then the devil himself will seize on that, as you will see.”

  This remarkable letter, with its allusions to the weakness of Christ, the proviso of the Gospel and the successful “insidiæ,” calls for some further consideration. Luther reckoned on two things, as we shall see from his instructions to be quoted immediately. First, that the best way to escape from the difficult situation created by the Reichstag was to make general statements, which, however, were not to surrender any part of the new teaching; he was anxious to pursue this course in order to secure freedom for the Evangel, or at least some delay in the condemnation of his cause. Secondly, that though at Augsburg the evangelical spokesmen might be forced to give up some part of the new teaching, yet this would be invalid, since against the Gospel nothing can stand.

  One can scarcely fail to see that one and the other of these calculations militated against any serious, practical result of the negotiations. They could only succeed in retarding any settlement of the question, though any delay would of course tend to strengthen Luther’s cause.

  We have also a Latin letter of Luther’s to Melanchthon, bearing the same date (August 28), which throws even more light on their treatment of the Diet of Augsburg.

  The letter describes the painful embarrassment in which Melanchthon found himself placed as intermediary after the advances and concessions he had made at Augsburg. Luther encourages him with strange arguments: “I am reassured by the thought, that you cannot have committed anything worse than a sin against our own person, so that we may be accused of perfidy and fickleness. But what then? The constancy and truth of our cause will soon set that right. I trust this will not be the case, but I say, should it be, even then we should have no need to despair. For when once we have evaded the peril and are at peace, then we can easily atone for our tricks and failings (‘dolos ac lapsus nostros’), because His [God’s] mercy is over us. ‘Expect the Lord, do manfully and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord’” (Psalm xxvi. 14).

  This highly questionable counsel refers to the second of Luther’s calculations mentioned above. He was not, however, forgetful of the first, and expressly tells Melanchthon that he will best elude difficulties by the general statement that “they were ready to give to God what was God’s, and to the Kaiser what was the Kaiser’s.... Let them [the opposition] prove what they assert, viz. that God and the Emperor were on their side.” “Let them show that what they demand is according to the Word of God”; should they succeed, then they will have a right to hold the field, because all they were anxious to do was to obey the Word of God. With Luther, however, the Word of God was not really the Word of God itself, but what he understood by the Word of God. We cannot wonder if Catholics stigmatised this form of speaking as mere “dissimulation.” Nor can it be matter of surprise that far-seeing Catholic representatives at Augsburg dreaded some snare on the part of the protesters. Luther’s conception of the “proviso of the Gospel” which, according to his letter to Spengler, was under any circumstances to lead to the success of his cause, certainly shows their suspicions to have been amply justified. Luther was, however, wrong in imputing to them any wish to make use of similar “insidiæ” against his cause.

  In a Latin letter of the same date Luther pointed out to his friend Jonas, who was also one of the theologians then at Augsburg, the course he himself had pursued at the Diet of Worms as the best example and rule to be followed at Augsburg. At Worms Luther had appealed in the presence of the Empire to the Word of God as binding on his conscience. “Whatever you may concede [to the opposition],” he says to Jonas, “never forget to except the Gospel, as I did at Worms, for here the circumstances are quite similar.” Previous to this he had said: “Christ watches over His honour, though we may perhaps be asleep to our shame. Let them boast that you have yielded much, for they do not understand that they have not got the one and only thing for which we really care [the Gospel]. Let them have their way, those spectre-monks of Spires,” he adds in German.

  Nevertheless, in his letter of September 23, 1530, to the pastor of Zwickau, Nicholas Hausmann, Luther speaks of the readiness of his party to make concessions in the matter of the bishops, as of a serious and important matter: the Catholic party had required concessions of them which could only be described as “filthy, shameful and degrading.” “Our party have rejected their offers absolutely.” And he continues in the same serious tone: “They offered to admit the jurisdiction of the bishops again, if these would see that the Gospel was taught and all abuses done away with; some festivals also were to be retained. Nothing, however, came of it. Our foes are determined upon their own destruction; their inevitable fate hangs over their heads.”

  What he says to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse scarcely a month later, on looking back upon this matter, is less mystical and more diplomatic. The latter had expressed his “surprise” at the position which had been taken up at Augsburg towards the Catholics, and Luther was forced to seek an excuse. Here he represents the offers made as a mere pretence and thus comes, as a matter of fact, nearer to the truth than in the aforesaid letter to his zealous admirer Hausmann, which was anything but true to fact. We should assuredly have been guilty of a “fault,” he says, and have acted to the detriment of our party, had our advances been accepted, but of that there was little fear; now, however, we profit by our offer, for we can represent ourselves as having been badly treated and thus we get an advantage of the Papists. “I trust that Your Highness will not take offence,” so runs the passage, “that we offered to accept certain things, such as fasting, festivals, meats and chants, for we knew well that they could not accept any such offer, and it serves to raise our repute still further and enables me in my booklet to paint their disrepute still more forcibly. It would indeed have been a mistake on our part had the offer been accepted.” The Protestant author of the “Hessische Kirchengeschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation” thinks it necessary to make this extenuating remark: “The fact that Luther was here seeking to excuse himself will serve to explain the wording of this letter concerning his behaviour during the negotiations with the Catholics, which otherwise might be easily misunderstood.” He thinks there was no question of any original intention of taking advantage of his opponents’ good faith, but that Luther, merely as an afterthought, sought “to represent this as having been all along his intention.” But does this really suffice to establish Luther’s honesty and uprightness in the business?

  In agreement with what he had said to Philip of Hesse, in his “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen” (below, ), which he was then writing, or at least thinking of, Luther made every effort “to enhance our repute” by instancing the ostensibly so conciliatory attitude of the evangelicals at Augsburg. He there speaks of the “humility, patience and pleading” which they “exhibited”; “our prayers and pleas for peace” were, however, “lost upon these obstinate men.” “The Papists,” he declared further on, quite untruly, had refused to hear of peace, truth or reproof, but, “with their heads down,” insisted upon waging war or raising a revolt. “Our offers, our prayers,
our cries for peace” were all wasted. He gives no details concerning the spirit in which these “offers” were made.

  The Emperor’s attempts to bring about peace at the Diet of Augsburg, under the circumstances described above, were doomed to failure. It was impossible for the Reichstag to bridge over the chasm which was intentionally and artfully kept open by Luther and his party. The final resolutions which were drawn up in due form and proclaimed by the Emperor on November 19, declared that in matters of faith no innovations might be introduced; worship, in particular the ritual of the sacraments, the Mass and Veneration of the Saints, was to remain as before until a decision by an Œcumenical Council; any interference with or injury to churches and convents was forbidden; married priests were to be removed from their posts and punished; preachers were only to be appointed by the bishop; books were not to be printed without being submitted to the censors, etc. The enactment, that Church property which had been seized by the innovators should be returned without delay, was a source of particular displeasure to Luther’s friends.

  According to Luther the devil had triumphed at the Reichstag. “The spectre-monks of Spires,” to use his own expression, i.e. the spirits of hell, according to him, threatened his enterprise with destruction.

  The apparition of the phantom monks of Spires was one of the manifestations of diabolical animosity towards his teaching which troubled Luther greatly at that time, in his lonely retreat of Coburg. We here see the curious spirit-world in which he lived. A whole troop of fiends disguised as monks, so he had been reliably informed, had come to the Rhine at Spires at the beginning of the Diet of Augsburg and had been ferried across the river on the pretext that “they were from Cologne and wished to attend the Diet at Augsburg. But,” so the story ran, “when they had crossed over, they all suddenly vanished, so that they are believed to have been nothing but a band of evil spirits.” Melanchthon looked upon the apparition of the “monks of Spires” as the presage of a “terrible revolt.” His son-in-law, George Sabinus, wrote a description of the incident in verse. Luther himself was probably more inclined to look upon these spectres as devils, because he had personally seen an apparition of the devil at Coburg, where Satan had appeared in the garden below his window under the form of a serpentine streak of light (cp. vol. vi., xxxvi. 3).

  He was at that time dominated by fear and dread, partly owing to the proceedings at the Reichstag, partly on account of the unfortunate termination of the religious conference with Zwingli at Marburg, where no understanding had been reached regarding the chief point under dispute, and partly also because in his solitude his old inward “temptations” and mental depression were again tormenting him. He was also suffering much from the result of overwork. A malady due to nervous exhaustion had, in 1527, so enfeebled him as to bring him to the verge of the grave. The malady now returned with similar, though less severe, symptoms. The spiritual desolation and fear, which were the consequence of his doubts, now again assailed him as they had done after his previous illness in 1527. Of this condition, Melanchthon, to whom it was familiar enough, wrote to Dietrich, that one could not hope to dispel it by human means, but only by recourse to prayer.

  “Satan has sent me his emissaries,” Luther himself says of his sufferings; “I was alone, Veit and Cyriacus were absent, and Satan was so far successful as to drive me out of the room and force me to go amongst the people.” He compares his mental state to a land dried up by heat and wind and thirsting for water.

  He observed to Melanchthon that as a rule he was weaker in such personal combats than when it was a question of the common weal, or of his public work. This may serve to correct those historians who have nothing but “praise for Luther’s assurance and cheerfulness” during the time when at Augsburg his cause stood in such imminent danger.

  Luther’s letters, previous to the breaking off of his followers’ pretended negotiations at Augsburg, certainly do not breathe a spirit of interior peace. He says, for instance, to Jonas: “I am actually bursting with anger and indignation (‘pæne rumpor ira et indignatione’). I beseech you to cut the matter short and come back home. They have our Confession and the Gospel. If they wish they can accept them, if not let them depart.” Then there follows in the Latin epistle a characteristic exclamation in German: “If war is to come, let it come, we have prayed and done enough. The Lord has given them over to us as a holocaust in order ‘to reward them according to their works’ [2 Tim. iv. 14]; us, His people,” Luther concludes, “He will save even from the fiery furnace of Babylon. Forgive me, I pray, my Jonas, for spewing out all this annoyance of mine into your lap; but what I have written for you is meant for all.”

  That it was indeed meant for all he showed by publishing, in 1531, in anticipation of the “war” and in order that his party might not become a “holocaust,” the “Warnunge Doctoris Martini Luther an seine lieben Deudschen.” In this work, while indulging in the most virulent abuse of the Reichstag, he declares, that in the event of a war or tumult no assistance was to be rendered to the Papists; legitimate self-defence demanded that such attacks should be met by resistance. The determination shown by Luther after the Diet of Augsburg to withstand the whole authority of the Empire is plainly manifest even now in the vehemence of the tracts which he proceeded to throw broadcast among the people. His purpose was to foster among the masses a spirit of opposition which should be a constant menace to peace.

  Losing no time, he at once attacked the Imperial Abschied in a special pamphlet, “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict,” which immediately followed the “Warnunge” and was soon being read throughout the German lands.

  It is true that at the beginning he here affirms that it is not his wish to “write against his Imperial Majesty or any of the authorities, temporal or spiritual.” Yet the whole work is nothing but a piece of frightful abuse against the decision arrived at by Charles V and against those Estates of the realm which had confirmed it. It is a mere artifice when he declares that he is merely inveighing against “traitors and other miscreants,” whether “Princes or Bishops, who work their deeds of wickedness in the name of the Emperor,” “particularly against that arch-knave, Pope Clement [VII] and his servant Campegius,” for all the while, now with satire, now in deadly earnest, he is really attacking the Reichstag and the authority of the Empire. Incidentally we may mention that, quite oblivious of the Imperial command, he had launched this pamphlet amongst the people without submitting it to the censorship, and that in the very title he speaks of the “supposed Edict,” though it was a question of an Edict issued in due form and signed and sealed by the Emperor. His distortions and misrepresentations, both of historical truth and of the Catholic doctrine as put forward at the Reichstag, are so gross that they deserve to be chronicled here.

  Some of his misstatements were at once pointed out to him, in 1531, by Franz Arnoldi, parish-priest at Cöllen, near Meissen, in the “Antwort auf das Büchlein,” printed at Dresden, probably at the instance of Duke George of Saxony. “As many lies as words,” exclaims Arnoldi; “the devil, the father of lies and murderer of the human race,” was anxious to support Luther by means of the “dissensions, disagreements and revolts” which had already been stirred up, and, for this purpose, had sent this shocking booklet among the people through the agency of his “familiar and customary instrument and tool, Martin Luther, that barrel brimful of abuse and slander.” Over and over again Arnoldi expresses his conviction in the strongest and coarsest language, that “the apostate undoubtedly worked under the devil’s own direction.” Luther’s proceedings do not, however, stand out with sufficient clearness in Arnoldi’s tract; indeed, the author was not competent to grapple with the task he undertook. For instance, he fails to show by examples how Luther, all through his pamphlet, makes use of dishonest devices. Thus Luther represents the Imperial Recess as laying it down that everything which the Lutherans opposed was certain on the strength of the Gospel, or of a special inspiration received by the Pope, and that this applied even to rea
l ecclesiastical abuses, to say nothing of certain pious customs not affecting the faith. Hoping to mislead the people, Luther tells them that whoever refuses to take Holy Water has, according to the Reichstag, fallen under sentence of death; that, according to the same source, “befoulment with holy things, pilgrimages and such-like” is a true revelation; that festivals and fasts, cowls and tonsure, payments to Rome and pious brotherhoods, come, according to the Papists, from the Gospel, in fact, constitute their only Gospel. By his “inspirations” the Pope sets himself above Holy Scripture, just as he makes himself Emperor and sets himself above the Emperor, particularly in “secular government.” In support of this last statement he cites the Decretals, though his references prove nothing of the sort but rather the reverse.

  It will be worth our while to examine rather more closely Luther’s system of polemics as it appears in his work “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict.” Its utter unfairness was, indeed, calculated to rouse the masses to a pitch in which deeds of violence were to be expected.

  Seeing that the Edict promulgated by the Reichstag merely leads people to “blaspheme God day and night,” it were better to be a Turk than a Christian under such a banner. The Edict “abuses and slanders the married state” — because it does not tolerate those priests who “live a dishonourable life or with dishonourable women.” It brings to nought the Word of God because it will not allow those to preach who teach, like himself, “that which is in accordance with faith in Christ.” It entirely degrades the authorities by inciting them only to “murder, burn, drown, hang and expel” the people. “Let no one,” he says, “be apprehensive of this Edict which they have so shamefully invented and promulgated” in the name of the pious Emperor, for in real truth it is the veriest devil’s dung.

  Many other almost incredible misrepresentations accompany his stream of eloquence. Bishops, cardinals and popes were merely squandering Church property “on women of easy virtue, on feasting and debauchery,” whereas Luther and his followers employed for good purposes such possessions of the Church as they had appropriated. If they did not hold them in very high esteem this was because so much “blasphemy” still adhered to them. The monks were stifled in their holiness-by-works; they were convinced, for instance, that they had infallibly won heaven by merely donning the religious habit. The clergy were a mere herd of “hogs and debauchees.” Many of his statements were made expressly to excite the contempt and laughter of the masses. The clerical doctrine of good works, for instance, consisted in believing that whoever inadvertently swallowed a drop of water or a gnat before communion, was not permitted to approach the sacrament. According to him the clergy declared that “whoever had a smudge on his rochet was guilty of a mortal sin.” Of himself and his preaching on faith he has it, that “he insisted more upon good works than Popery had ever done”; nevertheless, he would not have men seek salvation in their works without Christ, as the Pope taught, and as the sophistical authors of the Edict, “those imperial clerks and poets,” believed.