Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The following example likewise shows how Melanchthon’s want of uprightness and firmness contributed to raise difficulties and unpleasantness with those in power. Johann Frederick of Saxony seized upon the bishopric of Naumburg-Zeitz, and, in spite of the Emperor’s warning, caused Amsdorf to be “consecrated” its bishop. The Wittenbergers, including Melanchthon, had given their sanction to this step. Afterwards, however, the latter was overwhelmed with scruples. “Tyranny has increased more and more at the Courts,” exclaimed Melanchthon.— “There is no doubt that his sense of responsibility in a proceeding, which he had been driven to sanction against his better judgment, depressed him.” He trembled at the thought that “the matter might well lead to warlike entanglements, and that the Emperor would resent as an insult and never forget this violent seizure of the highest spiritual principalities.”

  Here we shall only hint at Melanchthon’s attitude — again characterised by weakness and indecision — at the time of the Interim controversy. He himself, from motives of policy and out of consideration for the interests of the Court, had lent a hand in the bringing about of the Leipzig Interim. The “real” Lutherans (“Gnesio-Lutherans”) saw in this an alliance with the Popish abomination. The “temporising policy of the Interim” in which he “became entangled,” remarks Carl Sell, “called forth the righteous anger of all honest German Protestants.” “Melanchthon saved his life’s work only at the cost of the agony of the last thirteen years of his life ... a real martyr — albeit a tragically guilty one — to a cause.” “The whole struggle of ‘Gnesio-Lutheranism’ with ‘Philippism’ consisted in employing against Melanchthon the very weapon of which Melanchthon himself had made use,” viz. the “confusion of theological opinions with the Divine data which these opinions purported to represent.”

  A redeeming feature in the life of this unhappy man, upon which one is glad to dwell after what has gone before, was his strong sense of right and wrong. In spite of all his weakness, his conscience was highly sensitive. Thus he himself supplies in many cases the moral appreciation of his actions in his outspoken statements and frank confessions to some trusted friend, for whom his words were also intended to serve as a guide.

  To his friends he was in the habit of giving advice on their behaviour, couching such advice in the language of the scholar. Nor was he jesting when he declared that such good counsel was intended in the first instance for himself; in practice, however, the deed fell short of the will. So excellent was his theory that many of his aphorisms, in their short, classical form, became permanent principles of morality. Their influence was on a par with that of his pedagogical writings, which long held sway in the history of education.

  His friends could count not only on the ethical guidance of the philosopher and Humanist, but even on his ready assistance in matters of all sorts. It was not in his nature to refuse his sympathy to anyone, and, to the students, who gladly sought his assistance, he was unable to say no.

  Another valuable quality was that talent for making peace, of which he repeatedly made use in the interests of his co-religionists. His conversation and bearing were exceedingly courteous. Erasmus, for instance, speaks of his “irresistible charm” (“gratia quædam fatalis”). In a letter of 1531 Erasmus says: “In addition to his excellent education and rare eloquence, he possesses an irresistible charm, due more to ‘genius’ than to ‘ingenium.’ For this reason he stands in high esteem with noble minds, and, even amongst his enemies, there is not one who cordially hates him.” At the time of the Interim controversy the agents of the Duke of Saxony were desirous that the Catholic party should find men of real moderation and culture to negotiate with Melanchthon and the other leaders of the new faith. They were particularly anxious that Claudius Jaius, the Jesuit, should repair to Saxony for this purpose. Peter Canisius, apprised of this, wrote, on April 30, 1551, to Ignatius his superior, that these people were sure from experience that Jaius, with the modesty he owed to his culture, would do more good than the most violent controversies.

  Before the world Melanchthon was careful to hide the growing dissension between himself and Luther.

  Thus, writing on June 22, 1537, to Veit Dietrich, he says, alluding to the quarrel commenced by Cordatus, that he was working for peace at Wittenberg University. “Nor does Luther appear to be badly disposed towards us”; “no hatred exists, and should there be any it will presently break out”; for his own part he intends to be patient, “even should it come to blows [‘plaga’].”

  Even Luther’s outbursts of anger were explained away by his more supple comrade, who exhorts his friends to possess their souls in patience and to conceal such faults from the eyes of the world. The “dreadful man,” he writes to Bucer — applying to Luther the Homeric title [Greek: deinos]— “often gets these boisterous fits. More is gained by ignoring them than by open contradiction. Let us therefore make use of the philosophy in which we both have been initiated, cover our wounds, and exhort others too to do the same.” Luther, owing to his combativeness, was not to be depended on, and the sad part of it is that “our little Churches are tossed about with neither sail nor sober pilot”; for his part he feared victory as much as war; he was opposed to war in the cause of the Evangel because in the confusion the Court officials and the great ones of the Protestant party, the “Centaurs,” would assuredly stretch out greedy hands to grasp the rights and possessions of the Church.

  Melanchthon was at that time in a certain sense the “one who, thanks to his moderation, kept everything together at Wittenberg. This is expressly stated by Cruciger.” For this his endless patience, what he himself terms his “servile spirit,” was to some extent accountable. Yet his Humanism, and the equanimity, calmness and moderation he owed to it, doubtless served the peacemaker in good stead. To all, whether of his own party or of the opposite, he was wont to declare his abhorrence of the “democratia aut tyrannis indoctorum.” Owing to such personal qualities of Melanchthon’s, Cochlæus himself, in a letter to his friend Dantiscus, in which he attacks Melanchthon, admits that he was “nevertheless at heart very fond of him.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  LUTHER’S RELATIONS WITH ZWINGLI, CARLSTADT, BUGENHAGEN AND OTHERS

  1. Zwingli and the Controversy on the Supper

  From the time that Zwingli, in 1519, commenced working on his own lines at Zürich in the cause of the religious innovations, he had borrowed more and more largely from Luther’s writings. Whilst acknowledging Luther’s great achievements he did not, however, sacrifice his independence. Writing in 1523 with a strong sense of what he himself had done and of the success which had attended his own efforts, he said: “I began to preach before ever I had heard of Luther.... I was not instructed by Luther, for, until two years ago, his very name was unknown to me, and I worked on the Bible Word alone.... Nor do I intend to be called after Luther, seeing that I have read but little of his doctrine. What I have read of his writings, however, is as a rule so excellently grounded on the Word of God, that no creature can overthrow it.... I did not learn the teaching of Christ from Luther, but from the Word of God. If Luther preaches Christ, he is doing the same as I, though, praise be to God, countless more souls have been led to God by him than by me.”

  Little attention was paid at Wittenberg to the religious occurrences at Zürich, though they had been welcomed by Luther. Only when Zwingli sided with Carlstadt against Luther in the controversy on the Supper did the latter begin to give him more heed; this he at once did in his own fashion. He asserted, as he had already done in the case of Carlstadt, [Œcolampadius and others, that Zwingli would not have known the truth concerning Christ and the Evangel “had not Luther first written on the subject”; of his own initiative he would never have dared to come to freedom and the light; later he spoke of him as “a child of his loins” who had betrayed him.

  In 1526 the divergency of opinion between Luther and Zwingli on the subject of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, already present as early as 1524, became much more
apparent.

  Luther, in 1526, in his “Sermon von dem Sacrament,” and, in 1527, in his work on the words “This is My Body,” had, conformably with his theory, urged that Christ is present with the bread, and spoken not at all kindly of his Swiss gainsayers, the Zwinglians. Zwingli, on his side, soon after the appearance of the last work, attacked Luther’s view in a writing entitled “Amica exegesis” (1528); this, his first open assault on the Wittenberg doctor, he followed up with a German pamphlet on the words of Christ: “This is My Body.” In these we have the protest of the sceptical rationalism of Zürich, against Luther’s half-hearted doctrine on the Sacrament.

  Zwingli demanded that the words of institution should be taken figuratively and the Eucharist regarded as a mere symbol of the Body of Christ. This he did with no less assurance than Luther had urged his own pet view, viz. that Christ is present together with the bread (Impanation instead of the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation). Zwingli complained bitterly of the rude tone adopted by Luther; according to him God’s Word must prevail, not Luther’s abusive epithets, “fanatic, devil, rogue, heretic, Trotz, Plotz, Blitz and Donner, and so on.” Over and over again he roundly accuses Luther of “lying” and “falsehood,” though his language is not so lurid as his adversary’s. The artifices by which he sought to evade the plain sense of the words “This is My Body,” were well calculated to call forth a rude contradiction from Luther. Zwingli’s arbitrary recourse to the “figurative, symbolical, metaphorical” sense, Luther answered by appealing to the interpretation accepted by the whole of antiquity. At the turn of the fourth and the fifth centuries Macarius Magnes had written: “Christ has said ‘This is My Body’; it is no figure of the Body of Christ, nor a figure of His flesh, as some have been foolish enough to assert, but in truth the body and blood of Christ.” Concerning the promise of the Eucharist, Hilary of Poitiers declared in the fourth century: “Christ says: ‘My flesh is meat indeed’ (John vi. 56); as to the truth of the flesh and blood there can be no doubt. The Lord Himself teaches it and our faith confesses it, viz. that it is truly flesh and truly blood.” Any other interpretation of the words of Christ he calls “violenta atque imprudens prædicatio, aliena atque impia intelligentia.” The reproach, which at a much earlier period Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostles, had brought forward against the Docetæ of his day, Luther might well have applied to the Zwinglians: “They refuse to confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, that flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised from the dead.”

  We can understand the abhorrence which Luther conveyed by the term Sacramentarians (“sacramentarii”), by which he characterised all those — whether Swiss, Reformed, or followers of Carlstadt — who denied the Real Presence in the Sacrament.

  The Marburg Conference of 1529, at which both Zwingli and Luther attended with their friends, did not bring any real settlement, for no compromise on the question of the Eucharist was feasible. Fourteen of the other Articles submitted by Luther were accepted, but the 15th, with this principal question, remained in suspense owing to the opposition of the Swiss. In consequence of this Luther refused to recognise Zwingli and his followers as brothers, in spite of all the prayers of his opponents. He would not concede to them Christian brotherhood but merely “Christian charity,” that charity, moreover, which, as he declared, we owe even to our enemies. He again voiced it as his opinion, that, “your spirit is different from ours,” which greatly incensed the other side. A statement was appended to the Fifteen Articles of Marburg, to the effect, that, on account of the Supper, they had “so far failed to reach an understanding, but that each side would exercise Christian charity towards the other so far as every man’s conscience allowed.”

  Once, during the proceedings, Luther, to show his attachment to the literal sense of the words “This is My Body,” chalked these words on the tablecloth and held it up in front of him, pointing significantly to the writing.

  Luther, however, overlooked the fact, that, if once the words were taken in their literal sense, as he was perfectly right in doing, there was no alternative but to accept the Catholic interpretation, according to which the bread is actually and substantially changed into the Body of Christ, and that to say: “This is bread though Christ is present,” was really out of the question. Many theologians who follow Luther in other matters, unhesitatingly admit his inconsequence.

  At the solemn meeting at Marburg, Luther was not to be disconcerted, not even when Zwingli argued that the words of promise of the Sacrament in St. John’s Gospel (vi. 32 ff., 48 ff.), where we read: “My flesh is meat indeed,” must mean “my flesh signifies meat.” When Luther, no less erroneously, objected that the passage in question did not apply there, Zwingli exclaimed: “Of course not, Doctor, for that passage is the breaking of your neck.” Luther replied testily: “Don’t be so sure of it; necks don’t break so easily; here you are in Hesse, not in Switzerland!” Zwingli was constrained to protest that, even in Switzerland, people enjoyed the protection of the law, and to explain that what he had said had not been meant by way of any threat.

  Behind the efforts to unite Wittenberg and Zürich there was a different influence at work. Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, like Zwingli, was anxious to establish a league of all the Swiss and German Protestants against those who, in the Empire, defended Catholicism. This proposal Luther resisted with all his might, urging the Landgrave not to make common cause with the false teachers, to the delight of the devil. Melanchthon, who also was present, was likewise pleased to see the Landgrave’s plan frustrated, for it would have rendered impossible any reconciliation with the Emperor and the larger portion of the Empire, which was the vague ideal after which he was striving. The parties, however, were too distrustful of each other to arrive at any settlement. Jonas, for his diplomacy, called Bucer a “fox,” and said of Zwingli, that he detected in him a certain arrogance such as was to be expected in a boor.

  At the time of the Marburg Conference, Vienna was being besieged by the Turks. Thus, whilst the Empire stood in the greatest peril from foes without, an attempt was being made within to reach a settlement which might drive the wedge yet deeper into the unity of the Fatherland. The latter attempt ended, however, in failure, whilst the siege of Vienna was raised and the departure of the Turks brought about a certain strengthening of the Empire.

  The tension between the Zwinglians and the Lutherans was not lessened when each party claimed that it had gained the upper hand and utterly routed the other at Marburg.

  On October 11, 1531, Zwingli fell in the battle of Cappel, in which, mounted on horseback and fully armed, he was leading the men of Zürich against the five Catholic cantons. What Luther thought and felt at that time we learn both from Schlaginhaufen’s Notes of his Table-Talk in 1531 and 1532, which afford some fresh information, and from Luther’s letters and printed works.

  The very first Note we have of Schlaginhaufen’s touches upon Zwingli’s untimely end. It would appear that a rumour had got abroad that Luther’s other opponents, Carlstadt and Pellicanus, had also been slain.

  Luther was in high glee when news of Zwingli’s death reached him.

  He said: “God knows the thoughts of the heart. It is well that Zwingli, Carlstadt, and Pellicanus lie dead on the battle-field, for otherwise we could not have retained the Landgrave, Strasburg and other of our neighbours [true to our doctrine]. Oh, what a triumph is this, that they have perished! God indeed knows His business well.”— “Zwingli died like a brigand,” he said later, when scarcely a year had elapsed since his death. “He wished to force others to accept his errors, went to war, and was slain.” “He drew the sword, therefore he has received his reward, for Christ says: ‘All who take the sword shall perish by the sword.’ If God has saved him, then He did so contrary to His ordinary ways.”— “All seek to cloak their deceitful doctrines with the name of the Evangel,” so he exclaims in 1532. From Augsburg he heard that the Sacramentarian (i.e. Zwinglian) preachers were usi
ng his name and Melanchthon’s. “Since they refused to be our friends in God’s name, let them be so in the devil’s, even as Judas was the friend of Christ.”

  Because Thomas Münzer was no friend of the Evangel he was, according to Luther, destined to perish miserably and shamefully. Zwingli he placed on exactly the same footing; his death likewise was a just judgment. Zwingli, so he will have it, was a complete unbeliever. In his newly published sermons of 1530 he had shown that Zwingli, like Carlstadt, by his attacks on the Supper, had denied all the articles of the faith. “If a man falls away from one article of faith, however insignificant it may appear to reason, he has fallen away from all and does not hold any of them aright. For instance, it is certain that our fanatics who now deny the Sacrament, also deny Christ’s Divinity and all the other articles of faith, however much they protest to the contrary, and the reason of this is, that, when even one link of the chain is broken, the whole chain is in pieces.”

  H. Barge, a Protestant, remarks: “After the battle of Cappel, Luther appears to have devoted his unusual gifts of eloquence to slandering Zwingli and all who remained true to him, systematically, deliberately, and maliciously, as mere heretics.”

  The following delineation of Zwingli by Luther dates from 1538: “Zwingli was a very clever and upright man, but he fell [into error]; then he became so presumptuous as to dare to say and write: ‘I hold that no one in the world ever believed that the Body and Blood of Christ are present in the Sacrament.’” Luther adds: Because Zwingli ventured to speak rashly against him [Luther] and “against what is plain to the whole world, he perished miserably, just as did Egranus, that importunate fellow.”

  Just as he had condemned Carlstadt and Pellicanus, and, lastly, Egranus (Johann Silvius Egranus of Zwickau), so also elsewhere he lumps together in one condemnation with Zwingli all those doctors who differed from him. Relentlessly he scourges them as he had scourged the Catholics. “The character of those who oppose the Word is fiendish rather than human. Man does what he can, but when the devil takes possession of him then ‘enmity arises between him and the woman’” (Gen. iii. 15).