Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

In that same year he published at Leipzig a work entitled “A Christian Instruction on the righteousness of faith and on good works,” which, in spite of its bitterness, contained many home-truths. There, apart from what he says on doctrinal matters, we find an account of the “temptations and trials” he had to endure for having ventured to teach that “good works and a Christian life, side by side with faith, are useful and necessary for securing eternal life.”

  About this time Luther again sent forth a challenge to Erasmus and to all Erasmians generally who had broken with him, Egranus included.

  He told his friends that now his business was to “purify the Church from the brood of Erasmus” (“a fœtibus eius”); he was referring particularly to Egranus, also to Crotus Rubeanus, Wicel, [Œcolampadius, and Campanus. Erasmus had already “seduced” Zwingli and now he had also “converted Egranus, who believes just as much as he,” viz. nothing. — Egranus he calls a “proud donkey,” who teaches that Christ must not be exalted so high, having learnt this from Erasmus; “this proud spirit declared that though Christ had earned it, yet we must merit it.” — He had long been acquainted with this false spirit, so he wrote in 1533 or 1534 to a Joachimstal burgher; he, like other sectarians, was full of “devil’s venom.” “Even though no syrup or purgative be given them, yet they cannot but expel their poison from mouth and anus. The time will come when they will be unable any longer to pass the matter, and then their belly must burst like that of Judas; for they will not be able to retain what they have stolen and devoured of [the doctrine of] Christ.”

  That Egranus finally drank himself to death with Malmsey “is a despicable calumny, which can be traced back to Mathesius.” In the sixteenth-century controversies it was the usual thing on either side to calumniate opponents and to make them die the worst death conceivable, and it would appear, that, in the case of Egranus, at a very early date unfavourable reports were circulated concerning his manner of death. His lamentable end (“misere periit”), Luther likens to that of Zwingli, struck down in the battle of Cappel by a divine judgment. His death occurred in 1535.

  In the “Christian Instruction,” referred to above, Egranus had written: “The new prophets can only tell us that we are freed from sin by Christ; what He commanded or forbade in the Gospel that they pass over as were it not in the Gospel at all.” “If we simply say: Christ has done everything and what we do is of no account, then we are making too much of Christ’s share, for we also must do something to secure our salvation. By such words Christ is made a cloak for our sins, and, as is actually now the case, all seek to conceal and excuse their wickedness and viciousness under the mantle of Christ’s merits.”

  “If such faith without works continues to be preached much longer, the Christian religion will fall into ruins and come to a lamentable end, and the place where this faith without works is taught will become a Sodom and Gomorrha.”

  4. Bugenhagen, Jonas and others

  Disagreements such as these never arose to mar the relations between Luther and some of his other more intimate co-workers, for instance, his friendship with Bugenhagen and Jonas, who have been so frequently alluded to already. He was always ready to acknowledge in the warmest manner the great services they rendered him in the defence and spread of his teaching, and to support them when they stood in need of his assistance. He was never stingy in his bestowal of praise, narrow-minded or jealous, in his acknowledgement of the merits of friendly fellow-preachers, or of those writers who held Lutheran views.

  Nicholas von Amsdorf, who introduced the new faith into Magdeburg in 1524 and there became Superintendent, he praises for the firmness with which he confessed the faith and for his fearless conduct generally. In Disputations he was wont to go straight to the heart of the matter like the “born theologian” he was; at Schmalkalden, when preaching before the Princes and magnates, he had not shrunk from declaring that our Evangel was intended for the weak and oppressed and for those who feel themselves sinners, though he could not discern any such in the audience.

  Johann Brenz, preacher in Schwäbisch-Hall since 1522, and one of the founders of the new church system in Suabia, was greatly lauded by Luther for his exegetical abilities. “He is a learned and reliable man. Amongst all the theologians of our day there is not one who knows how to interpret and handle Holy Scripture like Brenz. When I gaze in admiration at his spirit I almost despair of my own powers. Certainly none of our people can do what he has done in his exposition of the Gospel of St. John. At times, it is true, he is carried away by his own ideas, yet he sticks to the point and speaks conformably to the simplicity of God’s Word.”

  Next to Melanchthon, however, the friend whom Luther praised most highly as a “thoroughly learned and most able man,” was Johann Bugenhagen. “He has, under most trying circumstances, been of service to many of the Churches.”

  In his Preface to Bugenhagen’s Latin Commentary on the Psalms — a work which, even in the opinion of Protestant theologians, “leaves much to be desired” from the “point of view of learning,” and which in reality is merely a sort of polemical work of edification, written from the standpoint of the new faith — Luther declared, that the spirit of Christ had at length unlocked the Psalter through Bugenhagen; every teacher must admit that now “the spirit was revealing secrets hidden for ages.” “I venture to assert that the first person on earth to give an explanation of the Book of Psalms is Pomeranus. Almost all earlier writers have introduced their own views into the book, but here the judgment of the spirit will teach you wondrous things.”

  Yet at the very outset, in the first verse of the Psalms, instead of a learned commentary, we find Bugenhagen expounding the new belief, and attacking the alleged self-righteousness of Catholicism, termed by him the “cathedra pestilentiæ”; he even relates at length his conversion to Lutheranism, which had given scandal “to those not yet enlightened by the sun of the Evangel.” They were no longer to wait for the completion of his own Commentary on the Psalms, Luther concludes, since now — in place of poor Luther — David, Isaias, Paul, and John were themselves speaking to the reader.

  “He had no clear perception of the defects of Bugenhagen’s exegetical method,” remarks O. Albrecht, the editor of the above Preface in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works. The explanation of this “uncalled-for praise,” as Albrecht terms it, is to be found in the feeling expressed by Luther in the first sentence of the Preface: At the present time God had caused His Word to shine like crystal, whereas of yore there prevailed only chill and dismal mists.

  The truth is that few of Luther’s assistants promoted his cause with such devotion and determination combined as did Pomeranus, who, for all his zeal, was both practical and sober in his ways. Such were his achievements for the cause, that Luther greets him in the superscription of a letter as “Bishop of the Church of Wittenberg, Legate of Christ’s face and heart to Denmark, my brother and my master.” He thus explains the words “legatus a facie et a corde”: “the Pope boasts of his ‘legati a latere,’ I boast of my pious preachers ‘a facie et a corde.’” Luther was in the habit of putting Bugenhagen on the same footing with himself and Melanchthon: Luther, Philip, and Pomeranus will support the Evangel as long as they are there, he says, but after this there will come a fall (“fiet lapsus”). Let those braggarts who pretend they know better “come to me, to Philip, and to Pomeranus ... then they will be nicely confounded.” Köstlin is, however, rightly of opinion that, as compared with Luther and Melanchthon, Bugenhagen was “merely a subordinate, though endowed by nature with considerable powers of mind and body.” Yet the sun of Luther’s favour shone upon him. Agricola, “the poor fellow,” says Luther, “looks down on Pomeranus, but the latter is a great theologian and has plenty nerve for his work (‘multum habet nervorum’); Agricola, of course, would make himself out to be more learned than Master Philip or I.” “Pomeranus is a splendid professor”; “his sermons are full of wealth.” The truth is that the “wealth,” or rather expansiveness, of his discourses was
so great that Luther had to reprove him severely for the length of his sermons.

  Johann Bugenhagen, called Pommer or Pomeranus because he hailed from Wollin in Pomerania, after two years spent at the University of Greifswald and a further course devoted mainly to Humanist studies, was ordained priest by the Bishop of Cammin, when “as yet he probably had not begun to study theology.” At the College at Treptow he earned respect as professor of Humanism and as Rector; in his desire to further the better theology advocated by Erasmus he took to studying the Bible, and, on Luther’s appearance, was soon won over to the cause, though on first reading Luther’s work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” he “had been repelled by the palpable heresies” it contained. He settled at Wittenberg, delivered private lectures on the Psalms, and married, on October 13, 1522, a servant-maid of Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer; in the following year he was inducted at the Schlosskirche as parish-priest of Wittenberg by the magistrates, acting together with Luther. In defiance of right and justice and of the murmurs raised, Luther, from the pulpit, proclaimed him pastor, thus overruling the objections of the Chapter; his choice by the board of magistrates “and by the congregation agreeably with the evangelical teaching of Paul,” Luther held to be quite sufficient.

  As pastor, Bugenhagen displayed great energy not merely in preaching to and instructing the people, but in furthering in every way the spread of Lutheranism in the civic and social life of the Electorate. His practical talents made him eventually the apostle of the new Church, even beyond the confines of Saxony. He successively introduced or organised it in Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, and in Pomerania, his own country; then in Denmark, from 1537-39, where he fixed his residence at Copenhagen. Two main features are apparent in all he did; everywhere the new Churches were established on a strictly civil basis, and, so far as the new religion allowed of it, the old Catholic forms were retained.

  In his indefatigable and arduous undertakings Bugenhagen made himself one with Luther, and became, so to speak, a replica of his master. In his scrupulous observance of Luther’s doctrine he was to be outdone by none, save possibly by Amsdorf; in rudeness and want of consideration where the new Evangel was concerned, and in his whole way of thinking, he stood nearest to Luther, the only difference being, that, in his discourses and writings we miss Luther’s imagination and feeling. In the literary field, in addition to the Commentary on the Psalms and other similar writings, he distinguished himself by a work in vindication of the new preaching, addressed to the city of Hamburg and entitled: “Von dem Christen-loven und den rechten guden Werken” (1526), also by the share he took, with Melanchthon and Cruciger, in Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and his labours in connection with the Low-Saxon version. Most important of all, however, were his Church-constitutions. Bugenhagen died at Wittenberg on April 20, 1558, after having already lost his sight — broken down by the bitter trials which had come on him subsequent to Luther’s death.

  Such was Luther’s confidence in his friend and appreciation of his power, that, during Bugenhagen’s prolonged absence, we often find Luther expressing his desire to see him again by his side and in charge of the Wittenberg pastorate. “Your absence,” so in 1531 he wrote to him at Lübeck, “is greatly felt by us. I am overburdened with work and my health is not good. I am neglecting the Church-accounts, and the shepherd should be here. I cannot attend to it. The world remains the world and the devil is its God.... Since the world refuses to allow itself to be saved, let it perish. Greet your Eve and Sara in my name and that of my wife and give greetings to all our friends.”

  When Bugenhagen was at Wittenberg Luther loved to open to him the secret recesses of his heart, especially when suffering from “temptations.” Frequently he even aroused in Bugenhagen a sort of echo of his own feelings, which shows us how close a tie existed between them, and gives us an idea of the kind of suggestion Luther was wont to exercise over those who surrendered themselves to his influence.

  Bugenhagen, like Luther, was not conscious of any good-will or merit of his own, but — apart from the merits of Christ with which we are bedecked — merely of the oppression arising from his “great weakness” and “secret idolatry against the first Table of the Law of Moses.” Hence, when Luther, in June, 1540, complained that Agricola was after some righteousness of his own, whereas he (Luther) could find nothing of the sort in himself, Bugenhagen at once chimed in with the assurance that he was no less unable to discover any such thing in himself.

  Luther’s anger against the fanatics and Sacramentarians was imbibed by Bugenhagen. To him and his other Table-guests Luther complained that his adversaries, Carlstadt, Grickel and Jeckel (i.e. Agricola and Jacob Schenk), were ignorant braggarts; they accuse us of want of charity because we will not allow them to have their own way, though we read in Paul: “A man that is a heretic avoid.” Bugenhagen was at once ready to propose a drastic remedy. “Doctor, we should do what is commanded in Deuteronomy [xiii. 5 ff.], where Moses says they should be put to death.” Whereupon Luther replied: “Quite so, and the reason is given in the same text: It is better to make away with a man than with God.” Bugenhagen was also the first to take up his pen in Luther’s defence when the Swiss heresy concerning the doctrine of the Supper began to be noised abroad owing to a letter of Zwingli’s to Alber at Reutlingen, and to his book, “Commentarius de vera et falsa religione,” of March, 1525. When Melanchthon showed signs of inclining towards the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament, there was soon a rumour at Wittenberg that “Melanchthon and Pomeranus have fallen out badly on the Article concerning the Supper,” and an apprehension of “dreadful dissensions amongst the foremost theologians.”

  In 1532 Luther declared: There must be some ready to show a “brave front” to the devil; “there must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan, as we three [Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen]; but not all are able or willing to endure this.” And on another occasion he described, in Bugenhagen’s presence, how he was wont cynically to mock the devil when “he comes by night to worry me ... by bringing up my sins”; Satan did not, however, torment him about his really grave sins, such as his “celebration of Mass and provocation of God [in the religious life].” “May God preserve me from that! For were I to realise keenly how great these sins were, the horror of it would kill me!” It was on the occasion of this fantastic outburst, employed by Luther to quiet his conscience, that Bugenhagen, not to be outdone in coarseness, uttered the words already recorded (above, ).

  The spiritual kinship between Luther and Bugenhagen produced in the latter a similar liking for coarse language. He was much addicted to the use of strong expressions, witness, for instance, his saying that friars wore ropes around their waists that we might have wherewith to hang them.

  In his most severe temptations Luther found consolation in the words of comfort spoken by the pastor of Wittenberg, and he assures us he was often refreshed by such exhortations, the memory of which he was slow to lose. Bugenhagen assisted him during his severe illness in 1527, and again in the other attack some ten years later. On the latter occasion he summoned his friend to Gotha, made his confession to him, so he says, and commended the “Church and his family” to his care. When separated they were in the habit of begging each other’s prayers.

  In his letters Bugenhagen recounts to Luther the success of his labours, in order to afford him pleasure, giving due thanks to God. Somewhat strange is the account he sent Luther of an encounter he had at Lübeck with a girl supposed to be possessed by the devil; through her lips the devil had given testimony to him just as at Ephesus, so the Acts of the Apostles tell us, he had borne witness to the power of Jesus and Paul. Hardly had he come to the town and visited the girl than the devil, speaking through her, called him by name (we must not forget that her parents, at least, were acquainted with Bugenhagen) and declared his coming to Lübeck to be quite uncalled for. That, in spite of his prayers and tears, he was unable to expel the devil, he himself admits. The account of the incident, written down
by him soon after his arrival at Lübeck, and before he had properly inquired into the case, was soon published under a curious title. So much did Luther think of the encounter with this hysterical or mentally deranged girl, that he wrote: “Satan is giving Pomeranus a great deal to do at Lübeck with a maid who is possessed. The cunning demon is planning marvels.” This, when forwarding from the Coburg to Wenceslaus Link, preacher at Nuremberg, the account he had received. In 1536 Bugenhagen related at table, during the conciliation meetings held at Wittenberg, the encounters he had had in Lübeck and Brunswick with “delivered demoniacs.”

  Luther on his side gave his friend, when busy abroad, frequent tidings of the state of things at Wittenberg. In 1537 he sent to him, at Copenhagen, an account of a nasty trick played by Paul Heintz, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, “greatly to the detriment of the town and University.” The latter, in order to possess himself of an inheritance, had given out that a youthful stepson of his was dead, and had caused a dog to be solemnly buried in his place with all the usual rites. “The Master’s drama makes me almost burst with rage.” If these lawyers (who in Luther’s opinion treated the case too leniently) “look upon the disgrace to our Church as a small matter,” he writes, to Bugenhagen, “I will show them a bit of the true Luther (‘ero, Deo volente, Lutherus in hac causa’).” He did actually write a furious letter to the Elector to secure the severe punishment of the offender, who has caused us “to be jeered at everywhere as dogs’ undertakers”; the lawyers, who in the Pope’s or the devil’s name had shown themselves lenient, he would denounce from the pulpit. To Magister Johann Saxo, who in turn related it to Bugenhagen, he declared, that, should the burial of the dog with all the rites of the Church be proved to have taken place, then “Paul would pay for it with his neck” on account of the mockery of religion involved. Even later Luther declared: “I should have liked to have written his death-sentence”; he added, however, that the culprit had really “buried the dog in order to drive away the plague.”