Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  CHAPTER XXII

  LUTHER AND LYING

  1. A Battery of Assertions.

  Luther’s frank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks, “if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience, or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t matter in the least.”

  It is worth while ascertaining how Luther — who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness — behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, the strength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.

  There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.

  On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”

  To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,” and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans — in which they differed from Italians and Greeks — their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds — and the words do him credit— “To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”

  This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.

  We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.

  For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in the Decretals. Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.” In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do; on Feb. 3, and again on Feb. 20, 1519, he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth. — In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection. Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.

  In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.

  In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.” — And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”

  To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.

  It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V. Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him. — Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.” He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.” And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.

  If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable
discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversy of 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.

  “I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.” “While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”

  His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.

  The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.” In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.” In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., .)

  This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.” Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542), whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.

  In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.

  We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,” although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.” — Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.

  At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws of the monster Behemoth.” Yet he knew well enough that the promise of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby forfeited his safe conduct.

  Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the Evangel. In confidence he declared that he “believed the Bull to be real and authentic,” and yet at that very time, in his “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.

  His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”

  A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.

  While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.

  In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point of raising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.

  Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.

  He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “quantum fragilitas humana permittit”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”

  To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their false doctrines. His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says, are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single article of the Faith. — Of Carlstadt, his theological child of trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the Bible, and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt, a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurring flood of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the Reformer poured upon his opponent.”

  Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.

  St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the r
eligious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.” Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.

  When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope. Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.