Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  He teaches, for instance: “It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded off and punished like all other revolts.”

  The fact is, the ecclesiastical order of things to which Luther attached himself more and more strongly amounted to this, as he declares in various passages of his Table-Talk. Through the ministers and preachers, as through His servants, God speaks to man; through them God baptises, instructs and absolves; what the ministers of the Gospel say and do, that God Himself does through and in us as His instruments. Whoever does not believe this, Luther looks on as damned. In a sermon of 1528, speaking of the spiritual authority which intervenes between God and man, he exclaims: “God requires for His Kingdom pious Bishops and pastors, through them he governs His subjects [the Emperor, on the other hand, so he had said, had not even to be a Christian since the secular power was all outward and merely served to restrain evil-doers]. If you will not hearken to these Bishops and pastors, then you will have to listen to Master Hans [the hangman] and get no thanks either.”

  He uses similar language in his sermons on Matthew: “God, by means of Prophets and Apostles, ministers and preachers, baptises, gives the sacraments, preaches and consoles; without preachers and holy persons, He does nothing, just as He does not govern land and people without the secular power.”

  Hence Luther shows himself very anxious to establish a kind of hierarchy. If then he charges the priesthood of the past with putting itself between God and man, it is hard to see how he is to avoid a similar charge being brought forward against himself. Moreover, at the bottom of his efforts, memories of his Catholic days were at work, and the feeling that an organised ministry was called for if the religious sentiment was not to die out completely among the people. His practical judgment of the conditions even appears here in a favourable light, for instance, in those passages where he insists on the authority of rightly appointed persons to act as intermediaries between God and man, and as vicars and representatives of Christ. The word Christ spoke on earth and the word of the preacher, are, he says, one and the same “re et effectu,” because Christ said: “He that heareth you heareth me” (Luke x. 16); “God deals with us through these instruments, through them He works everything and offers us all His treasures.” Indeed, “it is our greatest privilege that we have such a ministry and that God is so near to us; for he that hears Christ hears God Himself; and he that hears St. Peter or a preacher, hears Christ and God Himself speaking to us.”

  “We must always esteem the spoken Word very highly, for those who despise it become heretics at once. The Pope despises this ministry” [!]. God, however, “has ordained that no one should have faith, except thanks to the preacher’s office,” and, “without the Word, He does no work whatever in the Church.”

  Thus we find Luther, on the one hand insisting upon an authority, and, on the other, demanding freedom for the interpretation of Scripture. How he sought to harmonise the two is reserved for later examination. At any rate, it is to misapprehend both the Catholic Church and Luther’s own theological attitude, to say that “independent study of religious questions” had been forbidden in the Middle Ages and was “reintroduced” only by Luther, that he removed the “blinkers” which the Church had placed over people’s eyes and that henceforward “the representatives of the Church had no more call to assume the place of the Living God in man’s regard.”

  Luther also laid claim to having revived respect for the secular authorities, who, during the Middle Ages, had been despised owing to the one-sided regard shown to the monks and clergy. He declares that he had again brought people to esteem the earthly calling, family life and all worldly employments as being a true serving of God. Boldly he asserts, that, before my time, “the authorities did not know they were serving God”; “before my time nobody knew ... what the secular power, what matrimony, parents, children, master, servant, wife or maid really signified.” On the strength of his assertions it has been stated, that he revived the “ideal of life” by discovering the “true meaning of vocation,” which then became the “common property of the civilised world”; on this account he was “the creator of those theories which form the foundation upon which the modern State and modern civilisation rest.”

  The fact is, however, the Church of past ages fully recognised the value of the secular state and spheres of activity, saw in them a Divine institution, and respected and cherished them accordingly.

  A very high esteem for all secular callings is plainly expressed in the sermons of Johann Herolt, the famous and influential Nuremberg Dominican, whose much-read “Sermones de tempore et de Sanctis” (Latin outlines of sermons for the use of German preachers) had, prior to 1500, appeared in at least forty different editions.

  “It has been asked,” he says in one sermon, “whether the labour of parents for their children is meritorious. I reply: Yes, if only they have the intention of bringing up their children for the glory of God and in order that they may become good servants of Christ. If the parents are in a state of grace, then all their trouble with their children, in suckling them, bathing them, carrying them about, dressing them, feeding them, watching by them, teaching and reproving them, redounds to their eternal reward. All this becomes meritorious. And in the same way when the father labours hard in order to earn bread for his wife and children, all this is meritorious for the life beyond.” — A high regard for work is likewise expressed in his sermon “To workmen,” which begins with the words: “Man is born to labour as the bird is to fly.” Another sermon praises the calling of the merchant, which he calls a “good and necessary profession.”

  Another witness to the Church’s esteem for worldly callings and employments is Marcus von Weida, a Saxon Dominican. In the discourses he delivered on the “Our Father” at Leipzig, in 1501, he says: “All those pray who do some good work and live virtuously.” For everything that a man does to the praise and glory of God is really prayer. A man must always do what his state of life and his calling demands. “Hence it follows that many a poor peasant, husbandman, artisan or other man who does his work, or whatever he undertakes, in such a way as to redound to God’s glory, is more pleasing to God, by reason of the work he daily performs, and gains more merit before God than any Carthusian or Friar, be he Black, Grey or White, who stands daily in choir singing and praying.”

  It is evident that Catholic statements, such as that just quoted from Herolt, concerning the care of children being well-pleasing to God, have been overlooked by those who extol Luther as having been the first to discover and teach, that even to rock children’s cradles and wash their swaddling clothes is a noble, Christian work. What is, however, most curious is the assurance with which Luther himself claimed the merit of this discovery, in connection with his teaching on marriage.

  The Carthusian, Erhard Gross, speaks very finely of the different secular callings and states of life, and assigns to them an eminently honourable place: “What are the little precious stones in Christ’s crown but the various classes of the Christian people, who adorn the head of Christ? For He is our Head and all the Christian people are His Body for ever and ever. Hence, amongst the ornaments of the house of God some must be virgins, others widows, some married and others chaste, such as monks, priests and nuns. Nor are these all, for we have also Princes, Kings and Prelates who rule the commonwealth, those who provide for the needs of the body, as, for instance, husbandmen and fishermen, tailors and merchants, bakers and shoemakers, and, generally, all tradesmen.” If the general welfare is not to suffer, he says, each one must faithfully follow his calling. “Therefore whoever wishes to please God, let him stick to the order [state] in which God has placed him and live virtuously; he will then receive his reward from God here, and, after this life, in the world to come.”

  Although Luther must have been well aware of the views really hel
d on this subject, some excuse for his wild charges may perhaps be found in his small practical experience, prior to his apostasy, of Christian life in the world. His poverty had forced him, even in childhood, into irregular ways; he had been deprived of the blessings of a truly Christian family-life. His solitary studies had left him a stranger to the active life of good Catholics engaged in secular callings; the fact of his being a monk banished him alike from the society of the bad and impious and from that of the good and virtuous. Thus in many respects he was out of touch with the stimulating influence of the world; the versatility which results from experience was still lacking, when, in his early years at Wittenberg, he began to think out his new theories on God and sin, Grace and the Fall.

  “Whoever wishes to please God let him stick to the order [state] in which God has placed him.” These words of Gross, the Carthusian, quoted above, remind us of a comparison instituted by Herolt the Dominican between religious Orders and the “Order” of matrimony. Commending the secular calling of matrimony, he says here, that it was instituted by God Himself, whereas the religious Orders had been founded by men: “We must know that God first honoured matrimony by Himself instituting it. In this wise the Order of matrimony excels all other Orders (‘ordo matrimonialis præcellit olios ordines’); for just as St. Benedict founded the Black Monks, St. Francis the Order of Friars Minor and St. Dominic the Order of Friars Preacher, so God founded matrimony.”

  True Christian perfection, according to the ancient teaching of the Church, is not bound up with any particular state, but may be attained by all, no matter their profession, even by the married.

  Luther, and many after him, even down to the present day, have represented, that, according to the Catholic view, perfection was incapable of attainment save in the religious life, this alone being termed the “state of perfection.” In his work “On Monkish Vows” he declares: “The monks have divided Christian life into a state of perfection and one of imperfection. To the great majority they have assigned the state of imperfection, to themselves, that of perfection.”

  As a matter of fact the “state of perfection” only means, that, religious, by taking upon themselves, publicly and before the Church, the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, bind themselves to strive after perfection along this path as one leading most surely to the goal; it doesn’t imply that they are already in possession of perfection, still less that they alone possess it. By undertaking to follow all their life a Rule approved by the Church, under the guidance of Superiors appointed by the Church, they form a “state” or corporation of which perfection is the aim, and, in this sense alone, are said to belong to the “state of perfection.” In addition, it was always believed that equal, in fact the highest, perfection might be attained to in any state of life. Though the difficulties to be encountered in the worldly state were regarded as greater, yet the conquest they involved was looked upon as the fruit of an even greater love of God, the victory as more splendid, and the degree of perfection attained as so much the more exalted.

  It is the love of God which, according to the constant teaching of the Church, constitutes the essence of perfection.

  The most perfect Christian is he who fulfils the law of charity most perfectly, and this — notwithstanding whatever Luther may say — according to what has ever been the teaching of the Church, the ordinary Christian may quite well do in his everyday calling, and in the married as much as in the religious state. Even should the religious follow the severest of Rules, yet if he does not make use of the more abundant means of perfection at his command but lives in tepidity, then the ordinary Christian approaches more closely than he to the ideal standard of life if only he fulfils his duties in the home with greater love of God.

  The Bavarian Franciscan, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Luther’s contemporary, is right when he says in his work “Scrutinium divinæ scripturæ”: “We do not set up a twofold standard of perfection, one for people in the world and another for the religious. For all Christians there is but one order, one mode of worshipping God, one evangelical perfection.... But we do say this, that in cloistral life the attainment of perfection is easier, though a Christian living in the world may excel all religious in perfection.” For — such is the ground he gives in a German work— “it may well happen that in the ordinary Christian state a man runs so hotly and eagerly towards God as to outstrip all religious in all the essentials of Christian perfection, just as a sculptor may with a blunt chisel produce a masterpiece far superior to that carved by an unskilful apprentice even with the best and sharpest of tools.”

  This may suffice to elucidate the question of the Catholic ideal of life in respect of Luther’s statements, a question much debated in recent controversies but not always set in as clear a light as it deserved.

  The preceding remarks on Luther’s misrepresentations of the Church’s teaching concerning worldly callings lead us to consider his utterances on the Church’s depreciation of the female sex and of matrimony.

  5. Was Luther the Liberator of Womankind from “Mediæval Degradation”?

  Luther maintained that he had raised the dignity of woman from the depths to which it had fallen in previous ages and had revived due respect for married life. What the Church had defined on this subject in the past he regarded as all rubbish. Indeed, “not one of the Fathers,” he says, “ever wrote anything notable or particularly good concerning the married state.” But, as in the case of the secular authority and the preaching office, so God, before the coming of the Judgment Day, by His special Grace and through His Word, i.e. through the new Evangel, had restored married life to its rightful dignity, “as He had at first instituted and ordained it.” Marriage, so Luther asserts, had been regarded as “a usage and practice rather than as a thing ordained by God. In the same way the secular authorities did not know that they were serving God, but were all tied up in ceremonies. The preaching office, too, was nothing but a sham consisting of cowls, tonsures, oilings,” etc.

  In short, by his teaching on marriage he had ennobled woman, whereas the Catholics had represented matrimony as an “unchristian” state, only permitted out of necessity, even though they called it a Sacrament.

  Conspectus of Luther’s Distortion of the Catholic View of Marriage.

  Luther based his charges chiefly on the canonical enforcement of clerical celibacy and on the favour shown by the Church to the vow of chastity and the monastic life. How this proved his contention it is not easy to see. Further, he will have it, that the Church taught that true service of God was to be found only in the monastic state, and that vows were a sure warrant of salvation — though, as a matter of fact, neither Church nor theologians had ever said anything of the sort.

  In his remarks on this subject in 1527 he openly accused the Papists of saying that “whoever is desirous of having to do with God and spiritual matters must, whether man or woman, remain unmarried,” and “thus,” so he says, “they have scared the young from matrimony, so that now they are sunk in fornication.”

  At first Luther only ventured on the charge, that matrimony had been “de facto” forbidden, though it had not actually been declared sinful, by the Pope; by forbidding the monks to marry he had fulfilled the prophecy in 1 Timothy iv. 1 ff., concerning the latter times, when many would fall away from the faith and forbid people to marry. “The Pope forbids marriage under the semblance of spirituality.” “Squire Pope has forbidden marriage, because one had to come who would prohibit marriage. The Pope has made man to be no longer man, and woman to be no longer woman.”

  As years passed Luther went further; forgetful of his admission that the Pope had not made matrimony sinful, he exclaimed: To him and to his followers marriage is a sin. The Church had hitherto treated marriage as something “non-Christian”; the married state she had “handed over to the devil”; her theologians look down on it as a “low, immoral sort of life,” and her religious can only renounce it on the ground that it is a kind of legalised “incontinence.”


  In reality, however, religious, when taking their vow, merely acted on the Christian principle which St. Augustine expresses as follows: Although “all chastity, conjugal as well as virginal, has its merit in God’s sight,” yet, “the latter is higher, the former less exalted.” They merely renounced a less perfect state for one more perfect; they could, moreover, appeal not only to 1 Cor. vii. 33, where the Apostle speaks in praise of the greater freedom for serving God which the celibate state affords, but even to Luther himself who, in 1523, had interpreted this very passage in the same sense, and that with no little warmth.

  His later and still more extravagant statements concerning the Catholic view of marriage can hardly be taken seriously; his perversion of the truth is altogether too great.

  He says, that married people had not been aware that God “had ordained” that state, until at last God, by His special Grace, and before the Judgment Day, had restored the dignity of matrimony no less than that of the secular authority and the preaching office, “through His Word [i.e. through Luther’s preaching].” The blame for this state of things went back very far, for the Fathers, like Jerome, “had seen in matrimony mere sensuality,” and for this reason had disparaged it.

  The Prophet Daniel had foreseen the degradation of marriage under the Papacy: It is of the Papal Antichrist “that Daniel says [xi. 37], that he will wallow in the unnatural vice which is the recompense due to contemners of God (Rom. i.), in what we call Italian weddings and silent sin. For matrimony and a right love and use of women he shall not know. Such are the horrible abominations prevailing under Pope and Turk.” “The same prophet,” he writes elsewhere, “says that Antichrist shall stand on two pillars, viz.: idolatry and celibacy. The idol he calls Mausim, thus using the very letters which form the word Mass.” The Pope had deluded people, on the one hand by the Mass, and, on the other, “by celibacy, or the unmarried state, fooling the whole world with a semblance of sanctity. These are the two pillars on which the Papacy rests, like the house of the Philistines in Samson’s time. If God chose to make Luther play the part of Samson, lay hold on the pillars and shake them, so that the house fall on the whole multitude, who could take it ill? He is God and wonderful are His ways.”