Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Among those doctrines of the Church from which Luther cut himself adrift only little by little and at the expense of a wrench, must be numbered those dealing with the invocation of the Saints and with Purgatory.

  The grand and inspiring belief of the Church in the Communion of Saints, which weaves a close and common band between the living and those souls who have already passed into heaven and those, again, who are still undergoing purification, had at first taken deep root in Luther’s mind. Later on, however, the foundations of this doctrine became more and more undermined, partly owing to his theories on the Church and the Mediatorship of Christ, partly and even more so by his ardent wish to strike a deadly blow at the practical life of the Catholic Church and all that “Popish” worship had erected on this particular doctrine. Veneration of the Saints and intercession for the dead loomed very large among the religious practices dear to the Christian people, though, at that time, they were disfigured by abuses. Luther adroitly used the abuses as a lever for his work.

  As late as 1519, in one of his sermons, he urged his hearers to call upon the angels and the Saints; just as on earth one Christian may pray for another and be asked for his prayers, so, as he justly remarks, is it also with the Saints in heaven. In his Church-postils, however, he raises his voice to condemn the “awful idolatry” by which (so he thought) the “trust” which we should repose on God alone was put in the Saints. From that time he never tires of declaring that there was “no text or warrant in Scripture for the worship of the Saints”; all he will sanction is the humble petition to the Saints: “Pray for me.” He required the Wittenberg Canons to erase from the liturgical prayers all reference to the intercession of the saints, as misleading and likely to give offence; this, in spite of the fact that the liturgical prayers of the Church’s earliest days loudly voice the opposite view. The “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ” of 1530 gives even stronger expression to his abhorrence for all invocation of the Saints. There he says that the light of the Gospel was now so bright that no one could find any excuse for remaining in darkness.

  In his Schmalkalden Articles the invocation of Saints has become one of the “abuses of Endchrist”; for “though the angels in heaven pray for us,” so he explains, again reverting to the ancient teaching of the Church, “and also the Saints on earth, and, perhaps, even those in heaven, yet it does not follow that we are to invoke the angels and the Saints.”

  Mary.

  As long as he admitted the invocation of Saints, Luther assigned a prominent place to that of the Blessed Virgin. “She is to be invoked,” he writes in 1521, “that God may give and do according to her will what we ask.” After he had changed his mind concerning the saints, he was unwilling to allow this any longer.

  Owing, however, to the after effects of his Catholic education, here particularly noticeable in him, we meet with many beautiful sayings of his in support of the worship of Mary, although as time went on he grew ever more hostile to it.

  “You know,” so he says in a sermon published in 1522, “that the honour paid to the Mother of God is so deeply implanted in the heart of man that we dislike to hear it spoken against, but would much rather it were fostered and encouraged.”

  “O Blessed Mother,” he had already said, “O most worthy Virgin, be mindful of us and grant that the Lord may do great things in us also.” Such were his words in 1516 in a sermon on the Feast of the Assumption.

  In the same year, on the Feast of our Lady’s Conception, he speaks of her name, which he says is derived from “stilla maris,” and extols her as the one pure drop in the ocean of the “massa perditionis.” To his admission here that her conception was immaculate he was still true in 1527, as has already been shown; after 1529, however, the passage containing this admission was expunged when the sermon in question was reprinted. In his home-postils he says of her conception: “Mary the Mother was surely born of sinful parents, and in sin, as we were”; any explanation of the universal belief to the contrary and of his own previous statements he does not attempt.

  Owing to his belief in the Divinity of the Son, Luther continued to call Mary the “Mother of God.” Even later he shared the Catholic view that Mary by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost and at the birth of the Saviour had been sanctified by God as the instrument of the great mystery of the Incarnation through her Divine Son. He was also firm in accepting the Virginity of the Mother of God as expressed in the Apostles’ Creed. Nevertheless, according to his own confession, this appealed to him less than her “wifehood,” and when praising her he prefers to dwell on the latter, i.e. on the Virgin’s motherhood. Mary was to him ever a Virgin, before, during and after childbirth, and, in the last sermon he delivered at Eisleben before his death, he insists on this perpetual Virginity, says she ever remained a “pure, chaste maid,” and praises her humility, because, though a “most pure and most holy Virgin,” yet after the birth of her Son, obediently to the Law, she came to the Temple to be purified.

  Luther’s work on the Magnificat (1521), of which we have already spoken (, n. 1), marks a turning-point. Although much that it says of the greatness, dignity and virtues of Mary might well be quoted, yet it contains some curiously superfluous warnings, for instance, not to look on Mary as a “helpful goddess.” In spite of any abuse which may possibly have mingled with her worship, the Catholic people were well able to distinguish between the veneration and confidence given to her and those acts of worship which belong solely to God. Catholicism allowed full play to the deepest and warmest feelings towards the ideal of the purest of women, without in any way detracting from the exclusive rights of her Divine Son; on the contrary, devotion to the Mother tended only to increase the honour paid to the Son.

  His “Exposition of the Magnificat” has frequently been taken as a proof of Luther’s great piety. It indeed contains many good thoughts, even apart from those relating to Mary, but in numerous passages the author uses his pen for a highly prejudiced vindication of his new teachings on the state of grace.

  It should also be borne in mind that the printers started on the book just before the Diet of Worms, and that it was intended to attract and secure the support of the future rulers of the Saxon Electorate. Luther was also engaged at that time on his exceedingly violent screed against Catharinus, in which he attempts to reveal the Pope in his true character as Antichrist. When, after the Diet of Worms, he continued his work on the Magnificat he was certainly in no mood to compose a book of piety on Mary. The result was that the book became to all intents and purposes a controversial tract, which cannot be quoted as a proof of his piety or serenity of mind during those struggles. Luther’s Magnificat is as little a serious work of edification and piety as his exposition of certain of the Psalms, which appeared almost simultaneously and was also directed “against the Pope and the doctrine of men.”

  In the “Prayer-book” which Luther prepared for the press he retained the “Hail Mary” together with the “Our Father” and the “I believe,” but he cut it down to the angel’s greeting, as contained in the Bible, and taught that thereby honour was merely to be given God for the grace announced to Mary. He frequently preached, e.g. in 1523, on the wrong use of this prayer.

  In the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon, when rejecting the invocation of the Saints, made no exception in favour of Mary. Yet in the “Apologia” of the Confession also composed by him, he says, that “Mary prays for the Church,” that she is “most worthy of the greatest honour” (“dignissima amplissimis honoribus”), but is not to be made equal to Christ, as the Catholics fancied.

  Luther did not merely reproach the Catholics for making a goddess of Mary; he even ventured some remarks scarcely to the credit of the Mother of God; for a while, so he says, she had possessed only a small measure of faith and God had sometimes allowed her to waver; such statements were due to his idea that all Christians, in order to preserve a firm faith in their hearts, must ever be waging battle. On these statements, Eck, in his Homilies, was very severe.

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p; An attitude hostile to all the Catholic veneration for Mary is expressed by Luther in a sermon in 1522 on the Feast of our Lady’s Nativity, included in his church-postils. It is true that we “owe honour to Mary,” he says, rather frigidly, at the very beginning, “but we must take care that we honour her aright.” He proceeds to explain that “we have gone too far in honouring her and esteem her more highly than we should.” For in the first place we have thereby “disparaged” Christ, the Redeemer, and “by the profound honour paid to the Mother of God derogated from the honour and knowledge of Christ”; secondly, the honour due to our fellow-men and the love of the poor has thereby been forgotten. If it is a question of honouring anyone on account of his holiness, “then we are just as holy as Mary and the other Saints, however great, provided we believe in Christ.” That she “has a greater grace,” viz. a higher dignity as the Mother of God, “is not due to any merit of hers, but simply because we cannot all be Mothers of God; otherwise she is on the same level with us.”

  Of the anthem “Salve Regina,” which is “sung throughout the world to the ringing of great bells,” he says, that it was a “great blasphemy against God,” for it terms Mary, the mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. “The ‘Regina Caeli’ is not much better, since it calls her Queen of Heaven.” Why should her prayers have so much value, he asks, as though unaware of the explanations given by so many ecclesiastical writers, particularly by St. Bernard. “Your prayers, O Christian, are as dear to me as hers. And why? Because if you believe that Christ lives in you as much as in her then you can help me as much as she.”

  In this discourse again he ventures on the calumny on the Catholic veneration of Mary, of which he was to make such frequent use later; it is equivalent to adoration; “To seek to make of Mary an idol, that we cannot and may not do. We will not have her as a mediator, but as an advocate [to this Luther always clung] we will gladly accept her, like the other Saints. But people have put her above all the choirs of angels.” Neither here nor elsewhere does he attempt to prove her alleged adoration or the idolatry of the Catholics; when, a little further on, he launches forth against the pilgrimages made by common folk to churches and chapels of our Lady, he is straying from the subject and dealing with a practice of the faithful, quite harmless and wholesome in itself, whatever abuses it may then have involved.

  The veneration for the holy Mother of the Redeemer, that high ideal of humility and purity of heart, so devoid of the slightest trace of sensuality, springs from the soil of humility, chastity and pure, unselfish love. Luther’s whole mental outlook was not too favourable to such necessary dispositions. His moral character, as exhibited more particularly during the period after his stay at the Wartburg and previous to his marriage, scarcely harmonised with the delicate blossoms of this cultus, nor can we be surprised, looking at it psychologically, that the chief alteration in his views took place just at this time.

  That hostile instinct, shared by so many heretics in their attitude towards the most holy of women, outweighed in his soul the vestiges of Catholic feeling he still retained. Malice impelled him to blacken the honour which the people loved to pay to Mary; this he strove to paint as mere idolatry, seeking unceasingly to affix this stigma on Catholicism. Controversy stifled in him the impulse to that pious veneration which he himself had admitted to be so well-founded and so natural.

  Purgatory.

  In the Schmalkalden Articles the olden doctrine of Purgatory was rejected by Luther as follows: Purgatory, “with all its pomp, worship and traffic, must be held to be nothing more than a mere phantom of the devil,” born of “that dragon’s tail” the Mass.

  Although in this condemnation Luther’s customary polemical exaggeration of abuses clearly plays a part, yet from his Indulgence Theses and “Resolutions” down to the sentence in the Articles of Schmalkalden the working of his mind can clearly be traced, expressed as it is, now in rejection on principle, and on theological or biblical grounds, now in opportunist and cynical attacks on the Church’s ancient doctrine of Purgatory. The temporal penalties which, according to the teaching of the Church, must be paid by the suffering souls notwithstanding their state of grace, found no place in Luther’s new theory of a faith which covered over everything. According to the usual view venial sins also are forgiven in the next world, thanks to the purifying pains of Purgatory. But of venial sins as distinct from grievous sins Luther refused to hear. He had nothing but evasive replies to the objection which presented itself of its own accord, viz. that mortals when they die often seem ripe neither for heaven nor for hell.

  At first Luther was content to modify merely the doctrine of Purgatory which is so deeply implanted in the consciousness of the Christian, by denying that it was capable of making satisfaction while nevertheless asserting his belief in the existence of a place of purgation (“mihi certissimum est, purgatorium esse”); then he devoted himself to countering the many legends and popular tales of the appearance of ghosts, a comparatively easy task. The Pope, he went on to say, had merely made Purgatory an article of faith in order to enrich himself and his followers by Masses for the Dead, though in fact “it may be that only very few souls go there.”

  Later he preferred to think, that God had in reality told us practically nothing about the existence or non-existence of Purgatory, or of the condition of the Saints in heaven; the preachers would do well, he says, gradually to wean the people from their practices in this regard; they had merely to decline to discuss the question of the dead and of the Saints in heaven. He was indeed unwilling to sever the close ties, so dear to the Catholic, binding the faithful to the deceased members of his family and to the beloved patterns and heroes of former days, yet his writings do tend in that direction.

  From 1522 onward he inclined strongly to the idea that those who passed away fell into a deep sleep, from which they would awaken only on the day of Judgment; those who had breathed their last in the faith of Christ would all, so he fancies, sleep as in Abraham’s bosom; but since this depended on the “good pleasure of God,” it was not forbidden “to pray for the dead”; the petition must, however, be cautiously worded, for instance, as follows: “I beseech Thee for this soul which may be sleeping or suffering; if it be suffering, I implore Thee, if it be Thy Divine Will, to deliver it.” After praying thus once or twice, then “let it be.” In 1528 we still meet, in his writings, with similar concessions to the olden teaching and practice.

  In 1530, however, his writing “Widderruff vom Fegefeur,” made an end of all concessions; here he is compelled to combat the “shouting and boasting of the Papists,” for the “lies and abominations of the sophists with regard to Purgatory” had passed all endurance. He now wants the sleep of the soul to be understood as a state of happy peace, and when it becomes a question of answering the Bible passage alleged by the Catholics, viz. 2 Machabees xii. 45 f., where it is said of the offering made for the fallen, that it is “a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from sins,” Luther simply strikes out this book from the Canon of Scripture, as indeed he had done even previously; the Church, so his curious argument ran, could not bestow more authority and force on a book than it possessed of itself, because the sacred books must themselves bear witness to their inspiration.

  It would be superfluous to enumerate in detail the other points of theology on which he set himself to oppose the Catholic teaching he had himself in earlier days advocated, sometimes on excellent grounds. We know his exclamation: Were I to teach to-day everything that I formerly taught, particularly in the beginning, then “I should be obliged to worship the Pope.” Moreover, not only were there contradictions due to his falling away from doctrines of the Church which he had formerly vindicated, but also many others resulting from his modification of his own views, or implied in his new opinions.

  His views on indulgences, satisfaction, penance and contrition, original sin and predestination, on marriage, priestly ordination, spiritual jurisdiction and secular autho
rity, on Councils and the Roman Primacy, have already been dealt with historically in what has gone before. Other points of doctrine will have to be discussed elsewhere in a different connection; for instance, the far-reaching question of the Church and her visibility and invisibility, and — what is of no less importance for a due appreciation of the man — the end of all and the devil.

  One only point, on which indeed Luther opposed the doctrine and practice of the Church with all his heart and soul, must here be considered more closely.

  6. Luther’s Attack on the Sacrifice of the Mass

  All Luther’s new doctrines referred to above might be regarded in the light of attacks on the Church’s teaching and practice. None of his theological views were put forward by him merely to be discussed in the calm domain of thought. They are always quickened by his hatred of the Church and the antichristian Papacy. This holds good in particular of his antagonism to the sacrificial character of the Mass.

  By his violent assault on the Mass he robbed the churches and public worship of the Holy Sacrifice, and removed the very focus of Divine service in the Church.

  Whereas to the Catholic Church the celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar was always a true sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving and atonement, which Christ, as the High Priest, offers to the Eternal Father through the instrumentality of a priest, according to Luther it is merely a memorial on the part of the congregation, which stimulates faith and gives a public testimony to God’s glory. In 1538 he characterised the struggle against the Mass as one vital to the new faith; he was very well aware how closely allied it was with the worship to which he himself had once been devoted: “Had any man twenty years ago tried to rob me of the Mass, I should have come to blows with him.”

  Sacrifice is the supreme and at the same time the most popular expression of the worship of God. “From the rising of the sun even to the going down,” the Prophet Malachias had prophesied (i. 11), “my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation,” viz. the Eucharist. The common oblation throughout Christendom formed a sublime bond uniting all the Christian nations of the earth in one holy family. The words of Christ concerning the “Body that is given for you,” and “Blood that is shed for you” were rightly regarded as proving both the institution of the common sacrifice and its atoning power.