A series of similar utterances may be quoted.
“The Papists are ashamed of themselves and stand in fear of their own conscience. Us they do not fear because, like Virgil of old, they console themselves with having already survived worse things. The paroxysm will cease suddenly.... They put to death the pious John Hus, who never departed in the least from the Papacy but only reproved moral disorders.” “For it was then not yet the time to unmask the [Roman] beast” (this having been reserved for me). “I, however, have not attacked merely the abuses but even the doctrine, and have bitten off the [Pope’s] heart. I don’t think the Pope will grow again.... The article of Justification has practically taken the shine out of the Pope’s thunderbolts.”
“Our Church by the grace of God comes quite near to that of the Apostles, because we have the pure doctrine, the catechism, the sacraments and the [right] use of government, both in the State and in the home. If the Word, which alone makes the Church, stands and flourishes, then all is well. The Papists, however, who seek to erect a Church on conciliar decrees and decretals will only arouse dissensions among themselves and ‘wash the tiles’ — however much they may pride themselves on their reason and wisdom.”
“I must for once boast, for it is a long while since I did so last. A Council whereby the Church might be reformed has long been clamoured for. I think I have summoned such a Council as will make the ears of the Papists tingle and their heart burst with malice: for I take it, that, even should the Pope hold a General Council, he will not be able to effect so much by it. First, I have driven the Papists to their books, particularly to Scripture, and deposed the heathen Aristotle and the ‘Summists.’ ... Secondly, I have made them to be more reserved about their indulgences. Thirdly, I have almost put an end to the pilgrimages and field-devilry.” Only look, he says, at the reduction of the monasteries and the many other things which no Council could ever have achieved but which have been brought about by “our people.” Everything had been lost, the “Our Father, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, Penance, Baptism, Prayer [etc., he enumerates twenty-one similar things].” “No institution, no monastery, university or presbytery” taught even one of these articles aright; now, however, “I have set all things in order.”
I can “write books as well as the Fathers and the Councils,” and this I may say “without pride.” This is because I have “exercised myself” in the Word of God by “prayer, meditation and temptations” (“oratio, meditatio, tentatio”). In my “temptation” the devil raged against me in every way, but God in a wonderful manner “kept alight His torch so that it did not go out.” Persecution overtook me “like the Apostles,” who “fared no better than their Lord and Master.” But the devil has entered into His foes the Papists, to whom, “in spite of all our good and well-meant admonitions, prayers and entreaties,” they have surrendered themselves; and rightly so, for the Papists (as I know from my own youthful experience when I did the same myself) refuse even to recognise the Gospel as a mystery. They simply make an end of all religion.
But, all this notwithstanding, as the Council shall learn “I am really a defender and prop of the Pope. After my death the Pope will suffer a blow which he will be unable to withstand. Then they will say: Would that we now had Luther to give some advice; but if anyone offers advice now they refuse it; when the hour is passed God will no longer be willing.”
After “God had given me that splendid victory which enabled me to get the better of my monkish vocation, the vows, masses and all the other abominations ... Pope and Emperor were alike unable to stop me.” It is true that I still have temptations to humble me, “but we remain victorious and shall conquer.”
“These Italians [at Trent they were present in large numbers] are profane men and Epicureans. No Pope or cardinal for the last six hundred years has read the Bible. They understand less of the catechism than does my little daughter. May God preserve us from such blindness and leave us His divine Word.”
This was the frame of mind in which Luther confronted the Council.
We shall be better able to appreciate the strangeness of his attitude if we imagine Luther, attended by a few theologians of his own circle, journeying to the Council at Trent and there holding converse with the foreign prelates, as he had done at Wittenberg with the Legate Vergerio.
In his wonted fashion he would not have hesitated to express plainly his views concerning his own authority. Some examples of his opinions of himself have already been given. What impression would the Wittenberger’s novel claims have made on bishops and theologians from distant lands where the Church was still in perfect peace, and where the spiritual supremacy of the hierarchy was unquestioned? With what astonishment would they have listened to those strange replies, which the Saxon had always ready in plenty, to such objections as they might have raised on the score of his disturbance of the peace of both Church and State, of the disorders within his own fold and of his own private life and that of his followers?
A number of other statements taken from his writings and conversations with his intimates may help to make the picture even more vivid.
“I have the Word,” we can hear him saying to the bishops in his usual vein, “that is enough for me! Were even an angel to come to me now I should not believe him.”
“Whoever obtrudes his doctrine on me and refuses to yield, must inevitably be lost; for I must be right, my cause being not mine, but God’s, Whose Word it also is. Hence those who are against it must go under. Hence my unfailing defiance.... I have risked my life on it and will die for it. Therefore whoever sets himself against me must be ruined if a God exists at all.”
To friend and foe I can only say: “Take in faith what Christ says to you through me; for I am not deceived, so far as I know. It is not the words of Satan that I speak. Christ speaks through me.”
“Though there are many who regard my cause as diabolical and condemn it, yet I know that my word and undertaking is not of me but of God, and neither death nor persecution will teach me otherwise.”
And before anyone can slip in a word of rejoinder he, again, as his way was, appeals to his personal knowledge. “I know that God together with all His angels bears me witness that I have not falsified His Word, baptism or sacrament, but have preached rightly and truthfully.”
This doctrine I learnt in my “temptations,” during which “I had to ponder ever more and more deeply.” “What is lacking to the fanatics and the mob is that they have not that real foeman who is the devil; he certainly teaches a man thoroughly.”
The hostility met with, particularly from false brethren, is also “God’s sure seal upon us”; by such “we have become like St. Paul, nay, like the whole Church.”
The chief thing for me, however, so he continues, is conscience and conviction. “Take heed,” such is my axiom, “not to make mere play of it. If you wish to begin it, then begin it with such a clear conscience that you may defy the devil.... Be a man and do everything that goes against and vexes them [the opponents] and omit everything that might please them.”
To those who ask whether his conscience did not upbraid him for breaking the peace and for overthrowing all order, he replies: It is quite true “Satan makes my conscience to prick me for having by false doctrine thrown the world into confusion and caused revolts.... But I meet him with this: The doctrine is not mine, but the Son of God’s; whole worlds are nothing to God, even should ten of them be rent by rebellion and go headlong to destruction. It is written in Holy Scripture [Mt. xvii. 5], ‘Hear ye Him’ (Christ), or everything will fall into ruins, and again [Ps. ii. 10], ‘Hearken, ye kings,’ or else ye shall perish. It was thus that Paul too had to console himself, when, in the Acts, he was accused of treason against God and Cæsar. God wills that the article of Justification shall stand, and if men accept it then no State or government will perish, but, if not, then they alone are the cause of their misfortune.”
With no less confidence is he prepared to counter the other objections. My doctrine bree
ds evil? “After the proclamation of the Evangel it is true we see in the world great wickedness, ingratitude and profanation; this followed on the overthrow of Antichrist [which I brought about]; but in reality it is only, that, formerly, before the dawn of the Evangel, we did not see so plainly these sins which all were already there, but now that the morning star has risen the whole world awakens, as though from a drunken sleep, and perceives the sins which previously, while all men were asleep and sunk in the gloom of night, they had failed to recognise. But [in view of all the wickedness] I set my hopes on the Last Day being not far distant; things cannot go on for more than a hundred years; for the Word of God will again grow weaker; owing to lack of ministers of the Word darkness will arise. Then the whole world will grow savage and so lull itself into a state of security. After this the voice will resound (Mt. xxv. 6): ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’ Then God will not be able to endure it any longer.”
Is our own life any objection? It is no question of life but of doctrine, “and, as to the doctrine, it is indubitable that it is the Word of God. ‘The words that I speak,’ saith the Lord [John xiv. 10], ‘are not mine but the Father’s.’” Certainly “I should not like God to judge me by my life.”— “My doctrine is true and includes the forgiveness of sins, because my doctrine is not mine; Christ also says, ‘My doctrine is not Mine.’ My doctrine stands fast, be my life what it may.” “True enough, it is hard when Satan comes and upbraids us saying: You have laid violent hands on this marvellous edifice of the Papacy,” you, “a man full of error and sin.” “But Paul also, according to Rom. ix., had at times to endure similar reproaches.” “We answer: We do not attack the Pope on account of his personal errors and trespasses; we must indeed condemn them, but we will overlook them and forgive them as we ourselves wish to be forgiven. Thus it is not a question for us of the Pope’s personal faults and sins, but of his doctrine and of submission to the Word. The Pope and his followers, quite apart from their own sins, offend against the glory and the grace of God, nay, against Christ Himself, of whom the Father says: Hear ye Him. But the Pope would have men’s ears attentive only to what he says!”
But, because my doctrine is true, so he concludes, this had to come about, “as I had long ago foreseen; in spite of the purity of my theology I [like Paul] was alleged to have preached ‘scandal’ to the holy Jews and ‘foolishness’ to the sapient heathen.” — Nevertheless, “whoever teaches otherwise than I have taught, or condemns me, condemns God and must remain a child of hell.”— “For the future I will not do the Papists the honour,” of permitting them, “or even an angel from heaven, to judge of my doctrine, for we have had too much already of foolish humility.”
With what wonder and perplexity at so unaccountable an attitude would the foreign bishops have listened to words such as these!
4. Notable Movements of the Times accompanied by Luther with “Abuse and Defiance down to the very Grave.” The Caricatures
Brunswick, Cleves, the Schmalkalden Leaguers
Luther followed with great sympathy and perturbation the warlike proceedings instituted by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse against Duke Henry of Brunswick, whom he had himself already attacked with the pen in his “Wider Hans Worst.” They made war on the Duke in the summer of 1542, seized upon his lands and of their own initiative introduced the innovations, their troops at the same time committing unexampled excesses.
Luther acclaimed the victory as a deed of God; such a proceeding could not be described as the work of man; such a success foreboded the approach of the Day of Judgment and retribution.
The Imperial Chamber of Justice protested against the violent appropriation of the country by the Schmalkalden Leaguers, and, on Se, summoned the two princes and their confederates to Spires to answer for the breach of the peace committed at the expense of Duke Henry. Thereupon all the members of the League of Schmalkalden repudiated their obedience to the “wicked, dissolute, Popish rascals,” as the Landgrave Philip politely styled the Imperial Court. In this he was at one with Luther, who, in former years, had called the Imperial Chamber “a devil’s whore.”
A new war of the Leaguers on Henry, who was anxious to recover his lands, was crowned in 1545 by a still more notable success on the part of the rebels, who this time contrived to take the Duke himself prisoner. When, however, Philip of Hesse, out of consideration for the Emperor, seemed inclined to set the captive free, Luther intervened with a circular letter addressed to Philip and his own Elector. He was determined to characterise any idea of setting free the “mischievous, wild tool of the Roman idol” as an open attack not merely on the Evangel, but even on the manifest will of God as displayed in the recent war which had been waged “by His angels.” Here his pseudo-mysticism is again much to the fore. The circular letter was soon printed and spread broadcast.
Without any deep insight into the real state of affairs, either political or ecclesiastical, unmindful even of diplomacy, Luther seeks to work on the fears of the Protestant princes by an extravagant description of the Divine Judgments which were overtaking blasphemers, and tells them they will be sharers in the sin of others if, now that God had “broken down the bulwark” of the Papacy, they were to set it up anew.
To the Papists he says: “Stop, you mad fools, Pope and Papists, and do not blow the flame that God has kindled. For it will turn against yourselves so that the sparks and cinders will fly into your eyes. Yes, indeed, this is God’s fire, Who calls Himself a consuming fire. You know and are convinced in your own conscience that your cause is wicked and lost and that you are striving against God.”
He writes confidently: We on this side, without causing either Emperor or Pope “to raise a hair, have unceasingly prayed, implored, besought and clamoured for peace, as they very well know; this, however, we have never been able to obtain from them, but have had daily to endure nothing but insults, attacks and extermination.” The defensive alliance of the Catholic Princes and Estates became in his eyes a robber-league, established under pretext of religion; “what they wanted was not the Christian religion but the lands of the Elector and Landgrave.” The captive Duke had obtained help from Italy, very likely from the Pope. “In short, we all know that the Pope and the Papists would gladly see us dead, body and soul, whereas we for our part would have them all to be saved body and soul together with us.” The whole writing, with its combination of rage and mysticism, and likewise much else dating from that period, may well raise grave doubts as to the state of the author’s mind.
The inroad into Brunswick was merely a preliminary to the religious wars soon to break out and ravage Germany. No sooner had Luther closed his eyes in death than they began on a larger scale with the Schmalkalden War, which was to prove so disastrous to the Protestants. His words just quoted to the princes of his party were repeated almost word for word in the Protestant manifestos during the religious wars.
It is possible that he may have been roused to make such attacks on the Catholics by certain disagreeable events which occurred from 1541 onwards. Political steps were being taken which were unfavourable to Lutheranism and not at all adequately balanced by the Protestants’ victory in Brunswick and elsewhere.
Luther was made painfully aware of the unexpected weakening of the League of Schmalkalden which resulted from the bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. By virtue of a secret compact with the Emperor, into which Philip of Hesse had found himself forced (June 13, 1541), the latter, in his position of head of the German Protestants, had bound himself not to consent that Duke William of Cleves, who inclined to Protestantism, should be admitted into the Schmalkalden League; he had also to refuse any assistance to the Duke when the Emperor Charles V took the field against him on account of the union of Guelders with Cleves. The progress of Protestantism in these districts was checked by the Emperor’s victory in 1543. The formal introduction of the new faith into Metz was frustrated by the Emperor; at Cologne too the Reformers saw all their efforts brought to naught.
The
Diet of Spires, in 1544, it is true brought the Protestants an extension of that peace which was so favourable to their interests, but the campaign which Charles V thereupon undertook against François I — whom Philip of Hesse and the Schmalkaldeners were compelled by the above-mentioned compact to leave on the lurch — led to the humiliation of the Frenchman, who was compelled to make peace at Crespy on Se, 1544. There the King of France promised the Emperor never again to side with the German Protestants.
Luther was also troubled by the dissensions within the League of Schmalkalden, by the refusal of Joachim II of Brandenburg, of Louis, Elector of the Palatinate, and especially of Duke Maurice of Saxony to join the League; the last sovereign’s intimate relations with the Emperor were also a source of anxiety. At Wittenberg it was clearly seen what danger threatened Lutheranism should the Imperial power gather strength and intervene on behalf of the Roman Church.
The Roman Church, so Luther exclaims fretfully in his “Kurtz Bekentnis” (1545), is made up of “nothing but Epicureans and scoffers at the Christian faith.” The Pope, “the greatest foe of Christ and the real Antichrist, has made himself head of Christendom, nay, the very hind-piece and bottom-hole of the devil through which so many abominations of Masses, monkery and immorality are cacked into the world.”
The Zwinglian “Sacramentarians”
One controversy which greatly excited Luther at this time was that with the Swiss Sacramentarians. Once more his old feud with Zwinglianism was to break out and embitter his days. When, in 1542, the elevation was abolished in the parish church of Wittenberg (to some extent out of deference to the wishes of the Landgrave of Hesse who objected to this rite), some people too hastily concluded that Luther was renouncing his own doctrine in favour of that of the Swiss; hence he deemed it necessary once more to deny, in language too clear to be mistaken, any intention to make common cause with a company, which, as he puts it, had been “infected and intoxicated with an alien spirit.”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 819
