Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Under the Divine guidance the Church also more than made up for the numbers torn from her, by the rapid growth of her missions in distant parts of the world, where the voyages of discovery and the conquest of the Western Continent at the dawn of the new century gave rise to unlooked-for new opportunities; this, too, at a time when Lutheranism and the other Protestant sects were still inclined to discountenance any universality and preferred to remain strictly local and national.

  Above all it is indisputable that the Catholic Church, in order to emphasise her opposition to the so-called Evangelical freedom, devoted herself ever more assiduously to promoting a true inward life of religion among the people, the lower clergy and the bishops.

  Whereas — at the close of the Middle Ages and dawn of the new era — the Papacy had been too eager in the pursuit of humanistic aims, had cultivated too exclusively merely human ideals of art and learning, and at the same time had become entangled in secular business and politics and was altogether too worldly, after Luther’s terrible attack on the formalism of the Church the Popes devoted themselves more and more to the real problems of the Kingdom of God, summoned to their side better advisers in the shape of Cardinals of strict morals, and introduced disciplinary new regulations in the spirit of a St. Charles Borromeo. The charge of shallowness brought against Catholic life was not — so far as it was justified — made in vain. From the new seminaries, from the sublime and saintly figures, who, in greater numbers than ever before, set an example of heroic virtue, and from the newly founded religious Orders such as the Theatines (1524), Capuchins (1528), Somaschans (1528), Barnabites (1530) and last but not least the Jesuits (1534), a new spirit breathed through the Church’s life and revived once more the practice of prayer, self-denial and neighbourly charity.

  In this connection we need have no scruple in characterising the “Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius Loyola as a phenomenon typical of the increasing religiousness of the age. Many, particularly amongst the influential representatives of the Church in Germany, under the guidance of such men as Pierre Favre, Peter Canisius and Claude Jaius, found in them a new wellspring of love for the Church and her aims.

  “To the Exercises, through which many of the great German nobles went,” so Pierre Favre wrote from Ratisbon, “almost all the good was due that was afterwards done in Germany.”

  The struggle with the apostasy called forth everywhere an increase of intellectual activity on the part of the threatened Church. Not only was theology deepened, but all the cognate branches of learning were more sedulously cultivated. “I scarcely think,” wrote the Jesuit, Peter Canisius, to the General of his Order, speaking of religious writings, that “Our Order could undertake or carry out any work that would be more useful and more conducive to the general welfare of the Church. Fresh writings on religious questions make a great impression and are a source of immeasurable comfort to the hard-pressed Catholics at a time when the writings of the false teachers are disseminated far and wide and cannot be exterminated.” Canisius was, however, of opinion that a simple exposition of the Catholic faith was more in place than polemics; he did not wish to see too much heat and human passion in the writings: “We do not heal the sick by such medicine but only make their case worse”; as he says in a memorandum: “In Germany there are countless numbers who err in religion, but they do not err from stubbornness or bitterness; they err after the manner of Germans who by nature are generally honest, very ready to accept everything that they, born and bred in the Lutheran heresies, have learnt, partly in schools, partly in churches, partly by the writings of false teachers.”

  There is a true saying of Erasmus’s often quoted by Catholics: “Just as it would be wrong to approve all that Luther writes, so, too, it would be unjust, if, out of hatred for his person, we condemned what is true or distorted what is right.” “What writer is so bad,” he asks elsewhere, “that we do not find some good in his writings?” — What there was of good in his own and Luther’s writings was not without its effect on Catholicism. Some of their censures of things Catholic were seen to be deserved, and, in the course of time, were acted upon, at least in order to give opponents less cause for fault-finding.

  The following remarks of Erasmus also found an echo amongst Catholic contemporaries and bear witness to the good which came of the sad religious struggles: “Often have I pondered in my own mind, whether, perchance, it had not pleased God to send a strong physician to deal with the profound corruption of morals in our day, who should heal by cutting and searing what was incapable of remedy by means of medicines and bandages.”— “May God, Who is wont to turn evil to good, so dispose matters, that, from this strong and bitter medicine (‘ex hoc violento amaroque pharmaco’) with which Luther has purged the world, as a body sick unto death, there may come some good for the morals of Christians.” — In 1524 he even went so far as to term Luther a “necessary evil” which they must not even desire to see removed. Yet Erasmus writes severely of him and ranks him with the greatest foes of the people of God: God had chosen to use Luther as a tool just as He had used the Pharaohs, the Philistines, Nabuchodonosor and the Romans.

  That Luther wielded a wholesome rod was admitted even by the Papal Legate Zacharias Ferreri in an admonition he addressed to him in 1520; with such a scourge as this God from time to time tried Christians in order to bring them to repentance. “If you are a scourge, praised be the name of the Lord, if by this wicked instrument He is leading us to a better mind, purifying and purging us!… Is it astonishing if, even through you, we are purified and cleansed? Oh, that the Almighty would pour on us ‘clean water,’ ‘sprinkle us with hyssop’ and wash us!”

  Thomas Murner, the Strasburg Franciscan, a man who was wont to scourge the failings and abuses in the Church of his day in very outspoken language, frankly admitted in a reply to Luther’s book “An den Adel” that much of the Wittenberg monk’s censure might be useful to those who wanted to put a stop to immorality, and to abuses and obsolete ecclesiastical customs and statutes. He even goes so far as to say to Luther: “Where you speak the truth, there undoubtedly the Holy Spirit speaks through you, for all truth is of God.” He adds, however, “Where you do not speak the truth, there assuredly the devil speaks through you, he who is the father of lies.” Speaking of the pictures of Luther with the symbol of the dove, which even then were common, in his satirical fashion, he suggests an improvement: “They paint the Holy Spirit over your head as though He were speaking through you. Now I learn for the first time that the Holy Spirit can say silly things.… I should suggest that they paint over your head, the Holy Ghost on one side and the devil on the other, and, in the middle, the city of Prague,” (to symbolise the heresy of Hus of which he accused Luther). Anxious as Murner was to see an end of the real abuses which Luther censured, yet, in the true Catholic spirit, he left to the ecclesiastical authorities the right and duty of taking the initiative, and it was to them that he addressed his urgent exhortations.

  Cochlæus is likewise unable to refrain from remarking that, in Luther’s writings, side by side with what is worthless there is much that is good, in his exposition of Holy Scripture, in his exhortations and also in his censures. For many men, and among them some of high standing, believed [at first] that he was guided by the Spirit of God and by zeal for virtue to remove the abuses of the hypocrites, to amend morals to improve the education of the clergy, and to promote in people’s hearts the love and worship of God.” Cochlæus points out how Luther had taught his followers to steep themselves in the Bible, so that they gained “so much skill and experience” that they had “no scruples in disputing about the faith and the Gospel even with magisters and doctors of Holy Scripture”; they had been much more diligent than the Catholics in learning by heart the Bible in its German dress; they were in the habit “of quoting Scripture more than the priests and monks did, for which reason they accused Catholics of being ignorant of it or not understanding it however learned they might be as theologians”; their teachers “qu
oted the Greek and Hebrew texts, and the variant readings, scoffed at our theologians when they were ignorant of these things and all agreed in representing Luther as the best theologian in the world.” Cochlæus also admits, that, in the field of historical criticism Luther and his party were ahead of many Catholic preachers, who, albeit in good faith, were fond of adducing “fables and tales invented by men.” He describes the zeal of the Protestant printers, which far exceeded that of the Catholics, the “diligence, care and money” lavished on the writings of their party, and “how carefully and accurately they printed their books”; apostates and escaped monks travelled far and wide through Germany, peddling Lutheran writings “like booksellers.” — It is notorious, on the other hand, that the Catholic writers were hardly able to find publishers. At Ingolstadt Cochlæus managed to preserve a Catholic printing press, which was in danger of being shut down, and established a second at Mayence whence a large number of good works issued. “Stress must be laid on the self-sacrifice with which Cochlæus, after having by dint of many privations amassed a sum of money for the publication of his own writings, devoted it to the printing of the works of one of his colleagues, being convinced that they would prove of greater benefit to the common cause than his own productions.”

  In all these particulars, in the study of Holy Scripture, in the cultivation of historical and critical research among the clergy, in the use of the vernacular and of the art of printing for the instruction of the faithful, a real, though rather slow, change for the better took place. Had it not been for the misgivings felt even in the highest circles, and for a certain amount of prejudice against anything new, due to the fear of heresy, the gains doubtless would have been even greater and more quickly secured. In all this the Church owed much to Protestant example, for it was the innovators who involuntarily pointed out better methods of satisfying the spiritual needs of the new age, and a more effectual way of exerting a religious influence over the people.

  Further examples of this are to be found in the sermons and in the catechism.

  Clear-sighted Catholic contemporaries, like the worthy Dominican preacher and writer Johann Mensing, comparing the Bible preaching used and advocated by Luther with the empty, vapid sermons in vogue among many of the Catholic preachers were keenly conscious of what was lacking. At the close of a book written in 1532 Mensing exhorts the Catholic clergy to study Holy Writ and to make more use of it in the pulpit: “There are some now who say that Luther has driven the learned to Scripture. Would to God it were true that our well-beloved masters and brothers, the theologians, would turn their hearts wholly to Holy Scripture and leave out those other questions which serve no useful purpose. Some of them preach the laws and canons of heathen doctors and poets which are of small help to salvation, or they air their own opinions, and, where Scripture and Holy Church or the witness of the olden Doctors is not enough, reinforce them by incredible miracles, whereas, with the aid of Holy Scripture, they ought to endeavour to establish in men’s hearts the fear of God, faith, hope and charity, mildness and pity and such like.” If they learn something from the Lutherans in this then “we may hope that God has permitted Luther’s heresy for our good, it being to our profit that such heresy has arisen, and, as some declare, driven us to the Scriptures.” Mensing wonders, however, whether the dispersal of the monks, the plundering of the convents and lack of stipends for learned theologians and preachers will not make study of any kind a difficult matter for a long while to come.

  In the field of catechetical instruction it was clear that Luther and his followers had given their attention very skilfully to the young, the better to imbue the rising generation with their doctrines. At the time of Luther’s first appearance, as recent research has established, in many parts of Germany there was no regular, systematic religious instruction of the young by the clergy or in the schools, but the children were left to pick up what they could in the home or from the public sermons. There were indeed regulations in force for the priests and the schools, but they were not acted upon. About the very elementary home instruction, Cochlæus had words of commendation in 1533. As they were taken to the services and the sermons, the children had, he says, “sucked in” their religion “as it were with their mothers’ milk, and this is still the case to-day amongst Catholics.” In his sermons published in 1510 Gabriel Biel asks for no more than that the parents should impart to their children a knowledge of the things essential and prepare them for their first communion.

  Luther, however, as our readers know, insisted that his preachers must concern themselves directly with the children.

  He enjoined on them to preach from the pulpit at set times, even daily if necessary, on the most elementary points of doctrine, and again at home in the house to the children and servants in the mornings and evenings; if they wished to make Christians of them these points would have to be recited or read to them, “and this, not merely in such a way that they learn to say the words by heart, but that they be questioned on them one by one and made to say what each means and how they understand it.” “Let no one think himself above giving such instruction to the children or look down upon it,” he wrote; “Christ, when He wished to train up men, had to become a man, hence, if we are to train up children, we must become children with them.” At Wittenberg and elsewhere from 1528 onwards four sermons a week for two weeks on end were preached on the Catechism four times a year. When, seeing the importance of the matter, Luther himself took the Catechism in hand he was so anxious to make it popular and practical, that he first published his “Smaller Catechism” (1529) in the form of sheets to hang upon the wall (this method had been used even before his day), and thus to act on the memory through the eye.

  It would, however, be historically incorrect to describe Luther as the originator of the Catechism. Catholic Catechisms, even illustrated ones, had existed before Luther’s time, having been printed not only in Germany but also elsewhere. But, after the success attained by Luther’s Catechism, writers of Catholic Catechisms tried to profit by his example. The best of these Catholic works was the famous Catechism of Peter Canisius. It was first printed in Vienna in 1555 under the title “Summa doctrinæ christianæ”; eighteen years later it had already been translated into twelve different tongues. It is a work rich in thought and positive matter where almost every word is based on Holy Scripture or some utterance of the Fathers and other ecclesiastical authority. Abbreviated editions, the “Parvus Catechismus” (Viennæ, 1559), the “Institutiones” (1561), and particularly the short German one: “The Catechism or Sum of Christian Doctrine arranged in question and answer for the simple,” rendered it of greater use for the common people. “Canisius’s book,” writes a Protestant expert in pedagogics, “is a masterpiece of brevity, precision and erudition; in it one sees from beginning to end an endeavour to excel in style even the great Protestant prototype” (viz. Luther’s Catechism).

  Among the secular no less than among the regular clergy work for the souls of the children continued to win new friends. St. Ignatius of Loyola esteemed the teaching of the Catechism so highly that he expressly made it a duty incumbent on all members of his Order previous to their making their profession. Lainez, his companion and successor, when staying at Trent during the Council, instructed the people and the small folk in the Catechism. The Council itself impressed on the bishops in 1563 the duty of seeing that the children in each parish received religious instruction from the priest on Sundays and holidays.

  The spread of the new religion had at first been followed by a lamentable decline in the educational system by no means confined to those regions torn away from the old faith. The Protestants were the first to recover their balance, partly owing to Luther’s vigorous appeals on behalf of the schools, partly thanks to the active co-operation of Melanchthon, who had great experience in this sphere and on whom his co-religionists in consequence bestowed the title of “Præceptor Germaniæ.” The methods followed by the Lutherans were borrowed principally, as indeed was only t
o be expected, from the treasure-house of the humanists. Protestant effort was largely crowned with success, especially since the old Catholic endowments of the Grammar Schools, and some part of the income of the sequestrated Church properties, were applied by the sovereigns and townships to the erection and maintenance of these new educational institutions.

  The Catholics indeed were angry to see that these flourishing schools were at the same time hotbeds of the New Faith. They also lamented that, owing to the sad conditions of the times, they themselves had fallen astern of the other party in the matter of education. Their best leaders exhorted them to take a lesson from their opponents and thus reconquer the position the Catholic schools had lost. “With the spread and development of the Jesuit schools a change came over the face of affairs.” Before this Archbishop Albert of Mayence had declared in 1541 that the Protestants were far ahead of Catholics in the matter of education and were drawing all the youth of Germany into their schools. In 1550 Julius Pflug, bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz, wrote to Julius III: “The Protestant schools public as well as private are in a flourishing condition; ours are crumbling into ruin; the Protestants attract men by large salaries, we do not do this.” Already in 1538 George Wicel had expressed his regret to Julius Pflug that so little was done for the schools among the Catholics as compared with the Protestants, and that already the want of men of learning was being felt.

  To mention two other spheres in which Catholics received a stimulus from Luther’s example and work, we may call to mind the German translation of the Bible and the German hymns.

  What was good in Luther’s translation of the Bible was very soon turned to account in Catholic circles. If Catholic writers made use of Luther’s translation in their own editions, they probably excused themselves by arguing that Luther himself was undoubtedly indebted to the Catholic translations of the past. In the same way Luther had made use of some of the old hymns of the Church, amended and popularised them and published them as his own. Catholic hymns in the German language there were already in plenty. But, after 1524, when the first Protestant hymn-books made their appearance, Catholics copied these efforts to collect and improve on the originals, and the first Catholic hymn-book brought out by Michael Vehe, Provost at Leipzig as early as 1537, contained fifty-two hymns with forty-seven tunes — though, strange to say, the old Catholic hymns were given in the new Protestant version. A much bigger hymn-book was that of Johann Leisentritt, a Dean (1567); it contained in the first edition 250 hymns and 147 tunes. In the following century hymns well known to be Protestant but of which the words were orthodox were incorporated without demur in the Catholic collections.