Chapter 9 LUTHER'S FURTHER WORK, WRITINGS, AND INWARD PROGRESS, UNTIL 1520.

Luther looked upon his disputation at Leipzig as an idle waste of time. He longed to get back to his work at Wittenberg. He remained, in fact, devoted with his whole soul to his official duties there, though to the historian, of course, his work and struggles in the broader and general arena of the Church engage the most attention. He might well quarrel with the occasions that constantly called him out to it, as so many interruptions to his proper calling.

His energy there in the pulpit was as constant as his energy in the professor's chair. He glowed with zeal to unfold the one truth of salvation from its original source, the Scriptures, and to declare it and impress it on the hearts of his young pupils and his Wittenberg congregation, of educated and uneducated, of great and small. But he also wished to lay it before his students as a truth for life. With this object, he continued active with his pen, both in the Latin and the German languages. He was glad to turn to this from the questions of ecclesiastical controversy, which had formed the subject of his disputation, and of the writings referring to it. It was enough for him to show forth simply the merciful love of God and of the Saviour Christ, to point out the simple road of faith, and to destroy all trust in mere outward works, in one's own merit and virtue. Only to this extent, and because the authority pretended by the Church was opposed to this truth and this road to salvation, he was forced here also, and in face of his congregation, to wield the sword of his eloquence against that authority, and this he did with a zeal regardless of consequences. In all that he did, in his lectures as well as in his sermons, in his exposition of God's word in particular, as in his own polemics, he always threw his whole personality into the subject. We see him inwardly moved and often elated by the joyful message which he himself had learned, and had to announce to others, inspired by love to his fellow-Christians, whom he would wish to help save, and zealous even to anger for the cause of his Lord. At the same time, it cannot be denied that he was often carried away by the vehemence of his views, which saw at once in every opponent an uncompromising enemy to the truth; and that his naturally passionate temperament was often powerfully stirred, though even then his whole tone and demeanour was blended with outbursts of the noblest and the purest zeal.

In his academical lectures Luther still remained faithful to that path which he had struck out on entering the theological faculty. He wished simply to propound the revealed word of God, by explaining the books of the Old and New Testaments; though he took pains in these lectures, in which he devoted several terms to the study of a single book, to explain thoroughly and impressively the most important doctrines of Christian faith and conduct. Thus he occupied himself during the time of the contest about indulgences, and after the autumn of 1516, with the Epistle to the Galatians, wherein he found comprised clearly and briefly the fundamental truth of salvation, the doctrine of the way of faith, of God's laws of requirements and punishments, and of gospel grace. He then turned anew to the Psalms, dissatisfied with his own earlier exposition of them. His exposition of St. Paul's Epistle he had sent to the press whilst engaged in his preparations for the Leipzig disputation. His opponents, he says here, might busy themselves with their much larger affairs, with their indulgences, their Papal bulls, and the power of the Church, and so on; he would retire to smaller matters, to the Holy Scriptures and to the Apostle, who called himself not a prince of Apostles, but the least of the Apostles. He also now began the printing of his work on the Psalms.

Crowds of listeners gathered around him; his audience at times numbered upwards of four hundred. During the three years following the outbreak of the quarrel about indulgences, the number of those who matriculated annually at the university increased threefold. Luther wrote to Spalatin that the number of students increased mightily, like an overflowing river; the town could no longer contain them, many had to leave again for want of dwellings.

To this prosperity of the university Melancthon especially contributed. He had been appointed, as we have already mentioned, first professor of Greek by the Elector, and in addition to the young theologians, he attracted a number of other students to his lectures. Of still greater importance for Luther and his work, was the personal friendship and community of ideas, convictions, and aspirations which had bound the two men together in close intimacy from their first acquaintance. Their paths in life had hitherto been very different. Philip Schwarzerd, surnamed Melancthon, born in 1497 of a burgher's family of the little town of Bretten in the Palatinate, had passed a happy youth, and harmoniously and peacefully developed into manhood. He had had from early life capable teachers for his education, and was under the protection of the great philologist Reuchlin, who was a brother of his grandmother. He then showed gifts of mind wonderfully rich and early ripening. Besides the classics, he learnt mathematics, astronomy, and law. He also studied the Scriptures, grew to love them, and even when a youth had made himself familiar with their contents, without having had first to learn to know their worth by a heavy sense of inward need, by inward struggles or a long unsatisfied hunger of the soul. Thus, at seventeen he was already master of arts, and at twenty-one was appointed professor at Wittenberg. The young man, with an insignificant, delicate frame, and a shy, awkward demeanour, yet with a handsome, powerful forehead, an intellectual eye, and refined, thoughtful features, effaced at once, by his inaugural address, any doubts arising from his youthful appearance.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.-MELANCTHON. (From a Portrait by Dürer.)]

In this speech, however, he already declared that the chief object of classical studies was to teach theologians to draw from the original fount of Holy Scripture. He himself delivered a lecture on the New Testament immediately after one on Homer. And it was the Lutheran conception of the doctrine of salvation which he adopted in his own continued study of the Bible.

The year of his arrival at Wittenberg he celebrated Luther in a poem. He accompanied him to Leipzig. During the disputation there he is said to have assisted his friend with occasional suggestions or notes of argument, and thereby to have roused the anger of Eck. He now took the lowest theological degree of bachelor, to qualify himself for giving theological lectures on Scripture. He who from early youth had enjoyed so abundantly the treasures of Humanistic learning, and had won for himself the admiration of an Erasmus, now found in this study of Scripture a 'heavenly ambrosia' for his soul, and something much higher than all human wisdom. And already, in independent judgment on the traditional doctrines of the Church, he not only kept pace with Luther but even outwent him. It was he who attacked the dogma of transubstantiation, according to which in the mass the bread and wine of the sacrament are so changed by the consecration of the priest into the body and blood of our Lord, that nothing really remains of their original substance, but they only appear to the senses to retain it.

Luther at once recognised with joy the marvellous wealth of talent and knowledge in his new colleague, whose senior he was by fourteen years, besides being far ahead of him in theological study and experience. We have seen, during Luther's stay at Augsburg, how closely his heart clung to Melancthon and to the 'sweet intercourse' with him; we know of no other instance where Luther formed a friendship so rapidly. The more intimately he knew him, the more highly he esteemed him. When Eck spoke slightingly of him as a mere paltry grammarian, Luther exclaimed, 'I, the doctor of philosophy and theology, am not ashamed to yield the point, if this grammarian's mind thinks differently to myself; I have done so often already, and do the same daily, because of the gifts with which God has so richly filled this fragile vessel; I honour the work of my God in him.' 'Philip,' he said at another time, 'is a wonder to us all; if the Lord will, he will beat many Martins as the mightiest enemy to the devil and Scholasticism;' and again, 'This little Greek is even my master in theology.' Such were Luther's words, not uttered to particular friends of Melancthon, in order to please them, nor in public speeches or poetry, in which at that time friends showered fulsome flattery on friends, but in confidential letters to his own most intimate friends, to Spalatin, Staupitz, and others. So willing and ready was he, whilst himself on the road to the loftiest work and successes, to give precedence to this new companion whom God had given him. Luther also interested himself with Spalatin to obtain a higher salary for Melancthon, and thus keep him at Wittenberg. In common with other friends, he endeavoured to induce him to marry; for he needed a wife who would care for his health and household better than he did himself. His marriage actually took place in 1520, after he had at first resisted, in order to allow no interruption to his highest enjoyment, his learned studies.

At the university Luther was also busily engaged with the necessary preparations for many lectures that were not theological. He steadily persisted in his efforts to secure the appointment of a competent professor of Hebrew. He also worked hard to get a qualified printer, the son of the printer Letter at Leipzig, to settle at the university, and set up there for the first time a press for three languages, German, Latin, and Greek. For everything of this kind that was submitted to the Elector, who took a constant interest in the prosperity of the university, his friend Spalatin was his confidential intermediary. As early as 1518 Luther had expressed to him the wish and hope that Wittenberg, in honour of Frederick the Wise, should, by a new arrangement of study, become the occasion and pattern for a general reform of the universities. In addition to his constant and arduous labours of various kinds, he took part also in the social intercourse of his colleagues, although he complained of the time he lost by invitations and entertainments.

In the town church at Wittenberg he continued his active duties not only on Sundays but during the week. His custom was to expound consecutively in a course of sermons the Old and New Testaments, and he explained particularly to children and those under age, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. This work alone, he once complained to Spalatin, required properly a man for it and nothing else. These services he gave to the town congregation gratuitously. The magistracy were content to recognise them by trifling presents now and then; for instance, by a gift of money on his return from Leipzig, where he had had to live on his own very scanty means. In simple, powerful, and thoroughly popular language, Luther sought to bring home to the people who filled his church, the supreme truth he had newly gained. Here in particular he employed his own peculiar German, as he employed it also in his writings.

Both he and Melancthon formed a close personal intimacy with several worthy townsmen of Wittenberg. The most prominent man among them, the painter Lucas Cranach, from Bamberg, owner of a house and estate at Wittenberg, the proprietor of an apothecary's and also of a stationer's business, besides being a member of the magistracy, and finally burgomaster, belonged to the circle of Luther's nearest friends. Luther took a genuine pleasure in Cranach's art, and the latter, in his turn, soon employed it in the service of the Reformation.

[Illustration: Fig. l8.-LUCAS CRANACH. (From a Portrait by himself.)]

While occupied thus in delivering simple and practical sermons to his congregation in the town, he continued to publish written works of the same character and purport, in addition to his labours in the field of learned ecclesiastical controversy, thus showing the love with which he worked for them at large in this matter. These writings were little books, tracts, so-called sermons. It did not disturb him, he once said, to hear daily of certain people who despised his poverty because he only wrote little books and German sermons for the unlearned laymen. 'Would to God,' he said, 'I had all my life long and with all my power served a layman to his improvement; I should then be content to thank God, and would very willingly after that let all my little books perish. I leave it to others to judge whether writing large books and a great number of them constitutes art and is useful to Christianity; I consider rather, even if I cared to write large books after their art, I might do that quicker, with God's help, than making a little sermon in my fashion. I have never compelled or entreated anyone to listen to me or read my sermons. I have given freely to the congregation of what God has given to me and I owe to them; whoever does not like His word, let him read and listen to others.'

In this spirit he composed, after the Leipzig disputation, a little consolatory tract for Christians, full of reflection and wisdom. He dedicated it to the Elector, an illness of whom had prompted him to write it. Even his most bigoted opponents could not withhold their approbation of the work. Luther's pupil and biographer Mathesius, thought there had never been such words of comfort written before in the German language. In a similar strain Luther wrote about preparation for dying, the contemplation of Christ's sufferings, and other matters of like kind. He explained to the people in a few pages the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. At the desire of the Elector, conveyed to him through Spalatin, and notwithstanding the difficulty he had in finding time for such a large work, he applied himself to a practical exposition of the Epistles and Gospels read in church, intended principally for the use of preachers.

At the same time he made steady progress with his own Scriptural researches, which led him away more and more from the main articles of the purely traditional doctrines of the Church. And the light which dawned upon him in these studies he took pains to impart at once to his congregation. But it was no mere negative or hypercritical interest that led him on and induced him to write. In connection with the saving efficacy of faith, which he had gathered from the Bible, new truths, full of import, unfolded themselves before him. On the other hand, such dogmas of the Church as he found to have no warrant in Scripture, nor to harmonise with the Scriptural doctrine of salvation, frequently faded from his notice, and perished even before he was fully conscious of their hollowness. The new knowledge had ripened with him before the old husk was thrown away.

Thus he now learnt and taught others to understand anew the meaning of the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The Church of the middle ages beheld with wonder in this sacrament the miracle of transubstantiation. The body of our Lord, moreover, here present as the object of adoration, was to serve above all as the bloodless repetition of the bloody sacrifice for sin on Golgotha, to be offered to God for the good of Christendom and mankind. To offer that sacrifice was the highest act which the priesthood could boast of, as being thought worthy to perform by God. This whole mysterious, sacred transaction was clothed in the mass, for the eye and ear of the members of the congregation, with a number of ritualistic forms. In giving them, moreover, the consecrated elements in the sacrament, the priest alone partook of the cup. Luther, on the contrary, found the whole meaning of that institution of the departing Saviour, according to His own words, 'Take, eat, and drink,' in the blessed and joyful communion here prepared by Him for the congregation of receivers, each one of whom was verily to partake of it in faith. Here, as he taught in a sermon on the Sacrament in 1519, they were to celebrate and enjoy real communion; communion with the Saviour, who feeds them with His flesh and blood; communion with one another, that they, eating of one bread, should become one cake, one bread, one body united in love; communion in all the benefits purchased by their Saviour and Head; and communion also in all gifts of grace bestowed upon His people, in all sufferings to be endured, and in all virtues alive in their hearts. Above all, he appealed to Christ's own words, that He had shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins. Here at His holy Supper, He wished to dispense this forgiveness, and, with it, eternal life to all His guests; He pledged it to them here by the gift of His own body. Luther, but only incidentally, remarked in this sermon, when speaking of the cup: 'I should be well pleased to see the Church decree in a General Council, that communion in both kinds should be given to the laity as to the priests.' Even then he regarded as unfounded that idea of sacrifice at the mass which in his later writings he so strenuously denied and combated. At the same time he pointed out the sacrifice which Christendom, and indeed every Christian, must continually offer to God, namely, the sacrifice to God of himself and all that he possesses, offered with inward humility, prayer, and thankfulness. The question as to a change of the elements, which Melancthon had already denied, Luther passed by as an unnecessary subtlety. Lastly, together with the sacrifice supposed to be offered by the priest, he dismissed also the notion of a peculiar priesthood; for with the real sacrifice offered by Christians, as he understood it, all became priests. Instead of the difference theretofore existing between priests and laymen, he would recognise no difference among Christians but such as was conferred by the public ministration of God's word and sacrament.

Whilst discoursing in a sermon, in a similar manner, on the inner meaning of baptism, he passed from the vow of baptism to the vow of chastity, so highly prized in the Catholic Church. He admits this vow, but represents the former one as so immeasurably higher and all-embracing, as to deprive the Church of her grounds for attaching such value to the latter.

He enlarged on moral and religious life in general in a long sermon 'On Good Works,' which he dedicated early in 1520 to Duke John, the brother of the Elector. In clear and earnest language he explained how faith itself, on which everything depended, was a matter of innermost moral life and conduct, nay, the very highest work conformable to God's will; and further, how that same faith cannot possibly remain merely passive, but, on the contrary, the faithful Christian must himself become pleasing to God, on whose grace he relies, must love Him again, and fulfil His holy Will with energy and activity in all duties and relations of life. These duties he proceeds to explain according to the Ten Commandments. He will not, however, have the conscience further laden with duties imposed by the Church, for which no corresponding moral obligation exists. He turns then with earnest exhortation to rebuke certain common faults and crimes in the public life of his nation, the gluttony and drunkenness, the excessive luxury, the loose living, and the usury, which was then the subject of so much complaint. Against this last practice he preached a special sermon, in which, agreeably with the older teaching of the Church, he spoke of all interest taken for money as questionable, inasmuch as Jesus had exhorted only to lending without looking for a return. The creditor, at any rate, he said, should take his share of the risks to which his capital, in the hands of the debtor, was exposed from accident or misadventure.

The essence of the Church of Christ he placed in that inner communion of the faithful with one another and their heavenly Head, on which he dwelt with such emphasis in connection with the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. For the stability and prosperity of this Church he considered no externals necessary beyond the preaching of God's Word and the administration of the Sacraments, as ordained by Christ,-no Romish Popedom, nor any other hierarchical arrangements. But in the same spirit of love and brotherly fellowship with which he embraced Hussites, as well as the Eastern Christians who were denounced as Schismatics, he still wished to hold fast to the visible community of the Church of Rome, declining to identify it with the corrupt Romish Curia. That love, he said, should make him assist and sympathise with the Church, even in her infirmities and faults.

He was anxious also to fulfil personally all the minor duties incumbent on him as a monk and a priest. And yet the higher obligations of his calling, that incessant activity in proclaiming the word, both by speech and writing, were of much greater importance in his eyes. He performed with diligence such duties as the regular repetition of prayers, singing, reading the Horae, and never dreamed of venturing to omit them. He relates afterwards, how wonderfully industrious he had been in this respect. Often, if he happened to neglect these duties during the week, he would make up for it in the course of the Sunday from early morning till the evening, going without his breakfast and dinner. In vain his friend Melancthon represented to him that, if the neglect were such a sin, so foolish a reparation would not atone for it.

Measures, however, were now taken by the Romish Church and its representatives, which, by attacking the word, as he preached it, drove him further into the battle.

It will be remembered that the Papal bull, directed against his theses on indulgences, had not actually mentioned him by name. Contemptuously, therefore, as the Pope had spoken of him as an execrable heretic, he had never yet uttered a formal public judgment upon him. Two theological faculties, those of the universities of Cologne and Louvain, were the first to pronounce an official condemnation of him and his writings. The latter were to be burnt, and their author compelled publicly to recant. This sentence, though pronounced after the disputation at Leipzig, related only to a small collection of earlier writings. In a published reply he dismissed, not without scorn, these learned divines, who, in a spirit of vain self-exaltation and without the smallest grounds, had presumed to pass sentence on Christian verities. Their boasting, he said, was empty wind; their condemnation frightened him no more than the curse of a drunken woman.

The first official pronouncement of a German bishop touched him more nearly. This was a decree, issued in January 1520 by John, Bishop of Meissen, from his residence at Stolpen. Herein, Luther's one statement about the cup, which the Church, as he said, would do well to restore to the laity, was picked out of his Sermon on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The people were to be warned against the grievous errors and inconveniences which were bound to ensue from such a step; and the sermon was to be suppressed. Luther was now classed as an open ally of the Hussites, whose very ground of contention was the cup. Duke George in alarm complained of him to the Elector Frederick. It was rumoured about him even that he had been born and educated among the Bohemians.

To this episcopal note, which he ridiculed in a pun, Luther published a short and pungent reply in Latin and German. He was particularly indignant that this occasion should have been seized to tax his sermon with false doctrine, since the wish he there expressed did not contain, as even his enemies must admit, anything contrary to any dogma of the Church. For his enemies, no doubt, this one point was of more practical importance than many deviations from orthodoxy with which they might have reproached him in his doctrine of salvation; for it concerned a jealously guarded privilege of their priestly office, and was connected with the 'Bohemian heresy.' As for Huss, however, Luther now confessed without reserve the sympathy he shared with his evangelical teaching. He had learned to know him better since the Leipzig disputation. He now wrote to Spalatin: 'I have hitherto, unconsciously, taught everything that Huss taught, and so did John Staupitz, in short we are all Hussites, without knowing it. Paul and Augustine are also Hussites. I know not, for very terror, what to think as to God's fearful judgments among men, seeing that the most palpable evangelical truth known for more than a century, has been burnt and condemned, and nobody has ever ventured to say so.'

On the part of the Elector, Luther still continued to reap the benefit of that placid good-will which disregarded all attempts, either by friendly words or menaces, to set that prince against him. Luther for this thanked him publicly, without meeting with any demurrer from the Elector, as well in a dedication of the first part of his new work on the Psalms, which he had sent to the press early in 1519, as in another prefixed to his tract on Christian comfort, already noticed. This last work he had been encouraged to write by Spalatin, the confidant of the sick prince whom it was intended to please. In the dedication prefixed to the Psalms, he expressed his joy at hearing how Frederick had declared in a conversation reported by Staupitz, that all sermons, made by man's wit and uttering man's opinions, were cold and powerless, and the Scriptures alone inspired with such marvellous power and majesty that one must needs say, 'There is something more there than mere Scribe and Pharisee; there is the finger of God;' and how, when Staupitz had concurred in the remark, the prince had taken his hand and said, 'Promise me that you will always think thus.' Luther also thanked Frederick for having, as all his subjects knew, taken more care of his safety than he had done himself. In his thoughtlessness, he himself had thrown the die, and had already prepared himself for the worst, and only hoped to be able to retire into some corner, when his prince had come forward as his champion.

At the same time the Elector remained constant in his efforts to check the impetuosity of Luther. We have noticed how he encouraged him, through Spalatin, to peaceful work in the service of Christian preaching. When the episcopal missive from Stolpen threatened to make the storm break out afresh, he sent, by Spalatin, an urgent exhortation to Luther to restrain his pen, and further advised him to send letters of explanation, in a conciliatory spirit, to Albert, Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence, and the Bishop of Merseburg.

Luther wrote to both in a tone of perfect dignity. He begged them not to lend an ear to the complaints and calumniations which were being circulated against him, especially in reference to giving the cup to the laity, and to the Papal power, until the matter had been seriously examined. He spoke at the same time of malicious accusers, who on those points held secretly the same opinions as himself.

But from this contest with the Bishop of Meissen he refused to withdraw. To Spalatin he broke out again in February 1520, in terms more decided than any he had previously given vent to, and which led people to expect still sharper utterances. 'Do not suppose,' he said, 'that the cause of Christ is to be furthered on earth in sweet peace: the Word of God can never be set forth without danger and disquiet: it is a Word of infinite majesty, it works great things, and is wonderful among the great and the high; it slew, as the prophet says (Psalm lxxviii. 31), the wealthiest of them, and smote down the chosen ones of Israel. In this matter one must either renounce peace or deny the Word; the battle is the Lord's, who has not come to bring peace into the world.' Again he says: 'If you would think rightly of the Gospel, do not believe that its cause can be advanced without tumult, trouble, and uproar. You cannot make a pen out of a sword: the Word of God is a sword; it is war, overthrow, trouble, destruction, poison; it meets the children of Ephraim, as Amos says, like a bear on the road, or like a lioness in the wood.' Of himself he adds: 'I cannot deny that I am more violent than I ought to be; they know it, and therefore should not provoke the dog. How hard it is to moderate one's heat and one's pen you can learn for yourself. That is the reason why I was always unwilling to be forced to come forward in public; and the more unwilling I am, the more I am drawn into the contest; that this happens so is due to those scandalous libels which are heaped against me and the Word of God. So shameful are they that, even if my heat and my pen did not carry me away, a very heart of stone would be moved to seize a weapon, how much more myself, who am hot and whose pen is not entirely blunt.'

The two dignitaries of the Church answered not ungraciously. They merely expressed an opinion that he was too violent, and that his writings would have a questionable influence with the mass of the people. They refrained from giving judgment on the matter; a proof that, in the Catholic Church in Germany, the questions raised by Luther could not then have been considered of such importance as the upholders of the strict Papal system maintained and desired. Even Albert, the Cardinal, Archbishop, and Primate of the German Church, ventured to speak of the whole question about the Divine or merely human right of the Papacy as an insignificant affair, which had but little to do with real Christianity, and therefore should never have become the occasion of such passionate dispute.

From Rome was now awaited the supreme judicial decision as to Luther and his cause. The Pope had already in 1518 indicated clearly enough to Frederick the Wise in what sense he intended to give this decision. But it kept on being delayed, because, on the one hand, it still appeared necessary to act with caution and consideration, and, on the other, because Roman arrogance continued to underestimate the danger of the German movement. Meanwhile Eck, by a report of his disputation and by letters had stirred the fire at Rome. The theologians of Cologne and Louvain worked in the same direction, and called on the whole Dominican Order to assist them with their influence. The Papal pretensions which Luther had disputed were now for the first time proclaimed in all their fulness of audacity and exaggeration. Luther's old opponent Prierias, in a new pamphlet, extended them to the temporal as well as the spiritual sovereignty of the world; the Pope, he said, was head of the Universe. Eck now devoted an entire treatise to justifying the Divine right of the Papal primacy, resting his proofs boldly, and without any attempt at critical inquiry, on spurious old documents. With this book he hastened in February 1520 to Rome, in order personally to push forward and assist in publishing the bull of excommunication which was to demolish his enemy and extinguish the flame he had kindled.

But Luther's work, in proportion as it advanced and became bolder, had stirred already the minds of the people both wider and deeper. Opponents of Rome who had risen up against her in other quarters, on other grounds, and with other weapons, now ranged themselves upon his side. Among all alike the ardour of battle grew the more powerful and violent, the more it was attempted to smother them with edicts of arbitrary power.