The report, that, in the days of extreme mental tension previous to his last journey to Eisleben, he abandoned the doctrine of the Real Presence, hitherto so passionately advocated, in order to conciliate the Zwinglians or Melanchthonians, is a fable, put into circulation by older Protestant writers.[1742] In view of the proofs, met with up to the very last, of his belief to the contrary, we may safely dismiss also the doubtful account to be mentioned directly which seems to speak in favour of his having abandoned it.
Luther’s “Kurtz Bekentnis” of September, 1544, certainly was true to his old standpoint and showed that he wished “the fanatics and enemies of the Sacrament, Carlstadt, ‘Zwingel,’ Œcolampadius, Stinkfield [Schwenkfeld] and their disciples at Zürich, or wherever else they be, to be sternly condemned and avoided.”[1743] In his last sermon at Wittenberg on Jan. 17, 1546, he warned his hearers against reason, that “fair prostitute and devil’s bride,” and, indirectly, also against the Sacramentarians and those who attacked his doctrine of the Supper. George Major relates that when he was sent, on Jan. 10, 1546, by Luther to the religious conference at Ratisbon he found scribbled on his door these words: “Our professors must be examined on the Supper of the Lord”; Luther also admonished him not to endeavour to conceal or pass over in silence belief in the Real Presence. On his journey Luther said much the same in the sermons he delivered at Halle and Eisleben; even in his last sermon at Eisleben we find the Sacramentarians described as seducers of mankind and foes of the Gospel.[1744]
That Luther changed his opinion is the purport of a communication, which, after his death, Melanchthon is said to have made to A. R. Hardenberg, a friend of his. Hardenberg speaks of it in a document in his own handwriting preserved in the Bremen municipal archives. There he certainly affirms that Melanchthon had told him how that Luther, before his last journey, had said to him: People have gone too far in the matter of the Supper; he himself had often thought of writing something so as to smooth things down and thus allow the Church again to be reunited; this, however, might have cast doubts on his doctrine as a whole; he preferred therefore to commend the case to God; Melanchthon and the others might find it possible to do something after his death.[1745]—Evidently it is our duty to endeavour to understand and explain this account, however grounded our suspicions may be. One recent Protestant writer has justly remarked: “There must be something behind Hardenberg’s testimony”[1746]; and another, that it “cannot be simply set aside.”[1747]
J. Hausleiter, in 1898, seems to have given the most likely explanation of it:[1748] After Luther’s death Amsdorf complained bitterly that the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s German works, then in the press, had not preserved the real Luther undefiled; he pointed out, that, in the second volume, Luther’s violent attack on the Sacramentarians had been omitted where (at the end of the work “Das diese Wort Christi ‘Das ist mein Leib, etce.,’ noch fest stehen,” 1527) he had said that the devil with the help of Bucer and his denial of the Sacrament had “smeared his filth” over Luther’s books; that Bucer was a “sly, slippery, slimy devil”; where Luther had spoken of Bucer’s “poisonous malice, murderous stabs and arch-scoundreldom,” thanks to which he had “defiled, poisoned and defamed” Luther’s teaching, and where a protest was registered against the assertion that “to begin with,” Philip too had taught the same as the Sacramentarians, viz. that there is “nothing but bread in the Lord’s Supper.”[1749] It was known that those pages had been suppressed in the new edition at Luther’s own hint. This was stated by George Rörer, Luther’s former assistant, who supervised the correction. He said, “he did this with the knowledge and by the request and command of Luther, because M. Bucer, who had there been so severely handled as a notable enemy of the Sacrament, had since been converted.” Of any real conversion of Bucer there can be no question, but as he was then doing good work at Ratisbon in the interests of the new Evangel it may be that Luther—perhaps moved thereto by his Electer at the instance of the Landgrave of Hesse—consented to display such indulgence. This may well have formed the subject of the communication Hardenberg received from Melanchthon, only that the one or the other, or possibly both, in the interests of the movement hostile to Luther’s Sacramental teaching, distorted and exaggerated the facts of the case, and thus gave rise to the legend of Luther’s change of views.
Support for it may also have been seen in the circumstance that Luther, in spite of Melanchthon’s defection on the doctrine of the Sacrament, never broke off his relations with him. In his severe “Kurtz Bekentnis” (1544) he forbore from attacking Melanchthon either openly or covertly. Even in 1545, in the Preface to his own Latin works, Luther bestowed his well-known eulogy on Melanchthon’s “Loci theologici.”[1750] It has been pointed out elsewhere that the services his friend rendered him had been and continued to be too important to allow of Luther’s breaking with him.[1751]
Though Luther was unflinching in his advocacy of the Presence of Christ together with his pet theories of Impanation and Ubiquity, yet he waged an implacable war on the Sacrifice of the Mass. As, however, we have reserved this for later consideration we shall here only point out, that both his doctrine and his practice with regard to the Sacrament of the Altar suffered by his unhappy opposition to the Mass in which it is celebrated and offered, even more so than by the modifications he had already introduced into the older doctrine.
Invocation of the Saints.
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.[1752] 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.[1753] 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.”[1754] 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;[1755] 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.[1756]
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.”[1757]
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.”[1758] 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.”[1759]
“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.[1760]
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.”[1761] 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.[1762] 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.[1763]
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.[1764] 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.[1765] 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.[1766]
Luther’s work on the Magnificat (1521), of which we have already spoken (p. 237, 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.”[1767] 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.[1768] He frequently preached, e.g. in 1523, on the wrong use of this prayer.[1769]
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.[1770]
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.[1771]
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.”[1772]
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.”[1773]
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.”[1774] 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.[1775]
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.[1776]
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”);[1777] then he devoted himself to countering the many legends and popular tales of the appearance of ghosts, a comparatively easy task.[1778] 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.”[1779] In 1528 we still meet, in his writings, with similar concessions to the olden teaching and practice.[1780]
In 1530, however, his writing “Widderruff vom Fegefeur,”[1781] 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 authority, 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,[1782] 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.[1783] In 1538 he characterised the struggle against the Mass as one vital to the new faith;[1784] 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.”[1785]
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.
Luther not only burst asunder the bond of unity, but also overthrew the altar of sacrifice. It is against the correct idea of Divine worship to deprive it of all sacrifice, and to make its principal object consist in the edification and instruction of the congregation, as Luther decreed. Here again we see Luther’s individualism and the stress he laid on the subjective side, even to the extent of robbing religion of the sacrifice of the Lamb, which had the misfortune to be independent of fortuitous piety. The very walls of his temples seemed to utter a chill protest against being given over to a worship so entirely at the mercy of the feelings of the visitor. Luther was against the abuses connected with the Mass, and so were all well-instructed Catholics. But the latter argued, that, in spite of the abuses, the Mass must be honoured as the sacrifice on which the spiritual life rests. To the many contradictions of which he was guilty Luther added a further one, viz. of advocating as a purer and higher worship, one that does not even come up to the true standard of worship. (See vol. v., xxix., 9).
Luther’s deep-seated and almost instinctive antipathy to the Sacrifice of the Mass affords us, in its various phases, a good insight into his plan of campaign. On no other point does his hate flame forth so luridly, nowhere else is he so defiant, so contemptuous and so noisy—save perhaps when attacking Popery—as when assailing the Sacrifice of the Mass, that main bulwark of the Papacy. One thing is certain; of all the religious practices sacred to Catholics none was branded by him with such hideous and common abuse as this, the sublimest mystery of faith and of Divine Love.
First Attacks. “On the Abomination of the Silent Mass.”
In spite of Luther’s assurance given above of his former high regard for the Mass, he must quite early have grown averse to it, probably at the time when his zeal in the religious life first began to flag.
Even in 1516 we learn from his correspondence that he rarely found time for its celebration or for the recitation of the Canonical Hours.[1786] At a much later date he lets fall the remark, that he had never liked saying Mass.[1787] In view of his disturbed state of soul we can readily credit what he says, viz. that, in the monastery Gabriel Biel’s book on the Mass, in which the dignity of the Holy Sacrifice is extolled with the voices of antiquity, had often made his heart bleed.[1788] It is rather curious, that, according to his own account, it was on the occasion of his first Mass after ordination that his morbid state of fear showed itself strongly for the first time.[1789] No less remarkable is it that his most extravagant self-reproaches for his past life had reference to his saying Mass. He tells us how, even long after his apostasy, he had often been brought to the verge of despair by the recollection of the terrible sin of saying Mass whereby he had at one time openly defied and offended God. He morbidly persuades himself that he had been guilty of the most frightful idolatry; that, as a priest and monk, he had performed the most criminal of actions, one subversive of all religion, in spite of his having done so in ignorance and in perfect good faith.[1790]
In his sermons on the Commandments, published in 1518, we still find a tribute to the Sacrifice of the Mass as Catholics understood it.[1791] But in his “Sermon von dem hochwirdigen Sacrament des heyligen waren Leychnams Christi” of 1519 he is curiously reticent concerning the nature of the Mass, whilst expressly recommending and praising the communion of the congregation—under both kinds—as the work of that faith “wherein strength lies.”[1792]
The first open attack on the Holy Sacrifice was made in his “Sermon von dem newen Testament das ist von der heyligen Messe” (1520). The latter appeared almost simultaneously with his “An den christlichen Adel” and prepared the way for his subversive treatment of the Mass in his “De captivitate babylonica.” In the Sermon he declared that it was “almost the worst abuse,” that in the older Church the Eucharistic celebration had been turned into a sacrifice to be offered to God.[1793] Statements such as these predominate in the virulent chapter devoted to the Mass in the “De captivitate babylonica”: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross had been made out to be insufficient and the Sacrifice of the Mass set up in its place; the Supper was the Lord’s work for us, but, by ascribing a sacrificial value to the Mass, it becomes a work of man for God, whereby man hopes to please God.
The close ties connecting the Sacrifice of the Mass with both the Church’s ancient traditions and the institution of Christ are here ruthlessly torn asunder. A lurid and grossly exaggerated account of the abuses which had arisen in connection with the money-offerings for Masses served to stimulate the struggle, essentials faring as badly as what was merely accidental.
At the Wartburg the “Spirit” of the place further excited Luther’s hatred of the Mass. He poked fun at the “Mass-priest” who served the stronghold and wrote to Melanchthon: “Never to all eternity shall I say another Low Mass.”[1794] This he says in the same letter which witnesses to his inner contest with the monastic vows, and in which we find the sentence: “Be a sinner and sin boldly but believe more boldly still.”[1795] At the time of his spiritual baptism in the Wartburg he also wrote both his “De abroganda missa” and his “De votis monasticis.” The former he published in 1522, also in a German version entitled “Vom Missbrauch der Messen.”
This was the bugle-call to the struggle he immediately commenced at Wittenberg against the continued celebration of Mass by the Catholic clergy in the Castle and Collegiate churches of the town. We have already treated of the phases of that campaign in which his impetuosity and intolerance manifested itself in all its nakedness.[1796] From the inglorious combat, thanks to the help of the mob, he was to come forth victorious. On Christmas Day, 1524, for the first time, there was no Mass, and in the following year Justus Jonas wrote of the completion of the work: “On the Saturday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, the whole Pope ... was flung out of All Saints’ church at Wittenberg, together with the stoles, albs, etc.; the olden ceremonies were replaced by pious ones such as accord with Scripture.”[1797]
Luther was convinced that the “whole Pope” could not be destroyed throughout the world save by the abolition everywhere of the Mass. “When once the Mass has been put away,” he declares in 1522, in his screed against Henry VIII., “then I shall think I have overthrown the Pope completely.”[1798]
In this writing his consciousness of his mission and his defiant insistence on the new teaching were largely directed against that palladium of the old Church: “Through me Christ has begun to reveal the abomination standing in the Holy Place” (Dn. ix. 27). It is in denying the sacrificial character of the Mass that he uses those odd words of bravado: “Here I stand, here I sit, here I remain, here I defy with contempt the whole assembly of the Papists,” etc.[1799]
The last act in his warfare on the Mass at the Collegiate church of Wittenberg had been anticipated by Luther’s stormy sermon against the Canon of the Mass (Nov. 27, 1524).[1800] This identical sermon, taken down by his pupil George Rörer, formed the groundwork of the writing he published in 1525, “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse so man den Canon nennet.”[1801]
Here he proceeds on the curious assumption, only to be explained by his perverted enthusiasm, that the mere bringing to light of the Canon (i.e. of the principal part of the Mass, which includes the Consecration and which the priest reads in silence) will suffice to bring about the fall of the whole Eucharistic ritual. The passionate, cynical commentary which he appended to the translation, was, however, far more effective.
The author seems not in the least to realise that the Canon of the Mass is one of the most ancient and most authentic echoes of the early Western Church. It contains sublime religious ideas couched in the simple yet impressive language of the remotest ages of the Church when she was still in touch with classical culture.[1802] Yet Luther’s opinion is that: “It must have been composed by some unlettered monk.”[1803]
He concludes the booklet with a specimen of his usual language: “See, there you have heard the holy, silent Mass and now know what it is, that you may stand aghast at it and cross yourself as though you saw the devil as large as life.” He exhorts the reader to thank God, that “such an abomination has been brought to light,” and “that the great whore of Babylon has been exposed.”
At the same time he tells the secular authorities that it is their bounden duty to interfere “by means of the law” against such defamation of the name of God; “for when an impudent rascal openly blasphemes God in the street, or curses and swears, and the authorities permit it, they become in the sight of God partners in his wickedness. And if in some regions it is forbidden to curse or swear, much more just were it that the secular lords should here do something to prevent and to punish, because such blaspheming and defaming in the Mass is quite as public and as open as when a knave blasphemes in the street. If one is punishable, the other is surely no less so.”[1804]
Thus Luther’s attacks on the Mass in a fatal way became one of the quicksands on which the theory of freedom of conscience and worship which he had put forth at the commencement suffered shipwreck.[1805] Even in the question of the Mass at Wittenberg he had formerly insisted, in opposition to Carlstadt’s violent proceedings, that no religious compulsion should be exercised; this he did, for instance, in the sermons he preached against Carlstadt’s undertaking and particularly in that on Low Masses,[1806] where he declared that faith cannot he held captive or bound, that each one must see for himself what is right or wrong and is not simply to fall in with the “general opinion or to yield to compulsion.” His words were an honourable declaration in favour of freedom of conscience. And now, in his warfare against his fantastic caricature of the Mass, not theoretically only but in practice too (for besides Wittenberg, there was also Altenburg and Erfurt)[1807] he placed the Mass, the most sacred centre of the Church’s worship, on a level with criminal deeds and invited the magistrates to treat it as a sacrilege, since it was the duty of authority “to check all outbreaks of wickedness.”[1808]
When Johann Eck took up his pen to refute Luther’s “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse” he felt it almost superfluous to prove how unfounded the latter’s assertions were, that, by the sacrifice of the Mass, Catholics “denied in deed and in their heart that Christ had blotted out sin”[1809] by His Sacrifice on Golgotha, or that they maintained, that, not the merits of Christ, but rather “our works, must effect this.”[1810] He enters at greater length into the theological proofs of the truly sacrificial character of the consecration and of the correctness and value of the Canon, supplementing the biblical passages on the Sacrifice of the New Covenant by the clear and definite witness of tradition.[1811]
He and his Catholic readers were, however, quite prepared to find Luther refusing even to listen to such proofs taken from tradition. “Ah, bah, tradition this way, tradition that!” he had already cried, with regard to this very question, when striving to shake himself free of the fetters of the Church’s doctrine.
Eck, however, also attacked Luther from another point. Luther had placed in the very forefront of his writing the assertion, that he had never advised the people to have recourse to violent measures, whether with regard to the Mass or the Catholic worship generally, or invited them to revolt; in the preface Eck accordingly promises to take him to task both concerning the Canon and for his responsibility in the rising. “I shall, please God, prove Luther a liar on both counts.” He convicts him of inciting to revolt on the strength of “five proofs” taken from various works of his.
The pecuniary aspect of the Mass supplied Luther and the preachers with an effective means of exciting the people which they were not slow to seize. The abuses, real or apparent, of the system of Mass-stipends, were worked to their utmost by the demagogues.