His standpoint, according to Harnack, was originally this: “If it is certain that man may not, and indeed cannot do anything for God’s sake, if the very idea of moving God by our works is the death of true piety, if the whole relationship between God and man depends on a believing disposition, i.e. on unshakable trust in Him, humility and constant prayer, if lastly no ceremony has any worth, then there can be no ‘Divine Service’ in the true sense of the term. The only direct service of God there is, is faith, otherwise the rule that obtains everywhere is that we serve God by charity towards our neighbour.”[1843]
Very soon, however, we find that in practice Luther reverts to some sort of common worship for the sake of the “common man,” who requires to hear the Word, to assist at public prayers, and who must also have some kind of liturgy. At times Luther seems to speak of public worship as merely a “school for the imperfect,” and, occasionally, he may really have meant it (above, p. 149 f.). By reforming the Mass and by the other directions he gave concerning public worship, scanty and faltering though they be, he introduced a practice which is at variance with his principles. “The seemingly conservative attitude he adopted in his emendation of the Missal, and his refusal to undertake a thorough reconstruction of divine worship led to many ‘Lutherans’ in the 16th, and again in the 19th century, entertaining questionable views on the specific religious value of public worship, its object and its practice. How very unlike Luther this is—seeing that Luther here can, and must, be corrected in his own light—and what a vast difference exists between the Evangelical and the Catholic doctrine of divine worship.”[1844] Harnack appeals to Gottschick’s “Luthers Anschauungen vom christlichen Gottesdienst” (1887), as clearly demonstrating this. According to Gottschick the old Lutheran liturgy is not “even relatively a genuine product of the real spirit of the Reformation.” In this theologian’s opinion, Luther “really adopted the Roman Mass, contenting himself with a few alterations.” Gottschick urges that an attempt should be made to construct “an entirely new edifice on the basis of the principles embodied in Luther’s reforming views,” etc.[1845]
Gottschick is also right when he points out, that Luther “took but little interest in liturgy.”[1846] He was, however, set on bringing the people into the new faith and Church with the utmost circumspection and with as little fuss as possible. It is not necessary to recall here how successful was his policy of retaining the external forms, particularly on the unschooled masses who were unable to see below the surface. (Cp. vol. ii., p. 319 ff.)
Luther declared that he himself, “with a few friends, really constituted the ancient Church”—“a remarkable point of view,” says Harnack, “explicable only by the idealism of his faith.”[1847]
This enabled him, so Harnack continues, “to abandon and assail the Catholic Church, and nevertheless all the while to protest that he stood with the olden Church. Though in assuming this attitude his faith was so strong that it mattered nothing to him how great or how small was the number of those who refused to bend the knee to Baal, yet it was of the greatest interest to him to show that he was a true member of that Church which had existed through the ages. Hence, he was compelled to prove the historical continuity of his position. But how could this be proved more surely than by means of the old creeds of the ancient Church still in force?”[1848]
Here, again, we are confronted by the contradiction which runs through the whole of Luther’s theology.
Even the very Creeds he had undermined by that subjectivism which he had exalted into a principle. Every Creed must submit to being tested by the Word of God, either by Luther himself or by any other man who considered himself equal to the task. Furthermore, the Word of God is subservient to the Canon set up by Luther or any other Christian scholar, and its sense may be determined by any Christian sufficiently enlightened to understand it. This was to open up the road to a Christianity minus any creed or dogma.
Luther’s claims, whether to represent the olden Church or to have furnished a better and firmer basis for the future, have never been more vigorously questioned by any Protestant theologian of modern days than by Adolf Harnack.
If we sum up in Harnack’s words the results of modern Protestant criticism exercised on Luther’s teaching, we find that they do not in the least countenance the obsolete view of some of Luther’s latest admirers, viz. that he preserved what was good and “wholesome” of the existing dogmas and merely added “one, or two supplementary doctrines.”[1849] Even to-day we still hear it said that his belief and the “ancient dogma” were really “in complete harmony”; people, in support of this statement, appeal to what might naturally be considered the best witness, viz. to Luther himself, who was quite of this opinion. But when the defenders of this view begin to speak of Luther’s “alteration” of dogma and of his having “reconstructed” it, then, says Harnack, it becomes “hard to tell what the words are intended to convey,” in any case, it is an admission that “Luther’s conception of faith in some way or other modified the whole of dogma.”[1850]
It would be more correct, according to Harnack, to say, that “Luther overthrew the whole doctrine of the olden and mediæval Church, retaining only a few fragments.”[1851] His own “attitude of mind towards ancient dogma” was not “altogether consistent.” His “Christianity” is, as a matter of fact, “no longer inwardly bound up” with ancient dogma; his “conception of faith, i.e. what admittedly constituted his main contribution,” stands in no need of the olden doctrinal baggage.[1852] “In Luther’s Reformation the old, dogmatic Christianity was set aside and replaced by a new, Evangelical conception. The Reformation is really [for Harnack’s Protestantism] the end of the history of dogma.... If Luther agrees with this or that definition of the ancient or mediæval Church, the agreement, seen from this standpoint, is partly only apparent, partly a coincidence which can never be the result of any a priori submission to tradition.”[1853]
“So far as Luther left a ‘Theology’ to his followers it appears as an extremely complicated affair.... He did not therein give its final expression to Evangelical Christianity, but merely inaugurated it.”[1854] A philosopher may, at a pinch, find the dogmas of the Greek Church wise and profound, but no philosopher could possibly find any savour in Luther’s faith. Luther himself was not aware of the chasm that separated him from the ancient dogma, partly because he interpreted it in his own sense, partly because he retained some vestige of respect for the definitions of the Councils, partly, too, because he was only too pleased to be able to confront the Turks, heathen, Jews and fanatics with something definite, assured, exalted and incomprehensible.[1855]
We may well make Harnack’s concluding words our own: “It has been shown that the scraps of the olden belief which he retained do not tally with his views as a whole.... The whole does not merely rise above this or that dogma, but above all dogmatic Christianity in general,”[1856] i.e. the doctrines of the Christian faith are no longer binding.
2. Luther as a Popular Religious Writer. The Catechism
During the last years of his life Luther was able to put the last touch to his literary labours by undertaking a new revision of some of his more important earlier works, and by assisting in the compilation of complete editions of his writings.
Thanks partly to his own literary labours, partly to the help and support of friends and pupils, he succeeded in gathering together those works which he desired to see handed down to posterity.
In 1541 and 1545 Luther’s German translation of the Bible also received its finishing touch, and a new, amended edition was brought out, which, though slightly altered, still serves the Protestant congregations to-day. Moreover, the sermons of the Postils were revised afresh in order to furnish reading matter for the people and to help the preachers. In 1540 he himself published the first part of the Church-Postils (the winter term) and, in 1543, appeared the second portion, previously revised by Cruciger.[1857] The Home-Postils appeared for the first time in 1544, edited by Veit Dietrich. At the same time a beginning was made with the complete editions of his literary works, the first volume of the German edition appearing in 1539 and the first volume of the Latin edition in 1545.
His Collected Works; his New Edition of the Church-Postils
Luther’s German writings were collected by Cruciger and Rörer and printed at Wittenberg. The second volume was published only in 1548, after Luther’s death. The compilation of the Latin writings was carried out with the aid of various friends, for instance, of Spalatin and Rörer, and also first saw the light at Wittenberg. Both these editions were eagerly sought after by the booksellers and a great sale was anticipated.
In the introductions which Luther prefixed to both collections he not only followed the then universal fashion of seeking to make a favourable impression on the reader by an extravagant display of humility, but also gave free play to his love for grotesque exaggerations. He had no intention of writing any “Retractations,” as St. Augustine had done, however much such might be called for. Instead of this he professes to repudiate his books wholesale—though only, of course, to bring them forward again all the more vigorously. Whoever is familiar with Luther’s ways will not need to be told how to interpret and appreciate what he here says. There is no doubt, however, that countless readers of these introductions fell into the trap and exclaimed: How great and yet how humble is the man who speaks in these pages!
Luther begins the prefaces to his German works[1858] with the wish, which we have heard him express before: “Gladly would I see all my books unwritten or destroyed.”[1859] Why? “That Holy Scripture might be read and studied the more,” that Word of God, “which so long lay forgotten under the bench.” Because, in the Church, “many books and large libraries” had been collected “apart from and in addition to Scripture,” and “without any discrimination,” the “true understanding of the Divine Word had at last been lost.” At any rate it was “good and profitable that the writings of some of the Fathers and Councils had remained as witnesses and histories.” I myself, he says, “may venture to boast without pride or lying that I do not fall far short of some of the Fathers in the matter of the making of books; my life, however, I would not dare to liken to theirs.” It is, however, his books that “provide the ‘pure knowledge’ of the Word.” Nevertheless, he seeks comfort in the thought, “that, in time, my books, too, will lie dusty and forgotten,” “particularly now that it has begun to rain and hail books.” But whoever reads them, “let him see well to it that they do not prove a hindrance to his studying Scripture itself.”
He then goes on to give some quite excellent directions as to how best to study Holy Scripture. He himself had pursued this method, and were the reader too to make it his own he would be able, “if necessary, to compose as good books as the Fathers and the Councils.”
In the first place you must “altogether renounce your own judgment and reason,” and rather beg God “humbly and earnestly to ... enlighten you”; but if anyone “falls on it with his reason” ... then the result is only a new crop of fanatics. Secondly, he recommends that the text of the Bible, i.e. “the literal words of the book, should be ever studied, read and re-read with diligent attention and reflection as to what the Holy Ghost means thereby.” Thirdly, temptations: “As soon as the Word of God is being made known to you, the devil will attack you, make a real doctor of you, and, by his temptations, teach you to seek and love God’s Word.” He, too, had to thank his Papists and the raging of the devil at their bidding for having made him “a pretty fair theologian.” Hence “oratio, meditatio, tentatio.”
But if anyone seeks to win praise by writing books, then let him pull his own ears and he will find “a fine long pair of big rough donkey’s ears”; these he may adorn with golden bells so that everyone may point at him and say: “There goes the elegant animal who writes such precious books.” No, so he concludes his preface, “in this book all the praise is God’s.”
In the preface to the first volume of his Latin works Luther seeks, not so much to enhance his knowledge of Scripture as he does in the German preface, but rather to explain in his own way how he was led to take up the position he did.
He represents the indulgence controversy as the sole cause of his breach with Catholicism and does so in language in which readers, unacquainted with the real state of the case, would detect simply a defence of his struggle against the “fury and wrath of Satan.” Of the real motive of the struggle, viz. his rupture with the doctrines of the Church even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, or, indeed, to the Theses against Tetzel, he says never a word. On the other hand, he launches out into a dissertation on his Popish views at that time, which he urges had been deeper and more ingrained than those of Eck and all his opponents, and, which, unfortunately, had disfigured his earliest writings. He had been terribly afraid of the Last Judgment but at the same time had longed ardently to be eternally saved. God knew that it was only by the merest chance that he had been drawn into public controversy (“casu, non voluntate nec studio”). Only when beginning his second exposition of the Psalms (1518-19) had the knowledge dawned upon him of that “Justice of God,” whereby we are justified; before this he had hated the term “Justice of God.”[1860] He is at great pains to impress on the reader that he had “gradually advanced, thanks to much writing and teaching,” and was not one of those, “who [like the fanatics], from nothing, become all at once the greatest of men ... without labour, or temptations, or experience.” No great stress need be laid on the statement he again makes at the commencement of this preface, viz. that he would fain see all his books “buried in oblivion,” and that only the urgent entreaties of friends had won his consent to their bringing out a complete edition of his “muddled books.”
In the evening of his life Luther could look back with a certain satisfaction on the numerous popular works he had composed for the instruction and edification of the masses and the “simple,” and on the success with which they had been crowned. Again and again his fondness for thus instructing the populace had drawn him into this sphere of work; he had always striven with great perseverance and patience to better, both as to their language and their matter, the little tracts he composed. How highly he valued such works of instruction we can see from the writings which appeared from time to time as precursors of his Catechisms. They show how diligent he was in dealing with popular religious subjects.
He himself bears witness to his laborious literary labours and their results in the preface to his Church-Postils of 1543.[1861] Conscious of what he had achieved he there quotes the passage where St. Paul says that the faithful were “enriched in all things, in all knowledge and understanding,” etc. (1 Cor. i. 5). “In the same way we may say to our Germans that God has richly given us His Word in the German tongue.... For what more can we have or desire?” He points to the catechism which he has preached “clearly and with power,” to his exposition of the Commandments, of the Our Father and the Creed; in his writings they would find explained “Holy Baptism, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, the keys, the ban, and absolution. We have been instructed definitely how each one is to understand his own state and calling and behave himself; whether he be a cleric or a layman, or of high or low estate. We know what conjugal life is, what widowhood and maidenhood, and how we are to live and act therein in a Christian manner.”—Although the people were already sufficiently instructed on these points, and though Luther’s teaching in so far as it was something new cannot meet with our approval, yet it must be admitted that in his writings for the people Luther treated of these things, according to his light, in language both popular and forcible.
Herewith, so he says in the same preface, you receive from my friend Cruciger the Church-Postils amended and enlarged, with its “lucid and amusing” explanations of the Gospel-lessons. Just as a mother pulps the food for her baby, so the Epistles and Gospels of the year have been pulped for you. As now they had already in print a corrected edition of the lives of the Saints, a German version of the Psalter and, in particular, the whole Bible in “good German,” the preachers should be better able to teach the people how to be saved. “We have done our part faithfully and in full measure; let us therefore be for ever thankful to God, the Father of all mercies.” Luther’s allusion to his Postils as being “lucid and amusing,” and to the “good German” of his translation of the Bible, are perfectly justified.
Luther, in 1527, spoke of his Church-Postils as the “best book I ever wrote ... which, indeed, pleases even the Papists.”[1862] It is obvious that he bestowed this praise upon it in view of its positive contents. It is true that, some eight or nine years later, he declared with his customary exaggeration, he wished the “whole of this book could be blotted out”; this was, however, at a time when he was already planning a new edition to be undertaken by Cruciger, “which might be useful to the whole Church.”[1863] The work, however, even in its first dress, undoubtedly contained much that was good.
Good Points and Shortcomings of Luther’s Popular Works
Not only is the number of popular writings Luther composed surprising, but they are distinguished by the energy and originality of their style, and, in many passages where no fault is to be found with what he says, his instructions and exhortations are admittedly seasoned with much that is truly thoughtful and edifying. In spite of all the admixture of falsehood to the ancient treasure of doctrine a certain current of believing Christianity flows through these popular writings and contrasts agreeably with both the more or less infidel literature of recent times and the shallow religious productions of an earlier date.
The mediæval language, feelings and world of thought, all so instinct with faith and piety, find a splendid exponent in Luther as soon as, putting controversy aside, he seeks to seize the hearts of the people; such passages even make the reader ask whether the author can really be one and the same with the writer who elsewhere fulminates with such revolting malice against the Church of the past. Then, again, the plentiful quotations from the Bible in which he was so much at home, impart a devout tone to what he says without, however, in the least rendering it insipid or unnatural. From the latter fault he was preserved by a certain soberness of outlook, by his native realistic coarseness and his general tendency to be rude rather than sentimental.
Nor would it by any means be right were Luther’s opponents to attribute the above favourable traits in his writings exclusively to the influence of the Catholic past. It is true that it is the latter which is mainly responsible for the elements of truth found in his writings, and also, not seldom, for the attractive and sympathetic way in which he presents his matter to the reader; but to deny that the author’s peculiar talent for speaking to the people and his rare gift of adapting himself to his German readers had also its share, would be to go too far. Luther, who hailed from among the lower class and had ever been in touch with it, knew the German character as well as any man (see vol. iii., p. 93 ff.). In his style he embodied to some extent the nation’s mode of thought and speech. Hence his success with the Germans, whom he drew by the strongest ties, viz. those of nationalism, into circles where the motherly warnings of the Church were no longer heard.
We are, however, unable to discern in his writings the mystical qualities which some of his admirers find everywhere. Echoes of the sayings of the olden mystics, such as we have had occasion to quote from his earlier works, obviously do not suffice to prove his own mystic gifts. Moreover, these echoes tend to become feebler as time goes on, and the nearer his literary labours draw to their close the less can they be considered to bear the character of true mystical productions. Certain leanings met with in Luther at the beginning, and even later, we have already had to characterise as the outcome of an untheological pseudo-mysticism.[1864]
In his Exposition of the Magnificat (1521), for instance, we meet with trains of thought expressed in words which by their beauty recall those of the mystics of old. One cannot read without being edified what he says at the commencement of this little work, of the love of God which makes “the heart overflow with joy,”[1865] or of the glories of Mary; of her, nothing greater can be said than that she was the Mother of God, “even had one as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, blades of grass in the field, stars in heaven, or grains of sand on the sea-shore.”[1866]—Akin to this is the touching conclusion of his little writing on the Our Father, where he pictures the soul as pouring forth its desires to God the Father.[1867] Such jewels are, however, not offered to his readers as frequently as his talent in this respect would have rendered desirable.
To what good account he put this gift in his earlier years is well seen even in his controversial “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen” (1520), where he is at pains to expound the sum of the Christian life, though “only for the plain man.” Our present subject invites us to return once more to this side of the writing.[1868]
Of works of charity Luther there speaks as follows: “The inward man is at one with God, is joyful and merry by reason of Christ Who has done so much for him, and all his joy is in wishing to serve God in return freely and out of pure love. In his flesh, however, he finds a will which is quite other and which wishes to serve the world and to seek what it pleases. But this, faith cannot bear, and it sets vigorously to work to check and restrain it. As St. Paul says, Rom. vii.[23]: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and ensnaring me in the law of sin.”[1869]
Later, coming to the works imposed upon man by self-restraint, he says: “So much of works in general, such as it suits a Christian to practise against his own flesh. Now we have to speak of works which he does for other men. For on this earth man does not live by himself but among other folk. Hence he cannot live without performing works for them, for he has to speak and have dealings with them.... Look how plainly Paul makes the Christian life to consist in works done for the good of our neighbour.... He instances Christ as our example and says [Phil. ii. 6-7]: ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal to God, and yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,’ and doing and suffering all things for our sakes alone. In the same way the Christian man, though he is free, ought willingly to become a slave in his neighbour’s service, and treat him as God through Christ has treated us, and all this, too, without reward; to seek nothing thereby but to be well-pleasing to God, and to think thus: See, God in and through Christ has bestowed on me, unworthy and guilty wretch that I am, without any merit, and solely out of pure mercy, an abundance of riches, piety and salvation.... Hence, in my turn, I will readily, gladly and without reward do what is well-pleasing to such a Father Who has heaped upon me His unspeakable riches, and be a Christ to my neighbour as Christ was to me; only what I see him to need and what is useful and profitable to him, will I do, now that, by my faith, I myself have all things abundantly in Christ. See, how joy and love of God spring from faith, and, how, from love comes a ready, willing, cheerful life of service towards our neighbour.”[1870]—“It is thus that God’s gifts must flow from the one to the other and become common to all, so that each one cares as much for his neighbour as he does for himself. They flow to us from Christ, Who, in His life, took us on Him as though He had been what we are. From us they should flow to those who need them.”[1871]
Though, intermingled with such excellent matter, we find ever-recurring allusions to his peculiar doctrine of justification by faith alone, and though he fails to see the true organic connection between good works and the life of faith and thus condemns to inanity all works not performed out of perfect charity, yet it cannot be gainsaid that certain aspects of neighbourly love are here admirably portrayed.
Later on we often miss this sympathetic tone, for it was blighted by his polemics. As for his aptitude for instructing the people he retained it, however, to the end.
In the Exposition of the Our Father, of which the dialogue of the soul with God forms a part, he lays down at the outset in striking, popular guise the need of prayer, the value of the simple Paternoster, the profit to be derived from weighing well its contents, and also the beauty of the virtue of humility.[1872] His explanation of the Hail Mary, for all its brevity, contains practical and valuable hints as to how God is to be honoured in all.[1873]
In a very useful booklet entitled “Einfeltige Weise zu beten”[1874] (1534), Luther assumes the garb of an instructor on prayer and attempts to show how the forms in common use, the Our Father, Ten Commandments and Creed, provide matter for prayer even for busy laymen, and how the latter, by meditating on each separate word or clause, may rise to perfect prayer. “When good thoughts press in upon us,” he says, for instance, explaining the latter practice, “then the other prayers may be neglected and all our attention given to such thoughts which should be listened to in silence and on no account be thwarted, for then the Holy Ghost Himself is preaching to us; one word of His sermon is far better than a thousand prayers of ours. And I, too,” he adds, “have often learnt more in one such prayer than I could from much reading and composing.”[1875]
In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,”[1876] exhorting all to pray for the public needs, he speaks alluringly and with great religious fervour. Urging his readers to pray for the divine assistance, he takes one by one, as was indeed his wont, the thoughts suggested by the Our Father.[1877] “Our comfort and defiance, our pride, our daring and our arrogance, our insistence, our victory and our life, our joy, our honour and our glory are seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. There, devil, just you touch a hair of His!” The power of his words is heightened by his references to the nearness of the Last Day, the advent of which was foreshadowed in the downfall of both Papal and Turkish power. He even declares that the certainty of being heard depended on the spiritual struggle being waged in defence of the Evangel against the popish “blasphemers, persecutors and God-forsaken children of the devil”; where these had their way and were fighting, there nothing was to be looked for save ruin; there God’s “angry hand was raised in vengeance against all the devils and Turks, against Mahmed, Pope, Meinz, Heinz and all the miscreants.”[1878] Hence, even in a tract intended as an exhortation to prayer and to promote a great work of Christian charity, quite other sentiments gain for the time the upper hand.
This brings us back to the remark we have frequently had to make when describing other writings of Luther’s meant for the common people.
All too often his exhortations are disfigured by unmeasured vituperation or uncalled-for controversy of the most bitter kind. In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,” referred to above, Luther is seen at his worst in the excursion he makes therein against the abuses—then indeed very bad—of the usurers, particularly because they had ventured to say that “Luther does not even know what usury is.”[1879] He, altogether forgetful of meekness, also attacks the ungrateful Evangelicals in a highly unseemly manner, because they refused to submit to the stern reproofs of their preachers: “Let them fare to the devil and die like pigs and dogs, without grace or sacrament, and be buried on the carrion-heap.... Those men who wish to go unreproved thereby admit that they are downright rogues.... They deserve to hear Mahmed, the Turk, the Pope and the devil and his mother rather than God. Amen, Amen, if they will have it so.”[1880] Of the Catholics he says in the same “Vermanunge,” that the foes of the Evangel among the Catholic princes, “traitors, murderers and incendiaries that they are,” knew full well that his was the “true Word of God,” yet, instead of accepting it, they would “much prefer to behave towards us like Turks, or were it possible, like very devils, not to speak of their being ready to serve, aid, counsel and abet the Turks”; they said, “If God in heaven won’t help us, then let us call in all the devils from hell.... This I know to be true.”[1881]
It was no mere passing fit of temper that induced him in his old age so to disfigure his exhortations. In another pious writing, the “Circular Letter to the Pastors,” sent around two years previous, and also dealing with the war against the Turks, he says: “The Papists do not pray and are so bloodthirsty that they cannot pray”; hence let us pray, he says; “but, when they start with their bloodthirsty designs against the Evangel, then all must fall upon them as upon a pack of mad dogs.”[1882] Such words scattered broadcast over Germany could not possibly serve to promote union or to strengthen the resistance to be offered to the danger looming from the East. They merely throw a lurid light on the chasm Luther cleft in the heart of the nation, and on the internal dissensions which were weakening the Empire and making it an object of ridicule to the Turkish unbelievers.
In the preface to his Church-Postils (1543), Luther exhorts the pastors to leave those, who “wish to be left unpunished,” to “die like dogs”; the rooks and ravens, jackdaws and wolves would sing the best vigils and dirges for the souls of such proud wiselings.[1883] He not only wishes them to fulminate against such men but also desires, that, in the sermons, “certain instances of the Papal tyranny under which we once groaned in misery be introduced.”[1884]
Such was his anger with his foes that Luther even goes so far as to say in his exposition of the Hail Mary, that the Papists “cursed” instead of blessed, the fruit of Mary’s womb.[1885]—In the tract “How to pray” “Peter Balbier” is warned to bear in mind the “idolatry of the Turk, the Pope and all false teachers”;[1886] nor is ridicule of the praying priestlings wanting;[1887] he then exhorts Peter in the most pious of language to imitate his example, viz. “to suck at the Paternoster like a baby, and to eat and drink it like a man,” “never wearying of it”; he was also “very fond of the Psalter,” turning “the whole as far as possible into a prayer,”[1888] and, when he had “grown cold and disgusted with saying prayers,” would take his “little Psalter and escape into his own room,” etc.[1889]—But even his homely exposition of the Our Father is not free from a polemical bias.[1890]
With the beautiful and useful thoughts contained in his preface to the Larger Catechism, to the annoyance of the thoughtful reader, he mingles abuse of the “lazy bellies and presumptuous saints” of his own party,[1891] to say nothing of the inevitable outbursts against Catholic practices. Here, too, the thought of the devil, by which he is ever obsessed, makes him represent Satan’s wiles as the best and most powerful incentive to the study of the Catechism.
Even his earlier Exposition of the Magnificat is spoilt by a controversial colouring,[1892] and, moreover, is overclouded by the circumstance that he wrote it at the very time when the menace of the Diet of Worms was at its worse. Looking out for a powerful protector, he dedicated his writing to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony, the future Elector, who had wished him luck in his crusade against the Papal Ban. Luther extols the Duke’s piety at the beginning of the work. But was he not anxious to make a good impression himself by his Exposition of the Magnificat? To impress his readers that he was a man enlightened by God and living in union with Him? We may notice how pathetically he depicts the righteous man (and we naturally think of him) submitting to be persecuted for the Word of God, and awaiting with heavenly resignation succour from on high, without in the least striving to protect himself. He who is persecuted, he writes, “must humble himself before God as unworthy that such great things should be done through him and commend everything to His mercy with prayer and supplication.”[1893]
Another motive which inspired the publication of his works of edification was, as he himself admits, to wrest the Catholic prayer-books from the people’s hands. It is true, he says, his intention is “simply and honestly” to supply the people with spiritual food. But he also alludes to the “manifold wretchedness arising out of confession and sin,” and the “unchristian stupidity found in the little prayers offered to God and His Saints,” which he is obliged to assail. Even where his peculiar doctrine makes no appearance in his instructions he is not oblivious of its interest, even though he assures us, seemingly with the utmost sincerity, that he was going to see whether, by his writings, “he could not do his very foes a service. For my object is ever to be helpful to all and harmful to none.”[1894] He saw well of what help the mere existence of pious books would prove to his party; the more pious and innocent they were, the more they would promote his cause and smooth the way for him. The simplicity of the dove thus openly flaunted, nevertheless contrasts unpleasantly with the wisdom of the serpent which is only too apparent.
As to what is lacking in Luther’s religious writings: Any reader familiar with the manuals of instruction and piety in use towards the close of the Middle Ages will at once perceive a great difference between the importance they attach to self-denial, self-conquest and the struggle against the evil inclinations of nature and that attached to them by Luther.
In the “Imitation of Christ,” for instance, the great stress laid on self-denial gives an effective spur to every inward virtue. In Luther, with his twin ideas of faith alone and the irresistible power of grace, this main feature of the religious warfare falls decidedly into the background. Is it a mere coincidence that in the Larger Catechism self-denial and penance are not mentioned among the means for preserving chastity?[1895] Chastity itself is there dealt with in a curiously grudging fashion. The so-called Evangelical Counsels, which fell from our Lord’s own lips and had been eagerly pursued in the past by those seeking to lead a life of perfection, are naturally altogether ignored by Luther. With him, too, the wholesome incentive to good provided by the hope of supernatural merit for heaven had also, owing to his theory, to be set aside. The appeals to the motive of holy fear which he makes are too rare and too powerless to be of much avail. He had clipped with a rude hand the two wings of the spiritual life, viz. fear and the hope of reward, which bear it upwards and without which man cannot rise above the things of sense.
In Luther’s works of edification, as pointed out above, we miss the school of virtue, the advance from one step of virtue and perfection to another, such as had grown up into a wise and recognised system, thanks to the experience of antiquity and the Middle Ages.[1896] With him everything begins with a rash breach with the past. Even the use made of the example of the Saints is painfully defective. An easy-going tendency hides the poverty of the aims and a shallow mediocrity lames the upward flight. Here, again, the fact that the author turns his back so rudely on the traditions of the earliest ages and the holy practices of his fathers, brings its own punishment. For a multitude of inspiring and perfectly legitimate acts of prayer and virtue in which the Christian heart had found strength and gladness are passed over by him in dead silence, or else scoffed at as mere “holiness-by-works.” While this is true of his practice, his theory, too, was wanting in that clear and solid justification and development which the theology of the older divines had enabled them to introduce into their teaching.
Lovers of Luther can, however, claim that in him two qualities were united which are rarely to be found combined, and possibly belong to no other popular religious writer of the age, viz. first, a wealth of ideas suggested by reminiscences, now of the Bible, now from the pages of human life; secondly, the writer’s wonderful imagination, which enables him to clothe all things in the best dress in order the more easily to win his way into the hearts of his readers.
In consequence of this his writings will always find approving friends, not only in Lutheran circles but also among those who for literary or historical reasons are interested in a form of literature bearing so individual a stamp, and know how to overlook their imperfections. The reasons, however, are sufficiently obvious why the Church by a general prohibition (though it does admit of exceptions) has set up a barrier against the study of any of Luther’s works by her children, and why she bids her faithful to seek spiritual food only in those books of instruction and edification which she sanctions.
The Catechism
The ignorance of the people in religious things, of which Luther was made aware during the Visitation in the Saxon Electorate in 1527, led him to compose a sort of Catechism, “which should be a short abstract and recapitulation of Holy Scripture.”[1897] He was desirous of providing in this way a manual for the “instruction of the children and the simple,” and more particularly of supplying fathers of families with an easy means “of questioning and catechising their children and dependents at least once a week (as was their duty), and seeing what they knew or had learnt of it.”[1898]
Thus, at the commencement of 1529, or possibly as early as 1528, he was at work, first, on the (Shorter) Catechism “for the rude country-folk,” as he writes to a friend,[1899] and also preparing mural tablets (“tabulæ”) which set out the matter “in the shortest and baldest way.”[1900] Of these tablets his pupil Rörer says, on Jan. 20, that some of them hung on his walls while the Catechism (“prædicatus pro rudibus et simplicibus”) was still in process of making.[1901] It was in this form that the “Shorter Catechism” first appeared, but, in the same year (1528) these tablets were collected into a booklet entitled the “Enchiridion.”[1902]
Luther was at the same time at work on a fuller German Catechism which was intended to supply the heads of families, and more particularly the preachers, with further matter for their instructions. This work, under the title of “Deudsch Catechismus,” was finished and printed in April, 1529,[1903] and in May appeared a Latin translation of the same. This was what was eventually termed the Larger Catechism.