Amongst the Protestant voices raised in protest against this doctrine, the following deserve to be set on record. It is clear, says K. Hase, that the Catholic doctrine is more closely related to the “Protestant view now prevailing”; he avers, that the “Protestant theologians of our day, even those who are sticklers for the purity of Lutheranism, have described saving faith as that which works by love, quite agreeably to the scholastic conception of the ‘fides formata,’ and have opposed to it a pretended Catholic dogma of Justification by good works.”[1593]

This well-known controversial writer when expressing it as his opinion that Luther’s doctrine of Justification is now practically discarded, was not even at pains to exclude the conservative theologians of his party: “Döllinger[1594] is quite right in charging the so-called ‘old believers’ amongst us with having fallen away from the Reformer’s dogma of Justification as strictly and theologically defined.”[1595]

Thus oblivion seems to be the tragic fate of Luther’s great theological discovery, which, if we are to believe what he says, was to him the light of his existence and his most powerful incentive in his whole work, and which figured so prominently in all his attacks on Rome. Was it not this doctrine which played the chief part in his belief in the utter corruption of the Church of earlier days, when, instead of prizing the grace of Christ, everything was made to depend on works, which had led to the ruin of Christendom, to the debasement of the clergy and to the transformation of the Pope into Antichrist?

The sole authority of Scripture, Luther’s other palladium, had already suffered sadly since the Revolution period, and now the doctrine of Justification seems destined to a like fate. Albert Ritschl was pronouncing a severe censure when he declared, “that, amongst the differences of opinion prevalent in the ranks of the evangelical theologians, the recognition of two propositions [the sole authority of Scripture and Justification by imputation] was the minimum that could be expected of anyone who wished to be considered Evangelical.”[1596] For the fact is that the minimum required by Ritschl, is, according to the admission of Protestant critics themselves, frequently no longer held by these theologians.

Of the Lutheran doctrine of Justification here in question, P. Genrich, a theologian, in his work on the idea of regeneration, says: “If we glance at the process of salvation as described in the evangelical theological handbooks of the 19th century, we may well be astonished at the extraordinary divergencies existing as regards both the conception of regeneration, and the place it is to occupy in the system of doctrine. There are hardly two theologians who entirely agree on the point.”[1597]—Of the practical side of the Lutheran doctrine in question the same writer states: “It is an almost universal complaint that this chief article of Evangelical faith is not of much use when it is a question of implanting and fostering piety, in the school, the church or in parish-work. Perhaps the preacher says a few words about it ... the teacher, too, feels it his duty to deal with it in his catechetical instructions.... Justification by faith is extolled in more or less eloquent words as the treasure of the Reformation, because Church history and theology have taught us so to regard it. But at heart one is glad to be finished with it and vaguely conscious that all one said was in vain, and that, to the children or congregation Justification still remains something foreign and scarcely understood.”[1598] Genrich himself lays the blame on the later formularies of Lutheranism for the mistaken notion of a righteousness coming from without; yet the formularies of Concord surely voiced Luther’s teaching better than the new exponents who are so disposed to tone it down.[1599]

Of the actual theory of Luther, de Lagarde wrote some fifty years ago: “The doctrine of Justification [Luther’s] is not the Evangel.... It was not the basic principle of the Reformation, and to-day in the Protestant Churches it is quite dead.” De Lagarde did not allow himself to be misled by the flowery language concerning personal religious experience which is all that remains of Luther’s doctrine in many modern expositions of it.[1600]

“Research in the domain of New-Testament history and in that of the Reformation,” says K. Holl, “has arrived at conclusions closely akin to de Lagarde’s.... It has been made impossible simply to set the Protestant doctrine of Justification on the same level with the Pauline and with that of the Gospel of Jesus.” Amongst the Protestant objections to the doctrine, he instances “its narrowness, which constitutes a limitation of the ethical insupportable to present-day tastes.” He attempts to explain, or rather to amend, Luther’s theory, so as to give ethics its due and to evade Luther’s “paradox of a God,” Who, though inexorable in His moral demands, Himself procures for the offender salvation and life. As the new dogma originally stood “both its Catholic opponents and the Anabaptists were at one in contending that Luther’s doctrine of Justification could not fail to lead to moral laxity. Protestant theologians were not able to deny the weight of this objection.” In point of fact it involves an “antinomy, for which there is no logical solution.”[1601]

The same author writes elsewhere concerning the assurance of salvation which, according to Luther, accompanies justifying faith: Luther, standing as he did for predestinarianism, “clearly abolished thereby the possibility of attaining to any certainty of salvation. All his life Luther allowed this remarkable contradiction to remain, not because it escaped his notice, but because he had no wish to remove it.” Holl finds, moreover, in Luther’s opinions on Predestination “the climax of the thoughts underlying his doctrine of Justification”; “the strength of [justifying] faith has to be tested by one’s readiness to submit even to the sentence [of damnation].”[1602]

In conclusion we may cite what W. Köhler says of the unreasonableness of Luther’s denial of free-will, according to which either God or the devil sits astride man’s back.

“With the rejection of man’s pure passivity, or, as Luther says, of his being ridden by the Lord God, Luther’s theology suffers a set-back, and the Catholic polemics of the 16th century receive a tardy vindication.” Only owing to his “lucky lack of logic” did Luther steer clear of the disastrous moral consequences of such a view; “in practice” he still laid stress on good works in spite of the danger that the “feeling of security” and the idea of “sinlessness” might lead people “to sink into the mire.” His doctrine, however, in itself leads “either to his usual thought: We are sinners after all, or to extravagant praise of the Divine mercy which flings ‘black sheep’ into the ‘kingdom of grace.’”[1603]

Evangelical theologians generally are, however, full of admiration for the spirit in which Luther, thanks to his “inward experiences,” convinced both himself and others of the certainty of Justification. His “experience of God” had at any rate made him capable of an “heroic faith” and, by his “risking all for God,” he pointed out to the religion of the heart the true road to contentment for all future time. Luther’s doctrine of Justification was the “final deepening of the sense of personal religion” (K. Holl).

“How terribly dangerous,” a Protestant Church-historian says, “is that ‘To be for ever and ever secure of life in Christ’ in the sense in which Luther understands it! We Protestants are merely toning it down when we find in it simply the consciousness of being supported by God; to Luther it is much more ... it is a feeling of spiritual mastery.” The author quotes as descriptive of Luther’s attitude the characteristic watchword from his writing “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen”: “The Christian is so far exalted above everything by faith that he becomes spiritually lord over all, for there is nothing that can endanger his salvation.” To these we may append Luther’s spoken words: “This is Christian freedom ... to have no need of any work in order to attain to piety and salvation”; a Christian may say: I possess “such a Saviour that I need have no fear of death, and am certain of life for ever and ever; I can snap my fingers at the devil and his hell, and am no longer called upon to tremble before the wrath of God.”[1611] The same writer also points out, that, according to Luther, this happy believer “remains for all this inwardly (‘intrinsece’) a sinner and is righteous only outwardly (‘extrinsece’).” From such teaching as this respect for works was bound to suffer: the question of “religion and morality,” whether from the point of view of religion in the process of salvation or from the point of view of morals in social action, could not be satisfactorily solved thereby. “In both cases morality comes short. Theologically no sufficient bulwark is erected against misinterpretation.” “Luther had trouble enough, and through his own fault, in stemming the incroachments of immorality.”

More strongly, and with the frankness usual in the polemics of his day, Willibald Pirkheimer, Luther’s former friend, voices the same thought when he speaks of the “not evangelical, but rather devilish freedom” which, owing to the preaching of the new “evangelical truth,” had made itself so “shockingly” felt amongst so many apostates, both male and female, and had induced him, after long hesitation, to betake himself back to the Catholic fold.[1612]

He is determined, as he says as early as 1516, “to root out utterly the stupid, fleshly affectation that trusts in such works.”[1613] “Many graces and merits,” so he taught even then, “lead man from God; we are so ready to rely on good works, more than on God Himself”; yet we should rather, “in absolute nakedness, pay homage to God’s mercy from the bottom of our heart.”[1614] “The multitude of our sins must not arouse despair, what should make us distrustful is any striving after good works”; we “ought rather to take refuge in the mercy of God.” The sense of good works is our ruin, for it induces in us “a feeling of self-righteousness.”[1615] The latter words portray his own psychological state at that time. It was these lax ideas that led to his quarrel with the Observantines amongst his brethren and with the so-called “Little Saints.” Here also we have an echo from the world of thought already described as the real starting-point of his sad development.

During this crucial period of his mental growth he preached in 1515 on the glad tidings of the Gospel; it was “glad” because it taught us “that the law had already been fulfilled by Christ, so that it was no longer necessary for us to fulfil it, but only, by faith, to hang it about the Man who had fulfilled it and become conformed to Him, because Christ is our Righteousness, Holiness and Redemption.”[1616]

Later he comes to speak still more strongly. He fully admitted it was natural to all men, himself included, to turn to good works in trouble of conscience; it was beyond reason not to rest on them,[1617] yet, according to him, in solacing our conscience we must pay no heed either to sin or to works, but put our whole trust in the righteousness of Christ; we must, to quote him literally, “set up grace and forgiveness, not only against sin, but also against good works.”[1618] It is true that he protests that he has no intention to exclude works (other statements of his in favour of good works will be quoted in due time), yet he abases them to a level which fails to explain why Christ and the Apostles so earnestly recommended them and promised an eternal reward for their performance. Luther assures us that good works form “worldly righteousness”; that love of our neighbour is enjoined for the welfare of society and because we live together; yet he steadfastly condemns as a “shameful delusion,” the view “that works are of any value to righteousness in the sight of God.”[1619]

Who of his contemporaries could deny that Luther preached a wonderfully simple and easy road to “life everlasting”? If this and the “forgiveness of sins” were to cost no more than he insists upon elsewhere, viz. “that you hear the Word and believe it when you have heard it; if you believe it, then you have it without any trouble, expense, delay or pains; thus does the Gospel of Christ and the Christian teaching do everything with a few short words, for it is God’s own Word.”[1620]

Worthy of notice in connection with his ideas of evangelical freedom (see above, p. 453, and vol. ii., p. 27 ff.) is the significant use he makes of the term applied in the New Testament to all Christians, viz. members of a “royal priesthood,” which Luther takes as meaning that all believers have a certain supremacy over sin.

As every Christian, so he teaches, by virtue of the universal priesthood possesses authority to “proclaim the Gospel,” as everyone, “man, woman or maid,” is qualified to “teach” who “knows how to and is able,” so the “Spirit of Christ encourages” all without exception and makes of each one “a great Lord and King of all.” But, “where works are preached, there the right of primogeniture is taken from us,” and this privilege of “royal and priestly dignity disappears completely.” Sometimes the devil tries to force us to sin, for “he is a servant and has his own way. If he forces me to sin then I run to Christ and invoke His help; then he is ashamed. The more he does, the greater his shame. Thus this power is omnipotent. ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ [Ps. viii. 8], we are told. ‘We shall judge the angels,’ says St. Paul [1 Cor. vi. 3]. That is our right of primogeniture which we must ascribe, not to ourselves, but to Christ. But when Christ has cleansed you, then you do what is good, not for yourself [by gaining merit], but for others.”—Such a doctrine he could truly say the Papists failed to understand. But he adds further: They cannot even pray; “with their prayers they merely mock God.”[1621]

The Catholic doctrine of fear had been expressed with wonderful simplicity in the “Imitation of Christ,” already widely read in the years previous to the Reformation: “It is well, my son, that so long as love avails not to restrain thee, fear of eternal punishment should at least affright thee from evil. Whoever disregards fear will not long be able to persevere in good.”—“Consider how thou mayest answer for thyself before the stern judge”: “Now thy labour is still fruitful, now thy contrition still cleanses and makes satisfaction.” “At the day of judgment the man who has mortified his flesh here below will rejoice more than he who has indulged it in luxury.”—The “Imitation” desires, however, that fear should be allied with confidence and love. “Look on Me,” it makes Christ say, “let not thy heart be troubled nor afraid. Believe in Me and trust in My mercy. When thou thinkest thou art far from Me, I am often closest to thee.” “If thou but trust in the Lord,” it says again, “strength will be given thee from above.” “Thou hast no need to fear the devil if thou art armed with the cross of Christ.” Nor do we meet in this book with any trace of that frozen fear which Luther represented as prevalent in the monasteries, on the contrary it insists no less on love: “In the cloister no one can persevere unless he be ready for the love of God to humble himself from the bottom of his heart.”

In order to supply a suitable background for his new doctrine, Luther made out Catholic antiquity to have fostered both in theory and in practice a craven fear, of which in reality it knew nothing at all. By excluding the elements of trust and love, he reduced Catholic life to the merest state of fear, as though this had actually been the sphere in which it moved; he charges it with having cultivated that servile fear which would at once commit sin were there no penalty attached; he also finds in monastic life an element of excitement and confusion which, as our readers already know, was really peculiar to his own personal temperament at one time.

Far more characteristic than such calumnies is his own attitude to that fear of God’s judgments which is just and indispensable.

Not as though, generally, he did not recommend and praise the “fear of God.” This, however, falls beside the mark since such a fear may exist without any adverting to the punishments of the judge, and, as Luther himself puts it, not altogether incorrectly, is more “an awe that holds God in honour and which is always expected of the Christian, just as a good child should fear his father.”[1622] This is the “timor reverentialis,” to use the earlier theological term. But to the actual fear of the Divine judgments as an expiatory and saving motive, Luther gives no place whatever; neither in the justification of the sinner, seeing that he makes faith the one condition for its attainment, or subsequent to justification and in the state of grace, because there all that obtains is confidence in the covering over of sin by grace, while the state of grace, in his opinion, of its own nature necessarily works what is good. The Law and its threats, is, in his opinion, useful “for revealing sin” in order that, knowing this, “grace may be sought and obtained”; “thus the Law works fear and wrath, whereas grace works hope and mercy.”[1623]

Fear, in reality, is contemptible; it “is there because sin prevails,” hence it is not found in the pious, not even in Old-Testament times.[1624] “Let us,” he cries, “cast at our feet all free-will.... Nature and free-will cannot stand before God, for they fear lest He should fall upon them with His club.... Where the Holy Spirit does not whisper to the heart the Evangelical promises, man looks upon God as a devil, executioner, taskmaster and judge.... To the devil with such holiness!”[1625] The above is no mere momentary outburst; it is a theological system and the expression of his deep psychological prejudice. We are carried back to his monastic days and to the theory which fear led him to invent to allay his own personal agitation, but to which he could hold fast only by dint of doing violence to himself.

When he came to see, that, to preserve the people from moral degradation, fear of the Judgments of God had to be preached, he urged that it should be emphasised and declared it quite essential. This he did particularly in his instructions for the Visitation of the Saxon Electorate, which accordingly contain what is practically a repudiation of his teaching. The reasonable and wholesome fear of the judge, which he would have preached to the “simple people” for the moving of their hearts, in spite of all his protests has surely a right and claim to work on the minds not merely of the “simple” but even of the educated, and accordingly to be urged even by the theologians.

However his convictions may have stood, he certainly, in his earlier writings, claimed Augustine in support of his doctrine of the absence of free-will, particularly on account of a passage in the work “Contra Julianum,” which Luther repeats and applies under various forms.[1634] There can, of course, be no question of St. Augustine’s having actually been a partisan, whether here or elsewhere, of the Lutheran doctrine of the “enslaved will.” “These and other passages from St. Augustine which Luther quotes in proof of the unfreedom of the will really tell against him; he either tears them from their context or else he falsifies their meaning.”[1635] He is equally unfair when, in his Commentary on Romans and frequently elsewhere, he appeals to this Doctor of the Church in defence of his opinion, that, after baptism, sin really still persists in man,[1636] likewise in his doctrine of concupiscence in general,[1637] where he even fails to quote his texts correctly. He alters the sense of Augustine’s words with regard to the keeping of God’s commandments, the difference between venial and mortal sin, and the virtues of the just.[1638] Denifle, after patiently tracing Luther’s patristic excursions, angrily exclaims: “He treats Augustine as he does Holy Scripture.”[1639]

Deserving of notice, because it explains both his repeated quotations from Augustine and his advocacy of the motive of fear, is a lengthy admonition of 1531 couched in the form of a letter on the defence of the new doctrine of faith alone and of works. The letter was written by Melanchthon to Johann Brenz, but it had the entire approval of Luther, who even appended a few words to it.[1640] While clearly throwing overboard Augustine, it is nevertheless anxious to retain him.

The letter discussed the objections alleged by Brenz, the influential promoter of the innovations in Suabia, against Luther’s doctrine of Justification, particularly as formulated in the Augsburg Confession, and against Melanchthon’s appeal therein to St. Augustine; Brenz urged that some effort on man’s part certainly intervened in the work of pardon. In the reply Augustine is practically given up. Brenz is told that he is wrong in clinging to Augustine’s fancy (“hæres in Augustini imaginatione”) which puts our righteousness in the fulfilment of the Law. “Avert your eyes from such a regeneration of man and from the Law and look only to the promises and to Christ.... Augustine is not in agreement with the doctrine of Paul [read ‘of Luther’], though he comes nearer to it than do the Schoolmen. I quote Augustine as in entire agreement (prorsus ὁμόψηχος), although he does not sufficiently explain the righteousness of faith; this I do because of public opinion concerning him.” What he means is: Since Augustine is universally held in such high esteem, and has been instanced by us, for this reason I too quote him as though on this point he agreed entirely with Paul, which, as a matter of fact, is not the case.[1641]

Melanchthon next deals more closely with the new idea of righteousness. He hints that, in the Augsburg documents, he had not been able to speak as he was now doing to Brenz,[1642] although, so he persuades himself, he was really saying the same then as now. He gives Brenz what, compared with Luther’s blunt words at the end, is a very polished rendering of the Wittenberg doctrine. “Dismiss the fancy of Augustine entirely from your mind,” he concludes, “and then you will readily understand the reason [why only faith can justify]; I hope that then you will find in our ‘Apologia’ [of the Confession] some profit, though in it I was obliged to express many things with that timidity which can only be understood in struggles of conscience (‘in certaminibus conscientiarum’). It is essential to bring to the ears of the people the preaching of the Law and of penance, but the above true doctrine of the Gospel must not be lost sight of.”—To retire with his holed theology into the mystic obscurity of the “struggles of conscience” was an art that the pupil had learnt from his master.

Luther, unlike Melanchthon, was no adept on the tight-rope; in his postscript he bluntly dismisses the Law, penance and all works so far as they are intended to assist in sanctification as Brenz like the Papists thought; his cry is “Christ alone.” Not even in “love or the gifts that follow from it,” does our salvation lie; in this work nothing within ourselves plays any part, therefore “away with all reference to the Law and to works,” away too, with the thought of “Christ as Rewarder!” “In the stead of every ‘qualitas’ in myself, whether termed faith or love, I simply set Jesus Christ and say: This is my righteousness, this is my ‘qualitas’ and my ‘formalis iustitia,’ as they call it.” Thus only had he everything in himself, thus only did Christ become the “way, the truth and the life” to him, without “effecting this in me from without; in me, not, however, through me, He Himself must remain, live and speak.” Of Augustine Luther indeed says nothing in this passage, but he could not have expressed more strongly the purely mechanical conception of justification, nor have rejected more emphatically every human work, even man’s co-operation under grace.

With this decision Brenz in his letters to Luther and Melanchthon declared himself satisfied, likewise with the instruction received, “which was worthy of a place in the canon of Scripture.”

It is unfortunate, however, that Conrad Cordatus, one of Luther’s favourite pupils, when consigning to his Notes the joint declarations of Luther and Melanchthon, should have registered a protest against “Philip’s innovations.” His quarrel with Philip Melanchthon on the doctrine of Justification was one of the many phases of the dissensions called forth in the Protestant camp by the “article on which the Church stands or falls.”[1643]

Against any citation of St. Augustine the Lutheran theologians and preachers in Pomerania protested during the negotiations for the formula of Concord. By thus falsely alleging this Father, they said in their declaration at the Synod of Stettin in 1577, a formidable weapon was placed in the hands of their Catholic opponents of which they had not failed to avail themselves against the Protestants; they were also assuming the responsibility for a public lie: “Augustine’s book ‘De spiritu et littera’ teaches concerning Justification what the Papists teach to-day.” In the following year they declared against the form of the “first ‘Confessio Augustana,’ as published at Wittenberg in 1531 by Luther and our other fathers,” again on the ground that “there Augustine’s ‘consensus’ is alleged.”[1644] In Mecklenburg the strictures of the Synods of Pomerania were accepted as perfectly warranted. David Chytræus, Professor at Rostock and once a member of Melanchthon’s household, stated about that time, that Erhard Schnepf, the Würtemberg theologian, who was of the same way of thinking as Johann Brenz, had declared in 1544, i.e. during Luther’s lifetime, in a public discourse at Tübingen, that in the whole of Augustine there was not a syllable concerning the righteousness of Christ being imputed to us by faith.[1645] When Chytræus adds that Augustine “was ὁμόψηχος with the Papists,” it is very likely that he was countering the opposite use of this same word by Melanchthon in the passage mentioned above; the latter’s epistle to Brenz had then already been printed.