In Luther’s “German Mass,” as in his even more traditional Latin one, we find at the beginning the Introit, Kyrie Eleison, Gloria and a Collect; then follows the Epistle for the Sunday together with a Gradual or Alleluia or both; then the Gospel and the Credo, followed by the sermon. “After the sermon the Our Father is to be publicly explained and an exhortation given to those intending to approach the Sacrament,”[512] then comes the Consecration. The Secret was omitted with the Offertory. The Preface was shortened. Of the whole of the hated “Canon”[513] the “priest” was merely to pronounce aloud over the Bread and Wine the words of consecration as given in 1 Cor. xi. 23-25, saying then the Sanctus and Benedictus. The Elevation came during the Benedictus.[514] The Our Father and the Pax follow, then the communion of the officiating clergyman and the faithful, under both kinds. To conclude there was another collect and then the blessing.
Some of the portions mentioned were sung by the congregation and great use was made of German hymns.[515] Whatever had been retained in Latin till 1526 was after that date put into German. For the sake of the scholars who had to learn Latin Luther would have been in favour of continuing to say the Mass in that language. The old ecclesiastical order of the excerpts of the Epistles and Gospels read in church was retained, though the selection was not to Luther’s tastes; it seemed to him that the passages in Holy Scripture which taught saving faith were not sufficiently to the fore; he was convinced that the man who originally made the selection was an ignorant and superstitious admirer of works;[516] his advice was that the deficiency should at any rate be made good by the sermon. The celebration of Saints’ days was abolished, saving the feasts of the Apostles and a few others, and of the feasts of the Virgin Mary only those were retained which bore on some mystery of Our Lord’s life. In addition to the Sunday service short daily services were introduced consisting of the reading and expounding of Holy Scripture; these were to be attended at least by the scholars and those preparing themselves for the preaching office. At these services Communion was not to be dispensed as a general rule but only to those who needed it.
Alb and chasuble continued to be worn by the clergyman at the “Mass” in the parish church of Wittenberg, though no longer in the monastic church. The Swiss who visited Wittenberg were struck by this, and, in their reports, declared that Luther’s service was still half Popish. At Augsburg where Zwinglianism was rampant the “puppet show” of the Saxons, with their priestly vestments, candles, etc., seemed a “foolish” and scandalous thing.[517] Luther wished the use of lights and incense to be neither enjoined nor abolished.
As he frequently declared, the utmost freedom was to prevail in matters of ritual in order to avoid a relapse into the Popish practice of man-made ordinances. Even the adoption of the “Deudsche Messe, etc.,” was to be left to the decision of the congregations and the pastors.[518] If they knew of anything better to set up in its place, this was not to be excluded; yet in every parish-congregation there must at least be uniformity. The chief thing is charity, edification and regard for the weak. Above all, the “Word must have free course and not be allowed to degenerate into singing and shouting, as was formerly the case.”[519]
Of the whole of the Wittenberg liturgical service, he says in his “Deudsche Messe”—to the surprise of his readers who expected to find in it a work for the believers—that it did not concern true believers at all: “In short we do not set up such a service for those who are already Christians.”[520] He is thinking, of course, of the earnest, convinced Christians whom, as stated above (p. 133 f.), he had long planned to assemble in special congregations. They alone in his eyes constituted the true Church, however imperfect and sinful they might be, provided they displayed faith and good-will.
“They” (the true believers), he here says of his regulations, “need none of these things, for which indeed we do not live, but rather they for the sake of us who are not yet Christians, in order that we may become Christian; true believers have their service in the spirit.”[521] In the case of the particular assemblies he had in mind for the latter, they would have to “enter their names and meet in some house or other for prayer, reading, baptism, receiving of the Sacrament and other Christian works.” “Here there would be no need of loud or fine singing. They could descant a while on baptism and the Sacrament, and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and charity. All they would need would be a good, short catechism on faith, the Ten Commandments and the Our Father.” Amongst them ecclesiastical discipline and particularly excommunication would be introduced; such assemblies would also be well suited for “common almsgiving,” all the members helping in replenishing the poor-box.[522]
Until such “congregations apart” had come into being the service, and particularly the sermon, according to Luther, must needs be addressed to all. “Such a service there must be for the sake of those who are yet to become Christians, or need strengthening ... especially for the sake of the simple-minded and young ... on their account we must read, sing and preach ... and, where this helps at all, I would have all the bells rung and all the organs played.” He boasts of having been the first to impart to public worship this aim and character, “to exercise the young and to call and incite others to the faith”; the “popish services,” on the other hand, were “so reprehensible” because of the absence of any such character.—In his Churches he sees “many who do not yet believe and are no Christians; the greater part stand there gaping at the sight of something new, just as though we were holding an open-air service among the Turks or heathen.” Hence it seems to him quite necessary to regard the worship in common as simply a public encouragement to faith and Christianity.[523]
As for those Christians who already believed, Luther cannot loudly enough assert their freedom.
As his highest principle he sets up the following, which in reality is subversive of all liturgy: In Divine worship “it is a matter for each one’s conscience to decide how he is to make use of such freedom [the freedom of the Christian man given by the Evangel]; the right to use it is not to be refused or denied to any.... Our conscience is in no way bound before God by this outward order.”[524] This has the true Lutheran ring. Beside this must be placed his frequently repeated assertion, that we can give God nothing that tends to His honour, and that every effort on our part to give Him anything is merely an attempt to make something of man and his works, which works are invariably sinful.[525] He also teaches elsewhere that not only does real and true worship consist in a life of faith and love, but that the outward worship given in common is in reality a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving (a gift to God after all) made in common solely because of all people’s need to express their faith and love;[526] he also calls it a “sacrificium,” naturally, not in the Catholic, but in the widest sense of the word. Even the expression “eucharistic sacrifice,” i.e. sacrifice of praise, is not inacceptable to him; but at least the sacrifice must be entirely free.
With such a view the form of worship described above seems scarcely to tally. A well-defined outward order of worship was first proposed, and then prescribed; it would, according to Luther’s statement, have imposed itself even on the assemblies of true believers. It is true, he says, that only considerations of charity and public order compel such outward regulations, that it was not his doing nor that of any other evangelical authority. Still it is a fact that they were enjoined, that a service according to the choice of the individual was, even in Luther’s day, regarded with misgivings, and that even in the 16th century it fell to the secular prince to sanction the form of worship in church and to punish those who stayed away, those who failed to communicate and those who did not know their catechism.[527] We have here another instance of the same contradiction apparent in matters of dogma, where Luther bound down the free religious convictions of the individual—supposed to be based on conscience and the Bible—in cast-iron strands in his catechism and theological hymns. The catechism, even in the matter of confession, and likewise the theology of the hymns, closely trenched on the regulations for Divine worship. The Ten Commandments, the Our Father, etc., were also put into verse and song. Moreover, those who presented themselves for communion had to submit at least to a formal examination into their faith and intentions, and also to a certain scrutiny of their morals—a strange limitation surely of Evangelical freedom and of the universal priesthood of all believers.
According to Kawerau, the best Protestant liturgical writers agree, that a “false, pedagogic conception of worship” finds expression in Luther’s form of service.[528] To make the aim of the public worship of the congregation—whatever elements the latter might comprise—a mere exercise for the young and a method of pressing “Christianity” on non-believers was in reality to drag down the sublime worship of God, the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” as Luther himself sometimes calls it, to an undeservedly low level.
This degradation was, however, intimately bound up with the fact, that Luther had robbed worship of its most precious and essential portion, the eucharistic sacrifice, which, according to the Prophet Malachias, was to be offered to the Lord from the rising till the going down of the sun as a pure and acceptable oblation. To the Catholic observer his service of the Mass, owing to the absence of this all-important liturgical centre, appears like a blank ruin. As early as 1524 he was told at Wittenberg that his service was “dreary and all too sober.” Although it was his opposition to the Holy Sacrifice and its ceremonies which called forth this stricture, yet at the same time his objection to any veneration of the Saints also contributed to the lifeless character of the new worship. It was, however, above all, the omission of the sacrifice which rendered Luther’s clinging to the ancient service of the Mass so unwarrantable.[529]
Older Protestant liturgical writers like Kliefoth spoke of the profound, mystical value of Luther’s liturgy and even of certain elements as being quite original. Recourse to the old scheme of the Mass, duly expurgated, was, however, a much simpler process than they imagined. We must also bear in mind, that Luther himself was not so rigid in restricting the liturgy to the forms he himself had sketched out as they assumed. On the contrary, he left room for development, and allowed the claims of freedom. Hence it is not correct to say, that he curtailed the tendency towards “free liturgical development,” as has been asserted of him by Protestants in modern times.[530] For it was no mere pretence on his part when he spoke of freedom to improve. The progress made in hymnology owing to this freedom is a proof that better results were actually arrived at.
How easy it was, on the other hand, for liberty to lead to serious abuses is plain from the history of the Evangelical churches in Livonia. Melchior Hofmann, the preacher, had come from that country to Wittenberg complaining that the reformed service had given rise to the worst discord among both people and clergy. Luther composed a circular letter addressed to the inhabitants of Livonia, entitled “Eyne christliche Vormanung von eusserlichem Gottis Dienste unde Eyntracht an die yn Lieffland,” which was printed together with a letter from Bugenhagen and another from Hofmann.[531] Therein he admits with praiseworthy frankness his embarrassment with regard to ceremonial uniformity.
“As soon as a particular form is chosen and set up,” he says, “people fall upon it and make it binding, contrary to the freedom brought by faith.” “But if nothing be set up or appointed, the result is as many factions as there are heads.... One must, however, give the best advice one can, albeit everything is not at once carried out as we speak and teach.” He accordingly encourages those whom he is addressing to meet together amicably “in order that the devil may not slink in unawares, owing to this outward quarrel about ceremonies.” “Come to some agreement as to how you wish these external matters arranged, that harmony and uniformity may prevail among you in your region,” otherwise the people would grow “confused and discontented.” Beyond such general exhortations he does not go and thus refuses to face the real difficulty.
When seeking to introduce uniformity nothing was to be imposed as “absolute command,” but merely to “ensure the unity of the Christian people in such external matters”; in other words, “because you see that the weak need and desire it.” The people, however, were “to inure themselves to the breaking out of factions and dissensions. For who is able to ward off the devil and his satellites?” “When you were Papists the devil, of course, left you in peace.... But now that you have the true seed of the divine Word he cannot refrain from sowing his own seed alongside.”
The writing did no good, for the confusion continued. It was only in 1528 that the Königsberg preacher, Johann Briesmann, at the request of the authorities and with Luther’s help, established a new form of church government in Livonia.
Were one to ask which was the principal point in Luther’s Mass, the Supper or the sermon, it would not be easy to answer.
The term Mass and the adaptation of the olden ritual would seem to speak in favour of the Supper.[532] If, however, the service was to consist principally of the celebration of the Supper it was necessary there should always be communicants. Without communions there was, according to Luther, no celebration of the Sacrament. Now at Wittenberg there were not always communicants, nor was there any prospect of the same presenting themselves at every Sunday service, or that things would always remain as in 1531 when Luther boasted, that “every Sunday the hundred or so communicants were always different people.”[533]
At the weekly services, communion in any case was very unusual. The custom had grown up under Luther’s eyes that, on Sundays, as soon as the sermon was over, the greater part of the congregation left the church.[534] From this it is clear that the ritual involved a misunderstanding. In practice the celebration of the Supper became something merely supplementary, whereas, according to Luther himself, it ought to have constituted either the culmination of the service, or at least an organic part of Divine worship; under him, however, it was soon put on the same level with the sermon though the organic connection between the two is not clear. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that predominance was assigned to the sermon,[535] which undoubtedly was only right if, as Luther maintains, worship was intended only for instruction.
In our own day some have gone so far as to demand that the sermon should be completely sundered from the Supper; and also to admit, that the creation of a real Lutheran liturgy constitutes “a problem still to be solved.”[536]
It is a fact of great ethical importance, that, what was according to Luther the Sacrament of His Real Presence instituted by Christ Himself, had to make way for preaching and edification by means of prayers and hymns. Even the Elevation had to go. From the beginning its retention had aroused “misgivings,”[537] and, to say the least, Luther’s reason for insisting on it, viz. to defy Carlstadt who had already abolished it, was but a poor one. It was abrogated at Wittenberg only in 1542; elsewhere, too, it was discontinued.[538] Thus the Sacrament receded into the background as compared with other portions of the service. But, like prayer and hymn-singing, preaching too is human and subject to imperfections, whereas the Sacrament, even though it be no sacrifice, is, even according to Luther, the Body of Christ. Luther was, indeed, ready with an answer, viz. that the sermon was also the Word of God, and, that, by means of both Sacrament and sermon, God was working for the strengthening of faith. Whether this reply gets rid of the difficulty may here be left an open question. At any rate the ideal Word of God could not be placed on the same footing with the sermons as frequently delivered at that time by expounders of the new faith, capable or otherwise, sermons, which, according to Luther’s own loud complaints, contained anything but the rightful Word of God, and were anything but worthy of being classed together with the Sacrament as one of the two component parts of Divine worship.
Three charges of a general character were made by Luther against Catholic worship. First, “the Word of God had not been preached ... this was the worst abuse.” Secondly, “many unchristian fables and lies found their way into the legends, hymns and sermons.” Finally, “worship was performed as a work whereby to win salvation and God’s grace; and so faith perished.”[539]
Of these charges it is hard to say which is the most unjust. His assertion that the Word of God had not been preached and that there was no Bible-preaching, has been refuted anew by every fresh work of research in the history of preaching at that time. Nor was the Bible-element in preaching entirely lacking, though it might not have been so conspicuous. The truth is, that, in many places, sermons were extremely frequent.[540]
Luther’s second assertion, viz. that Catholic worship was full of lying legends, does not contain the faintest trace of truth, more particularly there where he was most radical in his work of expurgation, i.e. in the Canon. The Canon was a part of the Mass-service, which had remained unaltered from the earliest times. It was only into the sermons that legends had found their way to a great extent.
If finally, as seems likely, Luther, by his third charge, viz. that the olden Church sought to “win salvation and God’s Grace” through her worship, means that this was the sole or principal aim of Catholic worship, here, too, he is at sea. The real object had always been the adoration and thanksgiving which are God’s due, offered by means of the sublime sacrifice united with the spiritual sacrifice of the whole congregation. Adoration and thanksgiving found their expression above all in the sublime Prefaces of the Mass. The thought already appears in the “Sursum corda, Gratias agamus, etc., Dignum et iustum est,” whereupon the priest, taking up again the “Dignum et iustum est,” proceeds: “Æquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere ... per Christum Dominum nostrum.” It is not without significance that “dignum,” “iustum” and “æquum” stand first, and that “salutare” comes after; praise and thanksgiving are what it becomes us first of all to offer in presence of God’s Majesty, but they are also profitable to us because they render God gracious to us.[541]
The ritual of the Catholic sacrifice, dating as it does from the Church’s remotest past, expresses adequately the highest thoughts of Christian ethics, viz. the adoration of the Creator by the creature through the God-man Christ, Who alone worthily honours Him. To this idea Luther’s attempt at a liturgy does not do justice.
Caspar Schwenckfeld, the Silesian nobleman (see above, p. 78 ff.), is a type of those men who attached themselves to Lutheranism with the utmost enthusiasm, but, who, owing to the experience they met with and in pursuance of those very principles which Luther himself had at first advocated, came to strike out new paths of their own.
In spite of his pseudo-mystical schemes for the establishment of a Church on the Apostolic model; in spite of his abandonment of doctrines to which Luther clung as to an heirloom of the ancient Church; regardless of his antagonism to Luther—which the latter repaid with relentless persecution—this cultured fanatic expressed in his numerous writings and letters his lasting gratitude to, and respect for, Luther on account of the services which the latter had in his opinion rendered in the restoration of truth. He extols his “wonderful trumpet-call,”[542] and without any trace of hypocrisy, says: “What Martin Luther and others have done aright, for instance in the expounding of Holy Scripture ... I trust I will, with God’s help, never underrate.”[543]
At the same time, however, he is not slow to express it as his conviction, that, “At the beginning of the present Evangel the said [Lutheran] doctrine was far better, purer and more wholesome than it is now.”[544] “Dr. Martin led us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, and there he left us to lose ourselves on the rough roads; yet he seeks to persuade everybody that we are already in the Promised Land.” This he said in 1528.[545]
“Although Luther has written much that is good,” “that has been and still may be profitable to believers, for which we give praise and thanks to God the Lord, still he has also written much that is evil, and in the end it will be proved that his and his people’s doctrine or theologia was neither apostolic, nor pure, nor perfect ... which certainly might have been seen long since by its fruits.”[546]
His criticisms of Luther, which, in spite of his harsh treatment at the latter’s hands, are throughout temperately expressed and with a certain aristocratic reticence, deal on the one hand with the fruits of the Wittenberg Reformation, and, on the other, with certain main features of the ethical teaching of his master and one-time friend; his strictures thus form a recapitulation of what has gone before.
“The reformation of life has not taken place,” this is what Carl Ecke, Schwenckfeld’s latest biographer, represents as the honest conviction of the “apostolic” preacher of the faith in Silesia.[547] “The religion of Lutheranism as it then was did not, in Schwenckfeld’s opinion, as a whole reach the standard of Bible Christianity.”[548] “The greater part of the common herd,” says Schwenckfeld, “who are called Lutherans do not know to-day how they stand, whether with regard to works, or in relation to God and to their own conscience.”[549]
Schwenckfeld’s own standard was certainly somewhat one-sided and his own Apostolic Church, so far as it ever saw the light, fell considerably short of the ideal. His insight into the ethical conditions and doctrines was, however, keen enough and his judgment was at least far calmer and clearer than that of Carlstadt and Luther’s other more hot-headed antagonists. He was also able to base his definite and oft-repeated statements on the experience he had gained during his wide travels and in intercourse with all sorts of men.
Thus he writes: “If by God’s grace I see the great common herd and the poor folk on both sides, as they really are, then I must fain admit, that, under the Papacy and in spite of all its errors, there are more pious, godfearing men than in Lutheranism. I also believe that they might more easily be improved than some of our Evangelicals who are now trying to hide themselves and their sinful life behind Holy Scripture, nay, behind a fictitious faith and Christ’s satisfaction, and in whom no fear of God is left.”[550]
Many of Schwenckfeld’s more specific complaints are supported by other witnesses. We may compare what Luther himself and his friends report of the conditions at Wittenberg[551] with what Schwenckfeld says a little later: “It is credibly asserted concerning their Church at Wittenberg, that there such a mad, dissolute life prevails as is woeful to see; there is no discipline whatever, no fear of God, and the people are wild, impudent and unmannerly, particularly Philip’s students, so that even Dr. Major not long since (1556) is himself said to have complained of it there in a sermon, saying: Our Wittenberg is so widely talked of that strangers fancy there are only angels here; when, however, they come they find only devils incarnate. If Philip, who sends out his disciples as Apostles ‘in omnem terram’ does not found any better Churches than these, he has but little to boast of before God.”[552]
“What harm and damage to consciences such Lutheran teaching has brought into Christendom it is easier to bewail with many tears than to describe.” Though Luther’s “Evangel and office has discovered and made an end of much false worship and a great apostasy, for which we give thanks to God the Lord,” yet “it has but little of the power of grace, of the Holy Spirit, or of blessing, for bringing sinners to repentance and true conversion.”[553]
“Thus we have Schwenckfeld’s witness that he had seen nothing of any real awakening or revival among the people generally. Whole classes, the merchant class, for instance, remained inwardly untouched by the glad tidings; even where the ‘Word’ was preached, there the bad sermons, of which Schwenckfeld had complained as early as 1524, often produced evil fruits.” Thus writes Ecke.[554] Schwenckfeld, however, does not lay all the blame on the preachers, but rather directly on the ethical principles resulting from Luther’s doctrines, which had filled the utterances of the new preachers with so much that was dangerous and misleading. “Oh, how many of our nobles have I heard say: ‘I cannot help it,’ ‘it is God’s Will,’ ‘God does all, even my sin, and I am not answerable’; ‘if He has predestined me I shall be saved.’” “How many have I heard, who all appealed to the Wittenberg writings, and, who, alas, to-day, are ten times worse than before the Evangel began to be preached.”[555]
Whenever he exhorted his Lutheran co-religionists to conversion and holiness of life, so he declares in 1543, he always received some reply such as the following: “We are poor sinners and can do nothing good.” “Faith alone without works saves us.” “We cannot keep God’s law”; “have no free-will.” “Amendment is not in our power.” “Christ has done enough for us; He has overthrown sin, death, hell and the devil; that is what we have to believe.”[556] When he preached sanctification he was dubbed a “Papist.” “That the Lutherans accuse me of being more a Papist than a Lutheran is due mainly to good works and the stress I lay on them.”[557]
Even in 1524 he had published an essay on practical ethics entitled, “An Exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry Articles of the Evangel, etc.” (Above, 79 f.) In 1547 he found it necessary to publish another work on the “Misuse of the Evangel.” To this misuse he attributes most of the above excuses of his “Lutheran co-religionists.” Luther himself, so he declares here, was much to blame for the confusion that prevailed. He quotes many passages from Luther’s Church-postils, from the edition printed at Wittenberg in 1526 with prefaces by Luther and Stephen Roth. He also makes use of the same work in another book, “On Holy Scripture,” which he also wrote in 1547.[558] Many of the incriminated passages were “wickedly omitted” in the next editions of the Church-postils.[559]
Schwenckfeld, in his strictures on Luther’s preaching and its results, deals with the ethical side of the new teaching concerning the Law and the Gospel.
Luther had said, that, with the law, God “wished to do no more than make us feel our helplessness, our weakness and our sickness.”[560] The critic asks: “Why not also to make us eschew evil and do good, 1 Peter iii.?” On the other hand, Luther will have it that the “Law makes all of us sinners so that not even the smallest tittle of these commandments can be kept even by the most holy.” “Such is in short Luther’s doctrine concerning the Law and the Commandments of God. There he lets it rest, as though the ground and contents of the Law and God’s intention therein—which was centred on Christ—were nothing.... Of this doctrine, particularly, the common people can make nothing save that God has given us His commandments, not in order that we may keep them by means of His Grace, but only that we may thereby come to the knowledge of sin.”[561]
“Why should we hate our life in this world ... and follow Christ? Nay, why take pains at all to enter in at the narrow gate and to seek the strait way to life everlasting (Mt. vii.) if it is possible to reach heaven along the broad way on which so many walk who are called Lutherans, and to enter in through the wide gate which they make for themselves!”[562]
Two other points of doctrine which in the same connection Schwenckfeld censures in the strongest terms as real stumbling blocks in ethics, are the preaching of predestination and the denial of free-will.
How, at the outset, the “learned had soared far too high” with their article of predestination “and, by means of their human wisdom, reached a philosophical, heathen conception [presumably the ancient ‘fatum’] can readily be seen from their books, especially from Luther’s against free-will and Melanchthon’s first Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.”[563]
“Luther writes that no one is free to plan either good or evil, but only does as he is obliged; that, as God wills, so we live.... Item, that the man who does evil has no control over himself, that it is not in man’s power to do evil or not, but that he is forced to do it, ‘nos coacti facimus.’” “God,” so Philip tells us, “does all things by His own power.”[564]
“They have treated of predestination in accordance with heathen philosophy, forgetful of Christ and the Grace of the Gospel now made manifest; they wrote of it from a human standpoint; and though Luther and Philip, after they had seen the evil results, would gladly have retracted it, yet because what they had formerly taught was very pleasing to the flesh, it took root in men’s hearts so deeply that what they afterwards said passed almost unheard.”[565]
“This aberration,” says Ecke, “was to Schwenckfeld a further sign that their method of reformation was not that of good missionaries.”[566]
Schwenckfeld complains rightly: “Instead of beginning, after the Apostles’ example, by preaching penance in the name of Christ ... they preferred vehemently to urge such lofty matters as predestination and the Divine election together with the denial of free-will.”[567]
The universal priesthood as commonly preached and understood by the people furnishes Schwenckfeld with a further cause for grumbling. “They have also been in the habit of preaching and shouting to the multitudes that all of them were already Christians, children of God and spiritual kings and princes. What corruption of conscience and abuse of the Evangel has resulted from all this we see and hear to-day from many ... who thereby have fallen into a bold and godless manner of life.”[568]
Finally there was Luther’s ethical attitude towards sin. “Look at the second sermon for Easter Day in Luther’s Church-sermons [where he says]: ‘Where now is sin? It is nailed to the cross.... If only I hold fast to this, I shall have a good conscience of being, like Christ Himself, without sin; then I can defy death, devil, sin and hell.’”
Schwenckfeld continues: “And again: ‘Seeing that Christ allowed Himself to be put to death for sin, it cannot harm me. Thus does faith work in the man who believes that Christ has taken away sin; such a one feels himself to be without sin like Christ, and knows that death, devil and hell have been conquered and cannot harm him any more.’ Hæc ille. This has proved a scandal to many.”[569]
He is angered by what Luther says in his sermon for the 8th Sunday after Trinity, that “no work can condemn a man, that unbelief is the only sin, and that it was the comfort of Christians to know that sins do not harm them. Item, that only sinners belong to the Kingdom of God.”—He is much shocked at such sayings as, “If you but believe you are freed from sin.... If we believe then we have a Gracious God and only need to direct our works to the advantage of our neighbour so that they may be profitable to him.”[570]
Such a form of neighbourly love does not suffice to reassure Schwenckfeld as to the method of justification taught by Luther. “We see here that repentance, the renewal of the heart and the crucifixion of the flesh with its lusts and concupiscences, as well as the Christian combat ... are all forgotten.” “How is it possible that such easy indulgence and soft and honeyed sermons should not lead to little account being made of sin, seeing the people are told that God winks at the sins of all those who believe?”[571]
Again and again he returns to the patent fact that “the result of such shameless preaching and teaching is nothing but a grave and damnable abuse of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, since people now make but little account even of many and great sins.”[572]
For Luther to point to the Crucified and tell the believer that “sin is nothing but a devilish spectre and a mere fancy,” was to speak “fanatically.” Luther might write what he pleased, but here, at any rate, he was himself guilty of that fanatism of which he was fond of accusing others.[573] Schwenckfeld himself had been numbered by the preachers among the crazy fanatics.
The Silesian also ruthlessly attacked the imputation of the merits of Christ by means of the Sola Fides.
The Lutherans, even the best of them, imagine their righteousness to be nothing else “but the bare faith, since they believe God accounts them righteous, even though they remain as they were before.” “They should, however, be exhorted to search Holy Scripture and to ask themselves in their hearts whether such faith and righteousness are not rather a human persuasion, mere imposition and self-delusion ... which men invent to justify an impenitent life; not a true, living faith, the gift of the Holy Ghost ... which, as Scripture says, purifies the heart, Acts xv. ..., reconciles consciences, Rom. v. ..., and brings Christ into our hearts, Eph. iii., Gal. ii.”[574]
An instructive parallel and at the same time a severe censure on Luther’s method of building up “faith” on inward assurance is afforded by Schwenckfeld’s account of the experiences and spiritual trials on which he himself had founded his faith. The preachers, insisting on the outward Word, urged that he had no right to appeal to his mere feelings; yet, as he points out, this very thing had been proclaimed from Wittenberg as the right, nay the duty of all.
“In addition to all this they reject the ghostly feeling and that inward sense of the Grace of God which Luther at the outset ... declared to be necessary for salvation, writing that: ‘No one can rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he has it direct from the Holy Ghost.’ No one, however, can receive it from the Holy Ghost unless he experiences it, makes trial of it and feels it; in this experience the Holy Ghost is teaching us as in His own school, outside of which nothing is learned but all is mere delusion, words and vapouring.”[575]
“How would Dr. Luther’s own gloss stand,” Schwenckfeld asks elsewhere, “which he gives on the words of the New Testament, 1 Cor. xi.: ‘Let a man prove himself,’ and where he says: ‘to prove oneself is to feel one’s faith,’ etc.? But the man who feels his faith will assuredly by such a faith—which is a power of God and the very being of the Holy Ghost—have forgiveness of sins and bear Christ in his believing heart.”[576]
He reproaches Luther with having in later days failed to distinguish between the outward Word or preaching and the inward living Word of God. The blunt assertion of the preachers—which was encouraged by “Luther’s unapostolic treatment of the problem of Christian experience”[577]—that faith referred solely to the written Word and was elicited merely by preaching,[578] leads in practice to neglect of those passages of Scripture which speak of the Divine character of faith and of its transmission by the Holy Ghost; owing to the lack of a faith really felt, there was also wanting any “holiness of life worked by the Spirit, and any moral justice and sanctification.”[579]
The system of a State Church then being set up, the externalism of the Lutheran Popular Church and the worship introduced were naturally looked at askance by the promoter of the Church Apart of true believers; at the same time his strictures are not unduly biassed.[580]
He looks at the matter from the standpoint of Lutheran freedom, or as Carl Ecke expresses it, of “the early Christian individualism rediscovered by Luther.”[581] From this point of view Schwenckfeld can detect in the official Lutheran Church only a shadow of the Apostolic Church. Not merely the principle of the multitude, but also the appeal to the authorities for help and coercion was opposed to the spirit of Christ, at least according to all he had learnt from Luther.