Already in 1530 Luther’s follower Lazarus Spengler wrote from Nuremberg to Veit Dietrich begging him to seek advice of Luther and to request his literary help; in the town there were some who opposed any measures of coercion against the divergent doctrines, “some of ours, who are not fanatics but are regarded as good Christians,” desire that neither the “Sacramentarians nor the Anabaptists” should be prosecuted so long as they do not “stir up revolt,” nor yet the errors prohibited of “the preachers of the godless Mass and other idolatries”; “they appeal on behalf of this to Dr. Luther’s booklet, which he some while ago addressed to Duke Frederick the Elector of Saxony against the fanatic Thomas Münzer, in which he approves this view and admits it to be quite sound.”[977]
At Augsburg (1533) the Lutheran lawyer, Conrad Hel, siding with his Catholic-minded confrères Conrad Peutinger and Johann Rehlinger[978] openly and courageously denied the Town-Councils any rights in the matter. In 1534 Christoph Ehem, a patrician of Augsburg, who also held Lutheran views, wrote a little work in which he demanded universal and unconditional toleration and invited the Council to place some “bridle and restraint” on the new preachers.[979] At that time (1536) the Lutheran preacher Johann Forster protested very strongly against Bucer, and refused to hear of the forcible suppression of Catholic worship in Cathedral churches outside the jurisdiction of the civic authorities; he appealed in this matter to Luther. Bucer just then was bent on suppressing the Catholic worship with the help of the magistrates. Forster was finally silenced by dint of “ranting, raging and shouting” and was indignantly asked: “Whether he wished to tolerate Popery and submit to such idolatry?”[980]
At Strasburg in 1528 the Protestant Town-Clerk, Peter Butz, set a brave example by openly and severely condemning in the Council the system of coercion planned by some of the preachers. Against the intolerance towards sectarians advocated by Bucer, preachers and scholars like Anton Engelbrecht, Wolfgang Schultheiss, Johann Sapidus and Jacob Ziegler were not slow to protest,[981] though they had nothing to say against the violent abolition of Catholic worship.
At Coire the preacher Johann Gantner came into conflict with Bullinger on account of the coercive measures favoured by the latter; he reproached the inhabitants of Zürich and Berne with having fallen away from the freedom of the Evangel into the Mosaic bondage. Gantner and others, in support of their protest, usually appealed against the prevailing tendency to Sebastian Franck’s “Chronica,” published at Strasburg in 1531.[982]
Sebastian Franck, the witty and learned opponent of Luther, “after Luther himself, the best and most popular German prose writer of the day,” took the line of pushing to its bitter end Luther’s subjectivism. He declared that the new preachers had made of Holy Scripture a paper idol for the benefit of their private views, and that the Lutheran Church was the invisible kingdom of Christ and as such numbered among its members men of every sect; hence he argued that what was termed false doctrine and false worship should not be interfered with.[983] As Kawerau points out, Franck found in the 16th century “not a few readers wherever dissatisfaction prevailed with the Papacy of the theologians”;[984] nevertheless, in 1531, he was expelled from Strasburg on account of his liberal views; later on, when he had taken up his residence at Ulm, Melanchthon wrote thither, in 1535, that he should be “dealt with severely” (“severe coercendum”) no less than Schwenckfeld.[985] Driven from Ulm he went to Basle in 1539, but even there the echo of the verdict of the Wittenbergers reached him; in March, 1540, the theologians assembled at Schmalkalden, condemned him and charged him with “inducing people to seek the spirit while neglecting the ‘Word’”; they themselves, they added, had broken with the Churches of the Pope because of their idolatry, but there was “no reason whatever for throwing over the ministry in our own Churches.”[986]
As we have already shown, Landgrave Philip of Hesse was likewise disposed to be less intolerant than Luther, at least with regard to the Anabaptists. Relentlessly as he refused any public toleration to the Catholic faith and banished those Catholics who persisted in their religious practices, yet, in a letter of 1532, addressed to Elector Johann of Saxony, he declared himself against the execution of the Anabaptists; the actual words have been quoted above (p. 256). In another letter, in 1545, to the Elector Johann Frederick, he also points out, that: “If this sect be punished so severely by us, then we, by our example, give our foes, the Papists, reason to treat us in the same way, for they regard us as no better than the Anabaptists.”[987]
These and similar remonstrances were unavailing to change the views which had taken root at Wittenberg.
George Major, Professor of theology at Wittenberg University, was a learned and zealous disciple of Luther’s. He, like Melanchthon, on hearing of the execution of Servetus at Geneva, declared that Calvin was to be commended for having put to death the heretic, and, at a Disputation held in 1555, expressly defended the thesis, that it was the duty of the authorities to punish contumacious heretics with death. They must “get rid of blasphemers, perjurers and wizards. Amongst the blasphemers must, however, be reckoned those who persistently defend idolatrous worship, or heresies which clearly disagree with the articles of the faith.”[988]
Luther’s code of penalties for any deviation from the Wittenberg teaching fitted in well with Bugenhagen’s natural harshness, who showed himself only too ready to make his own the words of Moses concerning the slaying of unbelievers. We may recall how, in conversation, when Luther mentioned the difficulties he had with Carlstadt, Agricola and Schenk, Bugenhagen broke in with the remark: “Sir Doctor, we ought to do what is commanded in Deuteronomy where Moses says they should be put to death.”[989] Bugenhagen, in the many places into which he brought the new faith, was relentlessly severe in enforcing against the Catholics the principles he had carried with him from Wittenberg. Very characteristic is the tone in which he reported to Luther that the Mass had been forbidden in Denmark and the monks driven out of the land as “seditionmongers” and “blasphemers.”[990] Not only had the bishops been imprisoned, but, according to the account of Peter Palladius the superintendent, some of the monks “had been hanged.”[991]
Justus Jonas began his labours at Halle in 1542 by a written invitation to the Town-Council “completely to purge the town of false doctrine and every kind of idolatrous worship”; Luther and Melanchthon had sufficiently proved in their works that this “was incumbent on Christian magistrates.” He declared that the monks still living in the town were “obstinate and impenitent idolaters,” “adders and snakes” whom he “must reduce to silence with the use of the gag”; already, throughout the whole neighbourhood, “merely at the exhortations of the preachers, the monasteries, with their Masses and idolatrous worship, had crumbled into ruins.”[992] Later, in a memorandum addressed to the Town-Council in 1546, Jonas again inveighed against the remaining handful of well-disposed and zealous monks, and called to mind how “our beloved father, Dr. Martin, in the very last sermon he preached at Halle shortly before his decease, had exhorted the Town-Council and the whole Church with all his burning, stormy earnestness to rid themselves of the crawling things.”[993] Jonas appealed to his own “conscience” and threatened to report matters to the Elector of Saxony and “his Electoral Highness’s scholars at Wittenberg.”[994] With the outbreak of the Schmalkalden war, when the Electoral troops laid waste the monasteries his hopes at last found their fulfilment. He announced on March 3, 1547, that, at Halle, the “Papistic idolatry” had now been swept away;[995] when he wrote this he did not expect the change in the position of the Catholics in the town, for which the defeat of the Elector’s troops in the following month was responsible.
We are reminded how greatly Spalatin was imbued with Luther’s exclusivism and spirit of intolerance by his words concerning the “Christian bit” which he wished placed in the mouths of all the clergy.[996] He was at great pains to press upon the sovereign that he was not to permit “unchristian ceremonies” and “idolatry.”[997]
The Elector Johann was merely giving expression to the views with which Spalatin and Luther had inspired him when he declared that, “heretics and contemners of the Word” must in every instance be punished by the authorities.[998] His successor, Johann Frederick, likewise followed obediently the “Wittenberg theologians and lawyers,” as he terms his authorities.[999] He instructed Melanchthon in 1536 to write and have printed a popular “Answer to sundry unchristian articles” against the Anabaptists, which was to be read aloud from the pulpit every third Sunday, and which insisted that the secular authorities were bound to punish “all contempt of Scripture and the outward Word” as “blatant blasphemy.”[1000]
At the Religious Conference at Worms in 1557 quite a number of respected Lutheran theologians (J. Brenz, J. Marbach, M. Diller, J. Pistorius, J. Andreæ, G. Karg, P. Eber and G. Rungius) signed a lengthy statement by Melanchthon aimed at the Anabaptists. As one of the errors of the sect is instanced their teaching that God communicates Himself without the intermediary of the ministry, of preaching or the Sacrament. Those “heads and ringleaders” of the sect who persisted in their doctrines were “to be condemned as guilty of sedition and blasphemy and put to death by the sword”; the death penalty prescribed in Leviticus for blasphemers was asserted to be a “natural law, binding, by virtue of their office, on all in authority,” hence “the judges had done the right thing” when they condemned to death the heretic Servetus at Geneva.[1001]
Johann Brenz, who helped to promote Lutheranism in Würtemberg, had, in 1528, written and published a pamphlet in which he deprecated the Anabaptists’ being put to death “merely on account of heresy” when not guilty of sedition.[1002] He was for this reason regarded by Melanchthon as “too mild.”[1003] His later writings, however, show that the intolerant spirit of Wittenberg finally seized on him too. In his treatment of Catholics—both previous to 1528, and, even more so when the olden worship had been suppressed at Schwäbisch-Halle and he had been called to Stuttgart—he was in the forefront in advising violent measures against Catholic practices. When he reorganised the Church in Würtemberg, in 1536, after the victory of Duke Ulrich, attendance at the Protestant sermons was made obligatory on the Catholics of Stuttgart under pain of a fine, or of imprisonment in the tower on bread and water.[1004] Brenz, though widely extolled as tolerant and broadminded, in his quality of spiritual adviser to Duke Christopher, stooped to the meanest and most petty regulations in order to induce the nuns who still remained faithful to their religion—many of whom were of high birth and advanced in years—to accept the new faith; they were compelled to attend the sermons and religious colloquies, deprived of their books of devotion, their correspondence was supervised, they had to entertain Protestant guests at table and to be served by Lutheran maids, etc.[1005]
The unenviable distinction of having most thoroughly assimilated Luther’s intolerant views was enjoyed by two men in close mental kinship with him, viz. Justus Menius and Johann Spangenberg.
Johann Spangenberg, an enthusiastic pupil of Luther’s, and, later, Superintendent at Eisleben, when preacher at Nordhausen declared in a tract that “fear of God’s wrath and His extreme displeasure” had rightly led the Town-Council to forbid Catholics to attend Catholic sermons, because, there, souls were “horribly murdered”; even Nabuchodonosor and Darius had set the authorities an example of how “blasphemy against religion” was to be treated.[1006]
Justus Menius, Luther’s friend, who worked as superintendent at Eisenach and Gotha, followed Luther in qualifying the Anabaptists as the emissaries of the devil, as “rebels and murderers,” who had fallen under the ban of the authorities because they did not “profess the true faith according to the Word of God” and live a “godly life.” Of the authorities who were negligent in punishing them he exclaims: “The devil rides such rulers so that they sin and do what is unrighteous.” Luther himself wrote laudatory prefaces to his works on the subject. In 1552 Menius demanded from Duke Albert of Prussia a severe prohibition against the new believers’ teaching or writing anything that was at variance with the Confession of Augsburg. When, however, his opponents secured the ear of the Court he had himself to suffer; the ruler pointed out to him that, in accordance with his own theories of the supremacy of the sovereign, it was the duty of the authorities, by virtue of their princely office, to withstand false doctrine and, consequently, he himself must either submit or go to prison; upon this Menius made his escape to Leipzig (†1558).[1007]
Urban Rhegius, appointed General Superintendent by Duke Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg after the Diet of Augsburg, not only defended in his writings a relentless system of compulsion whereby Catholic parents were no longer permitted even in their homes to instruct their children in the Catholic faith, but also allowed “Zwinglians and Papists to be beaten with rods and banished from the town.” The authorities he invited to appropriate the property of the clergy. The inglorious war he waged against the nuns of Lüneburg, who, in spite of every kind of persecution, stood true to their religion, has recently been brought to light, and that, thanks to Protestant research; it forms one of the blackest pages in the history of Lutheran intolerance.[1008]
A memorial of the Strasburg preachers dating from 1535 (printed in 1537) which might be termed the fullest and most complete exposition of the Royal Supremacy in church affairs drafted in that period, is the work of Wolfgang Capito, a preacher often extolled for his moderation and prudence.[1009] In it we have the picture of a Government-Church with a “Caliph” (Döllinger’s expression) at its head, who combines in himself the highest secular and spiritual authority.
Martin Bucer though differing from Luther in much else was yet at one with him in asserting that it was the duty of the secular authority to abolish “false doctrine and perverted ceremonials,” and that, as the sole authority, it was to be obeyed by “all the bishops and clergy.” Though anxious to be regarded as considerate and peaceable, he defended the prohibition against Catholic sermons issued at Augsburg by the City-Council in 1534, and even incited it to still more stringent measures against the Catholics. He advocated quite openly “the power of the authorities over consciences.”[1010] “Among us Christians,” he asks, “is injury and slaughter of souls by false worship of less importance than the ravishing of wives and daughters?”[1011] He never rested until, in 1537, with the help of such hot-heads as Wolfgang Musculus, he brought about the entire suppression of the Mass at Augsburg. At his instigation “many fine paintings, monuments and ancient works of art in the churches were wantonly torn, broken and smashed.”[1012] Whoever refused to submit and attend public worship was obliged within eight days to quit the city-boundaries. Catholic citizens were forbidden under severe penalties to attend Catholic worship elsewhere, and special guards were stationed at the gates to prevent any such attempt.[1013]
In other of the Imperial cities Bucer acted with no less violence and intolerance, for instance, at Ulm, where he supported Œcolampadius and Ambrose Blaurer in 1531, and at Strasburg where he acted in concert with Capito, Caspar Hedio, Matthæus Zell and others. Here, in 1529, after the Town-Council had prohibited Catholic worship, the Councillors were requested by the preachers to help to fill the empty churches by issuing regulations prescribing attendance at the sermons. Bucer adhered till his death (1551), as his work “De Regno Christi” (1550) proves, to the principle of the rights and duties of authorities towards the new religion.[1014]
In the above survey of those who preached religious intolerance only Luther’s own pupils and followers have been considered; the result would be even less cheering were the leaders of the other Protestant sects added to the list.
At Zürich, Zwingli’s State-Church grew up much as Luther’s did in Germany; Œcolampadius at Basle and Zwingli’s successor, Bullinger, were strong compulsionists. Calvin’s name is even more closely bound up with the idea of religious absolutism, while the task of handing down to posterity his harsh doctrine of religious compulsion was undertaken by Beza in his notorious work “De hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis.” The annals of the Established Church of England were likewise at the outset written in blood.
The sufferings endured by the Catholics in Germany owing to the wave of intolerance which spread from Wittenberg are reflected in the countless complaints we hear at that time. Many writings still tell to-day of the injustice under which they groaned. In a “Manual of Complaint and Consolation for all oppressed Christians” we read as follows: “Oh, what a mockery it is that these tyrants and abusers of power should exclaim everywhere that their gospel is Christian freedom, that they have no wish to tyrannise over consciences when there could never have been worse tyrants than those men who do not scruple to go on unceasingly tormenting the consciences of the people, robbing them of the consolation of the holy sacraments of the religious ministrations of consecrated priests, of all their prayer-books and devotional works, and, even on their death-beds, in spite of their piteous entreaties refusing them the Holy Viaticum!”[1015] This touching complaint is made more particularly in the name of those most defenceless members of society, who were devoid of legal protection and whose very poverty made emigration impossible. “All the iniquities committed in German lands and cities are attested at the Judgment-Seat of God by the souls of thousands of consecrated nuns, who never did wrong to anyone and who asked for nothing more than permission to live and die in their ancient faith, even though their worldly goods should be taken away from them and they shut up within closed walls.”[1016]
It must not be overlooked that Luther’s severity towards heretics within his fold is to be set down largely to his nervous irritability arising partly out of his natural temperament, partly out of his unceasing labours, so that, if we are to be just to him, his conviction that his doctrine was the only authorised one must not be held to be entirely responsible for his behaviour. At the same time it is plain how deeply he was affected by belief in his higher mission. Thus he practically made himself a religious dictator, when, in 1542, he demanded that the Meissen nobles who had come over to him should not only ratify their new belief by doing penance, but also should “signify their approval of everything which has hitherto been done by us and shall be done in the future.”[1017]
Another point on which we must also do him justice is the service performed by him in his controversies with rivals, in the field both of theology and Scripture-exegesis, by repressing with such energy and general success the dangerous tendencies apparent in the Anabaptist heresy and the Antinomianism of Johann Agricola. In the attacks of the Antinomians on all law, even on the Decalogue, there undoubtedly lay a great danger for morality and religion. Certain of Luther’s own principles were carried to rash, nay, foolhardy, lengths by the Antinomians. Hence it was not unfortunate that Agricola found pitted against him so redoubtable an opponent as Luther who, as was his wont, interfered and nipped the evil in the bud.
Luther bitterly accuses of boundless presumption all the heretics within the New Faith, but particularly Agricola. The latter might even be classed with those doctors who might most fittingly be compared with Arius and treated in the same way.
“This man,” he says of Agricola, “is presumption itself. Neither with the flute nor with tears is he to be won.… I see it is my goodness that puffs him up. He says he is a guiltless Abel. He is, forsooth, being made a martyr at my hands.…” But, so Luther continues, he will be such a martyr as was Arius and Satan.[1018]
In 1542, when the conversation at table turned on the teachers of the New Faith whose opinions differed from Luther’s, a good many names were mentioned, “Those at Zürich” (Zwingli’s pupils), Carlstadt, Bucer and Capito, “Grickel and Jeckel”—some of them living and some of them already dead—all of whom were insufferably presumptuous. It was then that Bugenhagen, who was present, could not refrain from quoting the passage in the Old Testament where Moses had commanded in God’s name “That prophet shall be slain because he spoke to draw you away from the Lord your God.… If thy brother would persuade thee (to serve other gods), thou shalt presently put him to death. Let thy hand be the first upon him and afterwards the hands of all the people. With stones shall he be stoned to death: because he would have withdrawn thee from the Lord thy God. If in one of the cities thou hear that some have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, inquire carefully and diligently the truth of the thing by looking well into it, and if thou find that which is said to be certain and that this abomination hath been committed, thou shalt forthwith kill the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, and shalt destroy it and all things that are in it, even to the cattle.”[1019]
Hence it was perhaps rather lucky that the Wittenberg tribunal was presided over by the sovereign of the land, and that the sentences pronounced at Luther’s table or in the learned circles of the Theological Faculty required subsequent ratification by the authorities.
Luther’s complaints elsewhere about the pride of the heretics throw still further light on the jealousy which was at work in him (above, p. 260).
“How is it that all the insurgents say ‘I am the man?’ They want all the glory for themselves and hate and are grim with all others, just like the Pope who also wants to stand alone.”[1020] Zwingli appears to be one of the foremost among those desirous of robbing him of his due glory. “He was ambitious through and through.”[1021] On hearing that Zwingli had said that, in three years, he would have France, Spain and England “on his side and for his share,” Luther became very bitter and several times complained of Zwingli’s intention to seize upon his harvest; such words seemed to him the “boasting of a braggart.”[1022] “Œcolampadius, too, fancied himself the doctor of doctors and far above me, even before he had ever heard me.” And in the same way Carlstadt said: “As for you, Sir Doctor, I don’t care a snap! Münzer, too, preached against two Popes, the old one and the new,[1023] said I must be a Saul, and that though I had made a good beginning, the Spirit of God had left me.… Hence let all the theologians and preachers look to it and diligently beware lest they seek their glory in Holy Scripture and in God’s Word; otherwise they will have a fall.”[1024]—“Mr. Eisleben [Johann Agricola] labours under great pride and presumption; he wants to be the only one, and, with his pride and his puffed-up spirit, to surpass all others.”[1025] “They are scamps,” so he abuses them in another passage, “fain would they get at us and surpass us, as though forsooth we were blind and could not see through their tricks.”[1026]
Elsewhere in the Table-Talk we read: “My best friends,” said Dr. Martin, with a deep sigh, “seek to stamp me under foot and to trouble and besmirch the Evangel; hence I am going to hold a disputation.” “Alas, that, in my own lifetime, I should see them strutting about and seeking to rule.” It was with him as with St. Paul to whom God wished to show how much he must suffer for His Name’s sake (Acts ix. 16). Some indeed were trying to persuade him that these foes in his own household were not really against Luther, but only against Cruciger, Rörer, etc. But this was false. “For the Catechism, the Exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Confession of Augsburg are mine, not Cruciger’s or Rörer’s.”[1027]
Of those near him “Mr. Eisleben” (Agricola) seemed to him his chief rival; those abroad troubled him less; for a while Luther was obsessed by the idea that Agricola, “with his cool head, was set on securing the reins and was seeking to become a great lord.”[1028]
Of Carlstadt Luther once said, referring to the rivalry between the pair: “He persuaded himself that there was no more learned man on earth than he; what I write that he imitates and seeks to copy me.” After a profession of personal humility, Luther concludes: “And yet, by God’s Grace, I am more learned than all the Sophists and theologians of the Schools.”[1029]
Though Luther never grows weary of insisting against the heretics at home on the “public, common doctrine,” and of instancing the fell consequences of pride and obstinacy, even going so far as to predict that they will in all likelihood never be converted because founders of sects rarely retrace their steps and recant,[1030] yet he never seems to have perceived that the point of all this might equally well have been turned against himself.
The blindness of such heretics he describes in a tract of 1526 dedicated to Queen Mary of Hungary:
“Here we may all of us well be afraid, and particularly all heretics and false teachers.… Such a temper [obstinacy in sticking to one’s own opinion] penetrates like water into the inmost recesses and like oil into the very bone, and becomes our daily clothing. Then it comes about that one party curses the other, and the doctrine of one is rank poison and malediction to the other, and his own doctrine nothing but blessing and salvation; this we now see among our fanatics and Papists. Then everything is lost. The masses are not converted; a few, whom God has chosen, come right again, but the others remain under the curse and even regard it as a precious thing.… Nor have I ever read of heresiarchs being converted; they remain obdurate in their own conceit, the oil has gone into the bone … and has become part of their nature. They allow none to find fault with them and brook no opposition. This is the sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”[1031]
In the same writing he describes the heretics’ way of speaking: “The heretics give themselves up to idle talk so that one hears of nothing but their dreams.… They overflow with words; all evildoers tend to become garrulous. As a boiling pot foams and bubbles over, so they too overflow with the talk of which their heart is full.… They stand stiff upon their doctrine about which there is no lack of ranting.”[1032]
The description (which seats so well on Luther himself) proceeds: “Those are heretics and apostates who follow their own ideas rather than the common tradition of Christendom, who transgress the teaching of their fathers and separate themselves from the common ways and usages of the whole of Christendom, who, out of pure wantonness, invent new ways and methods without cause, and contrary to Holy Writ.”[1033]—“They misread the Word of God according to their whim and make it mean what they please. In short they undertake something out of the common and invent a belief of their own, regardless of God’s Word.… God must put up with their doctrine and life as being alone holy and Godly.”[1034]
Again and again he brands pride as the cause of all heresy: “This is the reason; they think much of themselves, which, indeed, is the cause and well-spring of all heresies, for, as Augustine also says, ‘Ambition is the mother of all heresies.’ Thus Zwingli and Bucer now put forward a new doctrine.… So dangerous a thing is pride in the clergy.”[1035]—“We cannot sufficiently be on our guard against this deadly vice. Vices of the body are gross, and we feel them to be such, but this vice can always deck itself out with the glory of God, as though it had God’s Word on its side. But beneath the outward veil there is nothing but vain glory.”[1036]—“Lo, here you have in brief the cause and ground of all idolatry, heresy, hypocrisy and error, what the prophets inveigh against, and what was the cause of their being put to death, and against which the whole of Scripture witnesses. It all comes from obstinacy and conceit and the ideas of natural reason which puffs itself up … and fancies it knows enough, and can find its way for itself, etc.”[1037]
Such statements of Luther’s are of supreme importance for judging of his Divine Mission. In his frame of mind it became at last an impossibility for him to realise that his hostility and intolerance towards “heretics” within his fold could redound on himself, or that he was contradicting himself in continuing to proclaim freedom, or at least in continuing to make the fullest use of it himself. In reality he was living in a world of his own, and his mental state cannot be judged of by the usual standards.
Apart from the “pride of the heretics,” another idea of Luther’s deserves attention, viz. that those teachers who differed from him, in their heart of hearts, knew him to be in the right, or at least neither were nor could be quite certain of their own doctrines. Of any call in their case there could be no question; his call, however, was above doubt, seeing his certainty. Hence, in his dealings with the “sectarians” we once again find the same strange attitude, as he had exhibited towards the “Papists,” who, according to him, likewise were withstanding their own conscience and lacked any real call.
To a man so full of such fiery enthusiasm for his cause and so dominated by his imagination as Luther, it seems to have been an easy task to persuade himself ever more and more firmly, that all his opponents’ doings were against their own conscience.
The “teachers of faith,” he says, speaking of the sectarians, ought first of all “to be certain about their mission. Otherwise all is up with them. It was this [argument] that killed Œcolampadius. He could not endure the self-accusation: How if you have taught what is false?”[1038] Concerning Œcolampadius Luther professed to know that, even in his prayers, he had been doubtful of his own doctrine. But, so he argues, if a man goes so far as to pray for the spread of his doctrine he must surely first be “quite certain and not doubt thus of the Word and of his doctrine, for doubts and uncertainty have no place in theology, but a man must be certain of his case in the face of God.” Before the world, indeed, he continues, with a strange limitation of his previous assertion, “it behoves one to be humble, to proceed gently and to say: If anyone knows better, let him say so; to God’s Word I will gladly yield when I am better instructed.”[1039] Yet, in the same works, where seemingly he professes such willingness to listen to others, he himself proclaims most emphatically his great mission and its exclusive character.[1040]
All heretics, he once remarked, were disarmed by this one question: “My friend, is it the command of our Lord God [that you should teach thus]? At this, one and all are struck dumb.”[1041] Only by dint of lying are they able to boast of their inward assurance of their cause. Here we have Campanus for instance: “He boasts that he is as sure as sure can be of his cause and that it is impossible for him to be mistaken.” “But he is an accursed lump of filth whom we ought to despise and not bother our heads about writing against, for this only makes him more bold, proud and brave.… Whereupon Master Philip [Melanchthon] said: his suggestion would be that he should be strung up on the gallows, and this he had written to his lord [the Elector].”[1042]
With his own “certainty” Luther triumphantly confronts his opponents who at heart were uncertain: “Every man who speaks the Word of Christ is free to boast that his mouth is the mouth of Christ”; such a one, confiding in his certainty, may help to “tear Antichrist out of men’s hearts, so that his cause may no longer avail.”[1043]—“But, now, the articles of pure doctrine are proved [by me] from Scripture in the clearest way, and yet it carries no weight with them; never has an article of the faith been preached which has not more than once been attacked and contradicted by heretics, who, nevertheless, read the same Scriptures as we.”[1044]—“In short, ‘heretics must needs arise’ (1 Cor. xi. 19), and that cannot be stopped, for it was so even in the Apostles’ time. We are no better off than our fathers; Christ Himself was persecuted.”[1045] “No heretic allows himself to be convinced. They neither see nor hear anything, like Master Stiffel [Michael Stiefel]; he saw me not nor heard me.… It is forbidden to curse, swear, etc., far more to cause heresy.”[1046]—Then one becomes hardened against God the Holy Ghost; these fanatics “do not even doubt”—which is astonishing—“they stand firm.” He had warned the Anabaptist Marcus (Stübner), so he relates, “to beware lest he err,” to which he answered that “God Himself shall not dissuade me from this.”[1047]
In short, since Luther’s own cause is so clear and certain, those who disagree, particularly the sectarians, must simply have discarded the faith. For instance, “of Master Jeckel [Jacob Schenk] I hold that he believes nothing.”[1048] He, Luther, has “at all times taught God’s Word in all simplicity; to this I adhere, and will surrender myself a prisoner to it or else—become a Pope who believes neither in the again-rising of the dead nor in life everlasting.”[1049] Thus he sees no middle course between the most frivolous unbelief and the Word of God as he believes and interprets it. Hence, with heretics, whether among the Pope’s men or in his own flock, “he will have nothing to do outside of Scripture—unless indeed they start working miracles.”
The stress Luther lays on miracles as a proof of doctrine is another trait to add to the picture of his psychology. Again and again he repeated anew what he had already, in 1524, said of Münzer and some of the preachers: They must be told to corroborate their mission by signs and wonders, or else be forbidden to preach; for whenever God wills to change the order of things He always works miracles.[1050] There is something almost tragic in the courage with which he appealed to miracles in this connection, when we bear in mind his own difficulties, in accounting for their absence in his own case.[1051] Here it is enough to recall Hier. Weller’s words: “I still remember right well,” Weller writes, “how he once said that he had never thought of asking God for the gift of raising the dead, or of performing other miracles, though he did not doubt he might have obtained such of God had he wished; he had, however, preferred to be content with the rich gift of Scripture-interpretation; he further said that he had raised two persons from the dead, one of them being Philip Melanchthon and the other a God-fearing man.”[1052]
As against the sects and fanatics, Luther urges that he himself laid no claim to any extraordinary mission; as they, however, did make such a claim, they must vindicate it by miracles. “I have never preached or sought to preach unless I was asked and called for by men, for I cannot boast as they do that God has sent me from heaven without means; they run of their own accord, though no one sends them, as Jeremias writes [xxiii. 21]; for this reason they work no good.”[1053] Neither here nor elsewhere does he explicitly state by whom it is necessary to be “asked” or “called.” His account of the source whence he derives his mission also varies, being now the Wittenberg magistrates, now his Doctor’s degree, now the sovereign, now the enthusiastic hearers and readers of his word.[1054]
Such was his confidence that Luther forgot that it was by no means difficult for the “false brethren” within his camp to pick out the weak spots in his doctrine. He refused to recognise that much of their criticism was valid; on the negative side it even took the place of miracles. It was not every Catholic polemic who succeeded in demonstrating so clearly and convincingly the anomalies in Luther’s views, for instance, on the Law and Gospel, as the Antinomian, Johann Agricola.
On the other hand, Luther could well note with satisfaction the inability of the heretics to bring forward anything positive of importance. They were dwarfs compared with him. With his knowledge of the Bible it was child’s play to him to overthrow the fanatics’ often ludicrous applications of Scripture. Of Zwingli, too, it was easy for him to get the better by dint of sticking to the literal sense of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.” Luther was not slow in pointing out the blemishes of the “fanatics,” their vanity and blind obedience to ambition and self-will, and the impracticability of their fantastic, and often revolutionary, theories. The very truth of his strictures, for all his lack of miracles, raised him in his own eyes, far above these clumsy teachers; this perhaps enables us to understand better the utter contempt he expresses for them.
One had but to praise those whom he condemned to call forth Luther’s implacable anger.
This was the experience in 1538 of the humanist, Simon Lemnius (Lemchen) of Wittenberg, a man otherwise kindly disposed to the new teaching. A humanist above all, he had won Melanchthon’s favour on account of his talent.