Lemnius had thoughtlessly dared to publish two books of epigrams in which he not only attacked with biting sarcasm certain Wittenberg personages, but actually ventured to praise Archbishop Albert of Mayence, Luther’s powerful opponent. The poet, no doubt, was anxious to curry favour with the Archbishop so as to find in him a Mæcenas; he even went so far as to extol him as the man who “had kept alive the olden faith.” The censorship for which Melanchthon as Rector of the University was then responsible, was caught napping. Lemnius was indeed arrested by the University, but he escaped and fled from Wittenberg. On Trinity Sunday, June 16th, Luther read out from the pulpit a Mandate in which he abused Archbishop Albert in disgraceful terms, and scourged as a criminal act the praise bestowed in the “shameful, shocking book of lies” on Bishop Albert, “a devil out of whom it made a saint.” In it he also declared that, “by every code of law, and no matter whither the fugitive knave had fled, his head was forfeit.”[1055] Thus Lemnius was as good as outlawed—though no Court of Justice had yet sentenced him. On July 4th Melanchthon formally expelled him from the University on account of “faithlessness, perjury and slander.”[1056] The “perjury” consisted in his having fled, in defiance of the obedience he owed to the University, so as to evade the harsh penalties he had reason to apprehend. The whole edition of the Epigrams was destroyed.

“It is the devil who hatches out such knaves,” remarked Luther, “particularly among the Papists, through whom he attacks and thwarts us.… Because we preach Christ alone he persecutes us in every way he can.” The bishops deserve to be called “lost and godless knaves and foes of God,” hence “those must not be tolerated here who praise them in verse and prose.”[1057]

When Lemnius had a second edition of the Epigrams printed at Wittenberg this also was suppressed. He had added a third book, devoted to abuse of Luther and containing the famous “Merd-Song” on Luther, who was then ailing from diarrhœa. Luther retorted with a “Merd-Song” of his own on Lemnius. His verses he read aloud to his friends and they became public property through being incorporated in Lauterbach’s notes of the Table-Talk.[1058]

Lemnius, whose career had been wrecked by Luther’s anger and revenge, then wrote an “Apologia against the unjust and lying decree” which the Wittenberg University had published against him at the instigation (“imperio et tyrannide”) of Martin Luther and Justus Jonas. He still retained his loose humanistic style after his return in 1538 to his native Switzerland, where he obtained a position as schoolmaster at Coire.

The above Apologia was printed at Cologne, it would seem in 1539, but very few copies survive owing to the energy shown in their suppression. It is only of recent years that the complete text has become generally known;[1059] till then Protestants like Schelhorn and Hausen had only ventured to give fragments of the work. In it the writer complains bitterly that Luther “has published a pamphlet against him [the mandate read aloud in the church] in which, playing both the judge and the sovereign, Luther had condemned and abused him.” “Such authority in civil matters” does this soul-herd arrogate to himself. He robs the bishops of their secular power, but he himself is a tyrant. The charges against Luther’s private life made in this work are glaring, and they come, moreover, from a man who knew his Wittenberg, but it must not be forgotten that he was now a bitter foe of Luther.[1060] He goes so far as to declare that Luther’s shameless attacks on the sovereigns, for instance on the Elector of Mayence, gave grounds for apprehending contempt of all authority and the outbreak of a war that would spell the ruin of Germany.

Meanwhile “Luther sits like a dictator at Wittenberg and rules; what he says must be taken as law.”[1061] He calls his opponent the “Wittenberg Pope” (“Papa Albiacus”), who had been faithless to his Vows.

“A muddled and obstinate head” sits on the neck of the fanatics’ ringleader; “his horns must be blunted.”[1064]—“Carlstadt and Zwingli behave with insolence and defiance”; “We must needs decry the fanatics as damned”; “they actually dare to pick holes in our doctrine; ah, the scoundrelly rabble do a great injury to our Evangel even in the outland and enable our foes to scoff at us.”[1065]—“Their pride and audacity will bring about their downfall.”[1066]

In truth, he says, “Carlstadt blasphemed himself to death.”[1067]—Œcolampadius saw the “curse” of God fulfilled in himself, “and withered away with fear the night after Zwingli had been struck down” (at Cappel).[1068] Zwingli himself, like the rest, was urged on merely by “his boundless ambition.”[1069]—Egranus (Johann Wildenauer) was a “proud donkey.”[1070]—Bucer is a “gossip,”[1071] “a miscreant through and through, in every case, inflection and rule of grammar; I trust him not at all, for Paul says [Titus iii. 10] ‘A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.’”[1072]—Sebastian Franck is a “wicked, venomous knave and it is a wonder to me that those at Ulm care to keep him.”[1073] “He only loved to do harm, is inconstant and boasts of the spirit; but his wife has plenty of spirit and it is she who inspirits him with her spirit.”[1074]—Schwenckfeld deserves as little as Franck to be written against. “Agricola is only puffed up with hatred and ambition.”[1075]

He “is and should be called a godless man who denies God, which is what the Sacramentarians do.”[1076]—“Of false brethren we must above all things beware.”[1077]—With such a one “there is no hope of repentance; he is bold, impudent.”[1078]—“He remains obdurate,” he says of one of these heretics, “a cunning, evil-minded scoffer”; he betrays us as “Judas betrayed Christ.”[1079]

“The Church is altogether in the spirit,” so he again says in the following year, “she is altogether a spiritual thing.”[1089] “Christ,” so he says later, “works in the spirit so that it is hardly possible to smell His Church and bishops from afar, and the Holy Ghost behaves as though He were not there”; but that Church which is so close at hand “that it is possible to lay hold on her,” as is the case with the Popish Church, is only the Church of the devil.[1090] “Who will show us the Church,” he asks, “seeing that she is hidden in the spirit and is only believed in, just as we say: ‘I believe in one Holy Church.’”[1091] “The Church is believed in but she is not seen, and for the most part she is oppressed and hidden, under weakness, crosses and scandals.”[1092] In short, as a Lutheran theologian puts it, “he is speaking merely of a Holy Church or congregation whose real complement of Saints is not apparent, and which is therefore termed invisible.”[1093] Nor could he speak otherwise, for the absence of a divinely appointed hierarchy, and likewise his principle of the free examination of Scripture, could not but lead him to assume an invisible Church which lives only in the hearts of those who share the faith and the possession of the Holy Ghost.

Thus he asks: How can “a poor, blundering man know where to find this holy Christian folkdom [the Church]? For we are told that it is [to be found] in this life and on this earth … where it will also remain till the end of time.”[1098] This leads him to speak of the marks of the true Church.

“First of all the holy Christian people can be told by its having the Holy Word of God.” Luther forgets to say how the latter is to be recognised, though on this all depends; for he was far from being the only one who laid claim to possessing the pure Word of God. Hence many were not slow in pointing out how useless it was on his part to say: “Where you hear or see this Word preached, believed, confessed and acted upon, have no doubt that there, assuredly, must be the true ‘ecclesia sancta catholica,’ and the Holy Christian people, even though in number they be but few.”[1099] Nor did his theological opponents think any more highly of the other marks of the true Church which he sets up in the same work. They urged that the distinguishing marks should surely be clearer than what was to be distinguished, and patent and evident even to the unlearned. Concerning the marks set up by Luther, however, there was doubt even among those who had cut themselves adrift from Catholicism.

For instance, the second mark was “the Sacrament of Baptism where it is rightly taught and believed, and administered according to Christ’s ordinance.”[1100] But, among the Zwinglians and Anabaptists, baptism, so at least they claimed, was also rightly administered according to the ordinance of Christ; and, as for the Popish Church, Luther himself admits that she had always preserved baptism in its purity. Hence, here again, we have no clear, distinctive mark.

The other marks, according to Luther’s “Von den Conciliis,” were, thirdly, “the Sacrament of the Altar where it is rightly given, believed and received according to the institution of Christ”; and, fourthly, “the keys [forgiveness through faith] of which they make public use.” “Fifthly, the Church is known outwardly by her consecrating or calling of ministers of the Church, to the offices which it is her duty to fill.” Sixthly, “by her public prayer, praise, and thanks to God.” “Seventhly, the Christian people is recognised outwardly by the sacred emblem of the holy Cross since it has to suffer misfortune and persecution, all kinds of temptation and trouble—as we learn from the Our Father—from the devil, the world and the flesh; must be inwardly in pain, foolish and affrighted, and outwardly poor, despised, weak and sick.”[1101]

Bellarmine, the sharp-witted controversialist, and other polemics even earlier, dealt with these marks and showed their inadequacy. As regards the last mark Bellarmine, not unnaturally, expressed his wonder that Luther should have spoken of it, seeing that inward suffering, sadness and apprehension are of their very nature hidden things. Luther, however, hit upon this mark because he was accustomed to regard his “temptations” as a witness to the truth of his doctrine, and was convinced that the devil was causing them solely out of hatred for the truth.[1102] He thus carried his fancied experiences[1103] into his teaching on the Church, a fresh proof that his theology was the outcome rather of his inner life than of revealed doctrine. The idea that the Church was ever to be sick, weak, foolish and despised appealed to him all the more because his Evangel had not brought forth the good moral fruits he desiderated, and because he had vainly to struggle against the dissensions within his congregations and their abuse of the freedom of the Gospel.

It was this experience of his which led him to the fantastic plan already described of forming an “assembly of earnest Christians,” i.e. a Church-apart enrolled from the true believers who would then realise the idea of a Church even to the extent of having the power of excommunicating.

The seven marks of the Church were reduced to two in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, viz. pure doctrine, and true sacraments, and it is thus that they appear in the “Symbolic Books” of Lutheranism. On the other hand, Luther makes no appeal to the marks of the Church as given in the olden so-called Nicene Creed, “though all the olden Councils had insisted that it was these marks, particularly the attribute of ‘Apostolicity,’ which distinguished the Church from the sects.”[1104]

As a matter of fact the marks on which Catholic theologians laid stress, viz. the Church’s “oneness, holiness, Catholicity” and apostolicity furnished a striking answer to the question: Where is the Church? She is Apostolic because her connection with the Apostles has never been broken; Catholic because of her universal existence throughout the world; holy in her aims and means and in the practice of Christian virtue by the generality of her followers, and also on account of the special gifts of grace which have ever brightened her path through the ages; lastly, she is one, outwardly in being alone, and also inwardly, in the unity of her faith and belief, liturgy and sacraments, and in her character as a society in which a divinely appointed spiritual authority rules which the rest obey. In the latter respect the Church, to the Catholic mind, is even a “societas perfecta,” visible, moreover, to the whole world like the “city set on a hill” (Matt. v. 12) in which the Fathers of the Church indeed always saw an image of the Church;[1105] she is as a building built upon a rock, as a flock gathered round the shepherd, both of them comparisons which we owe to the Church’s Divine Founder.

It was not without reason that Luther was averse to any appeal to the four marks of the Church just referred to. What unity had he wherewith to confront that of Catholicism under its Pope? Apostolicity, as an historical union with Christ’s Apostles was so evidently wanting in his case that he declared that the doctrine he had come to preach had died out shortly after Apostolic times. Any claim to Catholicity in the usual sense of the word was not to be thought of for a moment. The only olden marks which he does not throw over is that of holiness. He here relies on the existence of holiness in the case of a few as being sufficient for his purpose.

Nevertheless, due justice must be done to the stress he is ever disposed to lay on the holiness of the Church. He practically makes all the other marks to centre in this, for he speaks of the seven marks mentioned above as the sevenfold “sanctuary whereby the Holy Ghost sanctifies Christ’s holy nation.”[1106]

“Even though it was impossible for him,” remarks Johann Adam Möhler, “to teach that the Church was to be regarded as a living institution in which men become holy, yet he sticks fast to the idea that she ought by rights to be composed of saints.… The inner Church [called by theologians the “soul” to distinguish it from the outward “body” of the Church] is everywhere in evidence, and the fact that no one is a true citizen of the heavenly kingdom if he belongs only outwardly to the Church and has not entered into the spirit of Christ and felt within himself its vivifying power, is pointed out [by Luther] in a way which merits all praise.”[1107]

Characteristically enough we find a first trace of what was to come, in his sermon on the power of the Papal Ban, which he published in Latin in 1518 and in German in the following year. Here, of course, he had to deal with the question of the effects of the threatened excommunication; in so doing he reached the false proposition, censured amongst his 41 errors in the Bull Exsurge Domine of May 16, 1520: “Excommunications are merely outward penalties and do not rob a man of the Church’s common spiritual prayers.”[1117] Not long after, according to his wont, he went a step further. Among the condemned Theses we find the paradoxical one: “Christians must be taught to love excommunication rather than to fear it.”[1118]

At Dresden on July 25, 1518, when he was found fault with on account of his Wittenberg Sermon on Excommunication (which was then probably not yet known in its entirety), he seems to have shown scant respect for the supreme authority in the Church. Emser, his then opponent, writes expressly that Luther had declared he cared nothing for the Pope’s Ban.[1119]

Some weeks later, on Sep. 1, Luther himself wrote to Staupitz, his superior, that his conscience told him he was in the right and with the truth on his side; “Christ liveth and reigneth yesterday, to-day and for ever”; he also tells him, that, in his “Resolutions,” and in his replies to Prierias he had spoken freely, and in a language that would wound the Romanists, and that he was ready, nay anxious, to give the brassy Romans an even ruder German answer in the service of Christ, the Shepherd of the people. “Have no fear; I shall continue untrammelled my study of the Word of God without any fear of the citation [to Augsburg].”[1120]

During the negotiations in the presence of Cajetan at Augsburg we can see even more clearly how Luther stood under the spell of his idea, that the only Church was a spiritual one, and that, even should he break away from ecclesiastical authority by rising against the Ban, he would still remain in this Church.

It was after his return from Augsburg, during the stormy days when he appealed “from the Pope to a General Christian Council,” i.e. in the winter of 1518, that he discovered the true “Antichrist” who reigned at Rome.[1121] This discovery deprived him of the last vestige of respect for the authority of the Church and for her head.[1122] His own inward state when he made this discovery was one of curious turmoil. In his letter to Link, of Dec. 11, 1518, we hear him speaking of his commotion of mind, of new projects just on the point of birth which would show that, so far, he had hardly made a serious beginning with the struggle; he had a “premonition” then that Antichrist described by St. Paul (2 Thes. ii. 3 ff.) was seated in Rome where he behaved even worse than the Turk.[1123] At the beginning of 1519 with bated breath he announced to his friends the impending war on all the Papal ordinances.[1124]

Thus, even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, he must have busied himself with his new idea of the Church.

It was, however, only during the Disputation that, pressed hard by Eck, he was induced to deny openly the Primacy and to proclaim his belief in an invisible Church controlled by no authority.[1125] In the Disputation on July 4 and the following days, he attacked the divine institution of the Pope’s authority, asserted that even Œcumenical Councils could err, and, on July 6, declared that the Council of Constance had actually done so in rejecting the doctrine of Hus that there is “a Holy Catholic Church which is the whole body of the elect.”

According to the “Resolutions” he published after the Leipzig Disputation, every man is born into the faith through the Evangel owing to the bestowal of certainty from on high without the intervention of the Church’s authority or of any doctrine outwardly binding upon him. Satan and all the heretics, so he declares, could not have forged a more dangerous opinion than that in vogue among Catholics concerning the relations between the Church’s authority and the Bible Word; needless to say Luther makes out that, in their opinion, the Pope was put above the Written Word and even above God Himself.[1135] The genuine Catholic doctrine, viz. that the Church is the guardian of the true sense of Holy Scripture and at the same time a witness to the faithful of the authenticity and inspiration of the Holy Books, is indeed poles asunder from the teaching foisted on her. Moreover, it is in these very Resolutions to the Leipzig Disputation that Luther disparages the Epistle of James, arguing that its style falls far short of the apostolic dignity and could in no way compare with that of Paul. Here the “freedom” which he exalts into a principle already begins to undermine his new foundation, viz. the Bible itself.

Not long after this, in 1520, he lays claim in his “Von dem Bapstum” and “De captivitate Babylonica,” to having been instructed solely by the Holy Ghost and out of the Bible regarding the sense of Holy Scripture.

In the “De captivitate Babylonica” he teaches: the faithful who surrender themselves to the Spirit of God and allow Him to work upon them through the “Word” (he calls them the Church), received from the same Spirit an infallible sense and an inspiration by which to judge of doctrine, a sense which is indeed not susceptible of proof yet which creates absolute certainty. The same thing held good here as in the case of the truth, of which Augustine had said, that the soul was so laid hold of and carried away by it as to be enabled by its means to judge of all things, though unable to prove the truth itself which nevertheless it was forced to acknowledge with an infallible certainty.[1136] Luther also appeals as a comparison to the evidence of certain fundamental truths of mathematics or philosophy. This would at first sight make it appear as though he excluded arbitrary freedom in the interpretation of the Bible, since the mind must necessarily bow to such logical and unquestionable truths as he instances; this is, however, not the case, and we may recall what a wide field he opened up for delusion in this matter of inspiration.[1137]

When he teaches that the perception of the truth of religion penetrates into every Christian soul as the direct result of a certainty operated by God Himself we must, in order to understand him, keep in view the other points of his teaching, above all his opinion of man’s utter incapacity to do what is good, the depravity of man’s mental powers, his lack of free-will and absolute passivity under the hand of God. Above all he needed some such theory in order to justify his attack on the olden conception of the Church and to defend his own alleged certainty.

The universal priesthood also serves him as a prop for his idea of the Church. This priesthood, with the right to judge of doctrine, such as he pictures in his “To the German Nobility” and “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” was a logical outcome of the above doctrine of inspiration and of his own inclination to break away from the olden Church. It gave to all complete independence in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters.[1138]

The above writings were followed in 1521 by his “Ad librum Ambrosii Catharini Responsio.” Here he treats in detail of the Church, and of Christ the spiritual and invisible rock on which alone she is built (without Peter and his successors); the Church’s nature is therefore spiritual and invisible; he emphasises anew the right of all the faithful individually to disregard all teaching authority and to give ear to the voice of the Holy Ghost Who speaks inwardly through the Evangel, and thus brings forth, nourishes, educates, strengthens and preserves the true Church. In this work Luther is, however, already at greater pains to bring down the Church to the region of the visible; he points out that at least she possesses visible elements, Baptism, the Supper and the Gospel. Nevertheless, direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost still looms large in the “Responsio” as we may gather from the elucubrations embellished with Bible texts in which he declares that the Papal Antichrist had been foretold in the Word of God and his appearance and workings even described in detail.[1139]

In “Von Menschen leren tzu meyden” (1522), which is still saturated with the spirit of the Wartburg he had just left, he insists that: “Each one must simply believe that it is God’s Word because he feels in his heart that it is the truth, even should an angel from heaven or all the world preach the contrary.”—His writing of 1523, “Das eyn Christliche Versamlung odder Gemeyne Recht und Macht habe alle Lere zu urteylen,” etc., was intended to promote unfettered freedom of spirit, but, of course, only in the interests of the removal of the Popish-minded clergy, for, naturally, there could be no question of such freedom being used against Luther, or of anyone setting himself up as judge of Luther’s new doctrine. Here, and even more strongly in the “De instituendis ministris Ecclesiæ,” which he published in the same year, he starts again from the standpoint of the universal priesthood; this was inconsistent with the clerical order of the Popish Church; by it every man was qualified to decide independently on doctrine in accordance with Scripture; but whoever preached openly in the Church of God only did so as representing the others and at their request; hence no preacher was to be at the head of any congregation unless the latter wanted him, and, taught by the unction of the Holy Spirit, found his doctrine right. A Christian might also, so he continues, whether amongst other Christians or amongst those who had formerly been unbelievers, instruct his fellow-men in the Gospel merely by virtue of his Christian calling; anyone, if he detected the ordinary teacher in error, might stand up and teach without any call, as the Apostle says (1 Cor. xiv. 30) “if anything be revealed to another, let the first hold his peace.”[1140]

But how is a man to be so certain in his heart as to be able to come forward in this way? “You can then be certain of the matter if you are able to decide freely and surely and to say this is the pure and simple truth, for it I will live or die, and whoever teaches otherwise, whatsoever be his title and standing, is accursed.”[1141]