Luther’s expectations in those early days were strange indeed and quite incapable of realisation; not only were all delusions to be excluded but everything, as he says of the enduring of opposition, was to be done “decently and piously”! If he is really speaking in earnest, then he shows himself a hermit utterly ignorant of human nature. And yet even in the seclusion of the convent walls, the greatest enthusiast should have seen that this was not the way to form a congregation on earth of believers, or anything resembling a Church.
We can, nevertheless, easily understand, to cite Möhler in confirmation of what has been said, “how the doctrine in question could, nay, had to, arise in Luther’s mind: Since the authority of the existing Church was against him he had perforce to seek for support in the authority of God working directly in him.… He saw no other way than to appeal to an intangible, inward authorisation.”[1142]—This he then proceeded to work out into a system for the other believers. “In the fashion of the true demagogue he flatters every Christian and invests him with such perfection as any unprejudiced mind must repudiate on the most cursory glance into his own heart.”[1143]
The truth is, the doctrine put forward by Luther against the Church, i.e. that Holy Scripture is the sole judge, has no meaning except on the assumption of a certainty through direct divine illumination.
Luther was quite right in declaring Holy Scripture to be the source of the doctrine of salvation; but it was a very different thing to assert that Holy Writ is the judge which determines what is the doctrine of salvation contained therein. He only reached the latter assertion by taking for granted the direct action of God in man for imparting a knowledge of the true sense of Scripture. Hence in his statements on Holy Scripture we frequently find one thing strangely confused with the other, the outward Book with the inward knowledge of the same, so that, as Möhler puts it, “the direct transmission of its contents to the reader is assumed in a quite childish fashion.”[1144] Even Köstlin has to admit this confusion, though he does so with reserve: “In Luther,” he says, “we see in many passages an intermingling of the pure Word and pure doctrine.”[1145]
Henceforward there remained deeply rooted in Luther’s mind the conviction that the individual was taught by God and that this Divine enlightenment was always leading to the adoption of his own chief articles of faith and to the promotion of the Lutheran Church.[1146]
There is no call to follow up this idea through all his various writings. We may, however, call to mind a remarkable and warlike statement with which, towards the end of his life, he sought to justify his attacks on the Pope and the ancient Church, and that, too, at a time when he must long since have been disappointed at the results of the freedom of judging which he had once allowed but had now already in many ways curtailed.
In his “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” he quotes the words of Christ which refer to prayer in common: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This leads him to conclude, strange to say, “that even two or three gathered together in Christ’s name hold all the power of St. Peter and all the Apostles.” And, at once, he proceeds in his old vein to declare that two or three, nay, even a single one, who has been enlightened by Christ, is as good a teacher as the whole Church, and, indeed, in certain cases, even takes precedence of her. “Hence it comes,” he says, “that, often, a man who believes in Christ has withstood a whole crowd … as the prophets withstood the Kings of Israel, the priests and the whole nation [to say nothing of Luther himself who had withstood the whole Church]. In short, God will not be bound as to numbers, greatness, height, power, or anything personal to man, but will only be with those who love and keep His Word even though they be no more than stable boys. What does He care for high, great and mighty lords? He alone is the greatest, highest and mightiest.”[1147] Thus he practically claims a Divine dignity for an undertaking such as his, and paints his career afresh as that of a prophet who had a right to exalt himself even over the topmost hierarchy; only that he invests all the faithful, and even the “stable boy,” with the like high calling.
But, in such a system, what place was there left for anything more than a phantom Church? Obviously the Church had to withdraw into the region of the invisible. For her again to become visible and assume the shape to be considered below, seems almost a paradox.
In view of the elasticity and vagueness of Luther’s teaching on the Church it is not surprising that his followers, to this very day, are divided as to whether, in point of fact, Luther wanted a “Church” or not.
A well-known Lutheran theologian admits in plain language that Luther left the problem of the Church unsolved; only after the Reformer’s time did certain “important problems” arise in respect of Luther’s tentative definition of the Church.[1148] Another theologian, writing in a Protestant periodical, says that Luther left behind him no “Evangelical Church.” “The Reformation,” he says, “spelt Christendom’s deliverance from the Church.… His great anticlerical bias was never repudiated by Luther.… He committed the care of the pure Evangel to the hands of the civil authorities. It ought no longer to be disputed that Luther and the Reformers were not the founders of the Evangelical Church—and that their ideal Protestantism was one minus a Church. It is only necessary to take the idea of the Church in its strict sense—not as the congregation, or the people of God, nor yet as a body of men holding the same opinions, nor as the kingdom of Christ—but as an independent complexus of regulations ordering the religious life, as a special institution to provide for the particular needs of the religious commonwealth within traditional limits.” Hence “the fact that, in our homeland, three hundred years after Luther’s time, we find the Evangelical preacherdom firmly consolidated in a body not unlike the State, and professing to be the official representative of Protestantism is one of the most astounding paradoxes in all the history of the Church.”[1149]
There is no need to go so far, nor is it really necessary to put the words evangelical “Church” or “Churches” in inverted commas, as Protestants sometimes do in order to mark the quite unusual meaning of the word Church according to Luther’s view. It is obvious that logic had no place in Luther’s ideas and aims in respect of the Church, and his subjectivism imposed on him in this matter the utmost vagueness.
Frequently we find in Catholic works on dogma extracts from Luther’s writings dating from 1519 and 1520, which, it is alleged, show his positive conviction at that time that a Church—i.e. one in the olden Catholic sense—was to be recognised. But this is a mistake. The documents containing such utterances were of a diplomatic character, and we have no right to build upon them. They do not in any way invalidate what has been said above.
One of these is Luther’s “Unterricht auff etlich Artikell,” dating from the end of Feb., 1519, i.e. from a time when he had already discovered the Roman Antichrist;[1150] the other, his “Oblatio sive Protestatio,” dating from the summer of 1520, is a tract unmistakably intended to forestall the publication of the Roman Bull.[1151] In the first work, composed at the instance of Miltitz, it is true he says in praise of the Roman Church that, in her, “St. Peter and St. Paul, 46 Popes and many hundred thousand martyrs had shed their blood,” that she was honoured by God above all others, and that, for the sake of Christian charity and unity, it was not lawful to separate from her for all her present blemishes; he will not, however, express himself regarding the “authority and supremacy of the Roman Church,” “seeing that this does not concern the salvation of souls”; Christ, on the contrary, had founded His Church on charity, meekness and oneness, and, for the sake of this oneness, the Papal commands ought to be obeyed. By this he fancies that he has proved that he “does not wish to detract from the Roman Church.”[1152]
What he says in the other writing referred to above is even less acceptable, though here too he wishes to appear “as a submissive and obedient son of the Holy Christian Churches.”[1153] The circumstance that many shortsighted persons doubtless took him at his word at this critical time of his excommunication must have served powerfully to promote the apostasy.
As to the changes to which Luther’s mode of thought was liable, we may perhaps be permitted to make a general observation before passing from the consideration of the invisible Church to that of the Church visible.
The charge brought against him of having formerly taught differently on many points from what he did at a later date, Luther lightly swept aside with the assurance that he had gone on gradually advancing in the knowledge of the truth. His defenders seek to escape the difficulty in a like way. His changeableness and inconstancy must undoubtedly weigh heavily in the balance. We must not, however, be unfair to him or argue that the fact of his having at first defended elements of Catholic doctrine which he afterwards abandoned constituted a grave self-contradiction.
Luther openly admits that it was only gradually that he came to attack the Church so bitterly.
When King Henry VIII reproached him with the contradictions apparent between his earlier and later teaching on the Papacy and the Church, Luther boldly appealed in 1522 in his “Contra Henricum regem Angliæ” to his having only gradually learnt the whole truth: “I did not yet know that the Papacy was contrary to Scripture.… God had then given me a cheerful spirit that suffered itself to be despised [by his opponents].… By dint of so doing they forced me on, so that the further I went the more lies I discovered … until it became plain from Scripture, thanks to God’s Grace, that the Papacy, episcopacy, foundations, cloisters, universities, together with all the monkery, nunnery, Masses, services were nothing but damnable sects of the devil.… Hence it came about that I had to write other books in condemnation and retractation of my earlier ones.”[1154] He will also, so he adds ironically, retract what he had previously said in his “De captivitate Babylonica,” viz. that the Papacy was the prey of a strong Nimrod, as this had scandalised the lying King of England, who was himself the robber of his country. This, in his own style, he now proposes to amend as follows: “I should have said: The Papacy is the arch-devil’s most poisonous abomination hitherto seen on earth.”[1155]
If it was a difficult matter to give an account of Luther’s invisible Church, owing to the changes which took place in his own views, even more difficult is the task of tracing the further growth of his teaching. His invisible Church becomes more and more clearly a visible Church; yet all the while it protests, that, in its nature, it is invisible.
What was Luther’s view of the Church’s character when the time came to set up new congregations within the circle of the “Evangel”?
Theologically the question is answered in the authentic publicly accepted explanations he gave of his doctrine on the Church. Of these the oldest is comprised in the Schwabach Articles of 1529,[1156] where we read in Article XII:
There is “no doubt that there is and ever will be on earth a holy Christian Church until the end of the world, as Christ says in Matt, xxviii. 20.… This Church is nothing else than the believers in Christ, who hold, believe and teach the above-mentioned articles and provisions [of the Schwabach Confession], and who, on this account, are persecuted and tormented in the world. For where the Gospel is preached and the sacraments rightly used, there is the holy Christian Church, bound by no laws and outward pomp to place or time, persons or ceremonies.”—“Thus did the Evangelical idea of the Church,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau, “find expression once and for all in the fundamental confessions of Protestantism, faith in Christ being identified with faith in the said ‘articles and provisions.’”[1157]
In the “Augsburg Confession” of 1530—“which Confession,” according to Luther, “was to last till the end of the world and the Last Judgment”[1158]—we read: “The Church is the mateship of the saints (‘congregatio sanctorum’) in which the Evangel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly dispensed.”[1159] The “Apologia” to this Confession contains the following: “The Church is not merely a commonwealth of outward things and rites like other institutions, but it is rather a society of hearts in faith and the Holy Ghost. She has, however, outward signs by which she may be known, viz. the pure doctrine of the Gospel and a dispensing of the sacraments in accordance with Christ’s Gospel.”[1160] Of “Church government” the Confession of Augsburg states: “Concerning the government of the Church we hold that no one may teach publicly or dispense the sacraments without being duly called”; this is further explained in the “Apologia”: “The Church has the command of God to appoint preachers.”[1161]
Regarding the same matter the Schmalkalden Articles of 1537-1538, which also form a part of the “Symbolic Books,” have the following: “The Churches must have power to call, choose and ordain the ministers of the Church, and such power is in fact bestowed on the Church by God … just as, in case of necessity, even a layman can absolve another and become his pastor.… The words of Peter: ‘You are a kingly priesthood’ refer only to the true Church, which, since she alone has the priesthood, must also have the power to choose and ordain ministers. To this the general usage of the Churches also bears witness.”[1162]
When the above was penned, indeed, even when Melanchthon wrote the “Confessio Augustana,” the new Church, though theoretically invisible, had long since received an established outward form. Yet its invisibility is emphasised in the Schwabach Articles which reject such outward laws as are inconsistent with the Church’s character; the Confession and Apologia also refer to the (ghostly) union of hearts in the faith, and to the assembly of the (unknown) saints.
Nevertheless the visibility, so strongly insisted on in the Schmalkalden Articles, was practically indispensable, and was also a logical result of the whole work undertaken by Luther.
First of all it was called for by the very nature of this “ministry” of those who were to preach and to dispense the sacraments in the name of the congregation; according to Luther’s teaching, the dispensing of the sacraments went hand in hand with preaching, the sacraments being efficacious only through the faith of the recipient, and the dispenser’s duty being confined to making the recipient more worthy of the inpouring of grace through the word of faith which accompanies the visible sign of the sacrament. The ministerial “office” was not conferred by a sacrament as was the case in the priestly ordination of the olden Church, but, as Luther teaches, “ordination, if understood aright, is no more than being called or ‘ordered’ to the office of parson or preacher.” Among the Papists “Baptism and Christ had been weakened and darkened” by the ordinations. “We are born priests and as such we want to be known.” “By Holy Baptism we have become the true priests of Christendom as St. Peter says: ‘You are a royal priesthood.’”[1163] Ministers (i.e. servants) of the Word was the proper title for those who performed all their functions in the name of the common priesthood of the whole people.
As soon, however, as it became a question of appointing preachers a visible Church at once appeared on the scene, though one without either Pope or hierarchy.
It may be recalled that Luther’s plan was originally to leave it to each congregation to appoint a preacher either from its own body or an outsider, who was then to act in their name and with their authority. There seemed no better way of securing control over the preacher’s doctrine. As for the ecclesiastical penalties, Luther, even in his “Deudsche Messe,” left their use to the congregation as a whole.[1164] At a later date he still clung to the idea of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the congregation. Even to absolve from sin belonged, in his opinion,—and to this he adhered to the end,—to all believers, and such absolution was as valid as had it been pronounced by God Himself (always assuming that faith had already been awakened in the penitent).[1165] On the authority of the congregation was to rest, not only the lower ministry, but also the quasi-episcopate. The scheme he sketched in 1523 in the Latin work he addressed to the Bohemians, “De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ,” has already been described.[1166]
The many abuses which arose, and indeed were bound to arise, from the independence of the congregations soon compelled him to cast about for a more reliable framework. The phantom of a community of believers united in spirit, of a “brotherhood” minus any social or constitutional cohesion and devoid of any vigorous direction, proved incapable of realisation.
Help was to be looked for only from the State.
By clinging to its solid structure the religious innovations would have a chance of avoiding the conventicle system and the danger of its congregations falling asunder. The tendency to drift towards the State was also promoted by the opposition of the fanatical Anabaptists, for this sect was a menace to order in the congregations owing to its excesses and also to the pertinacity with which, following out Luther’s own teaching, it insisted on individualism and repudiated the “office” of the ministry. Not only did Luther, after the rise of the Anabaptists, emphasise the outward rather than the inward Word, but, for the same reason, he also laid much greater stress than formerly on the “office” and on the external representation of the Church’s members—invisibly united by the faith—by duly called officials.
Thus, the Church, whose invisibility and spirituality Luther had been so fond of emphasising, became, in course of time, more and more a visible and concrete body, though remaining closely bound up with the State. Yet, even in Luther’s earlier views on the Church, certain indications pointed to the visible Church yet to come; indeed the ideas he retained from Catholic days were to prove stronger than he then anticipated.
Of a statement contained in “De servo arbitrio” (1525), a book written after the rise of the Anabaptist subjectivism, Möhler justly remarks: “This passage views the clergy as the representatives of the Church which is thus quite visible; professing the faith of the invisible Church and expressing its mind, this Church has a definite doctrinal standpoint which she advocates through her clergy, and, which, as the dictum of the Saints, she regards as true and infallible. Hence the visible Church appears as the expression and facsimile of the invisible Church.”[1167]
Already in his books against Alveld and Catharinus Luther was at pains to insist that the Church which he taught was a real community living on earth in the flesh, though not tied down to any definite place or persons.[1168] Wavering and confusion, here as elsewhere, characterise Luther’s teaching.
We can understand how his Catholic opponents, for instance Staphylus, make much of the change from the visible to the invisible Church. Staphylus dubs those who persisted in advocating her invisibility, the “Invisibiles,” such being the followers of Flacius, Schwenckfeld and Osiander, and also the Anabaptists.[1169]
It is a fact that Melanchthon, particularly in his later years, insists on the Church as an institution and on her visible nature more than Luther does. The centuriators defined the Church as “cœtus visibilis” and, after Chemnitz’s day (†1586), the Church of the Lutheran theologians is something quite visible, and is spoken of as an institution for the preservation and promotion of pure doctrine and of the means of grace which work by faith.[1170]
Nor can the Wittenberg view of the Church be taken otherwise when we see how the theologians of that town in Luther’s own time proceeded in appointing ministers and controlling and supervising their office. The preachers and pastors, after their doctrine had been found consonant with that of Wittenberg,[1171] were “entrusted with the ministry” though it is not apparent whether the authorisation came from the congregations who applied for them, or from the theological examiners, or from the sovereign and his mixed consistory. The formulas used are by no means clear, save on one point, viz. that they expressly claim for the Wittenbergers the character of a true “Catholic Church,” or at least their harmony with such a Church.
In the ordination-certificate of Heinrich Bock (above, p. 265), who received a call as pastor and Superintendent to Reval, the quondam city of the Teutonic Order in Esthland, and who had been “ordained” on April 25, 1540, by Bugenhagen, the pastor of Wittenberg, we find it stated: “His doctrine tallies with the consensus of the Catholic Church which our Church also holds, and he is free from every kind of fanaticism condemned by the Catholic Church of Christ.”[1172] Hence they claimed to be one with the universal Church throughout the world and not to form an isolated community apart; this, as we know, was Melanchthon’s favourite view. The olden hierarchy was, however, replaced by that of Wittenberg, as we read in the same certificate: “We”—the signatories, Luther, Bugenhagen, Jonas and Melanchthon—“have entrusted him with the ministry of the Church, that he may teach the Gospel and dispense the sacraments instituted by Christ,” “iuxta vocationem,” i.e. in accordance with the call of the authorities at Reval who had summoned the ordinand to govern their Church (“ad gubernationem ecclesiæ suæ”). The testimonial was the work of Melanchthon.
Other testimonials of this kind are similarly worded.
The certificate of Johann Fischer who went from Wittenberg to Rudolstadt in 1540 (above, p. 265) sets forth that “he had been called to the ministry of the Gospel by the people there, who had also borne witness to his good moral character”; they had asked that “his call might be reinforced by public ordination”; this had been conferred on him when it had been shown that he held “the pure, Catholic doctrine of the Gospel which our Church also teaches and professes,” and that he rejected all the fanatical opinions which the Catholic Church of Christ rejects.[1173] The statement embodied in the testimonial, giving the grounds on which the signatories, the pastor of Wittenberg and other “ministers of the Gospel,” undertook such an ordination is noteworthy: “We may not refuse to do our duty to the neighbouring Churches for the Nicene Council made the godly rule that ordination should be requested of the neighbouring Churches.” Of the objections that theology and Canon Law might have raised those who drafted the document seem to have no inkling.
In this case the Wittenbergers claim to be no more than a “neighbouring Church”; elsewhere they are more ambitious.
The fact is, Wittenberg was anxious to stand at the head of the visible Church.
It was at Wittenberg that Luther, as the leader of the young Church, had first preached the truth of the Gospel urged thereto “by Divine command”; on the strength of such a command he was compelled to defend himself against the Elector’s lawyers who wanted to play havoc with “his Church.”[1174]
“By divine authority we have begun to ameliorate the world.”[1175]
Foes at home twitted him with setting up an “office of the Word” by which an end was made of all freedom; they urged, that, at Wittenberg, people were trying to “breathe new life into despotism, to seat themselves in the chair and to exercise compulsion just as the Pope had done heretofore.”[1176] Luther proclaims loudly: “We, who preach the Evangel, have full powers to ordain; the Pope and the bishops can ordain no one.”[1177]—“You are a bishop,” said Luther once jokingly to a Superintendent, “just as I am Pope.”[1178] Beneath the jest there lay bitter earnest, for the authority of the “Wittenberg school” in Luther’s estimation stood high indeed; whoever “despises it, so long as the Church and school remain as they are, is a heretic and a bad man,” seeing that, in this school, God has “revealed His Word.”[1179]—Nevertheless, the Wittenberg theologians complained that this authority was not recognised, that the Church was a “spectacle of woe,” without “oneness either in doctrine or in worship”; “our princes and cities” ought to bring about unity. Moreover things are bound to grow worse, seeing that “each one wants to be his own Rabbi.”[1180] Outside Wittenberg, and even within the city walls, and that even in Luther’s time, the prediction of Duke George about the 72 sects of the Protestant Babel seemed about to be fulfilled.[1181]
Yet Luther, in setting up the Wittenberg Primacy, retained his former principles which were altogether at variance with unity and subordination. “Who holds the public office of preacher,” so he declared in 1531, is not “forbidden to judge of doctrine” (before this, as the reader may remember, every “miller’s maid” had been free to do this); but whoever has no such office may not do so, because he would be acting “of his own doctrine and spirit.”[1182]
Where is your office? Such was his question in 1525 to his opponent Carlstadt. The latter appealed to the call he had received from the congregation of Orlamünde. But of this Luther even then refuses to hear. He required from Carlstadt, in addition, the ratification of the sovereign, viz. of the Saxon Elector.
Even in those days he was most anxious to see Church discipline established and excommunication resorted to, even though this involved making the Church something visible; the disruption and confusion everywhere rampant cried aloud for regulations, laws and penalties.[1183] “Such punishment and discipline through the Ban,” so he says, “is utterly odious to the world and causes the faithful ministers much work and danger; for vice has already grown into a habit; it is no longer a sin; the ungodly have power, riches and position on their side. The greater the rascal the better his luck.”[1184] Yet, according to him it was impossible for the Church to make laws, otherwise we would again be putting up “snares for consciences” as in Popery.[1185] Laws must be made only by the sovereigns—whatever discipline was enforced against the unruly was enforced by the secular authorities. “The most the parsons did for discipline was in following out the Electoral instructions to the Visitors and denouncing offenders to the secular officials and judges.”[1186] Of the “blasphemers,” viz. those who were obstinate or opposed the New Evangel, Luther wrote in 1529 to Thomas Löscher, parson of Milau: “They must be forced to attend the preaching,” needless to say by temporal penalties; in this way they will be taught the obedience they owe as citizens and also their duty to the State, “whether they believe in the Evangel or not.… If they wish to live among the people, then they must learn the laws of the people, even though unwillingly.”[1187] Hence here and in other instructions it is no longer a question of the Church but only of the sovereigns; these, so he urged, were to be backed by the preachers. He praised the Bohemian Brethren and the Swiss for having better discipline in their Churches, he also admitted that the action of the authorities would not of itself alone be sufficient to correct grave moral disorders.[1188]
“Unless the Court gives its support to our regulations,” Melanchthon once said, the result will be mere “platonic laws.”[1189]
References such as these to the State, which was now seen to be necessary for the support of the Church when once it had become a visible body,[1190] are to be met with repeatedly by anyone who follows the history of Lutheranism in its beginnings, more particularly in the years 1525-1528. It was during this period that the union of the new Church with the State, which has been described above, was accomplished. The sovereign arrogated to himself those powers which gradually made him the supreme head of the Church and permanent “emergency-bishop.”[1191] The visibility of the Church, or rather Churches—as all claim to catholicity was abandoned save in the credal formularies—rested on the enactments of the rulers, who, not without Luther’s connivance, soon introduced the compulsory element into religion. To make use of the invisible power of the Gospel and to give advice to consciences as to moral conduct, was indeed left to the ministers of the Word. But it was the State that had to establish “the right form of worship and the right ecclesiastical organisation.”[1192]
All heretical communities from the commencement of the Church had looked to the State for help. But no heresiarch ever put himself so completely in the hands of the State in all outward matters as Luther and his fellows did where princes of their own party were concerned. “The common Christian Church” was, according to him, to retain for herself only the true faith and the sacraments which worked by faith.
When, in the State Church thus called into being, the authorities proceeded too vigorously against the preachers and treated Luther without due consideration, the latter had himself a taste of the state of servitude into which he had brought the Church. Döllinger says truly that this restriction must have been “doubly irksome to a man who had known the old episcopal, ecclesiastical rule and who now had to admit to himself that it was he who had brought about the destruction of a system which, in spite of all its defects, had dealt with Church matters in an ecclesiastical spirit, and that it was he who had paved the way for the new and quite unecclesiastical order of things.”[1193]
Not seldom do we hear Luther reproaching himself bitterly for the changes.
Among the thoughts that chiefly disturbed his conscience was, as he himself repeatedly admits, that of having rent asunder the great Church. How can you justify your revolt against the one great Church of antiquity, the heir to the promises, so the inner voices said to him as he himself relates: “The words ‘sancta ecclesia’ affright a man. They rise up and say: ‘Preach and act as you like and can, the ‘ecclesia christiana’ is still here. Here is the bark of Peter, it may be tossed about on the waves, but perish it will not!…’ What was I to do? And how was I to comfort myself?… And yet I had to do it [i.e. preach against this Church] as here [John viii. 28] the Lord Christ also does and preaches against those who in name are God’s Kingdom and God’s priesthood.”[1194]
Elsewhere he admits: “What am I doing in preaching against such [representatives of the olden Church], like a pupil against his masters? Thoughts such as these storm in upon me: Now I see that I am in the wrong; oh, that I had never begun, never preached a single word! For who is allowed to set himself up against the Church?… It is hard to persist and to preach against such a Ban.”[1195]—And yet, in his defiant spirit, he does persist: “This hits one smartly in the face, as has often happened to me … yet the One Man, my Beloved Lord and Healer Jesus Christ, is more to me than all the holiest people on earth.” Since he thinks it is His Evangel he is defending, he is able, though only at great costs, “to rise above the cry of ‘Church, Church,’” though he has to admit that, “this troubles me greatly,” and “it is truly a hard thing … to leave the Church herself and not to believe or trust her doctrine any more.”[1196]
It was no real parallel when Luther, in order to justify the State Church, appealed to the conditions in the Middle Ages where the rulers had a share in Church matters,[1197] for if then the princes had intervened in Church matters their action, at least in principle, was always subordinate to the ecclesiastical authority which kept the power in its own hands, and concerned moreover only those outward things in which the Church was thankful for their assistance: The two co-ordinate powers, the secular and the spiritual, helped one another mutually—such at least was the ideal of world-government in those days,—acting in Christian agreement in the service of God and for the general welfare of mankind. Now, however, that the olden spiritual authority had been either completely paralysed or reduced to the shadow of its former self, Luther undertook to replace it by the State, and thus the Church ceased to be any longer a co-ordinate power.
Though the Wittenberg theologians insisted that to them belonged the care of souls and this alone, still the limits between this domain and that of the State became everywhere confused when once the new system had begun to work. Owing to the friction this caused, Luther, in the course of time, came to emphasise merely the duty of the authorities to arrange by law for the establishment of “schools and pulpits,” and to “allow us divergency in preaching or morals.”[1198] Otherwise he left those in power, the high-handed nobles and officials, to do as they pleased, or, else, he lashed them ineffectually with violent and abusive language. In 1586 he declared, speaking of the marriage questions: “The peasants and the rude people who seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers who are always bent on thwarting our decisions, have wearied me so greatly that I have thrown aside the marriage cases and written to some that they may do as they please in the name of all the devils; let the dead bury their dead.”[1199] It was chiefly in the matter of these matrimonial cases that he came into conflict with the Court lawyers, e.g. as to the validity of the secret marriage contracts. It was in this connection that he declared that, “in his Church,” which was God’s own institution, he would retain in his own hands the decision on such matters by virtue of his ecclesiastical office. In other strong remonstrances wrung from him by the arbitrary interference of the State officials and the nobles in Church matters, he sometimes spoke so strongly of the inalienable rights of the Church that one might well think that he regarded the Church as essentially an independent institution with an organisation and spiritual authority of its own.[1200] More usually, however, he simply sighs. When the Court of Dresden interfered with his plans for the improvement of Church discipline he wrote resignedly: “Satan is still Satan. Under the Pope he pushed the Church into the world’s sphere and now, in our day, he seeks to bring the State system into the Church.”[1201]
Without reverting to the subject of the State and Established Church already dealt with (vol. v., 568 ff.) we may refer to the close connection between Luther’s theology on the Church and the development which was its outcome. His theology, from the outset, had aimed at undermining the authority of the Church, while at the same time enlarging the sphere of the secular power.
As early as 1520 in his work addressed to the German nobility he had praised the secular lords as “priests like us, equal in all things”; “they were to give free scope to the office and work which they have from God, wherever it is needed or useful.” Of the clergy, without considering their authority in ecclesiastical matters, he writes: “The priests, bishops or popes must deal with the Word of God and the sacraments, this is their work and office.”[1202]
“The direction of the outward business of the Church, i.e. what we now term Church government,” so Sehling, the Protestant Professor of Canon Law, says, “Luther in his writing to the German nobility, and ever after, attributes directly to the worldly authorities.… Nor, above all, does he claim for the Church any power of legislating. The Reformed Canon Law, so far as it was reorganised legislatively, was based entirely on the code of the State.”[1203]
Luther, in fact, recognised no other authority throughout the whole of the social order than that of the State; nowhere excepting amongst the secular authorities was there, according to him, any real power; there is on earth only one power, viz. the secular. “Worldly superiors, by virtue of their calling, maintain order and rule according to law and equity; as for the Church she has, by God’s ordinance, her common ministry of Word and Sacrament.”[1204] “The power of the Churches,” says the Schwabach Visitation Convention of 1528, “only extends to the choosing of ministers and the enforcing of the Christian Ban”; besides this they may also provide for the care of the poor; “all other power belongs either to Christ in heaven or to the secular authorities on earth.”[1205]
Nor could he well recognise any apostolic teaching authority in the “higher orders of the Church,” seeing that a “little maid of seven years” on the side of the New Faith “knows more than the Apostles, Evangelists and Prophets” on the other side; the latter are but the “devil’s apostles, evangelists and prophets.”[1206]
How he casts aside all the authority of the Church is perhaps shown most plainly in the short Theses of 1530 in his writing “Ettlich Artickelstück, so M. L. erhalten wil wider die gantze Satans Schüle uñ alle Pforten der Hellen”: “The Christian Church has no power to issue the least order concerning good works, never has done so and never will.” “The parson or bishop [i.e. the Evangelical ministers] has not the right to assert his authority everywhere for he is not the Christian Church. Such parson or bishop may exhort his Church to sanction certain fasts, prayers, holidays, etc., on account of the present needs, to be observed for a time and then be allowed to drop.”[1207]—But what the Evangelical ministers cannot do, that the secular authorities may do, for, in another passage, Luther points out expressly the binding character of the rules which the authorities might draw up, for instance regarding fasts; should the sovereign order fast-days, everyone must obey. In the same way if the German Prince-Bishops gave such an order it was to be obeyed, but only because they were Princes, not because they were bishops.[1208] During the Diet of Augsburg he refused to admit that, in future, there should be bishops having at the same time princely powers. On the other hand, however, he himself made the princes to all intents and purposes bishops.
The contradiction in which he here involves himself has been brought out very strongly by a recent historian and theologian who as a rule is on Luther’s side: “To our mind there is a glaring contradiction between Luther’s theses on the spirituality of faith and the rights of the Christian authorities. Luther never noticed this contradiction, and, all his life, stood for both simultaneously. … From the religious standpoint he advocates the principle of unlimited freedom as inherent in the nature of faith; in the secular sphere, i.e. in the domain of the State, he is unwilling to overthrow the principle shared by all [?] in his day, viz. that the authorities have a right to assist in deciding on public worship and doctrine; in the rightful domain of the worldly authorities his controversies have no right to intervene. Hence the contradiction.”[1209] “Luther, who, where the peasants are concerned, plays the part of Evangelist, refuses to tamper anywhere with the existing [?] laws of the State where it is a question of their lords.”[1210]
Here Luther’s fundamental idea of the separation between Church and world also comes into play.
The Church of his theology must necessarily be absorbed by the State, because, being a stranger to the world, it was not conversant with the conditions and, even with the best will in the world, was unable to hold its own against the visible powers. The spiritual rule, according to him, was to be as widely sundered from the secular “as the heavens are from the earth.”[1211] Thus the Church fled into a spirit realm and left the world to the tender mercies of the secular power. She thus became herself the cause of her “alienation and isolation from real life.”[1212] It naturally, indeed necessarily, followed that the sovereign set up government departments, which called themselves spiritual, but which in reality were secular and derived all their jurisdiction from him alone. Such were the consistories.
The relations between State and Church in Lutheranism may be regarded as an indirect justification of the Catholic doctrine of the Church’s nature. According to the Catholic view Christ founded the sublime structure of the Church as a free spiritual society. He willed that the saving grace he had won by His Death should be applied to the souls of men by means of a visible and independent institution, which, inspired by Him with His own ideal and holy aims and equipped with her own peculiar rights, should work for the salvation of mankind until the end of the world. Hence, the advocates of the olden Church not only set the idea of the Church in the foreground of the struggle, but they also explored, enlarged on and illumined this idea with the help of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers. Such was the work of men like Eck, Cochlæus, Johann Fabri, Bishop of Vienna, and Catharinus, and, in the same century, of Melchior Canus, Peter Canisius, Bellarmine and Stapleton. They indeed allowed the inward side of the Church—its soul as it has been called—to come into its rights, but, at the same time, they maintained with equal firmness its thoroughly visible character, above all they insisted on the hierarchy with the successor of St. Peter at its head as the holder of the threefold spiritual power—which Luther denied—of shepherd, teacher and priest. On this point there could be no yielding.
To those adherents of Luther’s who fancied they could reach union without the Church’s help and without an entire acceptance of the Catholic doctrine, Eck addressed the following: “There is no middle course and words are of no avail; whoever wishes to make himself one in faith with the Catholic Church must submit to the Pope and the Councils and believe what the Roman Church teaches; all else is wind and vapour, though one should go on disputing for a hundred years.”[1213]
What the above Catholic polemics said may be summed up as follows:—