The Berlin leader of this movement, A. F. Büsching, as early as 1748, said of himself that he had seen “Luther in his true greatness and as known only to the few; how, in matters of religion, he had absolutely refused to depend on any man, but had relied simply on his own insight and convictions and what had been borne in upon him by diligent reading of the Bible.”[1628] The Halle editor of Luther’s Works, J. G. Walch, vaunted among the other services rendered by Luther that of having established freedom of conscience; in the eyes of Julius Wegscheider he was the “libertatis cogitandi assertor”; it was this which inclined even Frederick II of Prussia to respect him, though otherwise he considered him a “furious monk” and a “barbarous writer.”—Those who thus credited Luther with tolerance “had no inkling of the antithesis between this idea and the true Luther.”[1629] His wanton way of dealing with the Canon of Scripture was urged against the Orthodox in defence of a more critical treatment of Holy Writ. Lessing, referring to Luther’s whole system of Bible interpretation, wrote to J. M. Goeze, the chief pastor of St. Catherine’s church at Hamburg: “What greater authority had Luther than any other Doctor of Divinity?”[1630]

Less dangerous to Lutheranism, and in itself harmless enough, though quite characteristic of the age, was the discovery then made, that Luther was the very personification of a public benefactor and great servant of the State. The Leipzig Professor, C. H. Wieland, described him as a “scholar to whom all were indebted”; Luther, he says, “unmasked obsolete prejudices and opened up to his contemporaries in more than one direction fresh prospects of a coming enlargement of the circle of human knowledge. And this great man was a German.”[1631] From the good bourgeois point of view the fact that Luther had, as it was thought, cultivated respect for the secular authorities was a great feather in his cap. Such people readily shut their eyes to the severity with which Luther had been wont to lash the rulers, even the highest in the land, and to the fact that he had undermined the very foundations of authority. The patriotic thought that “this great man was a German” was made to cover all his failings.

This sort of patriotism gradually produced a new pattern of Luther, differing in many respects from the others. Particularly after the outbreak of the great German wars of deliverance and the burning enthusiasm for the Fatherland which they called forth many felt that they could not sufficiently extol Luther as the great German, and a typical child of his beloved country.

Gœthe repeatedly called Luther a “great man.” But what, above all, prepossessed him in his favour was, first, his “Struggle against priestcraft and the hierarchy,” and, then, his translation of the Bible. “By him we have been freed from the fetters of intellectual narrowness … and have once more the courage to stand upright on God’s earth and to realise our own divinely endowed nature.”[1632] The poet, himself a true child of his age, had no eye for the truths defended by Catholicism against Lutheranism. In a letter to Knebel dated August 22, 1817, when the centenary of Luther’s promulgation of his Theses was being celebrated far and wide, he said: “Between ourselves, the only interesting thing in the whole business [the Reformation] is Luther’s character; it is also the only thing that really impresses the masses. All the rest is worthless trumpery of which we still feel the burden to-day.” As for the usual view of Luther he characterises it as mythological.

Zacharias Werner, while still a Protestant, wrote in Luther’s honour his drama “Die Weihe der Kraft,” and, then, as a Catholic, the drama entitled “Die Weihe der Unkraft.”

Novalis, who was deeply read in Luther’s works, was of opinion that he, like Protestantism itself, was something democratic; to him Luther appeared a “hothead.” Disgusted with Lutheranism and vaguely conscious of the beauty of the past he was anxious to see the scattered faithful once more united in a new Christianity. “Luther,” so he wrote, “treated Christianity as he liked, failed to recognise its spirit and introduced another letter and another religion, viz. the sacred principle of the Bible over all.” A “fire from heaven” had indeed presided over the commencement of his career; later on, however, the source of “holy inspiration had run dry” and worldliness gained the upper hand in Luther.[1633]

Wilhelm Maurenbrecher, professor of History at Bonn and Leipzig, said truly in his “Studien” (1874), that the traditional Luther “myth” the “stuff and rubbish” which the past had looked upon as true history, deserved to be cleared away. He traces back to Sleidanus the “current ‘fable convenue’” about Luther; this writer, in the work he published in 1555, which became a classic, had begun the process of “moderating and toning down the theological colours” of Luther’s picture, in such a way as to make Luther the living expression of the “already finished programme of the Protestant princes and theologians.” He lifted the author of the religious upheaval “out of his democratic, revolutionary setting” and stamped him as a “model” for theologians. Maurenbrecher, as a layman, is very frank in his opinion as to the central question of Bible-interpretation: “It is undoubtedly the right of every man at the present day to appeal to Luther’s own example, in favour of the unfettered freedom of Bible-research.”[1638]

By an objective portrayal of his characteristics, Protestant non-theologians such as Maurenbrecher have done good service, particularly as regards the more secular side of Luther’s picture. The historian Onno Klopp was still a Protestant when, in 1857, in his “Katholizismus, Protestantismus und Gewissensfreiheit in Deutschland,” albeit recognising Luther’s merits, he censured his “boundless confidence in the infallibility of his own judgment”; the “unstable character of the new Church, so dependent on the favour of princes”; also the blind, idolatrous veneration of his followers for him, especially the attitude of the “narrow-minded Elector and his advisers who were ready to take all the morbid drivel of a quarrelsome old man for the Word of God.” And these same authorities, so Onno Klopp declares, set up a new “Protestant Cæsarean Popedom” which year by year became more burdensome and oppressive.[1639] On the whole his portrait of Luther is the reverse of flattering.

Had the writings of Leopold von Ranke and Carl Adolf Menzel been as independent as Maurenbrecher’s or as broad-minded as Klopp’s, their picture of Luther would have been more true. Even to-day, in spite of the abundance of works on the Reformation period, an independent historian at home in all the profound and detailed studies which have recently appeared, is still lacking in Protestant circles; hence a living picture of Luther’s person has not yet been painted.

As for the Protestant theologians they have, as a rule, not contributed much to the portrait of Luther; what they have given us has been rather a sort of kaleidoscope of Luther’s dogma; they busy themselves more with crumbs from his history than with it as a whole. Dealing with some particular doctrine, writing or action of his they have sketched, so to speak, only one facet of his personality; with the help of this they have, nevertheless, built up a picture of the founder of Protestantism as he seemed to them. Hence even the fundamental conception of Luther’s message, i.e. that whereby it differs essentially from Catholicism has been very variously estimated.[1640]

Troeltsch thus comes to the conclusion that the new era in which we live did not commence with Luther but only some two centuries ago, i.e. with the dawn of the Enlightenment. The older Protestantism, no less than Luther himself, belongs to the Middle Ages. Luther stuck fast in the Middle Ages chiefly because he clung to the belief in the “supranatural,” whereas the modern world, thanks to a mathematico-mechanical natural science, has done away with all that stands above nature.

Troeltsch also points out that Luther traces his conception of the Evangel back to Paul, and not to Jesus as the New Theology does; also that he, like the earlier Protestantism, had not completely shaken himself free of the mediæval asceticism, and that he held fast to the traditional doctrine of an original sin.

A Catholic writer has expressed himself more correctly on Luther’s false “supranaturalism,” according to which God does everything and man nothing: “The innermost kernel of his doctrinal system was more ultra-mediæval than the Middle Ages themselves.” “So far was he from desiring to make religion less unworldly or less Christian, that, according to what he was incessantly hammering into his hearers, man was to live himself ever more and more into conscience and faith, into Christ and the Gospel.”[1645]

Nevertheless the objection brought forward repeatedly of recent years against the theory of Luther’s mediævalism is also worthy of note; it is urged that, particularly in the early years of his tempestuous struggle, he threw off ideas which stamp him as thoroughly modern.

F. Loofs, for instance, says: “His leading ideas include in them a whole series of inferences which, however, he never followed up to their logical conclusion.… I may mention Luther’s dislike for all bare historical and dogmatic belief, the tendency he had caught from Erasmus to criticise even the Canon, the distinction he adumbrated between the message of salvation or ‘Word of God’ and the actual written word of Scripture.… Semler, who has been styled the father of Rationalism, in his ‘Abhandlung vom freien Gebrauch des Kanons’ has not unjustly claimed Luther as a forerunner … moreover, the services rendered by Luther to the [liberal Protestant] theology of the 19th century in many of its varied schools of thought cannot easily be overlooked.”[1646]

In these remarks there is doubtless much truth, and there are facts which go to bear out the theory that Luther indeed stands in close relations to the modern spirit. There can be no doubt that, in Luther, we find mediæval and modern features combined. What is wanting is an organic connection between the two; as explained in the foregoing volumes it was only at the expense of flagrant contradictions that he took over certain elements from the past while rejecting others; that he took one step forward towards modern infidelity and another backwards. The ancient figure of Janus with one face looking forward into the future and the other back upon the past was harmonious, at least inasmuch as the two faces were depicted as separate. In Luther, however, the two faces are one, a fact which scarcely improves his physiognomy.

Those who regard Luther merely as a religious teacher practically confine themselves to imputing to him the “religiousness” of modern Protestantism as the inward force which moved him; albeit, maybe, in his teaching, he did not quite come up to the modern standard. This was to all intents and purposes the view of Albert Ritschl and his school. Luther, they declared, taught first and foremost that both “piety and theology should rest on the consciousness of having in Christ a Gracious God, thanks to which consciousness we rise superior to the world with all its goods and all its duties.” With him “it was not a question of denominations but simply one of religion.” Ritschl, as another Protestant not unjustly observed, “undoubtedly fell a victim to the temptation” of “modernising” Luther.[1648] Moreover, whereas, according to Ritschl, one of Luther’s main achievements was his introduction of a new view of the Church as an institution devoid of legal jurisdiction, according to other Protestant scholars, it was “chiefly in his views regarding the Church that Luther remained under the spell of mediæval thought.”[1649] On the other hand, some few have sought to make out Luther’s religiousness to have been simply ethical. Thus Wilhelm Wundt, the philosopher, declared that Luther had taught mankind no new religion but only a new ethical system, which, however, was merely an offshoot of the Renaissance. As against this we may set the affirmation of Paul Wernle, viz. that neither Luther nor Lutheranism had a system of ethics at all.[1650]

Recently, it is true, Luther’s “religiousness” has been described by a skilful pen as consisting in an interior union with God, as something altogether “spiritual,” “personal,” as “a sentiment bringing comfort to man’s conscience.”[1651] The truth is, however, that the greatest minds, in mediæval and still more in patristic times, were also in favour of greater inwardness and were against that sort of righteousness which consists merely of words and works. This is a result borne in upon one by all the research now being conducted with so much vigour into the views prevalent in the Middle Ages and earlier.

Hence those who look upon Luther as a new preacher of religion are compelled to paint the pre-Lutheran world as absolutely heathen. Luther, “with his peasant’s pick, relentlessly attacked the vulgar polytheism of the people, the sublime polytheism of public worship and dogma, and likewise the pantheism of mysticism.” But, even if we suppose that all these dreadful things prevailed before Luther’s coming, what did he set up in their place? He induced people, so it is said, to “seek God and find Him in Jesus Christ the image of the fatherly heart of God, to fear, love and hope in God above all things, to fix our heart on God alone and there let it rest.”[1652]—But this was precisely what the olden mediæval Church had sought to do, hence, where is Luther’s peculiarity?

The state of the question to-day would almost seem to justify the words of the famous Ernst Moritz Arndt in his “Ansichten und Aussichten der teutschen Geschichte.” He wrote in 1814: “What Luther really taught and wished has hitherto been understood only by the few; his contemporaries failed to understand him, nor did he understand himself”; but “he foresaw that fiery, disembodied, formless Christianity that was to consist of nothing more than fire and spirit.” Arndt concludes with the solemn words: “But peace be with thine ashes, thou great German man, and may the earth hide thy shortcomings and Christian charity thy faults.”[1653]

Modern civilisation is non-religious. It is perfectly true that Luther materially contributed to the expulsion of religious influences from the secular government and from public life in general; also that he intervened with a powerful hand to promote the secularisation—that had already begun—and to loosen the existing bond between the Church and the world. On the other hand, it is quite wrong to shut one’s eyes to the other powerful factors at work both before him and in his day which were also tending towards the civilisation of to-day with its estrangement from the Church and preponderance of material interests. Such a factor was the later Humanism. The whole background of the time in which he lived and the seething ferment that preceded the birth of the new world has been misunderstood. His friends indeed point to the after-effects of his undertaking as seen in the subsequent growth of education and scholarship; also to his attitude towards public morality; to the services he rendered to the German tongue; even to the benefit which, indirectly, accrued to agriculture, to the arts, to music, poetry, etc. But, even if we are disposed to allow that an improvement has taken place, it would be utterly unjust to blink the fact that many other spiritual and material influences were at work in all these spheres and were far more potent than Lutheranism. The Lutheran territories were still in a state of servitude and general backwardness when there passed over Germany a great wave of civilisation that was partly of German partly of foreign and even of Catholic growth. For the good that undoubtedly exists in modern civilisation we have to thank partly the natural sciences, which on their revival found a fertile soil even in Italy and France, partly commerce in which, however, the South of Europe was as active as any other region of the world, partly the arts, the best work being, however, cisalpine, partly the development of the State and the army, which again is certainly no indigenous product of Protestantism; hence what we now know is the result of a rivalry between varied influences and many countries. Then again all those qualities which to-day give Germany so high a place among the nations had existed in his countrymen long before Luther’s day; such were their readiness to appreciate the good in others, their openness to outside ideas, their ability to exploit foreign progress, their industry, their domesticity, their tenacity in overcoming all obstacles, and their sober outlook.

Those who make Luther the hero of “Kultur” are also apt to forget the sad ethical, social and political consequences of the schism. To these Adolf Harnack referred plainly enough in a lecture delivered in 1883: “We are well aware of what the Reformation cost us Germans and still costs us. For ages it delayed our political unity; it brought on us the Thirty Years’ War; it made it difficult for us to be just to the Church of the Middle Ages, nay, even to the Church of Antiquity—we cannot break with history without obscuring it—it brought upon us a religious schism which still hinders our growth.”[1654]

“Without the princes,” says Chamberlain, “nothing could have been done. Who seriously believes that the princes who patronised the Reformation were inspired by or acted from religious enthusiasm? The fingers of one hand would be more than enough on which to reckon up those of whom such a thing holds good. Political interest and political ambition backed by the awakening of national sentiment were the determining factors.” “Even in the later wars of religion the political question was paramount.” It was his desire to win over the German statesmen that made Luther “speak so highly of the ‘German nation’ and so disrespectfully of the Papists.” That was why he wrote, for instance: “For my Germans was I born, them will I serve.” He is “more a politician than a theologian.” “Luther is, above all, a political hero.”

This portrait of the “political hero” is not one whit less one-sided than the others; above all, the author, who has no understanding for Christianity and the Church, fails also to see the so-called “religious” side in Luther. It is true that political motives often loomed so large in Luther’s case and in that of the princes who lent him their support as actually to obscure the religious side of the struggle. Luther himself, however, was anything rather than a great politician on the world’s stage. He had, in fact, to quote a Protestant historian, woefully distorted and imperfect views of the actual trend of human events, particularly of the determining personalities and active factors in the politics of that day. Never perhaps has a more childish diagnosis been given than that contained in the advice of the Wittenberg theologian to his sovereigns about their attitude towards Charles V.[1658] The circumstance that he was deficient in political sense may explain to some extent his mistakes and want of logic in this sphere, but cannot excuse the masterful tone in which he so often expresses himself on the public questions of the day. Then again there was his changeableness. Resistance to the Kaiser, which at one time he had declared unlawful, was advised by him later. After he had handed over the rights of the Church to the lawyers he turns on them and denounces them as his worst foes, who must be fought with every weapon for the sake of the independence of the preachers. In the same way, in spite of the religious freedom which he seemed at first to proclaim as a lasting principle for all future government of Church and State, we find him making his own that repellant intolerance, which, at last subsequent to 1530, led him to advocate the death-penalty for those who held “sectarian” doctrines, or any that differed from his own.