The Roman Catholic Church, as we have already seen, had reached such a degree of corruption in doctrine and practice, so deep and widespread, that it would seem quite impossible for it to reach further degradation. The name of Christ was everywhere professed, but a devout believer was seldom found. The Christ was hidden that his pretended representatives might be all in all. Justification by faith was denounced in order to open up a trade in indulgences to enrich the papacy by the sale of salvation. The commands of God were openly made void by the doctrines and commandments of men. Apostolic order and ordinances had given place to those of the “man of sin.” “The mystery of lawlessness” stood out in full proportions.
And yet, notwithstanding all this, there were forces at work, in different parts of Europe, moving on to conflict and reform that were destined to break the all but universal sway of the papacy. There can be no doubt that the invention of printing, the gradual revival of learning, and the enlarged acquaintance with the Scriptures, all made directly against the then existing conditions. The Reformation was effected and the names of its chief actors have come down to us with deserved honor, and yet how imperfect the work done and the spirit of the doers of it. Measuring both by the doctrine and practice of the apostles can not but compel the conclusion that the Reformation from the first onward needed immense reformation to bring it up to the measures of the divine standard. And still it may be that any nearer approach to a completely scriptural work and spirit would have been quite futile under the existing conditions.
John Wyckliffe, who flourished in the latter part of the fourteenth century, popularly called the “Morning Star of the Reformation,” was the first to distinguish himself in fighting against the supremacy of the pope, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the abuses of the hierarchy. As early as 1360 he became known as the opponent of the mendicant friars who infested England, interfering with school discipline, as well as domestic relations. He exposed the venality and superstition of the monkish orders with a vigor of reasoning and a keen satire. Efforts were made by a commission appointed by the king to have the evil abrogated, and such arrangements were finally made; but the pope soon violated the compact and Parliament again took action against the Roman usurpations. These developments fully opened the eyes of Wyckliffe to the intolerant corruption of the Roman See, and he began henceforth to argue and teach, preach and write, boldly and without reserve against the papal system.
But the greatest work of Wyckliffe for the enlightenment of the world was the translation of the Bible into the English language. But in order to appreciate the difficulties of his task, we should remember that Rome had not only utterly neglected and contemned the Sacred writings, but had interdicted their translation into any vernacular tongue. She claimed that it was not only unlawful, but injurious, for the people at large to read the Scriptures. Nor was this idea left to pass current merely as a received opinion, but it was a subject which was considered by councils, and canons were enacted against it. Not to mention other proofs of this, more than one hundred and fifty years before Wyckliffe had finished his translation of the Bible, in the year 1229, at the Council of Toulouse, forty-five canons were passed and issued for the extinction of heresy and the re-establishment of peace. One of these canons involved the first court of inquisition, and another, the first canon, forbade the Scriptures to the laity, or the translation of any portion of them into the common tongue. The latter was expressed in the following very pointed terms:
We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the Old or New Testament, except, perhaps, the Psalter or Breviary for the Divine Offices, or the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, which some, out of devotion, wish to have; but having any of these books translated into the vulgar tongue, we strictly forbid.
In the face of all this, and far more than I can now explain, Wyckliffe performed his arduous task of translation. Of this great work, a competent critic most appropriately remarks: “From an early period of his life he had devoted his various learning, and his powerful energies of mind, to effect this, and, at length, by intense application on his part, and from assistance from a few of the most learned of his followers, he had the glory to complete a book, which, alone, would have been sufficient (or at least ought) to have procured the veneration of his own age, and the commendation of posterity.”
While engaged in this work, in the year 1379, he was taken violently ill, and the friars, imagining that his course was now near its end, contrived to visit him. Four of their ablest men had been selected, or a friar from each of the mendicant orders, and they were admitted to a patient hearing. After reminding him of the great injury he had done to their order, they exhorted him, as one near to death, that he would now, as a true penitent, bewail and revoke, in their presence, whatever he had said to their disparagement. As soon as they had done, Wyckliffe, calling for his servant, desired to be raised up on his pillow; and then collecting all his strength, with a severe and expressive countenance, and in a tone not to be misunderstood, exclaimed:
I shall not die, but live to declare the evil deeds of the friars.
Confounded at such a reply, they immediately left him; and he recovered, to finish in the next year his translation of the entire Bible.
As this was before the invention of printing, the translation could only be diffused by the laborious process of transcription; but transcribed it was most diligently, both entire and in parts, and as eagerly read. There were those who, at all hazards, sought wisdom from the Book of God, and their number could not be few. A contemporary writer, an enemy, and in the language of hatred and fear combined, with the wish to damage the cause, affirmed that “a man could not meet two people on the road, but one of them was a disciple of Wyckliffe.” Certainly the opportunity was gladly received by the people; and while the word of the Lord did not have “free course,” there can be no question that it was “glorified” in the reception given it by many. The same bitter opponent, in the tone of deep lamentation, makes the following remarkable admission about the wonderful progress made in the face of bitter persecution:
The soldiers, with the dukes and earls, are the chief adherents of this sect, its most powerful defenders, and its invincible protectors. This Master John Wyckliffe hath translated the Gospel out of Latin into English, which Christ had entrusted with the clergy and doctors of the Church, that they might minister it to the laity and weaker sort, according to the state of the times and the wants of men. So that by this means the Gospel is made vulgar, and laid more open to the laity, and even to women who can read, than it used to be to the most learned of the clergy and those of the best understanding! And what was before the chief gift of the clergy and doctors of the Church, is made forever common to the laity!
At about the same time another papal dupe, in the same spirit, most vehemently urged:
The prelates ought not to suffer that every one at his pleasure should read the Scriptures, translated even into Latin; because, as is plain from experience, this has been many ways the occasion of falling into heresies and errors. It is not, therefore, politic that any one, wheresoever and whensoever he will, should give himself to the frequent study of the Scriptures.
These men just quoted referred to the period between 1380 and 1400, and it was one, though but too short, which distinguished England from every other country in Europe. However transient, it was one that had much to do with wresting the world from the appalling darkness and ruin wrought by the papacy, and flooding the world with the glorious sunlight of eternal truth. It was all in vain that the bishops, with the primates of Canterbury at their head bellowed and remonstrated with the people, wrote letters to and received letters from Rome, made and executed fearful threats of punishment; the Bible had been translated, the people transcribed and read, and sent copies of it far and near.
In 1400 Parliament enacted a law that gave bishops the power to hand over obstinate or relapsed heretics to sheriffs and magistrates, who were enjoined to have them publicly burnt. In 1401 William Sawtre, a devout man, was burnt at Smithfield as a heretic. Of the many victims, I have only space to mention J. Badby, who was burnt in a barrel; and especially that generous friend of the Reformation, Sir John Oldcastle, who frequently sheltered preachers of reform in his castle, and devoutly did he adhere to these doctrines, since, as he himself attested his whole life through them had undergone a change. Henry V had made vain efforts to induce him to change from his faith; but he refused to recant, and was condemned as a “pernicious heretic” in 1413. But during the respite granted him, he managed to escape into Wales, where he concealed himself till 1417, when he was captured and executed at St. Giles’ Fields, amidst the most barbarous tortures, being roasted over a slow fire. The escape of Oldcastle and the rumors of a Lollard insurrection the following year were made the occasion for fresh measures of persecution. In 1414 it was ordered that all public officials should bind themselves by oath to aid in the extirpation of heresy, and that the lands and possessions of those convicted of heresy should be confiscated.
In 1416 a regular inquisition was instituted in every parish of the diocese of Canterbury. Among the common people, however, the desire for Biblical knowledge continued to spread; secret conventicles were held; and though the persecution, which lasted till 1431, may have crushed the “heresy,” the principles lived and spread worldwide, and became the influence that led to reformation in other parts.
If I were to follow the strictly chronological order, I would here give a sketch of Luther and his work, but as I have given an account of the work of Wyckliffe, it is proper to give attention to the work of William Tyndale, because I am now seeking the basic principle of the return to apostolic purity and simplicity.
At the opening of the sixteenth century, a period of great interest to all the world, were four men—Le Fevre, in France; Zwingli, in Switzerland; Luther, in Germany, and Tyndale, in England—destined to make a great impression on the world for all time. But they were wholly unknown to each other. In France, Switzerland and Germany were the living voices throughout life, of the men raised up, calling upon their countrymen to hear and obey the truth; and so it was in England a century and a half before, in the case of Wyclif. But in the case of Tyndale, the procedure is entirely different, and out of the usual course pursued in other lands. He had, it is true, lifted up his voice with some effect, but he was driven from his native land, never to return. In the other cases the men lived and died at home. Le Fevre when above one hundred years old wept because he had not felt and displayed the courage of a martyr; Zwingli, in battle for his country; and Luther, after his noble intrepidity, expired in his sick chamber; but Tyndale was strangled and his body burnt to ashes in a foreign land. Englishmen, Scotchmen and Germans were gathered together against him; yes, men of three nations at least concur to confer upon him the martyr’s crown, so that among all his contemporaries, in several respects, but especially as a translator of the Scriptures, he stands alone.
The political and literary condition of England under Cardinal Wolsey did not afford the slightest indication that the Scriptures were about to be given to the people in their native tongue, but the reverse. In justice to that event it is necessary to observe, also, the nature of that connection which had existed for ages between Britain and Rome. Indeed, under Henry VIII it reached its climax. This connection sustained a peculiarly complicated character. There were no fewer than twelve distinct sources of revenue that went directly to Rome. These altogether were operating on the inhabitants without exception, and with as much regularity as the rising and setting of the sun. “It was a pecuniary connection of immense power, made to bear upon the general conscience, which knew no pause by day or night; falling, as it did, not merely on the living, but on the dying and the dead!”
In no other country throughout Europe was the papal system in all its oppressive and fearful integrity more fully maintained. Under the unscrupulous and imperative Henry VIII, who gloried in his knowledge of divinity and prided himself on his orthodoxy, with a prime minister so well known in every foreign court, and who himself yearned for the pontificate, England had become the mainstay of the system. In Worcester diocese above every other part of England was this power of Rome most intensely felt, yet here in about 1484 was William Tyndale born whose labors were destined to work the overthrow of its power in the realm.
Erasmus arrived in England in 1498, and was delighted to find a taste for the study of Hebrew, Greek and Latin so pronounced, and he pursued his studies with great diligence and satisfaction. His zeal so inspired others that the influence of his residence there may be regarded as the opening of a new era in letters in that country. In 1516 the first edition of his Greek New Testament was published, accompanied by a new Latin translation, and spread far and wide. He received the hearty congratulations of his friends, but its appearance raised up a host of enemies.
Notwithstanding the opposition during the period during 1477 to 1526, fourteen editions of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek were published, and not one of the sacred originals had ever been restrained by any government. In fact, at this time, so far from such restraint being imposed in England, it was encouraged; as not a man in high authority seems to have foreseen that the cultivation of the knowledge of the original language would necessarily lead to a translation of the sacred volume into the common tongue. Even Henry VII transmitted to the university a royal mandate “that study of the Scriptures in the original language should not only be permitted, but received as a branch of the academical institution.” And this was at the period when Tyndale resided at Cambridge and Oxford. The advantages thus combined fully explain the source of the superior attainments in learning which he afterward turned to such wonderful account.
About 1504 Tyndale went to Oxford University, and took his degree of B.A., in 1508. One of the colleges at Oxford had forbidden the entrance of the Greek New Testament within its walls “by horse or by boat, by wheels or on foot.” Possibly owing to this enmity Tyndale left Oxford for Cambridge, where Erasmus was teaching Greek and issuing his edition of the Greek New Testament. About the close of 1521 we find Tyndale as tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh, at Little Sudbury, in Gloucestershire, twelve miles north of Bristol. Walsh always kept a good table, and abbots, deans, archdeacons, and divers other doctors who were fond of discussion, were often invited to share his hospitality. In these discussions Tyndale always bore a conspicuous and decided part. He had an uncomfortable way of crushing his opponents by clinching his arguments with a “thus saith the Lord.” His outspoken way caused Lady Walsh many an uneasy hour, and she often reminded him that bishops, abbots and others having an income of hundreds of pounds yearly held views the very opposite of his, “and were it reason that we should believe you before them?” Not being so skilled in the use of Scripture knowledge as some in these days of Gospel light and liberty, this was very embarrassing to him, a moneyless man, coming from such a source. In order to strengthen his position with his wavering hostess by the testimony of Erasmus, whose fame was resounding throughout Europe, he translated his “Christian Soldier” into English and presented it to Walsh and his wife. This won her, and they did not invite the clergy to their table any more. This change was attributed to Tyndale, and ever afterward they treasured a grudge against him. Of this opposition Fox says: “These blind and rude priests, flocking together to the alehouse, for that was their preaching place, raged and railed against him; affirming that his sayings were heresy, adding of their own heads moreover unto his sayings more than ever he spake.”
Fortunately Tyndale has left on record his reflections at this period of his life. He says:
A thousand books had they lever [rather] to be put forth against their abominable doings and doctrines, than that the Scripture should come to light. For as long as they may keep that down, they will so darken the right way with the mist of their sophistry, and so tangle them that either rebuke or despite their abominations with arguments of philosophy, and with worldly and apparent reasons of natural wisdom, and with wresting the Scriptures to their own purpose, clean contrary unto the process, order, and meaning of the text; and so delude them in descanting upon it with allegories, and amaze them, expounding it in many senses, whose light the owls can not hide, that though thou feel in thy heart, and art sure, how that all is false that they saw, yet couldst thou not solve their subtle riddles. Which thing only moved me to translate the New Testament. Because I have proved by experience, how that it is impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order and meaning of the text; for else, whatever truth is taught them, these enemies of all truth quench it again—partly with the smoke of their bottomless pit (Rev. 9), that is with apparent reasons of sophistry, and traditions of their own making; and partly in juggling with the text, expounding it in such a sense as it is impossible to gather of the text itself.
The Convocation of Canterbury had expressly forbidden any man to translate any part of the Scripture in English, or to read any such translation without authority of the bishop, an authority not likely to be granted. The study of the Bible was not even a part of the preparatory study of the religious teachers of the people. Writing against Alexander Alesius to James V of Scotland, Cochlæus, the notorious Roman Catholic theologian, writes about the Bible as follows:
The New Testament translated into the vulgar tongue, is in truth the food of death, the fuel of sin, the veil of malice, the pretext of false liberty, the protection of disobedience, the corruption of discipline, the depravity of morals, the termination of concord, the death of honesty, the well-spring of vice, the disease of virtues, the instigation of rebellion, the milk of pride, the nourishment of contempt, the death of peace, the destruction of charity, the enemy of unity, the murderer of truth. (Demaus’ Biography of William Tyndale, page 358.)
With such a sentiment prominent among the clergy, there is no surprise at the danger to which Tyndale subjected himself when in a warm discussion he revealed his intention. Of this incident Fox says:
Communing and disputing with a certain learned man in whose company he happened to be, he drove him to that issue, that the learned man said, “We were better to be without God’s law than the pope’s.” Master Tyndale hearing that, answered him, “I defy the pope and all his laws; and if God spare my life many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do!”
After this, the murmurings of the priests increased to a fury. Such language flew over the country as on the wings of the wind. They branded him as a heretic, and hinted loudly of burning him.
It was now evident to Tyndale that a crisis had been reached, and he saw too clearly that it would be impossible for him to remain longer at Little Sudbury in the home of Walsh in peaceful prosecution of his great purpose. This purpose he was determined to prosecute whatever inconvenience or danger it might bring upon him; and it seemed to him quite possible that he might find that liberty in some other part of England. He resolved, therefore, to give up his position which he held in the family of Walsh. So with the good will of Walsh, he made his way to London, hoping to find in Cuthburt Tunstal, Bishop of London, a liberal patron under whose protection the work might be prosecuted. Tunstal accorded him an interview, acknowledged his scholarship, but said that his house was already full, and advised him to seek a place elsewhere. While in London Tyndale preached at St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, and greatly impressed Humphrey Monmouth, a wealthy, educated, traveled cloth merchant, who took him into his house, where he remained six months diligently engaged in translating the New Testament. For this kindness Monmouth was imprisoned in the Tower.
While in London, Tyndale saw men around him led to prison and to death for having or reading the writings of Luther, which were finding their way into England, and he knew well that a Bible translation would be still a more dangerous book. At last he “understood not only that there was no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but, also, that there was no place to do it in all England.” But Tyndale was not the man to put his hands to the plow and then turn back. If only a life in exile could do the work, a life of exile he would gladly accept. As Fox remarks: “To give the people bare text of Scriptures, he would offer his body to suffer what pain of torture, yea, what death His Grace (Henry VIII) would so that this be obtained.”
Having now fully decided on going abroad, he sailed direct to Hamburg, about May, 1524, never to set foot on his native soil again. Scarcely a year before, he entered London with bright anticipations of success, but all his anticipations had been cruelly disappointed, and now in sorrow and sadness he was sailing forth on the untried dangers of solitude and exile. Had he been able to read the future that awaited him, and which he afterwards so patiently bewailed, “the poverty, the exile from his own native land, the bitter absence from his friends, the hunger, the thirst, the cold, the great danger wherewith he was everywhere compassed, the innumerable hard and sharp fightings which he had to endure,” doubtless his loving soul would have been melted with the spectacle, and yet, no doubt, the stout and brave heart would have gone forward, “hoping with his labors to do honor to God, true service to his prince,” and bestow unspeakable blessings upon his priest-ridden people.
In Hamburg he diligently applied his whole time to translating, but on being interrupted he moved to Cologne about the first of May, 1525, where he put his translation into the hands of the printer. Not only was the entire sacred text then translated, but his prologue was composed before he began to print. At this time John Cochlæus, dean of Frankfort, the “watchdog of Romanism,” was at Cologne, an exile from his own city on account of uprisings of the peasants against the clergy. He was occupied at Cologne printing a book. In consequence of this he became acquainted with the printers of Cologne, whom he heard confidently boasting over their cups that whether the king and cardinal would or not all England in a short time would be furnished the New Testament in English. He heard that there was “an Englishman there, learned, skilled in languages, eloquent, whom, however, he never could see or converse with.” Inviting, therefore, some printers to his lodging, and, after exciting them with wine, one of them disclosed to him that the New Testament had been translated into the English language; that it was then in the hands of the printers, who were then printing an edition of three thousand copies; and that the expenses were being met by English merchants, who were to convey it secretly to England and dispense it widely throughout the realm before the king or the cardinal could discover or prohibit it.
Though mentally distracted between fear and wonder, Cochlæus disguised his grief in a cheerful manner; and after having considered sadly the magnitude of the danger, he deliberated with himself how he might conveniently obstruct “these very wicked attempts.” So he went to Herman Rinck, a Senator of Cologne, and a knight, well known both to the Emperor and the King of England, to whom he made known the whole affair. On hearing this Rinck went to the Senate of Cologne, and procured an order interdicting the printers from proceeding further with the work. Tyndale contrived, however, to procure the printed sheets, and sailed up the Rhine to Worms about October, 1525; but Rinck and Cochlæus wrote at once to the king and cardinal and the Bishop of Rochester to take the utmost precaution in all the seaports of England, lest that “most pernicious article of merchandise should be introduced.” Apparently nothing could have been more complete than the triumph of Cochlæus. He had not only interrupted the printing of the New Testament at Cologne, but had disclosed the secret of Tyndale’s intentions to those who were most able to take effectual steps to prevent the introduction of the work in England, if he should ever succeed in getting it printed at all.
This interruption, though felt most keenly at the time by Tyndale, only inflamed his zeal, and the remarkable result was that two editions were issued by him in the same period in which he had contemplated only one. Thus the hostility of Cochlæus, which, as we have seen, threatened to arrest the progress of the work, only delayed its completion for a time and enabled Tyndale to issue six thousand copies of his translation instead of three thousand. “Early in 1526 both editions were sent into England in cases, in barrels, in bales of cloth, in sacks of flour, and in every other secret way that could be thought of.” The reception in England was remarkable. They were eagerly bought and read to the inexpressible joy and comfort of thousands who had long walked in darkness, and as eagerly proscribed and sought out for destruction. Sir Thomas More fiercely attacked the translation as ignorant, dishonest and heretical. In the autumn Tunstal and Warham issued mandates for the collection and surrender of copies. Tunstal attacked it in a sermon at St. Paul’s, and professed to have found three thousand errors in it. So the cardinal and all the bishops decided that the book should be burned, which was vigorously carried out. But this was all in vain, for the tide was fairly flowing and it could not be checked. A formidable organization was ready in England to welcome and circulate the books. In proportion to the violence with which the clergy condemned the books was the esteem in which they were held by those in England to whom the light was breaking.
In 1529 Bishop Tunstal went to Antwerp to seize Tyndale’s Testaments, and by a singular coincident Tyndale also was there and so it happened that one Parkington, who favored Tyndale, was at Antwerp at the same time. On being informed by the bishop that he would be glad to buy the Testaments, Parkington told him that, as he knew those who had them for sale, he could buy “every book of them that is imprinted and is here unsold.” The bargain was made, and as has been said by the quaint chronicler:
The bishop, thinking he had God by the toe, when indeed he had, as after he thought, the devil by the fist, said: “Gentle Mr. Parkington, do your diligence and get them; and with all my heart I will pay for them whatsoever they cost you, for the books are erroneous and nought, and I intend surely to destroy them all, and to burn them at Paul’s Cross.” Augustus Parkington came to William Tyndale, and said: “William, I know that thou art a poor man, and hast a heap of New Testaments and books by thee, for which thou hast both endangered thy friends and beggared thyself; and I have now gotten thee a merchant, which, with ready money, shall dispatch thee of all thou hast, if thou think it so profitable for yourself.” “Who is this merchant?” said Tyndale. “The Bishop of London,” said Parkington. “Oh, that is because he will burn them,” said Tyndale. “Yea, marry,” quoth Parkington. “I am the gladder,” said Tyndale, “for these two benefits shall come thereof: I shall get money to bring myself out of debt, and the whole world will cry out against the burning of God’s Word; and the overplus of the money that shall remain to me shall make me more studious to correct the New Testament, and so newly to imprint the same once again, and I trust the second will much better like you than ever did the first.” And so went forward the bargain; the bishop had the books; Parkington had the thanks, and Tyndale had the money.
After this, Tyndale corrected the same New Testament, and caused them to be newly imprinted, so that they came thick and threefold over into England. When the bishop perceived that, he sent for Parkington, and said to him: “How cometh this, that there are so many New Testaments abroad? You promised me that you would buy them all.” Then said Parkington: “Surely, I bought all that were to be had, but I perceive they have printed more since. I see it will never be better so long as they have letters and stamps; wherefore you were best to buy the stamps, too, and so you shall be sure.” At which the bishop smiled and so the matter ended.
It so happened that shortly after this that George Constantine was apprehended by Sir Thomas More, suspected of certain heresies. During the time he was in custody, More said to him: “There are beyond the sea Tyndale, Joyce, and a great many of you, I know they can not live without help, and I pray thee tell me who they are that help them thus?” “My lord,” quoth Constantine, “I will tell you truly, it is the Bishop of London that hath helped us, for he hath bestowed among us a great deal of money upon New Testaments to burn them; and that hath been, and yet is, our only succor and comfort.” “Now my troth,” quoth More, “I think even the same, for so much I told the bishop before he went about it.”
Tyndale’s enemies endeavored to decoy him into England, but he was too wary to be so easily entrapped, for he well knew what displeasure Henry VIII felt at his tract, called “The Practice of Prelates,” and what penalty the royal indignation would speedily inflict. But his enemies in England, whose power had been shaken by the wide circulation of the English New Testament, were the more enraged against him, and conspired to seize him on the Continent, in the name of the Emperor, and through the treachery of one Henry Philips, a smooth, treacherous villain, in the employ of Stephen Gardiner, after having invited Tyndale to dine with him, had him arrested and had him put in the State prison of the Castle of Vivorde, twenty-three miles from Antwerp, May 23, 1535. The English merchants aggrieved by the loss of an esteemed friend, and by this treacherous assault of their rights and privileges, made every effort to secure his release, but all in vain. The neighboring University of Louvain thirsted for his blood. He was speedily condemned, and on Friday, October 6, 1536, he was strangled at the stake and his body then burned to ashes. At the stake, with a fervent zeal and a loud voice, he cried: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
As an apostle of liberty, Tyndale stands foremost among the writers of his day, whose heroic fortitude and invincible love of the truth were heard with a force superior to royal and ecclesiastical injunctions; and “the very flames to which fanaticism and tyranny consigned his writings burnt them into the very hearts of the people, and made them powerful instruments in attacking and converting multitudes to the principles of the Reformation. It is not exaggeration to say that the noble sentiments of William Tyndale, uttered in pure, strong, Saxon English, and steeped in the doctrines of the Gospel, gave shape to the views of the most conspicuous promoters of the great movement, who, like himself, sealed their convictions with their blood.”
Notwithstanding the fact that the papacy had universal sway over Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it must be noted that, from the beginning of the fourteenth century on, there were insurgents, however varied their cries and watchwords, who were persistent in their denunciation of the priesthood. The hatred arose from their intolerable extortions, which were a galling burden. While the tithing system was an intolerable yoke, the rapacity of the priests went far beyond tithes in their exactions. In speaking of this condition, Seebohm, a Spanish historian, says:
I see that we can scarcely get anything from Christ’s ministers but for money; at baptism money, at marriage money, at bishoping money, for confession money—no, not extreme unction without money! They ring no bells without money, no burials in the Church without money; so that it seems that Paradise is shut up from them that have no money. The rich is buried in the church, the poor in the churchyard. The rich man may marry his nearest kin, but the poor not so, albeit he is ready to die for love of her. The rich may eat meat in Lent, but the poor may not, albeit fish be much dearer. The rich may readily get large indulgences, but the poor none, because he wanteth money to pay for them. (“The Era of the Protestant Revolution,” pages 57, 58.)
All the efforts at reformation had always ignominiously failed, and the papacy with all its abuses had never been more powerful than at the time John Tetzel was trafficking in indulgences. Just thirty-four years before this time, Martin Luther was born. His parents were poor, but it was their desire to give him the best education possible. When he was fourteen years old they sent him to school at Magdeburg, where he relied upon the liberality of well-meaning citizens to supply his needs. The tuition was free at Magdeburg, but the students were required to provide their own lodgings and meals. The usual custom was for a company of poor boys to band themselves together and sing in the front of the house of the wealthy citizens. Sometimes they would be invited to a meal; at other times they would receive the remnants of a repast or at least some slices of bread.
After a year had gone by his father decided to send him to Eisenach, because he hoped that some of his relatives would take a kindly interest in him; but in this expectation he was mistaken, for as before he was compelled to beg and sing for his bread. Many times young Luther became so discouraged that he made up his mind to return to his home and become a miner like his father. But a very different life was awaiting him. When he had acquired the discipline resulting from the long struggle with poverty, a great change took place.
One day, after having been harshly treated at three houses, he was preparing to return fasting to his lodgings; he stopped motionless in front of a house and reflected, “Must I for the want of food give up my studies and return with my father in the mines?” when suddenly a door opens and Madame Ursula Cotta, the wife of a wealthy merchant, stood on the threshold. She had heard the harsh words that had been addressed to him, and, seeing him standing thus sadly before her door, she came to his aid, beckoned to him to enter, and gave him food to satisfy his hunger. She and her husband took a liking to him, and offered him a place at their table and in their family, where he remained for three years. Thus were brought into his life the influences of gentleness and refinement.
A new life now opened to him. Free from care and anxiety as to his sustenance, he was able to devote his whole time to his studies. Here noble influences, very necessary for his future work, surrounded him, teaching him the fine and gentle traits of good breeding that elevated life above the struggle for mere existence and gave to it its peculiar charm. “The strength of his understanding, the liveliness of his imagination, the excellence of his memory, soon carried him beyond all his school fellows.”
These years of his school period contributed much towards promoting that higher education which his father was so very anxious that he should obtain. Thus furnished, in the summer of 1501, in his eighteenth year, he entered the University of Erfurt. Here he applied himself diligently and made rapid progress. He did not merely study to cultivate his intellect. He had serious thoughts about God, and fervently invoked the divine blessings to rest upon his labors. He passed all the time that he could possibly spare from his studies in the university library. Books were very scarce, and it was a great privilege for him to have access to the “great collection of books there brought together.” After having been in the university for two years, one day, to his great surprise and delight, he found a copy of the Bible, the first that he had ever seen. His interest was greatly excited. “He was filled with astonishment at finding other matters than those fragments of the Gospels and Epistles that the Church had selected to be read to the people during public worship throughout the year. Until this day he had imagined that they composed the whole Word of God.” And now he sees so much of which he had never thought! With eagerness and great emotion he turned its pages. The first passage on which he fixed his attention was the story of Hannah and Samuel, which gave him unbounded joy. He returned to his room with a full heart, saying, “Oh, that God would give me such a book for myself!” The copy of the Bible that had filled him with so much joy was in Latin. After this he returned to the library again and again to pore over this wonderful treasure, and thus the glimmerings of new truth were beginning to dawn upon his mind. “In that Bible the Reformation lay hid.”
Luther’s father required him to study law. At considerable expense the necessary books had been purchased, and he had begun to attend lectures on jurisprudence; but for the calling he had no love; and yet, from a sense of obedience to his father, he felt it his duty to follow the path he had prescribed. He was, however, frequently disturbed by the thought of the endangered spiritual condition of those who followed the legal profession. This conflict quickened within him the sense of his relation to the higher law, on which his obedience to his father was based. The sudden death of a friend followed shortly afterward by a narrow escape from death by lightning, in a forest on the way between Erfurt and Eisleben, determined him to obey what he then regarded as the commands of higher law. Terrified by the violence of the storm that was raging around him, and especially by the bolts of lightning that were crashing through the trees, addressing one of the patron saints of his childhood, he cried out: “Help me, dear Saint Anna, I will be a monk!”
The vow thus made was faithfully performed. Two weeks later, July 16, 1505, he invited his most intimate friends to a cheerful but frugal supper. For the last time he determined to enjoy music and song. The decision once made all sadness was gone. His intention was to tell no one of his decision, but at the very moment his guests were giving way to their gayety, he could no longer control the serious thoughts that filled his mind. They endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose, but all in vain. Sorrowfully they accompanied him the next morning to the Augustinian cloister located in the town, where he knocked for admission. As they opened, he entered. When the heavy portals of the monastery closed behind him, and the bars were fastened again, he had no idea but that he was separated from the world forever. The great struggle was at an end. Was his soul satisfied? Had he found that for which he was looking—the “peace that passeth all understanding”? We shall see in our next.
Luther was received among the novices of the monastery with sacred hymns, prayers and other solemnities. After this he was given over to the care of the master of the novices, whose duty it was to initiate them into the practices of the monastic sanctity, to observe their actual conduct, and to watch over their souls. Above all things, the will of the novices were to be entirely broken. They were to learn that everything enjoined upon them was to be performed without the least resistance, and even to be the more willing to render obedience the more it was against their own disposition and taste. Inclination to pride was to be overcome by imposing upon them the meanest services. So at the very beginning of Luther’s monastic life he was compelled to perform the most degrading work in sweeping and scrubbing, and it afforded those envious of him peculiar pleasure when he, the hitherto proud young master, was ordered, with a sack upon his shoulders, to beg through the town in company with a more experienced brother. He did not shirk from these services; but even desired to perform self-mortifying duties, so that he might the more deserve God’s favors. Of these days Luther says:
I chose for myself twenty-one saints, read mass every day, calling on three of them each day, so as to complete the circuit every week; especially did I invoke the Holy Virgin, as her womanly heart was more easily touched, that she might appease her Son. I verily thought that by invoking three saints daily, and by letting my body waste away with fastings and watchings, I should satisfy the law, and shield my conscience against the goad; but it all availed me nothing: the further I went on in this way the more I was terrified.
From this we see that Luther subjected himself to every possible form of discipline and mortification. He was a model of monkish piety. He says, “If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, I would have gotten there.” No one could surpass him in prayers by day and night, in fasting, in vigils, self-discipline and self-mortification, and yet—had he found what his soul was looking for? There is no mistake. He is as far from peace of conscience as ever. He read the Bible, but a veil was before his eyes. Christ was still to his mind a merciless judge. The righteousness of God, which, according to Paul, was revealed in the Gospel, he took to mean the righteousness which metes out just punishment.
Finally, John Staupitz, the vicar-general of the Augustinian order, a man of sympathetic nature, and one who possessed in a singular degree the power to discern and appreciate the needs of whomsoever applied to him for aid, came to his rescue. Looking into the haggard face of Luther, he said: “Brother, you must obey God and believe in forgiveness.” “You have altogether a wrong idea of Christ. Christ does not terrify; his office is to comfort.” “You must make up your mind that you are a very sinner, and that Christ is a very Savior.” These were starting points for new currents of thought. They shed light upon many passages of scripture. For days and weeks Luther pondered over these words: “The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; ... For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: as it is written, But the righteous shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:16, 17). Many years after receiving this help, Luther wrote:
If Dr. Staupitz, or, rather, God, through Dr. Staupitz, had not aided me in this, I would have been long since in hell.
Luther now devoted himself earnestly to the study of theology. Among other writings, he read those of Augustine more frequently and fixed them more thoroughly in his memory than any others. In 1508 his scholarship received acknowledgement by a call to the chair of philosophy in the newly-founded University of Wittenburg. As a professor he made rapid progress, and soon reached a position of great responsibility and influence.
“To make a pilgrimage to Rome; to confess in the Holy City all his sins committed from early youth; to visit the many sacred places, sacred to the memory of saints and martyrs; to avail himself of the rich influences offered there; to read mass in Rome—had been a long-cherished hope of the young monk. Hardly had he dared to look for its realization.” But all of a sudden he was sent by Staupitz to Rome to assist in the settlement of some difficulties which had arisen in the management of the monastic order. On foot, from monastery to monastery, he and his companion went across the Alps, and by the picturesque plain of Lombardy passed into Italy. Everywhere his eyes were opened, and important lessons for the future were learned.
The first sight of Rome inspired him with great enthusiasm. It was a great moment to him. He fell upon the ground, and, with outstretched hands, exclaimed, “Hail, thou Holy City!” The visit continued four weeks, giving him ample time to see the ruins of the Colosseum, the Baths of Dioclesian, the Pantheon, and other remains of past glory. He visited also the catacombs and other places made sacred by the sufferings of martyrs, and, above all, those churches and shrines where “special grace” could be obtained.
The chief attraction, however, was not that of sight-seeing, but the spiritual blessings that he hoped to receive. It was his purpose to make while there an unreserved confession of all the sins that he had ever committed. Although he had made such confession twice before at Erfurt, he expected an especial blessing from the same confession, if made in the “Holy City.” Mass he celebrated a number of times, and actually wished that his parents were dead, because, by such services at Rome, he thought that he could have been able to deliver them from purgatory.
But in all this he found no satisfaction for his mind; on the contrary, there was aroused in him a consciousness of another way to salvation which had previously taken root in his heart. While he was painfully climbing on his knees in devout prayer the steps of the identical staircase, as was superstitiously believed, which formerly led up to the palace of Pilate in Jerusalem—in order to receive the rich blessings promised by several popes upon all who would perform this meritorious deed—again and again as he struggled up the stairway, the words of Paul—“the just shall live by faith”—came to him as though uttered in tones of thunder. But Luther never became sensible of any blessing.
Even Rome did not give to his soul the peace for which he longed. On the contrary, his sojourn in the “Holy City,” brief though it was, sufficed to convince him that Rome could never supply the needs of his spiritual nature. The high ideals of the sanctity of the worship of the saintly life of the pope and the other ecclesiastical dignitaries, which filled his own soul with aspirations and stimulated him to like endeavors, were rudely shattered. What he saw and heard in Rome was the very opposite of what he had expected. Instead of piety he found levity; instead of holiness he met lasciviousness; instead of seeing pure spirituality, he beheld nothing but carnal-mindedness, greed and self-seeking. Religion was but the cloak which covered up the shame and vice. The white garments of the Church were polluted with the stains of the most disgraceful and carnal manner of living. Wherever he turned he saw hypocrisy and sin. Everything that was to him an object of holy adoration was made the butt of blasphemous jests. Of the impressions made on his mind he wrote:
Nobody can form an idea of the licentiousness, vice and shame that is in vogue in Rome. Nobody would believe it unless he could see it with his own eyes and hear it with his own ears. Rome was once the holiest city, now it is the vilest. It is true what has been said, “If there be a hell, Rome must be built over it.”
Yet in spite of all he saw and heard, he “loved the grand old Church” with all his heart. He did not return from Rome an enemy of the Church, nor even intending to reform it. But if ever a man left the “Holy City” thrust down from the heights of zeal and enthusiasm to the very depths of despair, wounded and crushed in spirit, it was the plain, honest Luther. This experience, however, was but another step in his preparation, for he says:
I would not take a thousand florins for missing that visit to Rome. I would constantly fear that I had wronged the pope. But now I can speak of what I have seen myself.
When Luther returned from Rome to Wittenburg in the early summer of 1512, Staupitz sent him to Erfurt to complete his training for the doctorate in theology. His advancement was so rapid that by the time he reached his twenty-ninth year he found himself not only installed in a professorship of Theology at Wittenburg, but also with the main responsibility resting upon him for all instruction that was to be given. From that time the presence of Staupitz was not frequent. In this position he did not hesitate to break through all traditional modes of theological instruction.
Luther was still a genuine monk, with no doubt of his vocation. He became the sub-prior of the Wittenburg Monastery in 1512, and was made district vicar over eleven monasteries in 1515. These administrative duties occasioned frequent interruptions of his professional and literary labors. It was his duty, by means of visitations and frequent correspondence, to learn the condition and decide concerning the necessities of each monastery and its inmates. The already thoroughly occupied professor was thus called to a truly pastoral care of an extensive and difficult field. To every one in doubts and perplexities, like those which agitated him, he sought to give the full benefit of his experience.