1. Zwingli and the Controversy on the Supper
From the time that Zwingli, in 1519, commenced working on his own lines at Zürich in the cause of the religious innovations, he had borrowed more and more largely from Luther’s writings. Whilst acknowledging Luther’s great achievements he did not, however, sacrifice his independence. Writing in 1523 with a strong sense of what he himself had done and of the success which had attended his own efforts, he said: “I began to preach before ever I had heard of Luther.... I was not instructed by Luther, for, until two years ago, his very name was unknown to me, and I worked on the Bible Word alone.... Nor do I intend to be called after Luther, seeing that I have read but little of his doctrine. What I have read of his writings, however, is as a rule so excellently grounded on the Word of God, that no creature can overthrow it.... I did not learn the teaching of Christ from Luther, but from the Word of God. If Luther preaches Christ, he is doing the same as I, though, praise be to God, countless more souls have been led to God by him than by me.”[1264]
Little attention was paid at Wittenberg to the religious occurrences at Zürich, though they had been welcomed by Luther. Only when Zwingli sided with Carlstadt against Luther in the controversy on the Supper did the latter begin to give him more heed; this he at once did in his own fashion. He asserted, as he had already done in the case of Carlstadt, [?colampadius and others, that Zwingli would not have known the truth concerning Christ and the Evangel “had not Luther first written on the subject”; of his own initiative he would never have dared to come to[380] freedom and the light; later he spoke of him as “a child of his loins” who had betrayed him.[1265]
In 1526 the divergency of opinion between Luther and Zwingli on the subject of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, already present as early as 1524, became much more apparent.[1266]
Luther, in 1526, in his “Sermon von dem Sacrament,” and, in 1527, in his work on the words “This is My Body,” had, conformably with his theory, urged that Christ is present with the bread, and spoken not at all kindly of his Swiss gainsayers, the Zwinglians.[1267] Zwingli, on his side, soon after the appearance of the last work, attacked Luther’s view in a writing entitled “Amica exegesis” (1528); this, his first open assault on the Wittenberg doctor, he followed up with a German pamphlet on the words of Christ: “This is My Body.” In these we have the protest of the sceptical rationalism of Zürich, against Luther’s half-hearted doctrine on the Sacrament.
Zwingli demanded that the words of institution should be taken figuratively and the Eucharist regarded as a mere symbol of the Body of Christ. This he did with no less assurance than Luther had urged his own pet view, viz. that Christ is present together with the bread (Impanation instead of the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation). Zwingli complained bitterly of the rude tone adopted by Luther; according to him God’s Word must prevail, not Luther’s abusive epithets, “fanatic, devil, rogue, heretic, Trotz, Plotz, Blitz and Donner, and so on.” Over and over again he roundly accuses Luther of “lying” and “falsehood,” though his language is not so lurid as his adversary’s. The artifices by which he sought to evade the plain sense of the words “This is My Body,” were well calculated to call forth a rude contradiction from Luther. Zwingli’s arbitrary recourse to the “figurative, symbolical, metaphorical” sense, Luther answered by appealing to the interpretation accepted by the whole of antiquity. At the turn of the fourth and the fifth centuries Macarius Magnes had written: “Christ has said ‘This is My Body’; it is no[381] figure of the Body of Christ, nor a figure of His flesh, as some have been foolish enough to assert, but in truth the body and blood of Christ.”[1268] Concerning the promise of the Eucharist, Hilary of Poitiers declared in the fourth century: “Christ says: ‘My flesh is meat indeed’ (John vi. 56); as to the truth of the flesh and blood there can be no doubt. The Lord Himself teaches it and our faith confesses it, viz. that it is truly flesh and truly blood.” Any other interpretation of the words of Christ he calls “violenta atque imprudens pr?dicatio, aliena atque impia intelligentia.”[1269] The reproach, which at a much earlier period Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostles, had brought forward against the Docet? of his day, Luther might well have applied to the Zwinglians: “They refuse to confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, that flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised from the dead.”[1270]
We can understand the abhorrence which Luther conveyed by the term Sacramentarians (“sacramentarii”), by which he characterised all those—whether Swiss, Reformed, or followers of Carlstadt—who denied the Real Presence in the Sacrament.
The Marburg Conference of 1529, at which both Zwingli and Luther attended with their friends, did not bring any real settlement, for no compromise on the question of the Eucharist was feasible. Fourteen of the other Articles submitted by Luther were accepted, but the 15th, with this principal question, remained in suspense owing to the opposition of the Swiss. In consequence of this Luther refused to recognise Zwingli and his followers as brothers, in spite of all the prayers of his opponents. He would not concede to them Christian brotherhood but merely “Christian charity,” that charity, moreover, which, as he declared, we owe even to our enemies. He again voiced it as his opinion, that, “your spirit is different from ours,” which greatly incensed the other side. A statement was appended to the Fifteen Articles of Marburg, to the effect, that, on account of the Supper, they had “so far failed to reach an[382] understanding, but that each side would exercise Christian charity towards the other so far as every man’s conscience allowed.”
Once, during the proceedings, Luther, to show his attachment to the literal sense of the words “This is My Body,” chalked these words on the tablecloth and held it up in front of him, pointing significantly to the writing.
Luther, however, overlooked the fact, that, if once the words were taken in their literal sense, as he was perfectly right in doing, there was no alternative but to accept the Catholic interpretation, according to which the bread is actually and substantially changed into the Body of Christ, and that to say: “This is bread though Christ is present,” was really out of the question. Many theologians who follow Luther in other matters, unhesitatingly admit his inconsequence.[1271]
At the solemn meeting at Marburg, Luther was not to be disconcerted, not even when Zwingli argued that the words of promise of the Sacrament in St. John’s Gospel (vi. 32 ff., 48 ff.), where we read: “My flesh is meat indeed,” must mean “my flesh signifies meat.” When Luther, no less erroneously, objected that the passage in question did not apply there, Zwingli exclaimed: “Of course not, Doctor, for that passage is the breaking of your neck.” Luther replied testily: “Don’t be so sure of it; necks don’t break so easily; here you are in Hesse, not in Switzerland!” Zwingli was constrained to protest that, even in Switzerland, people enjoyed the protection of the law, and to explain that what he had said had not been meant by way of any threat.
[383]
Behind the efforts to unite Wittenberg and Zürich there was a different influence at work. Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, like Zwingli, was anxious to establish a league of all the Swiss and German Protestants against those who, in the Empire, defended Catholicism. This proposal Luther resisted with all his might, urging the Landgrave not to make common cause with the false teachers, to the delight of the devil. Melanchthon, who also was present, was likewise pleased to see the Landgrave’s plan frustrated, for it would have rendered impossible any reconciliation with the Emperor and the larger portion of the Empire, which was the vague ideal after which he was striving. The parties, however, were too distrustful of each other to arrive at any settlement. Jonas, for his diplomacy, called Bucer a “fox,” and said of Zwingli, that he detected in him a certain arrogance such as was to be expected in a boor.
At the time of the Marburg Conference, Vienna was being besieged by the Turks. Thus, whilst the Empire stood in the greatest peril from foes without, an attempt was being made within to reach a settlement which might drive the wedge yet deeper into the unity of the Fatherland. The latter attempt ended, however, in failure, whilst the siege of Vienna was raised and the departure of the Turks brought about a certain strengthening of the Empire.
The tension between the Zwinglians and the Lutherans was not lessened when each party claimed that it had gained the upper hand and utterly routed the other at Marburg.
On October 11, 1531, Zwingli fell in the battle of Cappel, in which, mounted on horseback and fully armed, he was leading the men of Zürich against the five Catholic cantons. What Luther thought and felt at that time we learn both from Schlaginhaufen’s Notes of his Table-Talk in 1531 and 1532, which afford some fresh information, and from Luther’s letters and printed works.
The very first Note we have of Schlaginhaufen’s touches upon Zwingli’s untimely end. It would appear that a rumour had got abroad that Luther’s other opponents, Carlstadt and Pellicanus, had also been slain.
Luther was in high glee when news of Zwingli’s death reached him.
[384]
He said: “God knows the thoughts of the heart. It is well that Zwingli, Carlstadt, and Pellicanus lie dead on the battle-field, for otherwise we could not have retained the Landgrave, Strasburg and other of our neighbours [true to our doctrine]. Oh, what a triumph is this, that they have perished! God indeed knows His business well.”[1272]—“Zwingli died like a brigand,” he said later, when scarcely a year had elapsed since his death. “He wished to force others to accept his errors, went to war, and was slain.” “He drew the sword, therefore he has received his reward, for Christ says: ‘All who take the sword shall perish by the sword.’ If God has saved him, then He did so contrary to His ordinary ways.”[1273]—“All seek to cloak their deceitful doctrines with the name of the Evangel,” so he exclaims in 1532. From Augsburg he heard that the Sacramentarian (i.e. Zwinglian) preachers were using his name and Melanchthon’s. “Since they refused to be our friends in God’s name, let them be so in the devil’s, even as Judas was the friend of Christ.”[1274]
Because Thomas Münzer was no friend of the Evangel he was, according to Luther, destined to perish miserably and shamefully. Zwingli he placed on exactly the same footing; his death likewise was a just judgment.[1275] Zwingli, so he will have it, was a complete unbeliever. In his newly published sermons of 1530 he had shown that Zwingli, like Carlstadt, by his attacks on the Supper, had denied all the articles of the faith. “If a man falls away from one article of faith, however insignificant it may appear to reason, he has fallen away from all and does not hold any of them aright. For instance, it is certain that our fanatics who now deny the Sacrament, also deny Christ’s Divinity and all the other articles of faith, however much they protest to the contrary, and the reason of this is, that, when even one link of the chain is broken, the whole chain is in pieces.”[1276]
H. Barge, a Protestant, remarks: “After the battle of Cappel, Luther appears to have devoted his unusual gifts of eloquence to slandering Zwingli and all who remained true to him, systematically, deliberately, and maliciously, as mere heretics.”[1277]
The following delineation of Zwingli by Luther dates from 1538: “Zwingli was a very clever and upright man, but he fell [into error]; then he became so presumptuous as to dare to say and write: ‘I hold that no one in the world ever believed that the Body and Blood of Christ are present in the Sacrament.’” Luther adds: Because Zwingli ventured to speak rashly against him [Luther] and “against what is plain to the whole world, he perished miserably, just as did Egranus, that importunate fellow.”[1278]
Just as he had condemned Carlstadt and Pellicanus, and,[385] lastly, Egranus (Johann Silvius Egranus of Zwickau), so also elsewhere he lumps together in one condemnation with Zwingli all those doctors who differed from him. Relentlessly he scourges them as he had scourged the Catholics. “The character of those who oppose the Word is fiendish rather than human. Man does what he can, but when the devil takes possession of him then ‘enmity arises between him and the woman’” (Gen. iii. 15).[1279]
Few experienced his intolerance to such an extent as Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, his quondam colleague in the theological faculty of Wittenberg.
2. Carlstadt
Carlstadt, the fanatic, failed to obtain any peace from Luther until he passed over to the camp of the Swiss theologians. In 1534 he became preacher at St. Peter’s in Basle, and professor of theology. We may here cast a glance at the troubles brought on him, partly through Luther, partly through his own passionate exaltation, both previous to this date and until his death at Basle, where he was carried off by the plague in 1541.
Carlstadt’s violent doings at Wittenberg and the iconoclasm which he justified by the Mosaic prohibition of graven images, had miscarried owing to Luther’s warnings.[1280] Soon it became clear that there was no longer any room for him at the University town near the leader of the Reformation, more particularly since, in 1522, he had seen fit to deny the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Luther loudly bewailed Carlstadt’s sudden determination to become a new teacher, and to lay new injunctions on the people to the detriment of his (Luther’s) authority.[1281]
Carlstadt now migrated to Orlamünde in the Saxon Electorate, where the magistrates appointed him pastor. In August, 1524, however, Luther passed through Weimar, Jena, and the other districts where the fanatics had gained a footing, preaching energetically against them. Carlstadt he had met at Jena on August 22, 1523, in the Black Bear Inn. In vain did they seek a friendly settlement, for each overwhelmed the other with reproaches. Finally, in the tap-room of the inn, Luther handed his opponent a goldgulden[386] as a pledge that he was at liberty to write against him without reserve and that he did not mind in the least: “Take it and attack me like a man, don’t fear!”[1282] Shortly after, however, he complained of the treatment he had received: “At the inn at Jena ... he turned upon me and abused me, snapped his fingers at me and said: ‘I don’t care that for you.’ But if he does not respect me, whom, then, amongst us does he respect?”[1283]
The struggle continued after they had gone their ways, both seeking to secure the favour of the Court. Luther, through the agency of Prince Johann Frederick, proposed that Carlstadt should be hounded from his place of refuge and from the whole upper valley of the Saale. Ultimately the disturber of the peace was banished from the Electorate; Luther, in his work “Widder die hymelischen Propheten,” approved of his expulsion, roughly declaring that, so far as lay in him, Carlstadt would never again set foot in the country.[1284] The homeless man now betook himself to Strasburg, whither he was pursued by a furious letter of Luther’s, directed against him and his teaching, entitled “An die Christen zu Straspurg widder den Schwermer Geyst.”
Luther became greatly enraged when he perceived that the denial of the Sacrament, already widespread in Switzerland, was also gaining ground at Strasburg and was being adopted by Capito and Bucer. In his excitement, in the hope of checking the falling away from his doctrine, of closing the mouth of that “fiend” Carlstadt—who likewise stood for the denial of the Sacrament—and of preventing “the overthrow of all political and ecclesiastical order,” he[387] penned, in the course of a few weeks, a violent screed entitled, “Widder die hymelischen Propheten.” The knowledge that everywhere revolt “was being associated with the Lutheran doctrines and reforms”[1285] roused his terrible eloquence, of which the principal aim was to annihilate Carlstadt. Having completed the first part, comprising seventy pages of print in the Erlangen edition, he rushed this through the press as a preliminary instalment, informing his readers at the end that “the remainder will follow on foot.”[1286] As good as his word, three weeks later, he had ready the conclusion, consisting of nearly one hundred pages of print. He asserts that Carlstadt had, “for three years, been making a hash” of his books; he was even anxious to throw them all overboard. Luther’s strongest argument against him was the revolutionary peril which this man represented. Even if he did not actually plot “murder and revolt,” he writes, “yet I must say that he has a murderous and revolutionary spirit.... Because he carries a dagger, I do not trust him; he might well be simply awaiting a good opportunity to do what I apprehend. By the dagger I mean his false interpretation and understanding of the Law of Moses.”[1287] “What is the use of admonishing him?” he writes, alluding to Carlstadt’s departure from the Lutheran interpretation of the Bible and his obstinacy in accepting no exegesis but his own; “I believe that he still considers me one of the most learned men at Wittenberg and yet he tells me to my very face, that I am of no account, though all the while he pretends to be quite willing to be instructed.”[1288]
From Strasburg, Carlstadt, the restless wanderer, had gone to Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber, a hotbed of Anabaptists. It was whilst here, that finding himself in dire want, he besought Luther’s aid, at a time when the latter had not yet finished the above writing against him; he, however, frustrated all hopes of any reconciliation by previously penning a defence of his own doctrine of the Sacrament against the Wittenberg professor. The unfortunate termination of the Peasant War exposed him to grave danger, when he broke his promise to[388] keep silence, and again renewed his complaints concerning Luther, and bewailed his own reduced circumstances, dissensions broke out afresh between them. Luther, who was greatly vexed, was very anxious to find some new means of muzzling his opponent. He proposed that he should in no case advocate in the presence of others his own theological opinions or his private interpretation of the Bible, though he might cherish them as his private convictions, for of the heart no man is judge; doctrines which differed from his own, so Luther declared, were not to be defended publicly, else they would come under the cognisance of the authorities. Under these circumstances Carlstadt thought it better to depart. In the beginning of 1529 he escaped, and, in 1530, found a home in Switzerland, where he enjoyed a quieter life and was free to proceed with his theological labours. “Luther, like Carlstadt, never doubted for a moment that his doctrine was really founded on Scripture. Hence Luther and the Elector felt themselves bound in conscience to defend as best they could the Christian faith and their country against any invasion of false doctrine.”[1289] Such is the considered judgment of a Protestant historian.[1290]
For the period subsequent to 1534, when Carlstadt at length began to lead a more tranquil life as professor and preacher at Basle, the Table-Talk is the principal source of information concerning Luther’s relations with him.
Luther, in his conversations, frequently referred to his former friend, particularly in 1538.
“He, like Bucer, greatly retarded the progress of the Evangel by his arrogance. In other matters pride of intellect is not so dangerous, but in theology it is utterly pestilential to desire to arrogate anything to oneself.... Hence I was greatly troubled when Carlstadt once remarked to me: ‘I am as fond of honour as any other man.’ At Leipzig he refused to concede me the first place at the Disputation lest I should rob him of his part of the praise. And yet I was always glad to do him a favour. But he reaped shame instead of honour at Leipzig, for no worse disputant could be imagined than a man of so dull and wretched a spirit.... At first he, like Peter Lupinus, withstood me, but when I rebutted them with Augustine, they, too, studied Augustine and then insisted upon my doctrine more than I did myself. Carlstadt, however, was deceived by his arrogance.”[1291] Indeed, Carlstadt belonged to the category of the “arrogantissimi.”[1292]
Elsewhere Luther again says similar things without noticing, so it would seem, that others might have complained of his “arrogance” just as much as he did of Carlstadt’s. Carlstadt is “full of presumption,” and this “brought about his fall as it did that of Münzer, Zwingli, [?colampadius, Stiefel, and Eisleben.” “Such people, weak and untried though they be, are puffed up with self-sufficiency before the victory, whereas I have my daily struggles.” Before this Luther had declared that he was “plagued and vexed by the devil, whose bones are strong until we crack them.”[1293]—“It was impossible to make of Carlstadt a humble man because he had been through no real mental temptations.”[1294]—“He, like Münzer and Zwingli, was rash when good fortune attended him, but an arrant coward in misfortune”;[1295] Luther here was probably recalling how Carlstadt, the unhappy married priest, had been forced to humble himself before him[390] owing to the dire want and danger in which he and his family found themselves.
“Had not Carlstadt come on the scene with the fanatics, Münzer and the Anabaptists, all would have gone well with my undertaking. But though I alone lifted it out of the gutter, they wished to seize upon the prize and poach upon my preserves, though, owing to the way they went about the business, they were really working for the Pope though all the while anxious to destroy him.”[1296]
Luther afterwards held fast to the opinion concerning his enemy which he had expressed long before in a letter to Spalatin: “Carlstadt has now been delivered over to a reprobate spirit so that I despair of his return. He always was, and probably always will be, unmindful of the glory of Christ; his insensate ambition has brought him to this. To me, nay, to us, he is more troublesome than any foe, so that I believe the unhappy man to be possessed by more than one devil. God have mercy on his sin, so far as it is mortal.”[1297]
In 1541 the news of his rival’s death reached him. It was rumoured that he had died impenitent, that the devil had appeared at his death-bed, had fetched him away, and continued to make a great noise in his house.[1298] Luther believed these tales. It was not surprising, so he said, that Carlstadt had at last received his deserts,[1299] though he was sorry he should have died impenitent.[1300]
It only remains to glance at the arguments Luther brought forward and at the theoretical attitude he assumed with regard to Carlstadt and his followers. If we take the book “Widder die hymelischen Propheten” and the writing he addressed to the Strasburg Christians against the fanatics, and consider the answers and objections they drew forth, we shall have a strange picture of Luther’s ways of reasoning and of his crooked lines of thought. Not that his ability and eloquence failed him, but, for clearness and coherence, his doctrine and whole conduct leave everything to be desired. In his book he attacks not Carlstadt alone, but, as he says: “Carlstadt and his spirits,” i.e. all those opponents of his whom he was pleased to dub “fanatics.[391]” “Fanaticism” to him means not merely that fanciful interpretation of the Bible based on special illumination, to which his opponents were attached, but more particularly the threefold error for which they stood, viz. their denial of the Sacrament (i.e. of the Real Presence of Christ in the Supper), their iconoclasm, and, thirdly, their repudiation of infant baptism. As for the various elements of good, which, in spite of all their mistakes, were shared by the earlier Anabaptists, Luther refused categorically to see them or to hearken to the fanatics’ well-grounded remonstrances against certain of his propositions.
To preach, a man must be called by God, so he lays it down. Had your spirit “been the true one, it would have manifested itself by word and sign; but in reality it is a murderous, secret devil.”[1301] Luther demands miracles with as much confidence as though he himself could point to them in plenty.
Those preachers who ventured to differ from him, he invites, at the very least, to point to their ecclesiastical vocation. But what sort of a vocation was this to be, they asked. As Luther recognised no universal Church visible, a call emanating from a congregation of believers had to suffice; Carlstadt, for instance, could appeal to his having been chosen by Orlamünde as its pastor. This Luther would not allow: You must also have the consent of the Elector and of the University of Wittenberg. Carlstadt and those who felt with him were well aware, that, in the final instance, this simply meant Luther’s own consent, for at the University he was all-powerful, whilst the sovereign likewise was wont to be guided by him. Why, Carlstadt might also have asked, should not the degree of Doctor of Divinity suffice in my case, seeing that you yourself have solemnly pleaded your degree as a sufficient justification for assailing the common tradition of Christendom?
Luther’s final answer to such an appeal was as follows:
“My devil, I know you well.”[1302]
He was determined to hound out of his last hiding-place his presumptuous rival, many of whose doctrines, it must be admitted, were both mistaken and dangerous. Hence the measure which he induced the Elector to take in 1524,[392] according to which Carlstadt was to be refused shelter throughout the Electorate; this example was also followed by the magistrates of Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber, who, by an edict of January 27, 1525, commanded all burghers by virtue of their oath and fealty “not to house, shelter, or hide, provide with food and drink, or further on his way the said Dr. Carlstadt,” adding, that a similar prohibition had been published in “other lordships and Imperial cities both near and far.”[1303]
When seeking to retain the support of the burghers of Strasburg, Luther had made a display of broadminded forbearance and charity. What he then said is often quoted by his followers as proof of his kindliness and humility. “Take heed that you show brotherly charity towards one another in very deed.” “I am not your preacher. No one is bound to believe me, let each one look to himself. To warn all I am able, but stop any man I cannot.” Yet he continues: “Carlstadt makes a great fuss about outward things as though Christianity consisted in knocking down images, overthrowing the Sacrament, and preventing Baptism; by the dust he raises he seeks to darken the sun, and the brightness of the Evangel, and the main facts of Christian faith and practice, so that the world may forget all that has hitherto been taught by us.”[1304] Luther’s own doctrine, in spite of his preliminary assurance, was alone to stand, because, forsooth, it reveals the true sun to the world.
What, however, had he to oppose to the “knocking down of images” and the “overthrow of the Sacrament”? Did his standpoint afford sufficient resistance, or was it more than a mere subterfuge?
The pulling down of images and the overthrow of the Sacrament, Luther tells Carlstadt, agreeably with his own feelings at that time, may be introduced little by little, but must not be made into a law. Everyone is free to put away his images, to deny the Sacrament, or to refuse to receive it; let him follow his own conscience as it is the right and duty of every man to do. Luther, however, is forgetful of the restrictions he was in the habit of placing upon Catholic practices, of how he refused to admit the rights of conscience[393] in the matter of the Mass and the religious life, notwithstanding that Catholics could appeal to the age-long practice of the Church in every land, and of his denial of the existence or even of the possibility of good faith amongst any of his opponents, whether within or without his own fold. In his book against the “Heavenly Prophets” he declares it to be “optional to wear a cowl or the tonsure ... in this there is neither commandment nor prohibition,” “to wear the tonsure, to put on albs and chasubles, etc. is a thing God has neither commanded nor forbidden.” “Doctrine, command, and compulsion are not to be tolerated.”[1305] Here we see the confused after-effects of his old, pseudo-mystic conception of a religion of freedom, involving no duty of submission to any external authority in the matter of “doctrine or command.” (See p. 8 ff.)
Granting that any real tolerance underlay these statements, the fanatics could ask: “Why, then, not include our peculiarities, for instance, our penitential dress, our grey frock, and outward, pious practices?” Luther, however, will hear of no self-chosen works of penance, and condemns indiscriminately those of the fanatics and the more measured ones preferred by Catholics, in spite of mortification being recommended by the example of the saints both of the Old and the New Covenant and of Christ Himself. Of the last Luther says quite openly that Christ’s example taught us nothing; not Christ’s works, but merely His express words were to be our example. “What He wished us to do or leave undone, that He not only did or left undone but also enjoined or forbade in so many words.... Hence we admit no example, not even that of Christ Himself.”[1306] Elsewhere he also excludes the Evangelical Counsels of Perfection, although they are not only based on example, but are also expressed in words. Yet here, in a particular instance, he departs from his theory that only Christ’s express injunctions are binding; Carlstadt had done away with the elevation of the Sacrament in Divine Worship; this Luther disapproved of; he acknowledges, however, that Christ did not do so at the Last Supper, though we do.—He does not tell us when or how Christ enjoined this by “word.”
[394]
What the motives were which led to his decisions on such usages we see from the following. Speaking to Carlstadt’s party he says: “Although I too had the intention of doing away with the Elevation, yet, now, the better to defy and oppose for a while the fanatical spirit, I shall not do so.”[1307] In the same way, “in defiance of the spirit of the mob, he intends to call the Sacrament a Sacrifice, though it is not really one, but simply the reception of what was once a sacrifice.” We cannot wonder if the sectarians looked upon this spirit of defiance and contradiction as something strange. One of them during this controversy complained with some justice that Luther, according to his own admission, had thundered forth many of his theses merely because the Papists “had pressed him so hard,” and not from any inner conviction.[1308] Contradiction was to him sufficient reason for narrowing the freedom of others in the matter of doctrine.
The new Christian freedom Luther vindicates in his book “Widder die hymelischen Propheten,” more particularly in respect of the Old Testament Commandments. At that time, strange to say, the fanatics were set on imposing certain of the Mosaic laws on both public and ecclesiastical life, under the impression that they were precepts divinely ordained for all time. For this Luther’s own violent and one-sided interpretation of the Bible, in defiance of all tradition, was really responsible; indeed, he himself was not disinclined to lay undue stress on Mosaism. (See vol. v., xxix., xxxv. 6.)
The fanatics’ exaggerations were, however, too much for Luther. In his efforts to oppose their trend he goes so far as to include even the Decalogue, when he exclaims: “Don’t bother us with Moses”; the Ten Commandments are disfigured with Mosaism, so he says, for they prescribe the Sabbath and forbid images; it was stupid to see in the Decalogue nothing more than moral commandments and precepts of the natural law.[1309] Not on account of this law do we observe the weekly day of rest, but because we need a rest and regular times for Divine worship, viz. out of love for our neighbour and from necessity. It is no easy matter to reconcile this with Luther’s own praiseworthy practice of[395] teaching the Commandments and seeing that the young were instructed in them, or with the great respect with which he surrounded the Decalogue. The Church’s view, as expounded by St. Thomas, was both better and more logical, viz. that the Ten Commandments were the primary and common precepts of the law of nature,[1310] and that the alteration in the third Commandment, introduced by the Church concerning the day (Sunday in place of the Sabbath), was merely a minor detail not affecting the real substance of the Commandment.
That, however, the Sunday, instead of the Saturday, was to be observed as holy was a point on which Luther had perforce to content himself with that very tradition which he had so often abused.
Tradition likewise was his only authority for defending Infant Baptism with so much determination against the fanatics. It is true, that, in order to deprive his opponents of their chief argument, he put forth the strange theory, treated of elsewhere, that infants are able to believe.[1311] Elsewhere, too, he seeks to persuade himself, in spite of all difficulties, that infants in some way or other co-operate in the baptismal work of justification by means of some sort of faith.
On the other hand, he confutes Carlstadt’s opinion as to the figurative sense of the Eucharistic words of consecration in a masterly dissertation on their real meaning. Here he holds the field because his interpretation is conformable both with that of antiquity and with the dictates of reason. We find him demolishing Carlstadt’s stupidities by appeals to reason, but here Luther is in contradiction with himself, for in another part of the book, where, for his purpose, it was essential to make out reason to be absolutely blind as regards doctrine, he has the strongest invectives against it or any use of reason in matters of faith. In the case of Carlstadt’s objections against the Sacramental Presence of Christ, he had been obliged to have recourse to proofs based on reason, yet in the other passage he says: “As if we did not know that reason is the devil’s handmaid and does nothing but blaspheme and dishonour all that God says or[396] does.”[1312] To come to him with such a Frau Hulda (the name by which he ridicules reason) “is mere devil’s roguery.”[1313] In his contempt for reason he goes so far as to advocate a new theory of the omnipresence of Christ’s body, in heaven and everywhere on earth, in spite of the impossibility such a thing would involve.
It was quite at variance with his habitual exhortations and commands for him calmly to inform the fanatics that, whoever does not wish to receive the Sacrament may leave it alone. The only effect of receiving the Sacrament now appears to him to be, that it strengthens in us the Word of faith in Christ, and is a consolation to troubled consciences. It is true that he proves himself a fiery advocate of the literal sense of the words of institution and a passionate defender of the Sacramental Presence, yet the meagre effect he concedes to the Eucharist makes his fervour somewhat difficult to understand, for there is no doubt that he minimises both the graces we receive through the Sacrament and the greatness of the gift of Christ; apart from this he altogether excludes the sacrificial character of the Supper. Still, his zeal for the defence of the Eucharist against those who denied it was so great, that, out of defiance, he was anxious to retain even the Latin wording of his “Liturgy” and, to this end, made a pathetic appeal to the chapter in which St. Paul speaks of the use of strange tongues (1 Cor. xiv.), which Luther thought might be understood of the language used in the Mass.
The list of feeble arguments and self-contradictions found in this remarkable book might be indefinitely lengthened, though, on the other hand, it also contains many a practical and striking refutation of views held by the fanatics.
In the press of his personal struggle, and in spite of all his scorn for his opponents’ “spiritism,” Luther could not refrain from bringing forward against Carlstadt a prophecy of the “higher spirit.” This prophecy had condemned Carlstadt beforehand and had foretold that he would not long share our faith; this has now been fulfilled to the letter, so that “I cannot but understand it.”[1314] Unfortunately, before this, the opposite party had discovered a[397] prediction against Luther, an “ancient prophecy” which was certainly about to be fulfilled in Luther, viz. “that the black monk must first come and cause all mischief.”[1315]
As was to be expected, Luther preferred, however, to lay greater stress on other considerations which might assist him to gain the upper hand. He returns to his favourite asseveration: “If what I have begun is of God, no one will be able to hinder it; if it is not, I shall most assuredly not uphold it.”[1316] But not to “uphold it” with all the force and passion at his command, was, as a matter of fact, impossible to him. “No one shall take it from me!” he exclaims, almost in the same breath with the above, and though he indeed adds “save God alone,” still he knew perfectly well that God would not appear personally in order to wrestle with him. Moreover, he will have it that the crucial test had occurred long before and had entirely vindicated him. So great a work as he had achieved could not, he assures us, have been “built” without God’s help; not he but a higher power was the builder, though, so far as he was concerned, he had “in the main laboured well and rightly [this to the Strasburg dissenters],[1317] so that whoever avers the contrary cannot be a good spirit; I hope I shall have no worse luck in the outward matters upon which these prophets are so fond of harping.” In “outward matters,” however, he was cautious enough to restrict his claim within his favourite province of freedom. He calls it “spiritual freedom,” not to make iconoclasm a duty, to leave each one at liberty to receive, or not receive, the Sacrament, and not to insist on the wearing of grey frocks. He is also careful not to prescribe anything, that, by way of outward observances they may not fall back into Popery, the whole essence of which consists in this sort of thing.
Luther, however, insists all the more on the “Bible spirit,” the spirit of the outward Word.
This, in spite of its subjective character, is to be set up as a brazen shield against the private judgment of the “heavenly prophets” and their inspirations. It is true his opponents objected that he himself had much to learn from the “Bible spirit,” for instance, greater meekness and a[398] resolution to proceed without stirring up “dangerous enmities.” These, however, were minor matters in his eyes. For him the “Bible spirit” was the witness and safeguard of his treasured doctrine.
What we must hearken to is not the inward Word—such is his emphatic declaration after his encounter with the fanatics, in flat contradiction to his earlier statements (see above, p. 4 f.)—but above all the outward Word contained in Scripture: if we do otherwise we are simply following the example of the “heavenly prophets.” The Pope “spoke according to his own fancy,” paying no heed to the outward Word, but I speak according to Scripture.[1318] All that was necessary was not to pervert the Bible, as the fanatics did; it is the devil who gives them a wrong understanding of Scripture, indeed, according to Luther, there is no heretic who does not make much of Scripture. “When the devil sees that the Bible is used as a weapon against him, he runs to Scripture and raises such confusion that people no longer can tell who has the right interpretation. When I quote Scripture against the Papists and fanatics, they don’t believe me, for they have their own glosses.”[1319] Hence, such at least is his implicit invitation, they must hold fast to his gloss and no other. For I, by discovering Scripture, “have delivered the world from the horrid darkness of Antichrist; nor have I the faintest doubt, but am entirely convinced, that our Evangel is the true one.”[1320] “The heresies and persecutions rampant amongst us are merely that confirmation of the truth which the New Testament predicted (1 Cor. xi. 19), of the truth which I preach. Heresies must needs arise,” etc. etc.
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