John Tulloch · 7 of 27

I. Luther. · Part 2

When the reality of the excitement produced by the theses became apparent, opposition as well as sympathy was of course awakened. Tetzel continued to rave at Frankfort-on-the-Oder; Hochstraten, professor at Cologne (the great seat of the anti-humanist reaction) and head inquisitor of Germany, clamoured for the heretic to be committed to the flames; Sylvester Prierias, the general of the Dominicans and censor of the press at Rome, published a reply in dialogue, in which, after the manner of dialogues, he complacently refuted the propositions of Luther, and consigned him to the ministers of the inquisition; and, last and most formidable of all, Dr Eck, a theological professor at Ingoldstadt, entered the lists against the reformer. Eck was an able man, well versed in the scholastic theology; and a warm friendship, founded apparently on genuine respect on either side, had hitherto existed between him and Luther. Now, however, instigated partly by a natural feeling of rivalry, partly by honest opposition to the sentiments of Luther, and the call of his diocesan the Bishop of Eichstadt, he attacked the ninety-five theses in a style of violence which galled. Luther, and made him strongly feel the breach of friendship, especially as Eck had given no warning of the attack. The reformer, it may be imagined, did not spare his adversary in reply. Strong language was a difficult game to play at with Luther; and the old friends, now rival disputants, were destined ere long to meet face to face in a more memorable conflict.

At first the Pope, Leo X., took but little heed of the disturbance. He is reported, indeed, to have said, when the attack of Prierias was submitted to him, that “Friar Martin was a man of genius, that he did not wish to have him molested; the outcry against him was all monkish jealousy.” Busy with his own dilettante and ambitious schemes, his buildings and his MSS., Leo had no perception of the real state of things in Germany, and would fain have kept aloof from interference. Some of the cardinals, however, saw more distinctly the real character of the movement; the seriousness of the affair was made at length apparent even to papal indifference, and a tribunal was appointed to try Luther’s doctrines. At the head of this tribunal was placed Luther’s declared opponent, Prierias; and the monk received a summons to appear within sixty days at Rome to answer for his theses. Compliance with this summons would have been fatal to him. Once in the hands of the cardinals, the fate of Huss, or a secret and still more terrible one, awaited him. His university accordingly interceded, and the Elector at length took active steps, and claimed that, as a German, he should be heard in Germany rather than in Rome. This was conceded, and Luther was appointed to appear before the papal legate Cajetan, then present at the Diet of Augsburg.

But while thus seeming to yield to a fair investigation of the case, the papal court, with true Roman perfidy, had prejudged it, and despatched secret instructions to the legate to deal with Luther as a notorious heretic, and forthwith excommunicate him, unless he recanted his opinions. Unwitting of this judgment, Luther hastened to present himself before the legate, under the protection of a safe-conduct procured through the zealous intervention of his friends. Cajetan met him with the most bland and smiling kindness. The affair seemed to him only to require a little smoothness and address. The idea of conscientious conviction in a poor monk was unintelligible to him. He offered two propositions to Luther—the one as to the spiritual virtue of indulgences, and the other as to the necessity of faith to the efficacy of the sacraments and he was asked; in opposition to his supposed views, to admit the affirmative of the one and the negative of the other. Submit, and recant your errors, was all that the legate had to say to him. Submission without conviction, however, was about the very last idea that had entered into Luther’s mind. It is a fine and typical contrast between the moral earnestness of the Teuton, and the diplomatic accommodation of the Italian. “Most reverend father,” said Luther, “deign to point out to me in what I have erred.” “You must revoke both these errors, and embrace the true doctrine of the Church,” was all the answer. “I ask for Scripture; it is on Scripture my views are founded.” “Do you not know that the Pope is above all?” “Not above Scripture.” “Yes, above Scripture, and above councils. Retract, my son, retract it is hard for you to kick against the pricks.” It was of no use. They could not get near to one another, and never could have done. Thrice the conference was broken up, and thrice renewed. At length irritated self-esteem broke through the fair courtesy of the Italian. “Retract,” he cried, “or never appear in my presence again.” Luther retired in silence, and set forth in writing the grounds on which, while willing to acknowledge that he might have spoken unadvisedly and irreverently of the Pontiff, he could not retract his doctrines, for that would be against his conscience. Cajetan made no reply. He felt that he had been foiled, and his real feelings betrayed themselves in an unguarded moment to Staupitz. “I will not speak with the beast again; he has deep eyes, and his head is full of speculation.” What his designs were, remain unknown. Luther became convinced of his danger, hastily drew up two letters, the one to the legate, the other to the Pope, strongly repelling the imputation of heresy, and appealing from “Leo ill-informed to Leo well-informed;” and having procured horse and guide, he fled during the night from Augsburg, and with all speed reached Wittenberg. On his homeward way he was made acquainted with the secret instructions of the court of Rome, and with characteristic generosity offered to the Elector to retire into France till the storm had blown over. But this was not to be: God had further and higher work for him to do. The university resisted his proposal, and the Elector refused to part with him.

Baffled so far, the papal court made a further attempt at negotiation. Miltitz, himself a German, and the envoy of the Pope to the Saxon court, undertook the office of mediator. He understood the necessities of the case better than Cajetan. He even recognised the justice of the attack on the indulgence system, by bringing Tetzel to task, dismissing and disgracing him. He was content to impose silence on the offending monk, without demanding retractation, and Luther for a while consented to keep the peace. The truce, however, was hollow; it was not in the nature of things: the current of change had set in too strongly. Luther himself, while constantly reluctant to advance, felt that he was driven onward, as if by a higher power. “God hurries, drives, not to say leads me,” he wrote to Staupitz. “I am not master of myself. I wish to be quiet, and am hurried into the midst of tumults.” And so the movement gathered force under apparent repression. The current only channelled for itself a deeper and wider course, from being shut up and sealed from outlet for a time. The convictions of the reformer were assuming a bolder scope. “Whatever I have hitherto done against Rome,” he said, “has been in jest; soon I shall be in earnest. Let, me whisper in your ear that I am not sure whether the Pope is antichrist or his apostle.” And this, too, while he still kept appealing to the Pope in language deprecatory, and even servile in its adulation. This inconsistency, if not defensible, was very intelligible in Luther. There was a violent conflict raging in him, between the new ideas forcing themselves upon him from all sides, and his old and natural feeling of monkish obedience. Bold as he was, there were moments when he had dark and painful misgivings, and would fain have rested quietly in the bosom of the Church. More and more, however, the new ideas gathered force and shape, and took firm possession of him. It was no longer merely the special abuse of indulgences, but the general pretensions of the hierarchical Roman system, that actuated and impelled him forward. The indulgence controversy had done its work. A glare of light had been let in upon the hideous abuses of the prevailing ecclesiasticism. A rent had been made in the great sacerdotal fabric. Miltitz cunningly sought to patch up the rent, and shut out the streaming light but the time had passed for such compromise. The spirit moved was too earnest to be thus allayed: the arm which had rudely given the shock was too brawny and restless in its youthful power to be thus stroked into quietness. The work of destruction went on, and through the tumbling timbers of the crazy edifice light came rushing in at all points. Luther himself was amazed at the discoveries that crowded upon him.

The Leipzig disputation with Dr Eck marks this great advance in his views. It is no longer a question merely as to indulgences and the power of the Pope on a special point, but a question as to the general supremacy of the Pope. So far as the doctrine of indulgences was concerned, Luther’s adversary gave in on almost every point; but he made a vigorous stand on general grounds in behalf of the absolute supremacy of the Pope, arguing, among other reasons, from the basis of the well-known text, Matt. xvi. 18, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church.” Luther maintained the customary Protestant version of the text, applying the rock to Christ, whom Peter had just confessed to be the Son of the living God. He claimed for Christ the sole absolute headship of the Church: although, at the same time, he did not deny the primary ecclesiastical position of the Pope, nor his right to that position as a mere constitutional arrangement. Eck tried to frighten him, and cast discredit on his doctrines, by raising the old cry of “Bohemian” against them; but Luther was not to be moved by such imputations, and did not hesitate to defend some of the articles of Huss. The controversy lasted for days, and at length terminated with the usual issue in such controversies: both sides claimed the victory. A drawn battle, however, at this crisis was for Rome equivalent to a defeat. Luther was hailed more than ever as the champion of the national indignation, rising always more urgently against Rome. The question of indulgences was forgotten as the tide of national feeling swelled higher, and it became more manifest every day that the real question was Germany or Rome,—national independence or hierarchical bondage; and still more deeply,—Scripture or Church,—conscience or authority. The popular sympathy showed itself eagerly in numberless satires and caricatures of Eck and his party. Even Erasmus joined in the affray with his cold glancing mockery, and Hutten, after his peculiar fashion, aimed a trenchant blow at the papal champion in the “Planed-off Corner” (der abgehobelte Eck). Copies of the disputation in thirty different versions were rapidly bought up. Luther was now fairly engaged in a lifelong struggle, and the fight went bravely on.

From this point onwards to the Diet of Worms the life of Luther rises to its highest pitch of heroism. No one ever stood more fully in the light of a nation’s hopes, or answered, upon the whole, more nobly to them. Recognising his great position, he stood to it like a true man; and as the battle was now joined, he spared not those “thunderbolts,” which no one knew better how to use in a moment of need. Resting for a month or two to gather breath after his contest with Eck, in the course of the following June (1520) he published his famous address to the “Christian Nobles of Germany.” It was only a few sheets, but never did words tell more powerfully. “The time for silence is past,” he said, “the time to speak is come.” He struck a clear and loud note of national independence, and summoned the Christian powers of Germany to his aid. “Talk of war against the Turk,” he cried; “the Roman Turk is the fellest Turk in the world—Roman avarice the greatest thief that ever walked the earth: all goes into the Roman sack, which has no bottom, and all in the name of God too!” He reiterated in brief and emphatic language the great truth which had begun to dawn upon him at Leipzig, that all Christians are priests, and that consequently the clerical office is a mere function or order: he maintained the independence of all national churches, and the rights of national and social life, against ecclesiastical usurpation. He drew a strong picture of the miserable exactions and oppressions of the Papal See, and cast back with no measure its insolence in its very teeth. “Hearest thou, O Pope, not all-holy, but all-sinful, who gave thee power to lift thyself above God, and break His laws? The wicked Satan lies through thy throat. O my Lord Christ, hasten Thy last day, and destroy the devil’s nest at Rome.” The impression produced by such language may be more easily imagined than described. In the course of a fortnight 4000 copies of the address were sold, and before the end of the month a new edition was in print, and speedily bought up. This address was followed in October by a treatise “On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” in which he attacked with vigour the abuses into which its sacramental system had grown. He now looked back, as it were, with pity on his former indulgence to the Papacy. In the course of two years, and during his disputes with Eck, Emser, and others, his eyes had become greatly opened. After hearing and reading the “artful subtleties of these champions,” he was certain that the Papacy was “the kingdom of Babylon, and the power of Nimrod the mighty hunter.” “I must now deny that there are. seven sacraments, and bind them to three—baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and penance; and even these are led by the Church of Rome into a wretched prison, and the Church is robbed of all her liberty.” He defended, as he never ceased to do, the literal reality of Christ’s presence in the Supper; but he warmly combated the Thomist definitions of that presence, resting on a supposed Aristotelic distinction of subject and accident; and he zealously maintained the right of the laity to the cup as well as the bread. These two works, with his sermon “On the Liberty of a Christian Man,” mark the very crisis of the movement. Appealing, on the one hand, to the’ excited national interests of Germany, and, on the other hand, to its reviving spiritual life, they struck, with a happy success, the two most powerful chords then vibrating in the nation. “They contain,” Ranke says, “the kernel of the whole Reformation.” They concentrate its spirit while they signalise its triumph.

The publication of the papal bull just at this time consummated the crisis. It had been obtained by the reckless importunity of Eck nearly a year before; but great difficulty had been felt in making it public, owing to the enthusiasm now so widely spread on behalf of the reformer. At length Eck fixed upon Leipzig as the place where he supposed that he could promulgate it most safely under the protection of Duke George; but even here, where so recently he had been hailed by the university as the champion of the Papacy, the students now seized and insulted him, and he was glad to make his escape. He fled for his life to Erfurt; but here too the students attacked him, laid hold of the bull, and threw it into the river, saying, “It is a bubble, let it swim.” These demonstrations were crowned by Luther’s own daring act on the 10th of December (1520). Assembling the doctors, students, and citizens at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg on this memorable day, a fire of wood was kindled, and Luther, clad in his cowl, and with the papal bull and decretals in his hand, approached it, and cast them into the fire, saying, “As thou hast vexed the saints of God, so mayest thou be consumed in eternal fire.” This irrevocable act severed Luther for ever from the Papacy. There was no compromise—no truce even henceforth possible. The battle must be fought out.

With such high-hearted courage and clear trust in God on the part of the reformer, there was Ito doubt on whose side the victory would declare.

The moment of Luther’s proudest triumph was now at hand. Charles V. had recently succeeded to the Empire. He was only twenty years of age, inexperienced, and unconscious of all that was going on in Germany. “He understood neither its language nor its thoughts.” Naturally of a superstitious temper, his sacerdotal leanings were already manifest, and the papal party, with Aleander (the papal nuncio) at their head, failed in no efforts to influence him against the Reformation. They urged him to take some decided step—to cause the books of Luther to be burned throughout the Empire, and so to declare his determination to uphold the cause of the Church. The inclinations of Charles admit of no doubt; but he was too ignorant of the real meaning and magnitude of the movement, and hemmed in by too many practical difficulties, to be able to adopt and carry out a clear and uncompromising policy. Opposed to the zealots of the Papacy, the extreme national party approached him with the boldest suggestions. He was pressed to call the free national party, led by Hutten and Sickingen, to his aid. Hutten himself addressed him, offering to serve him day and night without fee or reward, if only he would throw off the trammels of a foreign ecclesiastical yoke, and place himself at the head of the German people. Add to this that he was mainly indebted for his imperial dignity to Luther’s friend, the Elector Frederick, and the complexities of his position may be imagined.

After being crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 28th January 1521, Charles had proceeded to Worms, where he assembled his first Diet of the sovereigns and states of Germany. It was the great object of Aleander, Eck, and the rest of the papal leaders, to have Luther condemned unheard, and with this view Aleander made a lengthened speech at the Diet. They succeeded so far as to induce the Emperor to issue an edict for the destruction of the reformer's books but the Estates refused to publish it, unless Luther had first an opportunity of confronting his accusers under a safe-conduct, and answering, before the Diet, to the charges preferred against him. Nothing could be more congenial to the present temper of Luther. It was exactly what he most desired—to confess the truth before the assembled powers of Germany. He made up his mind at once to obey the summons, and wrote bravely to Spalatin (the Elector’s secretary)—“I will be carried hither sick, if I cannot go sound. . . . Expect everything from me but flight or retractation.”

Nothing can well be grander—more epical in its contrasts, more scenic in its adjuncts, and more impressive in its issues—than this passage in the history of the Reformation,—the journey of Luther, with its strange and mixed incidents—his appearance in Worms—his appearance before the Diet—his prayer beforehand—his fears—his triumph—the excitements that followed his triumph—his seizure on his return, and residence in the Wartburg. It would be difficult to find anywhere a nobler subject for a great poem.

He set out on his mission on the 2d of April, with the sympathy and good wishes of all the Wittenbergers. He travelled in a carriage provided for the occasion by the town-council; and his friends of the university and others assembled to witness his departure. The imperial herald, clad in the insignia of his office, rode first, his servant followed; Luther and his comrades brought up the rear. His progress resembled a triumph. As he passed towns and villages the people came forth in numbers to greet him. At the hotels where he rested, crowds thronged to see him, and there were “drinking of healths, good cheer, and the delights of music.” As he left Nuremberg a priest sent after him a portrait of the Italian reformer Savonarola, with a letter exhorting him “to be manful for the truth, and to stand by God, and God would stand by him.” At Weimar the imperial messengers were seen posting on the walls an edict summoning all who were in possession of his books to deliver them up to the magistrates. The herald turned to inquire if he were moved by such a sign of danger. “I will go on,” he said, “although they should kindle a fire between Wittenberg and Worms to reach to heaven. I will confess Christ in Behemoth’s mouth, between his great teeth.” At Erfurt he preached, and a crowd of tender associations rushed upon his mind as he gazed at the convent, the scene of his spiritual birth; and as he stood by the grave of one of his former companions, a brother monk, “How calmly he sleeps, and I”—was his remark to Jonas, while he leaned upon the gravestone absorbed in thought, until warned of the lateness of the hour. At Eisenach, amidst the scenes of his boyhood, he was seized with a dangerous illness. His strength and spirits forsook him; but he went on in calm trust in God. At Heidelberg he held a public discussion: and undeterred by the remonstrances which were now poured upon him even from his best friends—unreduced by the well-meant intentions of Sickingen and others to retain him in safety at his castle of Ehrenberg—he approached the imperial city. Even Spalatin was alarmed, and sought to stay him. “Carry back,” was the answer, “that I am resolved to enter Worms in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, although as many devils should set at me as there are tiles on the house-tops.”

It has been supposed by Audin, Luther’s modern Romanist biographer, that it was on this occasion,—as the old towers of Worms came in sight, and the full greatness of the crisis rushed upon him,—that, rising in his carriage, he chanted his famous hymn, “Ein’ feste Burg isi unser Gott,” “the Marseillaise,” Audin significantly adds, “of the Reformation.” The suggestion adds a grandeur to the event; but there is reason to believe that the hymn was not composed till some years later.

He entered Worms on the 16th of April, escorted by his friends and numbers of the Saxon noblemen, who had gone out to meet him. As he passed through the city, so great was the crowd that pressed to see him, that he had to be conducted through back courts to his inn. More than two thousand assembled at the Deutscher Hof where he took up his abode, and till late at night his room was thronged by nobles and clergy who came to visit him. After his room was cleared, a different picture might have been seen. The bold monk prostrated himself in an agony of prayer. His voice was heard in snatches by his friends as it rose to heaven, and it is impossible to read anything more touching and awe-inspiring than the fragments of this prayer which have been preserved. On the following day he received intimation to attend before the Diet and in the afternoon of the same day, amidst the dark frowns of Spanish warriors and ecclesiastics, and the whisperings of affectionate and courageous sympathy, he was ushered into the imperial presence.

The scene which presented itself in the Diet was one well fitted to move the boldest heart. The Emperor sat elevated on his throne, with the three ecclesiastical Electors on his right, the three secular on his left; his brother Frederick sat on a chair of state below the throne the nobles, knights, and delegates of free cities around; the papal nuncio in front. “The sun, verging to its setting, streamed full on the scene of worldly magnificence, strangely varied by every colour and form of dress: the Spanish cloak of yellow silk, the velvet and ermine of the Electors, the red robes of cardinals, the violet robes of bishops, the plain sombre garb of deputies of towns and priests.” The monk stood alone, with his head uncovered, pale with recent illness and hard study, with little or none as yet of the brave rotundity of his later age,—a pale and slight figure “encircled by the dark flashing line of the mailed chivalry of Germany.” Little wonder that at first he seemed bewildered, and that his voice sounded feeble and hesitating. His old adversary Eck was the spokesman of his party, and loudly challenged him—first, as to whether he acknowledged the books before him as his writings; and, secondly, as to whether he would retract and recall them. To the first question he replied in the affirmative; in answer to the second, he demanded a day’s delay to consider and frame an answer. Many thought he was at length frightened, and would temporise; but on the following day they were abundantly undeceived. All signs of timidity and hesitation had then vanished; he had had time to meditate an adequate reply, and in a speech of two hours, first in German and then in Latin, he expressed his determination to abide by what he had written, and called upon the Emperor and the States to take into consideration the evil condition of the Church, lest God should visit the Empire and German nation with His judgments. Being pressed for a direct answer, yea or nay, whether he would retract, he answered finally in the memorable words—“Unless I be convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare retract anything; for my conscience is a captive to God’s word, and it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I take my stand: I can do no otherwise. So help me God. Amen.”

The picture is barely half sketched; many strokes half humorous, half sublime, with a touching quaintness stamping them upon the memory, would be required to complete it. Sympathy with his position, and with his grand and simple daring, expressed itself in numerous incidents. The old warrior Freundsberg, the most gallant and renowned soldier of his day, greeted him as he entered the imperial presence. “My good monk, you are going a path such as I and our captains, in our hardest fight, have never trodden. But if you are sure of your cause, go on in God’s name: fear not; He will not leave you.” On his return to his hotel, Eric, the aged Duke of Brunswick, sent him a silver can of Einbech beer, in token of his admiration and sympathy; and the weary monk, parched with thirst, raised it to his lips, and took a long draught, saying, as he set it down, “As Duke Eric has remembered me this day, so may our Lord Christ remember him in his last struggle.” Again Philip, the young Landgrave of Hesse, is seen riding into the courtyard of the inn, leaping from his horse, and as he rushes into Luther’s room, greeting him with the words, “My dear Doctor, how do matters go with you?” “My gracious lord, with God’s help all will go well,” was the reply. “They tell me,” the Landgrave added, “that you teach that, if a woman be married to an old man, it is lawful for her to quit him for a husband that is younger.” “No, no! Your highness must not say so.” “Well, Doctor, if your cause is just, may God aid you;” and seizing the reformer's hand, he shook it warmly, and disappeared as abruptly as he had come.

Luther tarried some days in Worms, and various attempts were made to bring him to a more submissive frame of mind, but all without success. Questioned at length as to whether any remedy remained for the unhappy dissensions which had sprung up, “I know not of any,” he replied, “except the advice of Gamaliel: ‘If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.’ Let the Emperor and the States write to the Pope that they are fully assured that, if the doctrines so much decried are not of God, they will perish by a natural death within two or three years.” Strong in the confidence of the truth he taught, he fearlessly appealed to the future. He was at once courageous and humble—courageous in the face of man, and humble before God—the true spirit in which alone the world can ever be reformed.

He received instructions to depart from Worms and return home on the 25th of April. On the following day he set out. He appears himself to have been in high spirits, excited and braced by the conflict in which he had been engaged. A letter which he wrote from Frankfort to his friend Lucas Cranach, gives a lively impression of his cheerfulness in the caricature which it presents of the proceedings of the Diet. “My service, dear Gossip Lucas. I supposed that his imperial majesty would have assembled some fifteen doctors or so, and have overcome the monk by argument: but no, nothing of the sort. ‘Are the books yours?’—‘Yes.’ ‘Will you revoke or not?’—‘No.’ ‘Get you gone then.’ O blind Germans, what children we are, to let the Roman apes scoff at and befool us in this way. Give my gossip, your dear wife, my greeting; and I trust she will keep well till I have the pleasure of seeing her again. . . . For a short time we must be silent and endure. A little time, and ye shall not see me; and again a little time, and ye shall see me. I hope it will prove so with us.” These last expressions, as well as others still more explicit in the letter, show that he was cognisant of the design of his friends to seize and conceal him in some place of safety for a while; but how the design was to be carried out, or where he was to be placed, “seems to have been but indistinctly communicated to him. He has himself narrated the circumstances of his seizure. As he left Eisenach, where he had preached and solaced himself for a single day in the company of his relatives, and was passing a narrow defile near the fortress of Altenstein, two armed horsemen, with armed attendants, rushed upon him and his friends. The waggoner was thrown to the ground. His brother, James Luther, who was of the party, fled and escaped, and Amsdorf was held fast while Luther was hurried away, mount upon a horse; and after various turnings, with the view of eluding all pursuit, he was safely lodged in the old castle of the Wartburg. The affair was made to assume the appearance of violence for obvious reasons, but in reality Amsdorf was conscious of the intentions of Luther’s friends, and he and the waggoner of course were quietly permitted to pursue their way after the horsemen had departed with their prisoner.