John Tulloch · 9 of 27

I. Luther. · Part 4

It would be idle for us to enter into the merits of this controversy, and in truth its merits are no longer to us what they were to the combatants themselves. The course of opinion has altered this as well as many other points of dispute, so that under the same names we no longer really discuss the same things. There are probably none, with any competent knowledge of the subject, who would care any longer to defend the exact position either of Luther or Erasmus. Both are right, and both are wrong. Man is free, and yet grace is needful; and the philosophic refinements of Erasmus, and the wild exaggerations of Luther, have become mere historic dust, which would only raise a cloud by being disturbed. Past polemics on such subjects become through time utterly dead and unmeaning and while we look for a living face in them, we find a mere empty skull—a hollow logical bone-work, from which the spirit has fled long years ago. There is reason to think that the controversy was far from being satisfying to Luther. He gave his adversary, indeed, as good as he got,—admitted his eloquence, but ridiculed his arguments, comparing them to “peasecods or waste matter served up in vessels of gold and silver.” His heavy strokes would be felt beneath all the light indifference of the scholar and he was strong in the conscious possession of a deep moral conviction that lay nearer to the truth than any self-assertion of mere Pelagian subtlety but then the torturing dilemmas of his dogmatic position, set in the clear light of common sense, and expounded by his adversary with a far more philosophic comprehension than he himself possessed, drove him into untenable and even unmoral assertions—assertions which could scarcely have been satisfactory to his own mind at the time, and which, on cool reflection afterwards, must have appeared less and less so. He is said to have consequently never recalled with pleasure the results of the controversy, and never to have forgiven Erasmus for having forced him into it. He spoke of him afterwards as “that amphibolous being sitting calmly and unmoved on the throne of amphibology, while he cheats and deludes us by his double meaning, covert phraseology, and claps his hands when he sees us involved in his insidious figures of speech, as a spider rejoices over a captured fly.” This bitter feeling seems to have sprung up towards Erasmus from the determination with which he pursued the subject, and drew out in his cool and sinuous way the moral perplexities involved in Luther’s bold statements. He replied in two treatises under the name of Hyperaspistes, and sought to overwhelm the reformer by ingenious criticism, and exposures of his prolixity and misrepresentations. “That venomous serpent Erasmus,” Luther says in a letter to Spalatin, “has been once more writing against me.” And again, “The treacherous Erasmus has brought forth two books against me, as full of cunning poison as a serpent.” But perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the dislike which he henceforth cherished for his adversary is contained in a letter addressed to his son John: “Erasmus is an enemy to all religion, and a decided adversary to Christ, a counterpart to Epicurus and Lucian. This I, Martin Luther, have written to you, my dear son John, and through you to all my children and the holy Christian church.”

It was in the same year, and amidst these contentions, that Luther took that step in his life which more than any other, except the affair of the Landgrave of Hesse, has exposed him to animadversion. On Trinity Sunday, the 11th of June (1525), he was married to Catherine von Bora, one of nine nuns who had escaped two years previously from the convent of Nimptsch and taken refuge in Wittenberg. His intention took his friends by surprise, and even alarmed Melanchthon to the point of urgent remonstrance. But Luther had made up his mind, after various delays; and although he was concerned at the disapprobation of his old friend, he was not to be moved from his purpose; and Melanchthon, when he saw this, had the good sense to change his tone, and to write to Camerarius in apology of the step. Luther does not lead us to suppose that he was moved to marriage at this time by any strong affection for the object of his choice. “I am not on fire with love,” he said, “but I esteem my wife.” In point of fact, he had originally destined Catherine for some one else, and it was only after this project fell through that he thought of marrying her himself. It is difficult, perhaps, to explain all the reasons which influenced. him. He more than once in his letters pleads the advice and desire of his father. He pleads also a sense of duty and obedience to the divine command. “I am anxious,” he writes to Amsdorf, “to be myself an example of what I have taught. It is the will of God I follow in this matter.” Melanchthon, in the letter to Camerarius, to which we have alluded, says somewhat vaguely, “It may seem strange that Luther should marry at such an unpropitious time, when Germany has especial need of his great and noble mind. But I think the case was as follows:—You are aware that Luther is far from being one of those who hate men and fly their society; you know his daily habits, and so you may conjecture the rest. It is not to be wondered at that his generous and great soul was in some way softened.”

It was a sufficiently startling step, no doubt, for a monk to marry a nun in the face of the world—and this, too, when the cause of the Reformation was undergoing its first violent shock in connection with the outbreak of the Zwickau fanatics and the peasants’ insurrection. But when we look at it apart from these incidents, which do not essentially touch the character of the act, however they may affect our judgment of its prudence, it seems as if a very unnecessary noise had been made about the marriage of the reformer. Even if it had been more obviously imprudent than it can be fairly said to be, there is no reason why it should have invoked such harsh and invidious judgments as even Protestant writers, like Sir James Stephen, have passed upon it. If in anything a man is entitled to please himself, it is surely in taking a wife at such a mature age as that which Luther had now reached; and while certain sacred associations were no doubt outraged by the step, no true and natural feelings were violated. In so far as the act is to be judged by its consequences, it is well known that it proved of the happiest character. It is impossible to conceive a more simple and beautiful picture of domestic life than in the letters and Table-talk of Luther henceforth. There is a richer charm and tenderness and pathos in his whole existence,—rather enhanced than otherwise by the slight glimpses we get of the fact that Catherine had a spirit and will of her own, and that while she greatly loved and reverenced the Doctor, she nevertheless took her own way in such things as seemed good to her. Some of the names under which he delights to address her seem to point to this little element of imperiousness, though in such a frank and merry way as to show that it was a well understood subject of banter between them, and nothing more. “My Lord Kate,” “My Emperor Kate,” are some of his titles; and again, in a more circumlocutory humour, “For the hands of the rich dame of Zuhlsdorf, Doctoress Catherine Luther:” sometimes simply and familiarly, “Kate my rib.” Nowhere does his genial nature overflow more than in these letters, running riot in all sorts of freakish extravagance, yet everywhere touched with the deep mellow light of a healthy and happy affection. What a pleasant glimpse and sly humour in the following: “In the first year of our marriage my Catherine was wont to seat herself beside me whilst I was studying; and once not having what else to say, she asked me, Sir Doctor! in Russia is not the maître d’hôtel the brother of the Margrave?’” And again, in the last year of his life, and when he is on that journey of friendliness and benevolence from which he is never to return to his dear household, the old spirit of wild fun and tender affection survives. He writes to his “heart-loved housewife Catherine Lutherinn, Doctoress Zuhlsdorferess, Sow Marketress, and whatever more she may be, grace and peace in Christ, and my old poor love in the first place.”

Catherine is said by Erasmus to have been very beautiful. Her portraits taken by Lucas Cranach represent her with a round full face, straight nose, and full tender eyes. Luther himself was greatly taken by the likeness, and threatened to send it to the Council of Mantua, to see if it would not influence the holy fathers there assembled to determine in favour of the marriage rather than the celibacy of the clergy.

Of this marriage there were born six children to Luther, and his relations to his children open up still deeper veins of love and kindness than any we have contemplated. Especially his eldest son Johnny and his daughter Magdalen seem to have been dear to his heart; and there is nothing more pathetic in any life than his wild yet resigned grief by the deathbed of the latter, who was taken from him in her fourteenth year.” “I love her very dearly,” he cried; “but, dear Lord, since it is Thy will to take her from me, I shall gladly know her to be with Thee.” And as he saw her lying in her coffin he said, “Thou darling Lena, how happy art thou now! Thou wilt arise again and shine as a star. I am joyful in the spirit, yet after the flesh I am very sad. How strange it is to know so surely that she is at peace and happy, and yet to be so sad.” “We have ever before us,” again he says, “her features, her words, her gestures, her every action in life, and on her deathbed, my darling, my all-beautiful, all-obedient daughter. Even the death of Christ cannot tear her from my thoughts, as it ought to do.”

The birth of his eldest son was an event of immense interest to the reformer. “I have received,” he writes to Spalatin, “from my most excellent and dearest wife a little Luther, by God’s wonderful mercy. Pray for me that Christ will preserve my child from Satan, who, I know, will try all that he can to harm me in him.” And then again, in answer to Spalatin’s good wishes, and in reference to his own hopes of the same character, “John, my fawn, together with my doe, return their warm thanks for your kind benediction; and may your doe present you with just such another fawn, on whom I may ask God’s blessing in turn. Amen.” As the little fellow grows and is about a year old, he writes to Agricola, “My Johnny is lively and strong, and a voracious, bibacious little fellow.”

It was to this son that he wrote when stationed at Coburg, during the Diet of Augsburg, that most beautiful and touching of all child-letters that ever was written. “Mercy and peace in Christ, my dear little son. I am glad to hear that you learn your lessons well and pray diligently. Go on doing so, my child. When I come home I will bring you a pretty fairing. I know a very pretty pleasant garden, and in it there are a great many children, all dressed in little golden coats, picking up nice apples, and pears, and cherries, and plums, under the trees. And they sing and jump about and are very merry; and besides, they have got beautiful little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles. Then I asked the man to whom the garden belonged, whose children they were, and he said, ‘These are children who love to pray and learn their lessons, and do as they are bid;’ then I said, ‘Dear sir, I have a little son called Johnny Luther; may he come into this garden too?’ And the man said, ‘If he loves to pray, and learn his lessons, and is good, he may; and Philip and Joe too.’” And so on in the same tender and beautiful strain, mixing the highest counsel and richest poetry with the most child-like interest. Only a very sound and healthy spirit could have preserved thus fresh and simple the flow of natural feeling amid the hardening contests of the world, and the arid subtleties of theological controversy.

In the year 1527, two years. after his marriage, Luther fell into a dangerous sickness and general depression of spirits, from the latter of which he was only fully aroused by the dangers besetting the German nation, and the very integrity of Christendom itself, by the threatened advance of the Turks. This was in the year 1529—the same year in which, on the invitation of the Landgrave of Hesse, he engaged in his famous conference with Zwingli, Bucer, and Œcolampadius at Marburg. The Landgrave, who, whatever may have been his personal failings, was always one of the most warm and zealous, and withal energetic and intelligent, supporters of the Reformation, was hopefully eager of establishing a union between the Swiss and German Reformers. Zwingli and his party shared in his eagerness, and were willing to concede much to Luther if only he would heartily extend to them the right hand of fellowship. In the matter of the sacrament of the Supper, however, Luther was not to be moved. His mind here remained shut against all argument; and although he is supposed to have admitted, under the name of Consubstantiation, a modification of the Catholic tradition, he adhered substantially to that tradition in all its significance to the last: he held to the literal reality of the Divine presence in the Eucharist, and would recognise nothing but rationalism, or, as he called it, mathematics, in the reasonings of Zwingli and his companions.

The conference was held in an inner compartment of the castle of the Landgrave. Many who had come from distances to be present were disappointed in gaining admission. Carlstadt had requested to be allowed to attend, but Luther would on no account consent: lie remembered, no doubt, his interview with him at Jena, and the violence with which he had obtruded upon him his contradictions on this very subject. The Prince opened the audience on the morning of the 2d of October, accompanied by certain of his counsellors and courtiers, and the professors of the University. The numbers who were present vary considerably in the respective accounts—the Swiss say about twenty-four, the German about fifty. A table covered with a velvet cloth separated the disputants; on the one side of it sat Luther and Melanchthon, on the other Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Before the discussion commenced, Luther is said to have taken a piece of chalk and written in large characters upon the velvet cloth the words, “This is My body”—not a very hopeful beginning!

The chancellor, Feige, on the part of the Prince, exhorted the disputants to approach the subject in a spirit of fairness and moderation. Luther, thereupon, after some preliminary objections to the general views of the Swiss, which were overruled, took up the keynote he had already started, and protested against the views of his opponents on the ground that the words of Scripture were explicit and conclusive, “This is My body.” Œcolampadius urged in reply that these words must be interpreted figuratively, in such a manner as other and corresponding expressions—viz., “I am the door”; “I am the true vine.” Luther admitted the figurative character of the latter expressions, but would not admit that there was an analogy between them and the solemn words he had put forward in the front of the controversy. Then they verged to a prolonged discussion as to the meaning of Christ’s language in the famous sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel. The Swiss divines maintained that the passage, “It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing,” was conclusive against the doctrine of transubstantiation. Luther denied that it applied to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and besides argued that the flesh did not and could not mean the flesh of Christ, but our own flesh. To say that “the flesh of Christ profiteth nothing,” appeared to him blasphemy. Christ Himself said, “His flesh bringeth life”; “but if there be spiritual life in Christ,” it was urged, “what does it matter to eat His flesh?” “That,” Luther replied with heat, “is a rationalistic question; it is enough that the Word of God says so: what the Word states, we are bound to believe without doubt or cavil. The world must obey God’s precepts; we must all obey His Word. Worms, listen! It is your God who speaks!” Zwingli joined in the discussion, and it waxed more vehement. He hinted, not very reverently, that Luther did nothing but repeat the same words; Christ Himself had decisively explained what He meant by His words. “Your language,” Luther retorted, “savours of the camp.”

The announcement of dinner fortunately-interrupted the disputants for the time. After dinner the debate was resumed, and carried on throughout the forenoon and afternoon of the following day. Zwingli became metaphysical and argumentative. “A body,” he said, “cannot be without place; but Christ’s body is in heaven, therefore it cannot be in the bread of the Eucharist.” Luther was not to be moved from his point by such an argument, although he afterwards acknowledged its force. When pressed by Zwingli’s dialectics, he exclaimed, “I will have nothing to do with your mathematics: God is above mathematics!” “The body of Christ,” he held, “was in the bread as the sword in the scabbard, or the Holy Ghost in the dove;” and finally, rising from his seat, he tore the velvet cloth from the table, and held up before the Assembly the large letters, “This is My body,” as an unassailable watchword to be received in evidence of his doctrine by all good Christians.

It was obvious that continued discussion could lead to no good. Luther’s dogmatism was unyielding. All his deepest feelings, as well as his theological reputation, were involved in his maintaining his ground. He had taken his stand, as he supposed, upon the Word of God, and nothing should make him swerve from that. It was proposed by the Landgrave that the conference should terminate by a declaration from both sides that, although they disagreed in this particular, they concurred in the essentials of faith, and recognised each other as Christian brethren. The Zwinglian party eagerly embraced the proposal; but Luther hesitated: he would not acknowledge a hearty brotherhood where there were variances on so vital a point as the Sacrament of the Altar. Zwingli was affected to tears by this coldness. Luther said, “We cannot accept you as brethren, but we are willing to hold out to you the hand of charity.” The warmheartedness of the Swiss responded cordially even to this offer, and the conference terminated with apparent good-will and commendatory prayers on both sides.

Upon the whole, Luther appears nowhere less admirable than in this famous conference—not, indeed, for the opinion which he defended, but for the irate and dogmatic spirit in which he defended it. He kept ever singing the same song, as Zwingli said, “This is My body.” His tone was very unreasoning and arbitrary, and there is scarcely any absurdity that might not be based on Scripture in the manner in which he used it, and considered it enough to use it, on this occasion. There is something, moreover, painful and unworthy of him in the terms in which he characterised the Swiss divines in his letters, and in the unbending, unkindly temper in which he met the warmly proffered friendship of Zwingli. The character of the latter—frank, gallant, fearless,—a soldier-reformer, with his Greek Testament, and nothing else, in his hand—appears in a far higher light throughout the debate. But he and Luther never could understand one another; and when, in the end of this very year, the German heard of the death of the brave Swiss on the sanguinary field of Cappel, fighting for the liberties of his country, there is. no sympathy, but a grating harshness, in the tone in which he received the sad news. The Marburg Conference, however, was not without some friendly and conciliatory results even in matters of doctrine, as the fourteen articles, which were at length signed on both sides, testify. It did not serve to unite Luther and the Swiss more cordially, for he continued to write with an increasing vehemence against them; but it served to show, in all things save that of the Eucharist, a substantial unity of doctrine in the two great branches of the Reformation, meeting locally together at so many points.

In the following year we find Luther at Coburg during the memorable meeting of the Diet at Augsburg. The reformer had proposed to attend the Diet in company with the Elector, but a letter met them at Coburg intimating that the ban of the Empire was still in force against him, and it was therefore wisely resolved that he should not make his appearance at the Diet, but leave the conduct of affairs in this great crisis to Melanchthon, whose more courtly manner and cooler judgment were in any case supposed to be more fit for bringing the pending negotiations to some favourable termination. Luther, however, removed to Coburg to be conveniently at hand for consultation; and, secure in the strong fortress of the Elector there, he abandoned himself to a most joyful interest in nature, and a variety of literary studies, while the news of the Diet floated to his solitude; and, in return, he counselled, encouraged, and warned Melanchthon. On the 22d of April he writes: “I have at length arrived at my Sinai, dear Philip; put of this Sinai I will make a Sion: I will raise thereon three tabernacles—one to the Psalmist, one to the Prophets, and one to Esop. It is truly a pleasant place, and most agreeable for study, unless your absence saddens me. . . . I reside in a vast abode which overlooks the castle; I have the key of all its apartments. There are about thirty persons together, of whom twelve are watchers by night, and two sentinels besides, who are constantly posted on the castle heights.” On the 29th of June, while matters are proceeding, and Melanchthon writes complaining of his difficulties, he replies, “To-day your last news has reached me, in which you advise me of your labours, your dangers, your tears, as if I were ignorant of these things, or sat in a bed of roses, and bore no part of your cares. Would to God my cause were such as admitted of tears!” When he hears of the Confession being read in open Diet, he is in great spirits; but the fears and anxieties of Melanchthon, who desired not merely to maintain the reformed doctrines, but to effect a reconciliation with the Romanists, speedily bring disquiet to him. He fell back upon that in which he was always stronger than Melanchthon—Faith. “Our cause is deposited,” he said, “in a commonplace not to be found in your book, Philip; that commonplace is Faith.” And in the same grand strain he wrote to the chancellor, Bruck: “I was lately looking out of my window, when I beheld two wonderful sights. First, I saw the stars and God’s fair bright firmament, but nowhere any pillars on which the Master-builder had poised this lofty frame; yet the heavens did not fall in, and the firmament stood quite fast. But there are some who search for such pillars, and would anxiously grasp and feel them, and because they cannot do this, fear and tremble lest the heavens should fall. The other spectacle I saw was a great dense cloud floating over us, so charged and burdened that it might be likened to a mighty sea, and yet I could perceive nothing on which it rested, no coffer in which it was enclosed and yet it fell not, but, greeting us with a black frown, passed on. When it had passed, a rainbow appeared—a weak, thin, and slight bow, which soon vanished into the clouds. Now, there are some who think more of the dense cloud than of the dim and slender bow, and are in great terror lest the clouds should pour down an eternal deluge. . . . I write to your worship in this familiar yet serious style, because I rejoice to hear that your courage has not failed. Our rainbow, indeed, appears a frail hope on which to rest, and their clouds are dark and lowering; but in the end it will be seen who will gain the victory.”

In this confident manner Luther encouraged his friends, and feared for himself no evil. It is a grand and heroic spectacle this solitary man in the old fortress of Coburg, looking out upon nature and the world with such a calm clear trust in God, interested in the proceedings at Augsburg, yet feeling, with the fulness of a living faith, how much greater was Providence than the negotiations of princes,—and with what mysterious safety the wheels of the world’s progress were revolving, whatever the poor pride of man might counsel or devise. The jackdaws and rooks, as they convened in circling crowds in front of his window, seemed to him not an unfitting emblem of the “magnanimous kings, dukes, and nobles,” consulting over the affairs of the realm at Augsburg. As he watched their movements, and saw them “flap their wings and strut with mimic majesty, not clad in royal attire, but glossy black or dark grey, having eyes of ashy paleness, and singing the same unvarying song, diversified only by the weaker tones or more discordant notes of the young or inexperienced,” he thought of the great princes and lords busying themselves with pompous and weak inconsequence over the movements of the world, which they vainly imagined within their control. The fresh and living glance with which he looked from his high and lonely windows upon the heavens above, and the joyous creatures of nature around, compare well with the hesitations and uncertainties which marked the proceedings at Augsburg, even on the part of his friends.

The result justified the confidence of Luther. Melanchthon, both from natural timidity and an ardent love of peace, would have made too many concessions—concessions which in the end would not have proved effectual. The favourable reception which his Confession at first met with, had encouraged not only him but Jonas and others to believe that a modus vivendi might be found between the Lutherans and the adherents of the Papacy within the Empire. “Christ,” cried Jonas, “is in the Diet, and He does not keep silence; the Word of God is indeed not to be bound.” For a moment even Luther seemed to see a prospect of conciliation, and in his enthusiasm wrote a letter of entreaty to Cardinal Albert. “Do not let us fall out. Do not let us ruin Germany. Let there be liberty of conscience, and let us save our fatherland.” But when it was proposed to unite, at the sacrifice of the truth, and even to grant the supremacy of the Pope (for so far was Melanchthon disposed to yield), Luther’s heart rose high within him, and he would brook no such policy. “You have begun a marvellous work,” he wrote to his friend, “to make Luther and the Pope agree together; but the Pope will say that he will not, and Luther begs to be excused. Take care. Your negotiations have no chance of success unless the Pope renounces Papacy.” The demands of the Romanists increased with Melanchthon’s concessions, until at length even he would go no farther. He shrank from all acknowledgment of private masses, auricular confession, and the merit of good works. The negotiations came to an end. Threats were made, and the imperial troops called within the free city of Augsburg; but Luther cried from his watch-tower, “Threats will not kill. There will be no war.” His friends escaped, all hope of reconciliation terminated, and threatening as the danger seemed, it passed away. The truth was, as Luther saw, that the Emperor was in no position to make war upon the Protestant princes. The Turks were hovering on the borders of the Empire. Henry VIII. of England and Francis were in alliance, watching their opportunity of breaking down Charles’s power. The Emperor, and even his brother Ferdinand of Austria, acknowledged the difficulties of the crisis, and the political compromise was allowed to remain as it was.

The Diet at Augsburg marks a turning-point in the history of the Reformation and in the career of the reformer. The Confession then presented by Melanchthon, known as the Confessio Augustana, remains the great dogmatic monument of German Protestantism. It is rightly associated with the name of Melanchthon, who digested its contents into their final form but the substance of the articles was Luther’s. He had written them on various occasions, and they embraced all the main points of his theology, positive and negative, from the doctrine of the Trinity to his disavowal of the special tenets of Romanism. The first part enumerates the “chief articles of faith” held by the princes and churches that had embraced the Reformation—twenty-one articles in all, stated with clearness, brevity, and moderation. The second part, under the distinct heading of “Articles in which are recounted the abuses which have been changed or corrected,” extends to only seven articles—the Lord’s Supper, the marriage of priests, the sacrifice of the mass, auricular confession, fasts and traditions, monastic vows, ecclesiastical power—points all of which had called forth the reformer’s polemical energy, and which are accordingly stated with much more detail and amplitude. They occupy more than double the space of the preceding articles.