<div1 type =
“Title Page” title = “History of the Christian Church”>
This volume constitutes the first part of
THE
HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION
by Philip Schaff
It is included as Volume VII in the 8-volume
HISTORY
OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Volume VIII in this series, on the Swiss
Reformation, completes the 2-volume unit
on he The History of the Reformation
HISTORY
of
the
CHRISTIAN
CHURCH*
by
PHILIP SCHAFF
professor of church history in the union theological
seminary
new york
<foreign lang="la">Christianus sum: Christiani nihil a me alienum puto
</foreign>
VOLUME
VII.
MODERN
CHRISTIANITY
THE
GERMAN REFORMATION
This is a reproduction of the Second Edition, Revised
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type = “Preface”>
PREFACE.
I
publish the history of the Reformation in advance of the concluding volume on
the Middle Ages, which will follow in due time.
The
Reformation was a republication of primitive Christianity, and the inauguration
of modern Christianity. This makes it, next to the Apostolic age, the most
important and interesting portion of church history. The Luther and Zwingli
celebrations of 1883 and 1884 have revived its memories, and largely increased
its literature; while scholars of the Roman Church have attempted, with great
ability, an ultramontane reconstruction of the history of Germany and Europe
during the period of the Reformation. The Cultur-Kampf is still going on. The
theological battles of the sixteenth century are being fought over again in
modern thought, with a slow but steady approach to a better understanding and
filial settlement. Protestantism with its freedom can afford to be fair and
just to Romanism, which is chained to its traditions. The dogma of papal
infallibility is fatal to freedom of investigation. Facts must control dogmas,
and not dogmas facts. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is the
aim of the historian; but truth should be told in love (Eph. 4:15).
The
signs of the times point to a new era in the ever onward March of Christ’s
kingdom. God alone foreknows the future, and sees the end from the beginning.
We poor mortals know only "in part," and see "in a mirror,
darkly." But, as the plans of Providence unfold themselves, the prospect
widens, old prejudices melt away, and hope and charity expand with our vision.
The historian must be impartial, without being neutral or indifferent. He must
follow the footsteps of Divine Providence, which shapes our ends, and guides
all human events in the interest of truth, righteousness, and peace.
I
have collected much material for a comprehensive history of the Reformation, in
the libraries of Europe, during several summer visits (thirteen in all), and
digested it at home. I have studied the Luther literature in Berlin, the
Zwingli literature in Zuerich, the Calvinistic literature in Geneva and Paris,
the English and Scotch Reformation in London, Oxford, and Edinburgh. Two years
ago I revisited, with great satisfaction, the classical localities made
memorable by the Reformation,—Wittenberg, Eisleben, Eisenach, the Wartburg,
Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Heidelberg, Zuerich, Geneva,—and
found kind friends and Christian brethren everywhere. At Marburg, Coburg,
Augsburg, I had been before. By way of contrast I made in the same year an
interesting tour through Roman-Catholic Spain, the land of Ferdinand and
Isabel, Charles V., Philip II., and Ignatius Loyola, and compared her former and
present state with the Protestant North. In Italy I have been three times,
including a three-months sojourn in Rome. A visit to the places of events
brings one nearer to the actors, and puts one almost into the position of a
witness.
This
volume embraces, besides a general introduction to modern church history, the
productive period of the German Reformation, from its beginning to the Diet of
Augsburg (1530), and the death of Luther (1546), with a concluding estimate of
the character and services of this extraordinary man. I have used the new
Weimar edition of his works as far as published; for the other parts, Walch and
the Erlangen edition. Of modern Protestant historians I have chiefly consulted
Ranke (my teacher), and Koestlin (my friend), with whose views, on Luther and
the Reformation I am in essential harmony. I have also constantly compared the
learned Roman-Catholic works of Doellinger, and Janssen, besides numerous
monographs. The reader will find classified lists of the sources and literature
in all leading sections (e.g., pp. 94, 99, 183, 272, 340, 399, 421, 494, 579,
612, 629, 695, 706), and occasional excursions into the field of the philosophy
of church history (as in the introductory chapter, and in §§ 49, 56, 63, 79,
87, 99, etc.). In these I have endeavored to interpret the past in the light of
the present, and to make the movements of the sixteenth century more
intelligible through their results in the nineteenth. For we must judge the
tree by its fruits. "God’s mills grind slowly, but wonderfully fine."
I
am conscious of the defects of this new attempt to reproduce the history of the
Reformation, which has so often been told by friend and foe, but too often in a
partisan spirit. I have done the best I could. God expects no more from his
servants than faithfulness in the use of their abilities and opportunities.
The Author.
New
York, September, 1888.
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CONTENTS.
––––––––––
HISTORY OF THE
REFORMATION.
1517 – 1648.
CHAPTER I.
ORIENTATION.
mediaeval and
modern christianity
.
§ 1. The
Turning Point of Modern History.
§ 2.
Protestantism and Romanism.
§ 3.
Necessity of a Reformation.
§ 4. The
Preparations for the Reformation.
§ 5. The
Genius and Aim of the Reformation.
§ 6. The
Authority of the Scriptures.
§ 7.
Justification by Faith.
§ 8. The
Priesthood of the Laity.
§ 9. The
Reformation and Rationalism.
§ 10.
Protestantism and Denominationalism.
§ 11.
Protestantism and Religious Liberty.
§ 12.
Religious intolerance and Liberty in England and America.
§ 13.
Chronological Limits.
§ 14.
General Literature on the Reformation.
FIRSTBOOK.
THE GERMAN
REFORMATION TILL THE DIET OF AUGSBURG,
1517–1530.
CHAPTER II.
LUTHER’S
TRAINING FOR THE REFORMATION, (l483–1517).
§ 15.
Literature of the German Reformation.
§ 16.
Germany and the Reformation.
§ 17. The
Luther Literature.
§ 18.
Luther’s Youth and Training.
§ 19.
Luther in the University of Erfurt.
§ 20.
Luther’s Conversion.
§ 21.
Luther as a Monk.
§ 22.
Luther and Staupitz.
§ 23. The
Victory of Justifying Faith.
§ 24.
Luther Ordained to the Priesthood.
§ 25.
Luther in Rome.
§ 26. The
University of Wittenberg.
§ 27.
Luther as Professor till 1517.
§ 28.
Luther and Mysticism. The Theologia Germanica.
§ 29. The
Penitential Psalms. The Eve of the Reformation.
CHAPTER III.
THE GERMAN
REFORMATION FROM THE PUBLICATION OF LUTHER’S THESES TO THE DIET OF WORMS,
(1517–1521).
§ 30. The
Sale of Indulgences.
§ 31.
Luther and Tetzel.
§ 32. The
Ninety-five Theses. Oct. 31, 1517.
§ 33. The
Theses-Controversy. 1518.
§ 34.
Rome’s Interposition. Luther and Prierias. 1518.
§ 35.
Luther and Cajetan. October, 1518.
§ 36.
Luther and Miltitz. January, 1519.
§ 37. The
Leipzig Disputation. June 27-July 15, 1519.
§ 38.
Philip Melanchthon. Literature (Portrait).
§ 39.
Melanchthon’s Training.
§ 40.
Melanchthon’s Early Labors.
§ 41.
Luther and Melanchthon.
§ 42.
Ulrich von Hutten and Luther.
§ 43.
Luther’s Crusade against Popery. 1520.
§ 44.
Address to the German Nobility.
§ 45. The
Babylonian Captivity of the Church. October, 1520.
§ 46.
Christian Freedom.—Luther’s Last
Letter to the Pope. October, 1520.
§ 47. The
bull of Excommunication. June 15, 1520.
§ 48.
Luther burns the Pope’s bull, and forever breaks with Rome. Dec. 10, 1520.
§ 49. The
Reformation and the Papacy.
§ 50.
Charles V.
§ 51. The
Ecclesiastical Policy of Charles V.
§ 52. The
Abdication of Charles, and his Cloister Life.
§ 53. The
Diet of Worms. 1521.
§ 54.
Luther’s Journey to Worms.
§ 55.
Luther’s Testimony before the Diet. April 17 and 18, 1521.
§ 56.
Reflections on Luther’s Testimony at Worms.
§ 57.
Private Conferences with Luther. The Emperors Conduct.
§ 58. The
Ban of the Empire. May 8 (26), 1521.
§ 59.
State of Public Opinion. Popular Literature.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GERMAN
REFORMATION FROM THE DIET OF WORMS TO THE PEASANTS’ WAR, (1521–1525).
§ 60. A
New Phase in the History of the Reformation.
§ 61.
Luther at the Wartburg. 1521–1522.
§ 62.
Luther’s Translation of the Bible.
§ 63. A
Critical Estimate of Luther’s Version.
§ 64.
Melanchthon’s Theology.
§ 65.
Protestant Radicalism. Disturbances at Erfurt.
§ 66. The
Revolution at Wittenberg. Carlstadt and the New Prophets.
§ 67.
Luther returns to Wittenberg.
§ 68.
Luther restores Order in Wittenberg.—The End of Carlstadt.
§ 69. The
Diets of Nuernberg, A.D. 1522–1524. Adrian VI.
§ 70.
Luther and Henry VIII
§ 71.
Erasmus.
§ 72.
Erasmus and the Reformation.
§ 73. The
Free-will Controversy. 1524–1527.
§ 74.
Wilibald Pirkheimer.
§ 75. The
Peasants’ War. 1523–1525.
CHAPTER V.
THE INNER
DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMATION FROM THE
PEASANTS’ WAR
TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, (1525–1530).
§ 76. The
Three Electors.
§ 77.
Luther’s Marriage. 1525.
§ 78.
Luther’s Home Life.
§ 79.
Reflections on Clerical Family Life.
§ 80.
Reformation of Public Worship.
§ 81.
Prominent Features of Evangelical Worship.
§ 82.
Beginnings of Evangelical Hymnody.
§ 83.
Common Schools.
§ 84.
Reconstruction of Church Government and Discipline.
§ 85.
Enlarged Conception of the Church. Augustin, Wiclif, Hus, Luther.
§ 86.
Changes in the Views on the Ministry. Departure from the Episcopal Succession.
Luther ordains a Deacon, and consecrates a Bishop.
§ 87.
Relation of Church and State.
§ 88.
Church Visitation in Saxony.
§ 89.
Luther’s Catechisms. 1529.
§ 90. The
Typical Catechisms of Protestantism.
CHAPTER VI.
PROPAGATION
AND PERSECUTION OF PROTESTANTISM.
§ 91.
Causes and Means of Progress.
§ 92. The
Printing-Press and the Reformation.
§ 93.
Protestantism in Saxony.
§ 94. The
Reformation in Nuernberg.
§ 95. The
Reformation in Strassburg. Martin Bucer.
§ 96. The
Reformation in North Germany.
§ 97.
Protestantism in Augsburg and South Germany.
§ 98. The
Reformation in Hesse, and the Synod of Homberg. Philip of Hesse, and Lambert of
Avignon.
§ 99. The
Reformation in Prussia. Duke Albrecht and Bishop Georg Von Polenz.
§ 100.
Protestant Martyrs.
CHAPTER VII.
THE
SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.
§ 101.
Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism.
§ 102. The
Anabaptist Controversy. Luther and Huebmaier.
§ 103. The
Eucharistic Controversy.
§ 104.
Luther’s Theory before the Controversy.
§ 105.
Luther and Carlstadt.
§ 106.
Luther and Zwingli.
§ 107. The
Marburg Conference, A.D. 1529. (With Facsimile of Signatures.)
§ 108. The
Marburg Conference continued. Discussion and Result.
§ 109.
Luther’s Last Attack on the Sacramentarians. His Relation to Calvin.
§ 110.
Reflections on the Ethics of the Eucharistic Controversy.
§ 111. The
Eucharistic Theories compared. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE POLITICAL
SITUATION BETWEEN 1526 AND 1529.
§ 112. The
First Diet of Speier, and the Beginning of the Territorial System. 1526.
§ 113. The
Emperor and the Pope. The Sacking of Rome, 1527.
§ 114. A
War Panic, 1528.
§ 115. The
Second Diet of Speier, and the Protest of 1529.
§ 116. The
Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope.
The
Crowning of the Emperor. 1529.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DIET AND
CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG. (1530).
§ 117. The
Diet of Augsburg.
§ 118. The
Negotiations, the Recess, the Peace of Nuernberg.
§ 119. The
Augsburg Confession.
§ 120. The
Roman Confutation and the Protestant Apology.
§ 121. The
Tetrapolitan Confession.
§ 122.
Zwingli’s Confession to the Emperor Charles.
§ 123.
Luther at the Coburg.
§ 124.
Luther’s Public Character, and Position in History.
§ 125. Ein
feste Burg ist unser Gott.
</deleted>
HISTORY
of
MODERN CHRISTIANITY
THE REFORMATION.
FROM A.D. 1517 TO 1648.
</div1><div2 type =
"Chapter" n="I" title="Orientation">
CHAPTER
I.
ORIENTATION.
Now
the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty.—2 Cor. 3:17.
<div3 type = "Section"
n="1" title="The Turning Point of Modern History">
§ 1. The
Turning Point of Modern History.
The
Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of
Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the Middle
Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave,
directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward movement, and made
Protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization.
The
age of the Reformation bears a strong resemblance to the first century. Both
are rich beyond any other period in great and good men, important facts, and
permanent results. Both contain the ripe fruits of preceding, and the fruitful
germs of succeeding ages. They are turning points in the history of mankind.
They are felt in their effects to this day, and will be felt to the end of
time. They refashioned the world from the innermost depths of the human soul in
its contact, with the infinite Being. They were ushered in by a providential
concurrence of events and tendencies of thought. The way for Christianity was
prepared by Moses and the Prophets, the dispersion of the Jews, the conquests
of Alexander the Great, the language and literature of Greece, the arms and
laws of Rome, the decay of idolatry, the spread of skepticism, the aspirations
after a new revelation, the hopes of a coming Messiah. The Reformation was
preceded and necessitated by the corruptions of the papacy, the decline of
monasticism and scholastic theology, the growth of mysticism, the revival of
letters, the resurrection of the Greek and Roman classics, the invention of the
printing press, the discovery of a new world, the publication of the Greek
Testament, the general spirit of enquiry, the striving after national
independence and personal freedom. In both centuries we hear the creative voice
of the Almighty calling light out of darkness.
The
sixteenth century is the age of the renaissance in religion, literature, and
art. The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and freedom. The snows of a
long winter were fast, melting before the rays of the vernal sun. The world
seemed to be renewing its youth; old things were passing away, all things were
becoming new. Pessimists and timid conservatives took alarm at the threatened
overthrow of cherished notions and institutions, and were complaining,
fault-finding and desponding. A very useless business. Intelligent observers of
the signs of the times looked hopefully and cheerfully to the future. "O
century!" exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten, "the studies flourish, the
spirits are awake, it is a luxury to live." And Luther wrote in 1522:
"If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like
this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good living
and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in all the arts, has not
been since Christ came into the world. And how numerous are the sharp and
intelligent people who leave nothing hidden and unturned: even a boy of twenty
years knows more nowadays than was known formerly by twenty doctors of
divinity."
The
same may be said with even greater force of the nineteenth century, which is
eminently an age of discovery and invention, of enquiry and progress. And both
then as now the enthusiasm for light and liberty takes two opposite directions,
either towards skepticism and infidelity, or towards a revival of true religion
from its primitive sources. But Christianity triumphed then, and will again
regenerate the world.
The
Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies and movements
of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of Christian life, and saved
the world from a disastrous revolution. For the Reformation was neither a
revolution nor a restoration, though including elements of both. It was
negative and destructive towards error, positive and constructive towards
truth; it was conservative as well as progressive; it built up new institutions
in the place of those which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this
extent it has succeeded.
Under
the motherly care of the Latin Church, Europe had been Christianized and
civilized, and united into a family of nations under the spiritual government
of the Pope and the secular government of the Emperor, with one creed, one
ritual, one discipline, and one sacred language. The state of heathenism and
barbarism at the beginning of the sixth century contrasts with the state of
Christian Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century as midnight darkness
compared with the dawn of the morning. But the sun of the day had not yet
arisen.
All
honor to the Catholic Church and her inestimable services to humanity. But
Christianity is far broader and deeper than any ecclesiastical organization. It
burst the shell of mediaeval forms, struck out new paths, and elevated Europe
to a higher plane of intellectual, moral and spiritual culture than it had ever
attained before.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="2" title="Protestantism and Romanism">
§ 2.
Protestantism and Romanism.
Protestantism
represents the most enlightened and active of modern church history, but not
the whole of it.
Since
the sixteenth century Western Christendom is divided and runs in two distinct
channels. The separation may be compared to the Eastern schism of the ninth
century, which is not healed to this day; both parties being as firm and
unyielding as ever on the doctrinal question of the Filioque, and the more
important practical question of Popery. But Protestantism differs much more
widely from the Roman church than the Roman church differs from the Greek, and
the Protestant schism has become the fruitful mother of minor divisions, which
exist in separate ecclesiastical organizations.
We
must distinguish between Catholicism and Romanism. The former embraces the ancient
Oriental church, the mediaeval church, and we may say, in a wider sense, all
the modern evangelical churches. Romanism is the Latin church turned against
the Reformation, consolidated by the Council of Trent and completed by the
Vatican Council of 1870 with its dogma of papal absolutism and papal
infallibility. Mediaeval Catholicism is pre-evangelical, looking to the
Reformation; modern Romanism is anti-evangelical, condemning the Reformation,
yet holding with unyielding tenacity the oecumenical doctrines once sanctioned,
and doing this all the more by virtue of its claim to infallibility.
The
distinction between pre-Reformation Catholicism and post-Reformation Romanism,
in their attitude towards Protestantism, has its historical antecedent and
parallel in the distinction between pre-Christian Israel which prepared the way
for Christianity, and post-Christian Judaism which opposed it as an apostasy.
Catholicism
and Protestantism represent two distinct types of Christianity which sprang
from the same root, but differ in the branches.
Catholicism
is legal Christianity which served to the barbarian nations of the Middle Ages
as a necessary school of discipline; Protestantism is evangelical Christianity
which answers the age of independent manhood. Catholicism is traditional,
hierarchical, ritualistic, conservative; Protestantism is biblical, democratic,
spiritual, progressive. The former is ruled by the principle of authority, the
latter by the principle of freedom. But the law, by awakening a sense of sin
and exciting a desire for redemption, leads to the gospel; parental authority
is a school of freedom; filial obedience looks to manly self-government.
The
characteristic features of mediaeval Catholicism are intensified by Romanism,
yet without destroying the underlying unity.
Romanism
and orthodox Protestantism believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and in one divine-human Lord and Saviour of the race. They accept in common the
Holy Scriptures and the oecumenical faith. They agree in every article of the
Apostles’ Creed. What unites them is far deeper, stronger and more important
than what divides them.
But
Romanism holds also a large number of "traditions of the elders,"
which Protestantism rejects as extra-scriptural or anti-scriptural; such are
the papacy, the worship of saints and relics, transubstantiation, the sacrifice
of the mass, prayers and masses for the dead, works of supererogation,
purgatory, indulgences, the system of monasticism with its perpetual vows and
ascetic practices, besides many superstitious rites and ceremonies.
Protestantism,
on the other hand, revived and developed the Augustinian doctrines of sin and
grace; it proclaimed the sovereignty of divine mercy in man’s salvation, the
sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of faith, and the sufficiency of
Christ’s merit as a source of justification; it asserted the right of direct
access to the Word of God and the throne of grace, without human mediators; it
secured Christian freedom from bondage; it substituted social morality for
monkish asceticism, and a simple, spiritual worship for an imposing
ceremonialism that addresses the senses and imagination rather than the
intellect and the heart.
The
difference between the Catholic and Protestant churches was typically
foreshadowed by the difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity in the
apostolic age, which anticipated, as it were, the whole future course of church
history. The question of circumcision or the keeping of the Mosaic law, as a
condition of church membership, threatened a split at the Council of Jerusalem,
but was solved by the wisdom and charity of the apostles, who agreed that Jews
and Gentiles alike are "saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus"
(Acts 15:11). Yet even after the settlement of the controversy by the Jerusalem
compromise Paul got into a sharp conflict with Peter at Antioch on the same
question, and protested against his older colleague for denying by his timid
conduct his better conviction, and disowning the Gentile brethren. It is not
accidental that the Roman Church professes to be built on Peter and regards him
as the first pope; while the Reformers appealed chiefly to Paul and found in
his epistles to the Galatians and Romans the bulwark of their anthropology and
soteriology, and their doctrine of Christian freedom. The collision between
Paul and Peter was only temporary; and so the war between Protestantism and
Romanism will ultimately pass away in God’s own good time.
The
Reformation began simultaneously in Germany and Switzerland, and swept with
astonishing rapidity over France, Holland, Scandinavia, Bohemia, Hungary,
England and Scotland; since the seventeenth century it has spread by emigration
to North America, and by commercial and missionary enterprises to every Dutch
and English colony, and every heathen land. It carried away the majority of the
Teutonic and a part of the Latin nations, and for a while threatened to
overthrow the papal church.
But
towards the close of the sixteenth century the triumphant march of the
Reformation was suddenly arrested. Romanism rose like a wounded giant, and made
the most vigorous efforts to reconquer the lost territory in Europe, and to
extend its dominion in Asia and South America. Since that time the numerical
relation of the two churches has undergone little change. But the progress of
secular and ecclesiastical history has run chiefly in Protestant channels.
In
many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon the
Mediaeval Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant Reformation,
and is far less corrupt and far more prosperous in Protestant than in Papal
countries. She was driven to a counter-reform which abolished some of the most
crying abuses and infused new life and zeal into her clergy and laity. No papal
schism has disgraced her history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the
character of Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives
chiefly of the past, but uses for her defence all the weapons of modern
warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the Greek or the
Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of both
hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of human beings in
all countries and climes; she extends her educational, benevolent and missionary
operations all over the globe; she advances in proportion as Protestantism
degenerates and neglects its duty; and by her venerable antiquity, historical
continuity, visible unity, centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred
art, and ascetic piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the
common people are kept in ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious
authority with its claim to open the gates of heaven and hell and to shorten
the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil she is the
strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is every reason to
believe that she will last to the end of time.
Thus
the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in check, and
ought to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good works.
The
unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they are the source of many evils, have
also the good effect of multiplying the agencies for the conversion of the
world and facilitating the free growth of every phase of religious life. The
evil lies not so much in the multiplicity of denominations, which have a
mission to fulfil, as in the spirit of sectarianism and exclusivism, which
denies the rights and virtues of others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century
is not a finale, but a movement still in progress. We may look hopefully
forward to a higher, deeper and broader Reformation, when God in His overruling
wisdom and mercy, by a pentecostal effusion of His Holy Spirit upon all the
churches, will reunite what the sin and folly of men have divided. There must
and will be, in the fullest sense of Christ’s prophecy, "one flock, one
Shepherd" (John 10:16).1
</div3><div3
type=“Section” n=”3” title=“Necessity of a Reformation”>
§3. Necessity of a Reformation.
The
corruption and abuses of the Latin church had long been the complaint of the
best men, and even of general councils. A reformation of the head and the
members was the watchword at Pisa, Constance, and Basel, but remained a pium
desiderium for a whole century.
Let
us briefly review the dark side in the condition of the church at the beginning
of the sixteenth century.
The
papacy was secularized, and changed into a selfish tyranny whose yoke became
more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism had indeed been
removed, but papal morals, after a temporary improvement, became worse than
ever during the years 1492 to 1521. Alexander VI. was a monster of iniquity;
Julius II. was a politician and warrior rather than a chief shepherd of souls;
and Leo X. took far more interest in the revival of heathen literature and art
than in religion, and is said to have even doubted the truth of the gospel
history.
No
wonder that many cardinals and priests followed the scandalous example of the
popes, and weakened the respect of the laity for the clergy. The writings of
contemporary scholars, preachers and satirists are full of complaints and
exposures of the ignorance, vulgarity and immorality of priests and monks.
Simony and nepotism were shamefully practiced. Celibacy was a foul fountain of
unchastity and uncleanness. The bishoprics were monopolized by the youngest
sons of princes and nobles without regard to qualification. Geiler of
Kaisersberg, a stern preacher of moral reform at Strassburg (d. 1510), charges
all Germany with promoting ignorant and worldly men to the chief dignities,
simply on account of their high connections. Thomas Murner complains that the
devil had introduced the nobility into the clergy, and monopolized for them the
bishoprics.2 Plurality of office and absence from
the diocese were common. Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz was at the same time
archbishop of Magdeburg and bishop of Halberstadt. Cardinal Wolsey was
archbishop of York while chancellor of England, received stipends from the
kings of France and Spain and the doge of Venice, and had a train of five
hundred servants. James V. of Scotland (1528–1542) provided for his
illegitimate children by making them abbots of Holyrood House, Kelso, Melrose,
Coldingham and St. Andrews, and intrusted royal favorites with bishoprics.
Discipline
was nearly ruined. Whole monastic establishments and orders had become
nurseries of ignorance and superstition, idleness and dissipation, and were the
objects of contempt and ridicule, as may be seen from the controversy of
Reuchlin with the Dominicans, the writings of Erasmus, and the Epistolae
Virorum Obscurorum.
Theology
was a maze of scholastic subtleties, Aristotelian dialectics and idle
speculations, but ignored the great doctrines of the gospel. Carlstadt, the
older colleague of Luther, confessed that he had been doctor of divinity before
he had seen a complete copy of the Bible. Education was confined to priests and
nobles. The mass of the laity could neither read nor write, and had no access to
the word of God except the Scripture lessons from the pulpit.
The
priest’s chief duty was to perform, by his magic words, the miracle of
transubstantiation, and to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the living and
the dead in a foreign tongue. Many did it mechanically, or with a skeptical
reservation, especially in Italy. Preaching was neglected, and had reference,
mostly, to indulgences, alms, pilgrimages and processions. The churches were
overloaded with good and bad pictures, with real and fictitious relics.
Saint-worship and image-worship, superstitious rites and ceremonies obstructed
the direct worship of God in spirit and in truth.
Piety
which should proceed from a living union of the soul with Christ and a
consecration of character, was turned outward and reduced to a round of
mechanical performances such as the recital of Paternosters and Avemarias,
fasting, alms-giving, confession to the priest, and pilgrimage to a holy
shrine. Good works were measured by the quantity rather than the quality, and vitiated
by the principle of meritoriousness which appealed to the selfish motive of
reward. Remission of sin could be bought with money; a shameful traffic in
indulgences was carried on under the Pope’s sanction for filthy lucre as well
as for the building of St. Peter’s Dome, and caused that outburst of moral
indignation which was the beginning of the Reformation and of the fearful
judgment on the Church of Rome.
This
is a one-sided, but not an exaggerated description. It is true as far as it
goes, and needs only to be supplemented by the bright side which we shall
present in the next section.
Honest
Roman Catholic scholars, while maintaining the infallibility and consequent
doctrinal irreformability of their church, admit in strong terms the decay of
discipline and the necessity of a moral reform in the sixteenth century.3
The
best proof is furnished by a pope of exceptional integrity, Adrian VI., who
made an extraordinary confession of the papal and clerical corruption to the
Diet of Nürnberg in 1522, and tried earnestly, though in vain, to reform his
court. The Council of Trent was called not only for the extirpation of heresy,
but in part also "for the reformation of the clergy and Christian
people;"4 and Pope Pius IV., in the bull of confirmation, likewise
declares that one of the objects of the Council was "the correction of
morals and the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline."5
On
the other hand, it must be admitted that the church was more than once in a far
worse condition, during the papal schism in the fourteenth, and especially in
the tenth and eleventh centuries; and yet she was reformed by Pope Hildebrand
and his successors without a split and without an alteration of the Catholic
Creed.
Why
could not the same be done in the sixteenth century? Because the Roman church in the critical moment resisted
reform with all her might, and forced the issue: either no reformation at all,
or a reformation in opposition to Rome.
The
guilt of the western schism is divided between the two parties, as the guilt of
the eastern schism is; although no human tribunal can measure the share of
responsibility. Much is due, no doubt, to the violence and extravagance of the
Protestant opposition, but still more to the intolerance and stubbornness of
the Roman resistance. The papal court used against the Reformation for a long
time only the carnal weapons of political influence, diplomatic intrigue,
secular wealth, haughty pride, scholastic philosophy, crushing authority, and
bloody persecution. It repeated the course of the Jewish hierarchy, which
crucified the Messiah and cast the apostles out of the synagogue.
But
we must look beyond this partial justification, and view the matter in the
light of the results of the Reformation.
It
was evidently the design of Providence to develop a new type of Christianity
outside of the restraints of the papacy, and the history of three centuries is
the best explanation and vindication of that design. Every movement in history
must be judged by its fruits.
The
elements of such an advance movement were all at work before Luther and Zwingli
protested against papal indulgences.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="4" title="The Preparations for the Reformation">
§ 4. The
Preparations for the Reformation.
C.
Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation. Hamburg, 1841, 2d ed. 1866, 2 vols.
(Engl. trans. by R. Menzies, Edinb. 1855, 2 vols.). C. de Bonnechose:
Réformateurs avant réforme du xvi. siècle. Par. 1853, 2 vols. A good résumé by
Geo. P. Fisher: The Reformation. New York, 1873, ch. III. 52–84; and in the
first two lectures of Charles Beard: The Reformation, London, 1883, p. 1–75.
Comp., also the numerous monographs of various scholars on the Renaissance, on
Wiclif, Hus, Savonarola, Hutten, Reuchlin, Erasmus, etc. A full account of the
preparation for the Reformation belongs to the last chapters of the History of
Mediaeval Christianity (see vol. V.). We here merely recapitulate the chief
points.
Judaism
before Christ was sadly degenerated, and those who sat in Moses’ seat had
become blind leaders of the blind. Yet "salvation is of the Jews;"
and out of this people arose John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, the Messiah,
and the Apostles. Jerusalem, which stoned the prophets and crucified the Lord,
witnessed also the pentecostal miracle and became the mother church of
Christendom. So the Catholic church in the sixteenth century, though corrupt in
its head and its members, was still the church of the living God and gave birth
to the Reformation, which removed the rubbish of human traditions and reopened
the pure fountain of the gospel of Christ.
The
Reformers, it should not be forgotten, were all born, baptized, confirmed, and
educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them had served as priests
at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to the pope on their conscience.
They stood as closely related to the papal church, as the Apostles and
Evangelists to the Synagogue and the Temple; and for reasons of similar
urgency, they were justified to leave the communion of their fathers; or
rather, they did not leave it, but were cast out by the ruling hierarchy.
The
Reformation went back to first principles in order to go forward. It struck its
roots deep in the past and bore rich fruits for the future. It sprang forth
almost simultaneously from different parts of Europe and was enthusiastically
hailed by the leading minds of the age in church and state. No great movement
in history—except Christianity itself—was so widely and thoroughly prepared as
the Protestant Reformation.
The
reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the conflict of the
Emperors with the Popes; the contemplative piety of the mystics with their
thirst after direct communion with God; the revival of classical literature;
the general intellectual awakening; the biblical studies of Reuchlin, and
Erasmus; the rising spirit of national independence; Wiclif, and the Lollards
in England; Hus, and the Hussites in Bohemia; John von Goch, John von Wesel,
and Johann Wessel in Germany and the Netherlands; Savonarola in Italy; the
Brethren of the Common Life, the Waldenses, the Friends of God,—contributed
their share towards the great change and paved the way for a new era of
Christianity. The innermost life of the church was pressing forward to a new
era. There is scarcely a principle or doctrine of the Reformation which was not
anticipated and advocated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Luther
made the remark that his opponents might charge him with having borrowed
everything from John Wessel if he had known his writings earlier. The fuel was
abundant all over Europe, but it required the spark which would set it ablaze.
Violent
passions, political intrigues, the ambition and avarice of princes, and all
sorts of selfish and worldly motives were mixed up with the war against the
papacy. But they were at work likewise in the introduction of Christianity
among the heathen barbarians. "Wherever God builds a church, the devil
builds a chapel close by." Human nature is terribly corrupt and leaves its
stains on the noblest movements in history.
But,
after all, the religious leaders of the Reformation, while not free from
faults, were men of the purest motives and highest aims, and there is no nation
which has not been benefited by the change they introduced.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="5" title="The Genius and Aim of the Reformation">
§ 5. The
Genius and Aim of the Reformation.
Is.
Aug. Dorner: On the formal, and the material Principle of the Reformation. Two
essays, first published in 1841 and 1857, and reprinted in his Gesammelte
Schriften, Berlin, 1883, p. 48–187. Also his History of Protestant Theology,
Engl. trans. 1871, 2 vols.
Phil.
Schaff: The Principle of Protestantism, Chambersburg, Penn., 1845 (German and
English); Protestantism and Romanism, and the Principles of the Reformation,
two essays in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York, 1885. p.
124–134. Also Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. 203–219.
Dan.
Schenkel: Das Princip des Protestantimus. Schaffhausen, 1852 (92 pages). This
is the concluding section of his larger work, Das Wesen des Protestantismus, in
3 vols.
K. F.
A. Kahnis: Ueber die Principien des Protestatismus. Leipzig, 1865. Also his
Zeugniss von den Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus gegen Dr. Hengstenberg.
Leipzig, 1862.
Charles
Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation to Modern
Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures for 1883. London, 1883. A Unitarian
view, written with ample learning and in excellent spirit.
Henry
Wace and C. A. Buchheim: First Principles of the Reformation, or the 95 Theses
and three Primary Works of Dr. M. Luther. London, 1885.
The
literature on the difference between Lutheran and Reformed or Calvinistic
Protestantism is given in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, l. 211.
The
spirit and aim of evangelical Protestantism is best expressed by Paul in his
anti-Judaistic Epistle to the Galatians: "For freedom did Christ set us
free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of
bondage." Christian freedom is so inestimable a blessing that no amount of
abuse can justify a relapse into a state of spiritual despotism and slavery.
But only those who have enjoyed it, can properly appreciate it.
The
Reformation was at first a purely religious movement, and furnishes a striking
illustration of the all-pervading power of religion in history. It started from
the question: What must a man do to be saved? How shall a sinner be justified before God, and attain peace
of his troubled conscience? The
Reformers were supremely concerned for the salvation of the soul, for the glory
of Christ and the triumph of his gospel. They thought much more of the future
world than of the present, and made all political, national, and literary
interests subordinate and subservient to religion.6
Yet
they were not monks, but live men in a live age, not pessimists, but optimists,
men of action as well as of thought, earnest, vigorous, hopeful men, free from
selfish motives and aims, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, equal to any who
had preceded them since the days of the Apostles. From the centre of religion
they have influenced every department of human life and activity, and given a
powerful impulse to political and civil liberty, to progress in theology,
philosophy, science, and literature.
The
Reformation removed the obstructions which the papal church had interposed
between Christ and the believer. It opened the door to direct union with him ,
as the only Mediator between God and man, and made his gospel accessible to
every reader without the permission of a priest. It was a return to first
principles, and for this very reason also a great advance. It was a revival of
primitive Christianity, and at the same time a deeper apprehension and
application of it than had been known before.
There
are three fundamental principles of the Reformation: the supremacy of the
Scriptures over tradition, the supremacy of faith over works, and the supremacy
of the Christian people over an exclusive priesthood. The first may be called the
objective, the second the subjective, the third the social or ecclesiastical
principle.7
They
resolve themselves into the one principle of evangelical freedom, or freedom in
Christ. The ultimate aim of evangelical Protestantism is to bring every man
into living union with Christ as the only and all-sufficient Lord and Saviour
from sin and death.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="6" title="The Authority of the Scriptures">
§ 6. The
Authority of the Scriptures.
The
objective principle of Protestantism maintains that the Bible, as the inspired
record of revelation, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice; in
opposition to the Roman Catholic coordination of Scripture and ecclesiastical
tradition, as the joint rules of faith.
The
teaching of the living church is by no means rejected, but subordinated to the
Word of God; while the opposite theory virtually subordinates the Bible to
tradition by making the latter the sole interpreter of the former and confining
interpretation within the limits of an imaginary consensus patrum. In the
application of the Bible principle there was considerable difference between
the more conservative Lutheran and Anglican Reformation, and the more radical
Zwinglian and Calvinistic Reformation; the former contained many
post-scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions, usages and institutions, which
the latter, in its zeal for primitive purity and simplicity, rejected as
useless or dangerous; but all Reformers opposed what they regarded as
anti-scriptural doctrines; and all agreed in the principle that the church has
no right to impose upon the conscience articles of faith without clear warrant
in the Word of God.
Every
true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the
Scriptures, which has "first, second, third, infinite draughts."
While the Humanists went back to the ancient classics and revived the spirit of
Greek and Roman paganism, the Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in
the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They
were fired by an enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since
the days of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached
again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of priests
only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the vernacular tongues
of Europe, and made a book of the people. Every Christian man could henceforth
go to the fountain-head of inspiration, and sit at the feet of the Divine
Teacher, without priestly permission and intervention. This achievement of the
Reformation was a source of incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a
few years Luther’s version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin
Vulgate had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more
Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before the
Reformation.
We
must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made possible by
the previous invention of the art of printing and by the subsequent education
of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved the sacred Scriptures through
ages of ignorance and barbarism; the Latin Bible was the first gift of the
printing press to the world; fourteen or more editions of a German version were
printed before 1518; the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to
the liberality of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch
scholar in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with
the aid of Jerome’s Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale were made.
The
Roman church, while recognizing the divine inspiration and authority of the
Bible, prefers to control the laity by the teaching priesthood, and allows the
reading of the Scriptures in the popular tongues only under certain
restrictions and precautions, from fear of abuse and profanation. Pope Innocent
III. was of the opinion that the Scriptures were too deep for the common
people, as they surpassed even the understanding of the wise and learned.
Several synods in Gaul, during the thirteenth century, prohibited the reading
of the Romanic translation, and ordered the copies to be burnt. Archbishop
Berthold, of Mainz, in an edict of January 4th, 1486, threatened with
excommunication all who ventured to translate and to circulate translations of
sacred books, especially the Bible, without his permission. The Council of
Constance (1415), which burnt John Hus and Jerome of Prague, condemned also the
writings and the hopes of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into
the English tongue, to the flames: and Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and
chancellor of England, denounced him as that "pestilent wretch of damnable
heresy who, as a complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of
the Scriptures into his mother tongue." Pope Pius IV. (1564), in the
conviction that the indiscriminate reading of Bible versions did more harm than
good (plus detrimenti quam utilitiatis), would not allow laymen to read the
sacred book except by special permission of a bishop or an inquisitor. Clement
VIII. (1598) reserved the right to grant this permission to the Congregation of
the Index. Gregory XV. (1622), and Clement XI. (in the Bull Unigenitus, 1713),
repeated the conditional prohibition. Benedict XIV., one of the liberal popes,
extended the permission to read the Word of God in the vernacular to all the
faithful, yet with the proviso that the translation be approved in Rome and
guarded by explanatory notes from the writings of the fathers and Catholic
scholars (1757). This excludes, of course, all Protestant versions, even the
very best. They are regarded as corrupt and heretical and have often been
committed to the flames in Roman Catholic countries, especially in connection
with the counter-Reformation of the Jesuits in Bohemia and elsewhere. The first
edition of Tyndale’s New Testament had to be smuggled into England and was
publicly burnt by order of Tunstall, bishop of London, in St. Paul’s
church-yard near the spot from which Bibles are now sent to all parts of the
globe. The Bible societies have been denounced and condemned by modern popes as
a "pestilence which perverts the gospel of Christ into a gospel of the
devil." The Papal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), classes "Societates
Biblicae" with Socialism, Communism, and Secret Societies, calls them
"pests frequently rebuked in the severest terms," and refers for
proof, to several Encyclicals from November 9th, 1846, to August 10th, 1863.8
Such
fulminations against Protestant Bible societies might be in some measure
excused if the popes favored Catholic Bible societies, which would be the best
proof of zeal for the spread of the Scriptures. But such institutions do not
exist. Fortunately papal bulls have little effect in modern times, and in spite
of official prohibitions and discouragements, there are zealous advocates of
Bible reading among modern Catholics, as there were among the Greek and Latin
fathers.9 Nor have the restrictions of the
Council of Trent been able to prevent the progress of Biblical scholarship and
exegesis even in the Roman church.
E pur si muove. The Bible, as well as the earth, moves for all that.
Modern
Protestant theology is much more just to ecclesiastical tradition than the
Reformers could be in their hot indignation against the prevailing corruptions
and against the papal tyranny of their day. The deeper study of ecclesiastical
and secular history has dispelled the former ignorance on the "dark
ages," so called, and brought out the merits of the fathers, missionaries,
schoolmen, and popes, in the progress of Christian civilization.
But
these results do not diminish the supreme value of the sacred Scripture as an
ultimate tribunal of appeal in matters of faith, nor the importance of its
widest circulation. It is by far the best guide of instruction in holy living
and dying. No matter what theory of the mode and extent of inspiration we may
hold, the fact of inspiration is plain and attested by the universal consent of
Christendom. The Bible is a book of holy men, but just as much a book of God,
who made those men witnesses of truth and sure teachers of the way of
salvation.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="7" title="Justification by Faith">
§ 7.
Justification by Faith.
The
subjective principle of Protestantism is the doctrine of justification and
salvation by faith in Christ; as distinct from the doctrine of justification by
faith and works or salvation by grace and human merit. Luther’s formula is sola
fide. Calvin goes further back to God’s eternal election, as the ultimate
ground of salvation and comfort in life and in death. But Luther and Calvin
meant substantially the same thing, and agree in the more general proposition
of salvation by free grace through living faith in Christ (Acts 4:12), in
opposition to any Pelagian or Semi-pelagian compromise which divides the work
and merit between God and man. And this is the very soul of evangelical
Protestantism.10
Luther
assigned to his solifidian doctrine of justification the central position in
the Christian system, declared it to be the article of the standing or falling
(Lutheran) church, and was unwilling to yield an inch from it, though heaven
and earth should collapse.11
This exaggeration is due to his personal experience during his convent
life. The central article of the Christian faith on which the church is built,
is not any specific dogma of the Protestant, or Roman, or Greek church, but the
broader and deeper truth held by all, namely, the divine-human personality and
atoning work of Christ, the Lord and Saviour. This was the confession of Peter,
the first creed of Christendom.
The
Protestant doctrine of justification differs from the Roman Catholic, as
defined (very circumspectly) by the Council of Trent, chiefly in two points.
Justification is conceived as a declaratory and judicial act of God, in
distinction from sanctification, which is a gradual growth; and faith is
conceived as a fiducial act of the heart and will, in distinction from
theoretical belief and blind submission to the church. The Reformers derived
their idea from Paul, the Romanists appealed chiefly to James (2:17–26); but
Paul suggests the solution of the apparent contradiction by his sentence, that
"in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor
uncircumcision, but faith working through love."
Faith,
in the biblical and evangelical sense, is a vital force which engages all the
powers of man and apprehends and appropriates the very life of Christ and all
his benefits. It is the child of grace and the mother of good works. It is the
pioneer of all great thoughts and deeds. By faith Abraham became the father of
nations; by faith Moses became the liberator and legislator of Israel; by faith
the Galilean fishermen became fishers of men; and by faith the noble army of
martyrs endured tortures and triumphed in death; without faith in the risen
Saviour the church could not have been founded. Faith is a saving power. It
unites us to Christ. Whosoever believeth in Christ "hath eternal
life." "We believe," said Peter at the Council of Jerusalem,
"that we shall be saved through the grace of God," like the Gentiles
who come to Christ by faith without the works and ceremonies of the law.
"Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," was Paul’s
answer to the question of the jailor:
"What must I do to be saved?"
Protestantism
does by no means despise or neglect good works or favor antinomian license; it
only subordinates them to faith, and measures their value by quality rather
than quantity. They are not the condition, but the necessary evidence of
justification; they are not the root, but the fruits of the tree. The same
faith which justifies, does also sanctify. It is ever "working through
love" (Gal. 5:6). Luther is often charged with indifference to good works,
but very unjustly. His occasional unguarded utterances must be understood in
connection with his whole teaching and character. "Faith" in his own
forcible language which expresses his true view, "faith is a living, busy,
active, mighty thing and it is impossible that it should not do good without
ceasing; it does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the
question is put, it has done them already, and is always engaged in doing them;
you may as well separate burning and shining from fire, as works from
faith."
The
Lutheran doctrine of Christian freedom and justification by faith alone, like
that of St. Paul on which it was based, was made the cloak of excesses by
carnal men who wickedly reasoned, "Let us continue in sin that grace may
abound" (Rom. 6:1), and who abused their "freedom for an occasion to
the flesh" (Gal. 5:13). All such consequences the apostle cut off at the
outset by an indignant "God forbid."
The
fact is undeniable, that the Reformation in Germany was accompanied and
followed by antinomian tendencies and a degeneracy of public morals. It rests
not only on the hostile testimonies of Romanists and separatists, but Luther
and Melanchthon themselves often bitterly complained in their later years of
the abuse of the liberty of the gospel and the sad state of morals in
Wittenberg and throughout Saxony.12
But
we should remember, first, that the degeneracy of morals, especially the
increase of extravagance, and luxury with its attending vices, had begun in
Catholic times in consequence of discoveries and inventions, the enlargement of
commerce and wealth.13
Nor was it near as bad as the state of things which Luther had witnessed
at Rome in 1510, under Pope Julius II., not to speak of the more wicked reign
of Pope Alexander VI. Secondly, the degeneracy was not due so much to a
particular doctrine, as to the confusion which necessarily followed the
overthrow of the ecclesiastical order and discipline, and to the fact that the
Lutheran Reformers allowed the government of the church too easily to pass from
the bishops into the hands of secular rulers. Thirdly, the degeneracy was only
temporary during the transition from the abolition of the old to the
establishment of the new order of things. Fourthly, the disorder was confined
to Germany. The Swiss Reformers from the start laid greater stress on
discipline than the Lutheran Reformers, and organized the new church on a more
solid basis. Calvin introduced a state of moral purity and rigorism in Geneva
such as had never been known before in the Christian church. The Huguenots of
France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Puritans of England and New England, and
the Presbyterians of Scotland are distinguished for their strict principles and
habits. An impartial comparison of Protestant countries and nations with Roman
Catholic, in regard to the present state of public and private morals and
general culture, is eminently favorable to the Reformation.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section" n="8"
title="The Priesthood of the Laity">
§ 8. The
Priesthood of the Laity.
The
social or ecclesiastical principle of Protestantism is the general priesthood
of believers, in distinction from the special priesthood which stands mediating
between Christ and the laity.
The
Roman church is an exclusive hierarchy, and assigns to the laity the position
of passive obedience. The bishops are the teaching and ruling church; they
alone constitute a council or synod, and have the exclusive power of
legislation and administration. Laymen have no voice in spiritual matters, they
can not even read the Bible without the permission of the priest, who holds the
keys of heaven and hell.
In
the New Testament every believer is called a saint, a priest, and a king.
"All Christians," says Luther, "are truly of the spiritual
estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St.
Paul says, we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve
the others. This is because we have one baptism, alike; one gospel, one faith,
and are all Christians for baptism, gospel and faith, these alone make
spiritual and Christian people." And again: "It is faith that makes
men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and gives them the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit, whereby they become filled with all holy grace and heavenly
power. The inward anointing—this oil, better than any that ever came from the
horn of bishop or pope—gives them not the name only, but the nature, the
purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received who are
believers in Christ."
This
principle, consistently carried out, raises the laity to active co-operation in
the government and administration of the church; it gives them a voice and vote
in the election of the pastor; it makes every member of the congregation
useful, according to his peculiar gift, for the general good. This principle is
the source of religious and civil liberty which flourishes most in Protestant
countries. Religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty. The universal
priesthood of Christians leads legitimately to the universal kingship of free,
self-governing citizens, whether under a monarchy or under a republic.
The
good effect of this principle showed itself in the spread of Bible knowledge
among the laity, in popular hymnody and congregational singing, in the
institution of lay-eldership, and in the pious zeal of the magistrates for
moral reform and general education.
But
it was also shamefully perverted and abused by the secular rulers who seized
the control of religion, made themselves bishops and popes in their dominion,
robbed the churches and convents, and often defied all discipline by their own
immoral conduct. . Philip of Hesse, and Henry VIII. of England, are conspicuous
examples of Protestant popes who disgraced the cause of the Reformation.
Erastianism and Territorialism whose motto is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are
perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The true
development lies in the direction of general education, in congregational
self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent co-operation of the
laity with the ministry in all good works, at home and abroad. In this respect
the Protestants of England, Scotland, and North America, are ahead of the
Protestants on the Continent of Europe. The Roman church is a church of priests
and has the grandest temples of worship; the Lutheran church is a church of
theologians and has most learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is
a church of the Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="9" title="The Reformation and Rationalism">
§ 9. The
Reformation and Rationalism.
G.
Frank: De Luthero rationalismi praecursore. Lips., 1857.
S.
Berger: La Bible an seizième siècle; étude sur les origines de la critique.
Paris, 1879.
Charles
Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in relation, to Modem Thought
and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures). London, 1883. Lect. V.
Comp.
also Lecky: History of Rationalism in Europe. London, 4th ed. 1870, 2 vols.
George P. Fisher: Faith and Rationalism. New York, 1879, revised 1885 (191
pages).
The
Roman Catholic Church makes Scripture and tradition the supreme rule of faith,
laying the chief stress on tradition, that is, the teaching of an infallible
church headed by an infallible Pope, as the judge of the meaning of both.14
Evangelical,
Protestantism makes the Scripture alone the supreme rule, but uses tradition
and reason as means in ascertaining its true sense.
Rationalism
raises human reason above Scripture and tradition, and accepts them only as far
as they come within the limits of its comprehension. It makes rationality or
intelligibility the measure of credibility. We take the word Rationalism here
in the technical sense of a theological system and tendency in distinction from
rational theology. The legitimate use of reason in religion is allowed by the
Catholic and still more by the Protestant church, and both have produced
scholastic systems in full harmony with orthodoxy. Christianity is above
reason, but not against reason.
The
Reformation is represented as the mother of Rationalism both by Rationalistic
and by Roman Catholic historians and controversialists, but from an opposite
point of view, by the former to the credit, by the latter to the disparagement
of both.
The
Reformation, it is said, took the first step in the emancipation of reason: it
freed us from the tyranny of the church. Rationalism took the second step: it
freed us from the tyranny of the Bible. "Luther," says Lessing, the
champion of criticism against Lutheran orthodoxy, "thou great, misjudged
man! Thou hast redeemed us from
the yoke of tradition: who will redeem us from the unbearable yoke of the
letter! Who will at last bring us
a Christianity such as thou would teach us now, such as Christ himself would
teach!"
Roman
Catholics go still further and hold Protestantism responsible for all modern
revolutions and for infidelity itself, and predict its ultimate dismemberment
and dissolution.15 But this charge is
sufficiently set aside by the undeniable fact that modern infidelity and
revolution in their worst forms have appeared chiefly in Roman Catholic
countries, as desperate reactions against hierarchical and political despotism.
The violent suppression of the Reformation in France ended at last in a radical
overthrow of the social order of the church. In Roman Catholic countries, like
Spain and Mexico, revolution has become a chronic disease. Romanism provokes
infidelity among cultivated minds by its excessive supernaturalism.
The
Reformation checked the skepticism of the renaissance, and the anarchical
tendencies of the Peasants’ War in Germany and of the Libertines in Geneva. An
intelligent faith is the best protection against infidelity; and a liberal
government is a safeguard against revolution.
The
connection of the Reformation with Rationalism is a historical fact, but they
are related to each other as the rightful use of intellectual freedom to the
excess and abuse of it. Rationalism asserts reason against revelation, and
freedom against divine as well as human authority. It is a one-sided
development of the negative, protesting, antipapal and antitraditional factor
of the Reformation to the exclusion of its positive, evangelical faith in the
revealed will and word of God. It denies the supernatural and miraculous. It
has a superficial sense of sin and guilt, and is essentially Pelagian; while
the Reformation took the opposite Augustinian ground and proceeded from the
deepest conviction of sin and the necessity of redeeming grace. The two systems
are thus theoretically and practically opposed to each other. And yet there is
an intellectual and critical affinity between them, and Rationalism is
inseparable from the history of Protestantism. It is in the modern era of
Christianity what Gnosticism was in the ancient church—a revolt of private
judgment against the popular faith and church orthodoxy, an overestimate of
theoretic knowledge, but also a wholesome stimulus to inquiry and progress. It
is not a church or sect (unless we choose to include Socinianism and
Unitarianism), but a school in the church, or rather a number of schools which
differ very considerably from each other.
Rationalism
appeared first in the seventeenth century in the Church of England, though
without much effect upon the people, as Deism, which asserted natural religion
versus revealed religion; it was matured in its various phases after the middle
of the eighteenth century on the Continent, especially in Protestant Germany
since Lessing (d. 1781) and Semler (d. 1791), and gradually obtained the
mastery of the chairs and pulpits of Lutheran and Reformed churches, till about
1817, when a revival of the positive faith of the Reformation spread over
Germany and a serious conflict began between positive and negative
Protestantism, which continues to this day.
1.
Let us first consider the relation of the Reformation to the use of reason as a
general principle.
The
Reformation was a protest against human authority, asserted the right of
private conscience and judgment, and roused a spirit of criticism and free
inquiry in all departments of knowledge. It allows, therefore, a much wider
scope for the exercise of reason in religion than the Roman church, which
requires an unconditional submission to her infallible authority. It marks real
progress, but this progress is perfectly consistent with a belief in revelation
on subjects which lie beyond the boundary of time and sense. What do we know of
the creation, and the world of the future, except what God has chosen to reveal
to us? Human reason can prove the
possibility and probability of the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul, but not the certainty and necessity. It is reasonable, therefore, to
believe in the supernatural on divine testimony, and it is unreasonable to
reject it.
The
Reformers used their reason and judgment very freely in their contest with
church authority. Luther refused to recant in the crisis at Worms, unless
convinced by testimonies of the Scriptures and "cogent arguments."16 For a while he was disposed to avail
himself of the humanistic movement which was skeptical and rationalistic in its
tendency, but his strong religious nature always retained the mastery. He felt
as keenly as any modern Rationalist, the conflict between natural reason and
the transcending mysteries of revelation. He was often tormented by doubts and
even temptations to blasphemy, especially when suffering from physical
infirmity. A comforter of others, he needed comfort himself and asked the
prayers of friends to fortify him against the assaults of the evil spirit, with
whom he had, as he thought, many a personal encounter. He confessed, in 1524,
how glad he would have been five years before in his war with papal superstition,
if Carlstadt could have convinced him that the Eucharist was nothing but bread
and wine, and how strongly he was then inclined to that rationalistic view
which would have given a death blow to transubstantiation and the mass. He felt
that every article of his creed—the trinity, in unity, the incarnation, the
transmission of Adam’s sin, the atonement by the blood of Christ, baptismal
regeneration, the real presence, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, the
resurrection of the body—transcended human comprehension. In Aug. 2, 1527,
during the raging of the pestilence at Wittenberg, he wrote to Melanchthon, who
was absent at Jena: "For more than a week I have been tossed about in
death and hell; so that, hurt in all my body, I still tremble in every limb.
For having almost wholly lost Christ, I was driven about by storms and tempests
of despair and blasphemy against God. But God, moved by the prayers of the
saints, begins to have pity upon me, and has drawn my soul out of the lowest
hell. Do not cease to pray for me, as I do for you. I believe that this agony
of mine pertains to others also."17
In
such trials and temptations he clung all the more mightily to the Scriptures
and to faith which believes against reason and hopes against hope. "It is
a quality of faith," he says in the explanation of his favorite Epistle to
the Galatians, "that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast,
which else the whole world, with all creatures, could not strangle. But
how? It holds to God’s Word, and
lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it sounds. So
did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it, inasmuch as he believed God’s
Word, wherein was promised him that from his unfruitful and as it were dead
wife, Sarah, God would give him seed."
This
and many similar passages clearly show the bent of Luther’s mind. He knew the
enemy, but overcame it; his faith triumphed over doubt. In his later years he
became more and more a conservative churchman. He repudiated the mystic
doctrine of the inner word and spirit, insisted on submission to the written
letter of the Scriptures, even when it flatly contradicted reason. He traced
the errors of the Zwickau prophets, the rebellious peasants, the Anabaptists,
and the radical views of Carlstadt and Zwingli, without proper discrimination,
to presumptuous inroads of the human reason into the domain of faith, and
feared from them the overthrow of religion. He so far forgot his obligations to
Erasmus as to call him an Epicurus, a Lucian, a doubter, and an atheist. Much as
he valued reason as a precious gift of God in matters of this world, he abused
it with unreasonable violence, when it dared to sit in judgment over matters of
faith.18
Certainly,
Luther must first be utterly divested of his faith, and the authorship of his
sermons, catechisms and hymns must be called in question, before he can be
appealed to as the father of Rationalism. He would have sacrificed his reason
ten times rather than his faith.
Zwingli
was the most clear-headed and rationalizing among the Reformers.19 He did not pass through the discipline
of monasticism and mysticism, like Luther, but through the liberal culture of
Erasmus. He had no mystic vein, but sound, sober, practical common sense. He
always preferred the plainest sense of the Bible. He rejected the Catholic
views on original sin, infant damnation and the corporeal presence in the
eucharist, and held advanced opinions which shocked Luther and even Calvin. But
he nevertheless reverently bowed before the divine authority of the inspired
Word of God, and had no idea of setting reason over it. His dispute with Luther
was simply a question of interpretation, and he had strong arguments for his
exegesis, as even the best Lutheran commentators must confess.
Calvin
was the best theologian and exegete among the Reformers. He never abused
reason, like Luther, but assigned it the office of an indispensable handmaid of
revelation. He constructed with his logical genius the severest system of
Protestant orthodoxy which shaped French, Dutch, English and American theology,
and fortified it against Rationalism as well as against Romanism. His orthodoxy
and discipline could not keep his own church in Geneva from becoming Socinian
in the eighteenth century, but he is no more responsible for that than Luther
for the Rationalism of Germany, or Rome for the infidelity of Voltaire. Upon
the whole, the Reformed churches in England, Scotland and North America, have
been far less invaded by Rationalism than Germany.
2.
Let us now consider the application of the principle of free inquiry to the
Bible.20
The
Bible, its origin, genuineness, integrity, aim, and all its circumstances and
surroundings are proper subjects of investigation; for it is a human as well as
a divine book, and has a history, like other literary productions. The extent
of the Bible, moreover, or the Canon, is not determined by the Bible itself or
by inspiration, but by church authority or tradition, and was not fully agreed
upon till the close of the fourth century, and even then only by provincial
synods, not by any of the seven oecumenical Councils. It was therefore justly
open to reinvestigation.
The
Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, settled the Canon, including the
Apocrypha, but without any critical inquiry or definite theological principle;
it simply confirmed the traditional usage, and pronounced an anathema on every
one who does not receive all the books contained in the Latin Vulgate.21 She also checked the freedom of
investigation by requiring conformity to a defective version and a unanimous
consensus of the fathers, although such an exegetical consensus does not exist
except in certain fundamental doctrines.
The
Reformers re-opened the question of the extent of the Canon, as they had a
right to do, but without any idea of sweeping away the traditional belief or
undermining the authority of the Word of God. On the contrary, from the fulness
of their faith in the inspired Word, as contained in the Scriptures, they
questioned the canonicity of a few books which seem to be lacking in sufficient
evidence to entitle them to a place in the Bible. They simply revived, in a new
shape and on doctrinal rather than historical grounds, the distinction made by
the Hebrews and the ancient fathers between the canonical and apocryphal books
of the Old Testament, and the Eusebian distinction between the Homologumena and
Antilegomena of the New Testament, and claimed in both respects the freedom of
the ante-Nicene church.
They
added, moreover, to the external evidence, the more important internal evidence
on the intrinsic excellency of the Scripture, as the true ground on which its
authority and claim to obedience rests; and they established a firm criterion
of canonicity, namely, the purity and force of teaching Christ and his gospel
of salvation. They did not reject the testimonies of the fathers, but they
placed over them what Paul calls the "demonstration of the Spirit and of
power" (1 Cor. 2:4).
Luther
was the bold pioneer of a higher criticism, which was indeed subjective and
arbitrary, but, after all, a criticism of faith. He made his central doctrine
of justification by faith the criterion of canonicity.22 He thus placed the material or
subjective principle of Protestantism above the formal or objective principle,
the truth above the witness of the truth, the doctrine of the gospel above the written
Gospel, Christ above the Bible. Romanism, on the contrary, places the church
above the Bible. But we must remember that Luther first learnt Christ from the
Bible, and especially, from the Epistles of Paul, which furnished him the key
for the understanding of the scheme of salvation.
He
made a distinction, moreover, between the more important and the less important
books of the New Testament, according to the extent of their evangelic purity
and force, and put Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of the
German Bible.23
He
states his reason in the Preface to the Hebrews as follows: "Hitherto we
have had the right and genuine books of the New Testament. The four that follow
have been differently esteemed in olden times." He therefore appeals to
the ante-Nicene tradition, but his chief objection was to the contents.
He
disliked, most of all, the Epistle of James because he could not harmonize it
with Paul’s teaching on justification by faith without works,24
and he called it an epistle of straw as compared with the genuine apostolic
writings.25
He
objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because it seems to deny (in Heb. 6, 10
and 12) the possibility of repentance after baptism, contrary to the Gospels
and to Paul, and betrays in 2:3, a post-apostolic origin. He ascribed the
authorship to Apollos by an ingenious guess, which, though not supported by
ancient tradition, has found great favor with modern commentators and critics,26
chiefly because the authorship of any other possible writer (Paul, Barnabas,
Luke, Clement) seems to offer insuperable difficulties, while the description
of Apollos in Acts 18:24–28, compared with the allusions in 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6;
4:6; 16:12, seems to fit exactly the author of this anonymous Epistle.
He
called the Epistle of Jude an "unnecessary epistle," a mere extract
from Second Peter and post-apostolic, filled with apocryphal matter, and hence
rejected by the ancient fathers.
He
could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and declared it
to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals only with
images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity, it adds threats and
promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but afterwards he modified
his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in it welcome weapons against the
church of Rome.
The
clearest utterance on this subject is found at the close of his preface to the
first edition of his German version of the New Testament (1522), but it was
suppressed in later editions.27
Luther’s
view of inspiration was both strong and free. With the profoundest conviction
of the divine contents of the Bible, he distinguished between the revealed
truth itself and the human wording and reasoning of the writers. He says of one
of the rabbinical arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear brother
Paul, this argument won’t stick."28
Luther
was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural character of these
opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on the church: hence he
modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged the Scriptures from an
exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline standpoint, and did not consider
their gradual historical growth.
A
few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a subordinate position to the
seven Antilegomena of the New Testament;29 but the Lutheran church, with a
sound instinct, accepted for popular use the traditional catholic Canon (not
even expressly excluding the Jewish Apocrypha), yet retained his arrangement of
the books of the New Testament.30
The Rationalists, of course, revived, intensified, and carried to excess
the bold opinions of Luther, but in a spirit against which he would himself
raise the strongest protest.
The
Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting the canonical
books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The
Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical books.
Zwingli
objected only to the Apocalypse and made no doctrinal use of it, because he did
not deem it an inspired book, written by the same John who wrote the fourth
Gospel.31 In this view he has many followers, but
the severest critical school of our days (that of Tübingen) assigns it to the
Apostle John. Wolfgang Musculus mentions the seven Antilegomena, but includes
them in the general catalogue of the New Testament; and Oecolampadius speaks of
six Antilegomena (omitting the Hebrews), as holding an inferior rank, but
nevertheless appeals to their testimony.32
Calvin
had no fault to find with James and Jude, and often quotes Hebrews and
Revelation as canonical books, though he wrote no commentary on Revelation,
probably because he felt himself incompetent for the task. He is silent about
Second and Third John. He denies, decidedly, the Pauline authorship, but not
the canonicity, of Hebrews.33
He is disposed to assign Second Peter to a pupil of Peter, who wrote
under the auspices and by direction of the Apostle; but he guards in this case,
also, against unfavorable inferences from the uncertainty of origin.34
Calvin
clearly saw the inconsistency of giving the Church the right of determining the
canon after denying her right of making an article of faith. He therefore
placed the Canon on the authority of God who bears testimony to it through the
voice of the Spirit in the hearts of the believer. The eternal and inviolable
truth of God, he says, is not founded on the pleasure and judgment of men, and
can be as easily distinguished as light from darkness, and white from black. In
the same line, Peter Vermilius denies that "the Scriptures take their
authority from the Church. Their certitude is derived from God. The Word is
older than the Church. The Spirit of God wrought in the hearts of the bearers
and readers of the Word so that they recognized it to be truly
divine." This view is clearly
set forth in several Calvinistic Confessions.35 In its exclusive form it is diametrically opposed to the
maxim of Augustin, otherwise so highly esteemed by the Reformers: "I
should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Church."36 But the two kinds of evidence
supplement each other. The human authority of tradition though not the final
ground of belief, is indispensable as an historical witness of the genuineness
and canonicity, and is of great weight in conflict with Rationalism. There is
no essential antagonism between the Bible and the Church in the proper sense of
the term. They are inseparable. The Church was founded by Christ and the
apostles through the preaching of the living Word of God, and the founders of
the Church are also the authors of the written Word, which continues to be the
shining and guiding light of the Church; while the Church in turn is the
guardian, preserver, translator, propagator, and expounder of the Bible.
3.
The liberal views of the Reformers on inspiration and the canon were abandoned
after the middle of the sixteenth century, and were succeeded by compact and
consolidated systems of theology. The evangelical scholasticism of the
seventeenth century strongly resembles, both in its virtues and defects, the
catholic scholasticism of the Middle Ages which systematized and contracted the
patristic theology, except that the former was based on the Bible, the latter
on church tradition. In the conflict with Romanism the Lutheran and Calvinistic
scholastics elaborated a stiff, mechanical theory of inspiration in order to
set an infallible book against an infallible pope. The Bible was identified
with the Word of God, dictated to the sacred writers as the penmen of the Holy
Ghost. Even the classical purity of style and the integrity of the traditional
text, including the Massoretic punctuation, were asserted in the face of
stubborn facts, which came to light as the study of the origin and history of
the text advanced. The divine side of the Scriptures was exclusively dwelled
upon, and the human and literary side was ignored or virtually denied. Hence
the exegetical poverty of the period of Protestant scholasticism. The Bible was
used as a repository of proof texts for previously conceived dogmas, without
regard to the context, the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and
the gradual development of the divine revelation in accordance with the needs
and capacities of men.
4.
It was against this Protestant bibliolatry and symbololatry that Rationalism
arose as a legitimate protest. It pulled down one dogma after another, and
subjected the Bible and the canon to a searching criticism. It denies the
divine inspiration of the Scriptures, except in a wider sense which applies to
all works of genius, and treats them simply as a gradual evolution of the
religious spirit of Israel and the primitive Christian Church. It charges them
with errors of fact and errors of doctrine, and resolves the miracles into
legends and myths. It questions the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, the
genuineness of the Davidic Psalms, the Solomonic writings, the prophecies of
Deutero-Isaiah and Daniel, and other books of the Old Testament. It assigns not
only the Eusebian Antilegomena, but even the Gospels, Acts, the Catholic
Epistles, and several Pauline Epistles to the post-apostolic age, from a.d. 70
to 150.
In
its later developments, however, Rationalism has been obliged to retreat and
make several concessions to orthodoxy. The canonical Gospels and Acts have
gained by further investigation and discovery;37 and the apostolic authorship of
the four great Epistles of Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians and
the Apocalypse of John is fully admitted by the severest school of criticism
(that of Tübingen). A most important admission: for these five books teach or
imply all the leading facts and truths of the gospel, and overthrow the very
foundations of Rationalism. With the Christ of the Gospels, and the Apostle
Paul of his acknowledged Epistles, Christianity is safe.
Rationalism
was a radical revolution which swept like a flood over the Continent of Europe.
But it is not negative and destructive only. It has made and is still making
valuable contributions to biblical philology, textual criticism, and
grammatico-historical exegesis. It enlarges the knowledge of the conditions and
environments of the Bible, and of all that belongs to the human and temporal
side of Christ and Christianity. It cultivates with special zeal and learning
the sciences of Critical Introduction, Biblical Theology, the Life of Christ,
the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Ages.
5.
These acquisitions to exegetical and historical theology are a permanent gain,
and are incorporated in the new evangelical theology, which arose in conflict
with Rationalism and in defense of the positive Christian faith in the divine
facts of revelation and the doctrines of salvation. The conflict is still going
on with increasing strength, but with the sure prospect of the triumph of
truth. Christianity is independent of all critical questions on the Canon, and
of human theories of inspiration; else Christ would himself have written the
Gospels, or commanded the Apostles to do so, and provided for the miraculous
preservation and inspired translation of the text, . His "words are
spirit, and are life." "The flesh profiteth nothing." Criticism
and speculation may for a while wander away from Christ, but will ultimately
return to Him who furnishes the only key for the solution of the problems of
history and human life. "No matter," says the world-poet Goethe in
one of his last utterances, "how much the human mind may progress in
intellectual culture, in the science of nature, in ever-expanding breadth and
depth: it will never be able to rise above the elevation and moral culture
which shines in the Gospels."
Notes.
The
famous close of the Preface of Luther’s edition of the German New Testament was
omitted in later editions, but is reprinted in Walch’s ed. XIV. 104 sqq., and
in the Erlangen Frankf. ed. LXIII. (or eleventh vol. of the Vermischte Deutsche
Schriften), p. 114 sq. It is verbatim as follows:
<foreign lang="de">"Aus diesem allen
kannst du nu recht urtheilen unter allen Büchern, und Unterschied nehmen,
welchs die besten sind. Denn, naemlich, ist Johannis Evangelion, und St. Pauli
Episteln, sonderlich die zu den Römern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel der
rechte Kern und Mark unter allen Büchern; welche auch billig die, ersten sein
sollten, und einem jeglichen Christen zu rathen wäre, das er dieselben am
ersten und allermeisten läse, und ihm durch täglich Lesen so gemein mächte, als
das täglich Brod.
"Denn
in diesen findist [findest] du nicht viel Werk und Wunderthaten Christi
beschrieben; du findist aber gar meisterlich ausgestrichen, wie der Glaube an
Christum Sünd, Tod und Hölle überwindet, und das Leben, Gerechtigkeit und
Seligkeit gibt. Welchs die rechte Art ist des Evangelii, wie du gehöret hast.
"Denn
wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke oder der Predigt Christi, so wollt
ich lieber der Werke denn seiner Predigt mangeln. Denn die Werke helfen mir
nichts; aber seine Worte, die geben das Leben, wie er selbst sagt (Joh 5.V.51).
Weil nu Johannes gar wenig Werke von Christo, aber gar viel seiner Predigt
schreibt; wiederumb die andern drei Evangelisten viel seiner Werke, wenig
seiner Worte beschreiben: ist Johannis Evangelion das einige zarte, recht(e)
Hauptevangelion, und den andren dreien weit fürzuzichen und höher zu heben.
Also auch Sanct Paulus und Petrus Episteln weit über die drei Evangelia
Matthai, Marci und Lucä vorgehen.
"Summa,
Sanct Johannis Evangel. und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel(n), sonderlich
die zu den Römern, Galatern, Ephesern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel. das sind
die Bücher, die dir Christum zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth
und selig ist ob du sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer [nimmermehr] sehest
and horist [hörest]. Darumb ist Sanct Jakobs Epistel ein recht strohern(e)
Epistel, gegen sie, denn sie doch kein(e) evangelisch(e) Art an ihr hat. Doch
davon weiter in andern Vorreden."
</foreign>
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="10" title="Protestantism and Denominationalism.">
§ 10.
Protestantism and Denominationalism.38
The
Greek Church exists as a patriarchal hierarchy based on the first seven
oecumenical Councils with four ancient local centres: Jerusalem, Antioch,
Alexandria, Constantinople; to which must be added, since 1725, St. Petersburg
where the Holy Synod of orthodox Russia resides. The patriarch of
Constantinople claims a primacy of honor, but no supremacy of jurisdiction over
his fellow-patriarchs.
The
Roman Church is an absolute monarchy, headed by an infallible pope who claims
to be vicar of Christ over all Christendom and unchurches the Greek and the
Protestant churches as schismatical and heretical.
The
Reformation came out of the bosom of the Latin Church and broke up the visible
unity of Western Christendom, but prepared the way for a higher spiritual unity
on the basis of freedom and the full development of every phase of truth.
Instead
of one organization, we have in Protestantism a number of distinct national
churches and confessions or denominations. Rome, the local centre of unity, was
replaced by Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. The one
great pope had to surrender to many little popes of smaller pretensions, yet each
claiming and exercising sovereign power in his domain. The hierarchical rule
gave way to the caesaropapal or Erastian principle, that the owner of the
territory is also the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus religio), a
principle first maintained by the Byzantine Emperors, and held also by the Czar
of Russia, but in subjection to the supreme authority of the oecumenical
Councils. Every king, prince, and magistrate, who adopted the Reformation,
assumed the ecclesiastical supremacy or summepiscopate, and established a
national church to the exclusion of Dissenters or Nonconformists who were
either expelled, or simply tolerated under various restrictions and
disabilities.
Hence
there are as many national or state churches as there are independent Protestant
governments; but all acknowledge the supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of
faith and practice, and most of them also the evangelical confessions as a
correct summary of Scripture doctrines. Every little principality in
monarchical Germany and every canton in republican Switzerland has its own
church establishment, and claims sovereign power to regulate its creed worship,
and discipline. And this power culminates not in the clergy, but in the secular
ruler who appoints the ministers of religion and the professors of theology.
The property of the church which had accumulated by the pious foundations of
the Middle Ages, was secularized during the Reformation period and placed under
the control of the state, which in turn assumed the temporal support of the
church.
This
is the state of things in Europe to this day, except in the independent or free
churches of more recent growth, which manage their own affairs on the voluntary
principle.
The
transfer of the episcopal and papal power to the head of the state was not
contemplated by the Reformers, but was the inevitable consequence of the
determined opposition of the whole Roman hierarchy to the Reformation. The many
and crying abuses which followed this change in the hands of selfish and
rapacious princes, were deeply deplored by Melanchthon, who would have
consented to the restoration of the episcopal hierarchy on condition of the
freedom of gospel preaching and gospel teaching.
The
Reformed church in Switzerland secured at first a greater degree of independence
than the Lutheran; for Zwingli controlled the magistrate of Zurich, and Calvin
ruled supreme in Geneva under institutions of his own founding; but both
closely united the civil and ecclesiastical power, and the former gradually
assumed the supremacy.
Scandinavia
and England adopted, together with the Reformation, a Protestant episcopate
which divides the ecclesiastical supremacy with the head of the state; yet even
there the civil ruler is legally the supreme governor of the church.
The
greatest Protestant church-establisbments or national churches are the Church
of England, much weakened by dissent, but still the richest and most powerful
of all; the United Evangelical Church of Prussia which, since 1817, includes
the formerly separated Lutheran and Reformed confessions; the Lutheran Church
of Saxony (with a Roman Catholic king); the Lutheran Churches of Denmark,
Sweden, and Norway; the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and Holland; and the
Reformed or Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Originally,
all evangelical Protestant churches were embraced under two confessions or
denominations, the Lutheran which prevailed and still prevails in Germany and
Scandinavia, and the Reformed which took root in Switzerland, France, Holland,
England and Scotland, and to a limited extent also in Germany, Bohemia and
Hungary. The Lutheran church follows the larger portion of German and
Scandinavian emigrants to America and other countries, the Reformed church in
its various branches is found in all the Dutch and British colonies, and in the
United States.
From
these two confessions should be distinguished the Anglican Church, which the
continental historians from defective information usually count with the
Reformed Church, but which stands midway between evangelical Protestantism and
Roman Catholicism, and may therefore be called Anglo-Catholic. She is indeed
moderately Reformed in her doctrinal articles,39 but in polity and ritual she is much more conservative than
the Calvinistic and even the Lutheran confession, pays greater deference to the
testimony of the ancient fathers, and lays stress upon her unbroken episcopal
succession.
The
confessional division in the Protestant camp arose very early. It was at first
confined to a difference of opinion on the eucharistic presence, which the
Marburg Conference of 1529 could not remove, although Luther and Zwingli agreed
in fourteen and a half out of fifteen articles of faith. Luther refused any
compromise. Other differences gradually developed themselves, on the ubiquity
of Christ’s body, predestination, and baptismal regeneration, which tended to
widen and perpetuate the split. The union of the two Confessions in Prussia and
other German states, since 1817, has not really healed it, but added a third
Church, the United Evangelical, to the two older Confessions which, still
continue separate in other countries.
The
controversies among the Protestants in the sixteenth century roused all the
religious and political passions and cast a gloom over the bright picture of
the Reformation. Melanchthon declared that with tears as abundant as the waters
of the river Elbe he could not express his grief over the distractions of
Christendom and the "fury of theologians." Calvin also, when invited,
with Melanchthon, Bullinger and Buzer, in 1552, by Archbishop Cranmer to
Lambeth Palace for the purpose of framing a concensus-creed of the Reformed
churches, was willing to cross ten seas for the cause of Christian union.40 But the noble scheme was frustrated by
the stormy times, and still remains a pium desiderium.
Much
as we must deplore and condemn sectarian strife and bitterness, it would be as
unjust to charge them on Protestantism, as to charge upon Catholicism the
violent passions of the trinitarian, christological and other controversies of
the Nicene age, or the fierce animosity between the Greek and Latin Churches,
or the envy and jealousy of the monastic orders of the Middle Ages, or the
unholy rivalries between Jansenists and Jesuits, Gallicans and Ultramontanists
in modern Romanism. The religious passions grow out of the selfishness of
depraved human nature in spite of Christianity, whether Greek, Roman, or
Protestant., and may arise in any denomination or in any congregation. Paul had
to rebuke the party spirit in the church at Corinth. The rancor of theological
schools and parties under one and the same government is as great and often
greater than among separate rival denominations. Providence overrules these
human weaknesses for the clearer development of doctrine and discipline, and
thus brings good out of evil.
The
tendency of Protestantism towards individualism did not stop with the three
Reformation Churches, but produced other divisions wherever it was left free to
formulate and organize the differences of theological parties and schools. This
was the case in England, in consequence of what may be called a second
Reformation, which agitated that country during the seventeenth century, while
Germany was passing through the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.
The
Toleration Act of 1689, after the final overthrow of the semi-popish and
treacherous dynasty of the Stuarts, gave the Dissenters who were formerly
included in the Church of England, the liberty to organize themselves into
independent denominations under the names of Presbyterians, Independents or
Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers; all professing the principles of the
Reformation, but differing in minor points of doctrine, and especially in
discipline, and the mode of worship.
The
Methodist revival of religion which shook England and the American colonies
during the eighteenth century, gave rise to a new denomination which spread
with the enthusiasm of an army of conquest and grew into one of the largest and
most influential communions in English-speaking Christendom.
In Scotland,
the original unity of the Reformed Kirk was likewise broken up, mostly on the
question of patronage and the sole headship of Christ, so that the Scotch
population is now divided chiefly into three branches, the Established Church,
the United Presbyterian Church, and the Free Church of Scotland; all holding,
however, to the Westminster standards.
In
Germany, the Moravian brotherhood acquired a legal existence, and fully earned
it by its missionary zeal among the heathen, its educational institutions, its
pure discipline and stimulating influence upon the older churches.
All
these Churches of Great Britain and the Continent were transplanted by
emigration to the virgin soil of North America, where they mingle on a basis of
equality before the law and in the enjoyment of perfect religious freedom. But
few communions are of native growth. In America, the distinction between church
and sect, churchmen and dissenters, has lost its legal meaning. And even in
Europe it is weakened in the same proportion in which under the influence of
modern ideas of toleration and freedom the bond of union of church and state is
relaxed, and the sects or theological parties are allowed to organize
themselves into distinct communities.
Thus
Protestantism in the nineteenth century is divided into half a dozen or more
large denominations, without counting the minor divisions which are even far
more numerous. The Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the
Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the Baptists, are distinct and separate
families. Nor is the centrifugal tendency of Protestantism exhausted, and may
produce new denominations, especially in America, where no political power can
check its progress.
To
an outside spectator, especially to a Romanist and to an infidel, Protestantism
presents the aspect of a religious chaos or anarchy which must end in
dissolution.
But
a calm review of the history of the last three centuries and the present
condition of Christendom leads to a very different conclusion. It is an undeniable
fact that Christianity has the strongest hold upon the people and displays the
greatest vitality and energy at home and abroad, in English-speaking countries,
where it is most divided into denominations and sects. A comparison of England
with Spain, or Scotland with Portugal, or the United States with Mexico and
Peru or Brazil, proves the advantages of living variety over dead uniformity.
Division is an element of weakness in attacking a consolidated foe, but it also
multiplies the missionary, educational, and converting agencies. Every
Protestant denomination has its own field of usefulness, and the cause of
Christianity itself would be seriously weakened and contracted by the
extinction of any one of them.
Nor
should we overlook the important fact, that the differences which divide the
various Protestant denominations are not fundamental, and that the articles of
faith in which they agree are more numerous than those in which they disagree.
All accept the inspired Scriptures as the supreme rule of faith and practice,
salvation by grace, and we may say every article of the Apostles’ Creed; while
in their views of practical Christianity they unanimously teach that our duties
are comprehended in the royal law of love to God and to our fellow-men, and that
true piety and virtue consist in the imitation of the example of Christ, the
Lord and Saviour of all.
There
is then unity in diversity as well as diversity in unity.
And
the tendency to separation and division is counteracted by the opposite
tendency to Christian union and denominational intercommunion which manifests
itself in a rising degree and in various forms among Protestants of the present
day, especially in England and America, and on missionary fields, and which is
sure to triumph in the end. The spirit of narrowness, bigotry and exclusiveness
must give way at last to a spirit of evangelical catholicity, which leaves each
denomination free to work out its own mission according to its special
charisma, and equally free to co-operate in a noble rivalry with all other
denominations for the glory of the common Master and the building up of His
Kingdom.
The
great problem of Christian union cannot be solved by returning to a uniformity
of belief and outward organization. Diversity in unity and unity in diversity
is the law of God in history as well as in nature. Every aspect of truth must
be allowed room for free development. Every possibility of Christian life must
be realized. The past cannot be undone; history moves zig-zag, like a sailing
vessel, but never backwards. The work of church history, whether Greek, Roman,
or Protestant, cannot be in vain. Every denomination and sect has to furnish
some stones for the building of the temple of God.
And
out of the greatest human discord God will bring the richest concord.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="11" title="Protestantism and Religious Liberty">
§ 11.
Protestantism and Religious Liberty.
Comp.
Ph. Schaff: The Progress of Religious Freedom as shown in the History of
Toleration Acts, N. York, 1889. (126 pages.)
The
Reformation was a grand act of emancipation from spiritual tyranny, and a
vindication of the sacred rights of conscience in matters of religious belief.
Luther’s bold stand at the Diet of Worms, in the face of the pope and the
emperor, is one of the sublimest events in the history of liberty, and the
eloquence of his testimony rings through the centuries.41 To break the force of the pope, who
called himself and was believed to be, the visible vicar of God on earth, and
who held in his hands the keys of the kingdom of heaven, required more moral
courage than to fight a hundred battles, and it was done by an humble monk in
the might of faith.
If
liberty, both civil and religious, has since made progress, it is due in large
measure to the inspiration of that heroic act. But the progress was slow and
passed through many obstructions and reactions. "The mills of God grind
slowly, but wonderfully fine."
It
seems one of the strangest inconsistencies that the very men who claimed and
exercised the right of protest in essentials, should have denied the same right
to others, who differed from them in nonessentials. After having secured
liberty from the yoke of popery, they acted on the persecuting principles in
which they had been brought up. They had no idea of toleration or liberty in
our modern sense. They fought for liberty in Christ, not from Christ, for
liberty to preach and teach the gospel, not to oppose or pervert it. They were
as intensely convinced of their views as their Roman opponents of theirs. They
abhorred popery and heresy as dangerous errors which should not be tolerated in
a Christian society. John Knox feared one Romish mass in Scotland more than an
army of ten thousand French invaders. The Protestant divines and princes of the
sixteenth century felt it to be their duty to God and to themselves to suppress
and punish heresy as well as civil crimes. They confounded the law with the
gospel. In many cases they acted in retaliation, and in self-defense. They were
surrounded by a swarm of sects and errorists who claimed to be the legitimate
children of the Reformation, exposed it to the reproach of the enemies and
threatened to turn it into confusion and anarchy. The world and the church were
not ripe for a universal reign of liberty, nor are they even now.
Religious
persecution arises not only from bigotry and fanaticism, and the base passions
of malice, hatred and uncharitableness, but also from mistaken zeal for truth
and orthodoxy, from the intensity of religious conviction, and from the
alliance of religion with politics or the union of church and state, whereby an
offence against the one becomes an offence against the other. Persecution is
found in all religions, churches and sects which had the power; while on the
other hand all persecuted religions, sects, and parties are advocates of
toleration and freedom, at least for themselves. Some of the best as well as
the worst men have been persecutors, believing that they served the cause of
God by fighting his enemies. Saul of Tarsus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic
saint and philosopher on the throne of the Caesars, have in ignorance
persecuted Christianity, the one from zeal for the law of Moses, the other from
devotion to the laws and gods of Rome. Charlemagne thought he could best
promote Christianity among the heathen Saxons by chasing them through the river
for wholesale baptism. St. Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, and Calvin were equally
convinced of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy. A
religion or church established by law must be protected by law against its
enemies. The only sure guarantee against persecution is to put all churches on
an equal footing before the law, and either to support all or none.
Church
history is lurid with the infernal fires of persecutions, not only of
Christians by heathens and Mohammedans, but of Christians by Christians.
But
there is a silver lining to every cloud, and an overruling Providence in all
human wickedness. The persecutions test character, develop moral heroism, bring
out the glories of martyrdom, and sow the bloody seed of religious liberty.
They fail of their object when the persecuted party has the truth on its side,
and ultimately result in its victory. This was the case with Christianity in
the Roman empire, and to a large extent with Protestantism. They suffered the
cross, and reaped the crown.
Let
us now briefly survey the chief stages in the history of persecution, which is
at the same time a history of religious liberty.
1.
The New Testament furnishes not a single passage in favor of persecution. The
teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are against it. He came to save
the world, not to destroy it. He declared that His kingdom is not of this
world. He rebuked the hasty Peter for drawing the sword, though it was in
defense of his Master; and he preferred to suffer and to die rather than to
call the angels of God to aid against his enemies. The Apostles spread the
gospel by spiritual means and condemned the use of carnal weapons.
For
three hundred years the church followed their example and advocated freedom of
conscience. She suffered persecution from Jews and Gentiles, but never
retaliated, and made her way to triumph through the power of truth and a holy
life sealed by a heroic death.42
2.
The change began with the union of church and state under Constantine the
Great, in the East, and Charles the Great, in the West. Both these emperors
represent the continuation of the old Roman empire under the dominion of the
sword and the cross.
The
mediaeval theory of the Catholic Church assumes a close alliance of Caesar and
Pope, or the civil and ecclesiastical power, in Christian countries, and the
exclusiveness of the Catholic communion out of which there can be no salvation.
The Athanasian Creed has no less than three damning clauses against all who
dissent from the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. From
this point of view every heresy, i.e., every departure from catholic orthodoxy,
is a sin and a crime against society, and punishable both by the church and the
state, though in different ways. "The church does not thirst for blood
"43
but excommunicates the obstinate heretic and hands him over to the civil
magistrate to be dealt with according to law. And the laws of pagan Rome and
Christian Rome were alike severe against every open dissent from the state
religion. The Mosaic legislation against idolatry and blasphemy, which were
punished by death, as a crime against the theocracy and as treason against
Jehovah,44
seemed to afford divine authority for similar enactments under the Christian
dispensation, in spite of the teaching and example of Christ and his Apostles.
The Christian emperors after Constantine persecuted the heathen religion and
heretical sects, as their heathen predecessors had persecuted the Christians as
enemies of the national gods. The Justinian code, which extended its influence
over the whole Continent of Europe, declares Christian heretics and
schismatics, as well as Pagans and Jews, incapable of holding civil or military
offices, forbids their public assemblies and ecclesiastical acts, and orders
their books to be burned.
The
leading divines of the church gave sanction to this theory. St. Augustin, who
had himself been a heretic for nine years, was at first in favor of toleration.45 But during the Donatist controversy, he
came to the conclusion that the correction and coërcion of heretics and
schismatics was in some cases necessary and wholesome. His tract on the
Correction of the Donatists was written about 417, to show that the
schismatical and fanatical Donatists should be subjected to the punishment of
the imperial laws. He admits that it is better that men should be led to
worship God by teaching than be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but
he reasons that more men are corrected by fear. He derives the proof from the
Old Testament. The only passages from the New Testament which he is able to
quote, would teach a compulsory salvation rather than punishment, but are
really not to the point. He refers to Paul’s conversion as a case of compulsion
by Christ himself, and misapplies the word of our Lord in the parable of the
Supper: "Constrain them to come in."46 Yet he professed, on the other hand, the correct principle
that "no man can believe against his will."47 And he expressly discouraged the
infliction of the death-penalty on heretics.48
Thomas
Aquinas, next to Augustin, the highest authority among the canonized doctors of
the Latin church, went a step further. He proved, to the satisfaction of the
Middle Ages, that the rites of idolaters, Jews, and infidels ought not to be
tolerated,49 and that heretics
or corruptors of the Christian faith, being worse criminals than debasers of
money, ought (after due admonition) not only to be excommunicated by the
church, but also be put to death by the state.50 He does not quote a Bible passage in favor of the
death-penalty of heretics; on the contrary he mentions three passages which
favor toleration of heretics, <scripRef passage = "2 Tim.
2:24">2
Tim. 2:24</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "1 Cor.
11:19">1
Cor. 11:19</scripRef>; <scripRef passage = "Matt.
13:29, 30">Matt.
13:29, 30</scripRef>, and then tries to deprive
them of their force by his argument drawn from the guilt of heresy.
The
persecution of heretics reached its height in the papal crusades against the
Albigenses under Innocent III., one of the best of popes; in the dark deeds of
the Spanish Inquisition; and in the unspeakable atrocities of the Duke of Alva
against the Protestants in the Netherlands during his short reign (1567–1573).51
The
horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24, 1572) was sanctioned by Pope
Gregory XIII., who celebrated it by public thanksgivings, and with a medal bearing
his image, an avenging angel and the inscription, Ugonottorum strages.52
The
infamous dragonnades of Louis XIV. were a continuation of the same politico-ecclesiastical
policy on a larger scale, aiming at the complete destruction of Protestantism
in France, in violation of the solemn edict of his grandfather (1598, revoked
1685), and met the full approval of the Roman clergy, including Bishop Bossuet,
the advocate of Gallican liberties.53
The
most cruel of the many persecutions of the innocent Waldenses in the valleys of
Piedmont took place in 1655, and shocked by its boundless violence the whole
Protestant world, calling forth the vigorous protest of Cromwell and inspiring
the famous sonnet of Milton, his foreign secretary:
"Avenge,
O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie
scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even
them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When
all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones."
These
persecutions form the darkest, we may say, the satanic chapters in church
history, and are a greater crime against humanity and Christianity than all the
heresies which they in vain tried to eradicate.
The
Roman church has never repented of her complicity with these unchristian acts.
On the contrary, she still holds the principle of persecution in connection
with her doctrine that there is no salvation outside of her bosom. The papal
Syllabus of 1864 expressly condemns, among the errors of modern times, the
doctrine of religious toleration.54
Leo XIII., a great admirer of the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, in his
Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885, "concerning the Christian constitution of
states," wisely moderates, but reaffirms, in substance, the political
principles of his predecessor.55 A
revocation would be fatal to the Vatican dogma of papal infallibility. The
practice of persecution is a question of power and expediency; and although
isolated cases still occur from time to time,56 the revival of mediaeval
intolerance is an impossibility, and would be condemned by intelligent and
liberal Roman Catholics as a folly and a crime.
3.
The Protestant theory and practice of persecution and toleration.
(a)
The Lutheran Reformers and Churches.
Luther
was the most advanced among the Reformers in the ideas of toleration and
liberty. He clearly saw the far-reaching effect of his own protest against
Rome, and during his storm- and pressure-period, from 1517 to 1521, he was a
fearless champion of liberty. He has left some of the noblest utterances
against coërcion in matters of conscience, which contain almost every essential
feature of the modern theory on the subject. He draws a sharp line between the
temporal power which is confined to the body and worldly goods, and the
spiritual government which belongs to God. He says that "no one can
command or ought to command the soul, except God, who alone can show it the way
to heaven;" that "the thoughts and mind of man are known only to
God;" that "it is futile and impossible to command, or by force to
compel any man’s belief;" that "heresy is a spiritual thing which no
iron can hew down, no fire burn, no water drown;" that "belief is a
free thing which cannot be enforced."57 He opposed the doctrine of the Anabaptists with every
argument at his command, but disapproved the cruel persecution to which they
were subjected in Protestant as well as Catholic countries. "It is not
right," he said in a book against them (1528), "and I deeply regret
that such wretched people should be so miserably murdered, burned, and cruelly
put to death; every one should be allowed to believe what he pleases. If he
believes wrongly, he will have punishment enough in the eternal fire of hell.
Why should they be tortured in this life also?"58 If heretics were to be punished by
death, the hangman would be the best (the most orthodox) theologian. "I
can in no way admit," he wrote to his friend Link in 1528, "that
false teachers should be put to death: it is enough that they should be
banished ."59
To
this extent, then, he favored punishment of heretics, but no further. He wanted
them to be silenced or banished by the government. He spent his violence in
words, in which he far outstripped friends and foes, and spared neither
papists, nor Zwinglians, nor Anabaptists, nor even temporal princes like Henry
VIII., Duke George of Saxony, and Duke Henry of Brunswick.60 But his acts of intolerance are few. He
refused the hand of fellowship to Zwingli, and would not have tolerated him at
Wittenberg. He begged the elector, John, to prevent a certain Hans Mohr from
spreading Zwinglian opinions in Coburg. He regretted the toleration of the
Zwinglians in Switzerland after their defeat, which he uncharitably interpreted
as a righteous judgment of God.61
A
few words on his views concerning the toleration of the Jews who had to suffer
every indignity from Christians, as if they were personally responsible for the
crime of the crucifixion. Luther was at first in advance of public opinion. In
1523 he protested against the cruel treatment of the Jews, as if they were
dogs, and not human beings, and counseled kindness and charity as the best
means of converting them. If the apostles, he says, who were Jews, had dealt
with the heathen, as we heathen Christians deal with the Jews, no heathen would
ever have been converted, and I myself, if I were a Jew, would rather become
anything else than a Christian.62
But in 1543 he wrote two violent books against the Jews.63 His intercourse with several Rabbis
filled him with disgust and indignation against their pride, obstinacy and
blasphemies. He came to the conclusion that it was useless to dispute with them
and impossible to convert them. Moses could do nothing with Pharaoh by
warnings, plagues and miracles, but had to let him drown in the Red Sea. The
Jews would crucify their expected Messiah, if he ever should come, even worse
than they crucified the Christian Messiah. They are a blind, hard, incorrigible
race.64 He went so far as to advise their
expulsion from Christian lands, the prohibition of their books, and the burning
of their synagogues and even their houses in which they blaspheme our Saviour
and the Holy Virgin. In the last of his sermons, preached shortly before his
death at Eisleben, where many Jews were allowed to trade, he concluded with a
severe warning against the Jews as dangerous public enemies who ought not to be
tolerated, but left the alternative of conversion or expulsion.65
Melanchthon,
the mildest of the Reformers, went—strange to say—a step further than Luther,
not during his lifetime, but eight years after his death, and expressly sanctioned
the execution of Servetus for blasphemy in the following astounding letter to
Calvin, dated Oct. 14, 1554: "Reverend sir and dearest brother: I have
read your work in which you have lucidly refuted the horrible blasphemies of
Servetus, and I thank the Son of God, who has been the arbiter
(brabeuthv") of this your contest. The church, both now and in all
generations, owes and will owe you a debt of gratitude. I entirely assent to
your judgment. (Tuo judicio prorsus adsentior.) And I say, too, that your
magistrates did right in that, after solemn trial, they put the blasphemer
(hominem blasphemum) to death."66 He expressed here his deliberate conviction to which he
adhered. Three years later, in a warning against the errors of Theobald
Thammer, he called the execution of Servetus "a pious and memorable
example to all posterity."67
We cannot tell what Luther might have said in this case had he lived at
that time. It is good for his reputation that he was spared the trial.68
The
other Lutheran Reformers agreed essentially with the leaders. They conceded to
the civil ruler the control over the religious as well as political opinions of
their subjects. Martin Bucer went furthest in this direction and taught in his
"Dialogues" (1535) the right and the duty of Christian magistrates to
reform the church, to forbid and punish popish idolatry, and all false
religions, according to the full rigor of the Mosaic law.69
In
accordance with these views of the Lutheran Reformers the Roman Catholics in
Lutheran countries were persecuted, not, indeed, by shedding their blood as the
blood of Protestants was shed in Roman Catholic countries, but by the
confiscation of their church property, the prohibition of their worship, and,
if it seemed necessary, by exile. In the reorganization of the church in
Electoral Saxony in 1528, under the direction of the Wittenberg Reformers, the
popish priests were deprived of their benefices, and even obstinate laymen were
forced to sell their property and to leave their country. "For," said
the Elector, "although it is not our intention to bind any one to what he
is to believe and hold, yet will we, for the prevention of mischievous tumult
and other inconveniences, suffer neither sect nor separation in our territory."70
The
Protestant dissenters fared no better in Lutheran Saxony. The Philippists
(Melanchthonians) or Crypto-Calvinists were outlawed, and all clergymen,
professors and school teachers who would not subscribe the Formula of Concord,
were deposed (1580). Dr. Caspar Peucer, Melanchthon’s son-in-law, professor of
medicine at Wittenberg and physician to the Elector Augustus of Saxony, was
imprisoned for ten years (1576–1586) for no other crime than
"Philippism" (i.e. Melanchthonianism), and Nicolas Crell, the
chancellor of Saxony, was, after ten years’ confinement, beheaded at Dresden
for favoring Crypto-Calvinism at home and supporting the Huguenots abroad,
which was construed as high treason (1601).71 Since that time the name of Calvin was as much hated in
Saxony as the name of the Pope and the Turk.72
In
other Lutheran countries, Zwinglians and Calvinists fared no better. John a
Lasco, the Reformer of Poland and minister of a Protestant congregation in
London, when fleeing with his followers, including many women and children,
from the persecution of the bloody Mary, was not allowed a resting place at
Copenhagen, or Rostock, or Lübeck, or Hamburg, because he could not accept the
Lutheran doctrine of the real presence, and the poor fugitives were driven from
port to port in cold winter, till at last they found a temporary home at Emden
(1553).73
In
Scandinavia every religion except the Lutheran was forbidden on pain of
confiscation and exile, and these laws were in force till the middle of the
nineteenth century. Queen Christina lost her Swedish crown by her apostasy from
Lutheranism, which her father had so heroically defended in the Thirty Years’
War.
(b)
The Swiss Reformers, though republicans, were not behind the Germans in
intolerance against Romanists and heretics.
Zwingli
extended the hand of brotherhood to Luther, and hoped to meet even the nobler
heathen in heaven, but had no mercy on the Anabaptists, who threatened to
overthrow his work in Zürich. After trying in vain to convince them by
successive disputations, the magistrate under his control resorted to the Cruel
irony of drowning their leaders (six in all) in the Limmat near the lake of
Zürich (between 1527 and 1532).74
Zwingli
counselled, at the risk of his own life, the forcible introduction of the
Reformed religion into the territory of the Catholic Forest Cantons (1531);
forgetting the warning of Christ to Peter, that they who take the sword shall
perish by the sword.75
Calvin
has the misfortune rather than the guilt of pre-eminence for intolerance among
the Reformers. He and Servetus are the best abused men of the sixteenth
century; and the depreciation of the good name of the one and the exculpation
of the bad name of the other have been carried far beyond the limits of
historic truth and justice. Both must be judged from the standpoint of the
sixteenth, not of the nineteenth, century.
The
fatal encounter of the champion of orthodoxy and the champion of heresy, men of
equal age, rare genius, and fervent zeal for the restoration of Christianity,
but direct antipodes in doctrine, spirit and aim, forms the most thrilling
tragedy in the history of the Reformation. The contrast between the two is
almost as great as that between Simon Peter and Simon Magus.76 Their contest will never lose its
interest. The fires of the funeral pile which were kindled at Champel on the
27th of October, 1553, are still burning and cast their lurid sparks into the
nineteenth century.
Leaving
the historical details and the doctrinal aspect for another chapter,77 we confine ourselves here to the
bearing of the case on the question of toleration.
Impartial
history must condemn alike the intolerance of the victor and the error of the
victim, but honor in both the strength of conviction. Calvin should have
contented himself with banishing his fugitive rival from the territory of
Geneva, or allowing him quietly to proceed on his contemplated journey to
Italy, where he might have resumed his practice of medicine in which he excelled.
But he sacrificed his future reputation to a mistaken sense of duty to the
truth and the cause of the Reformation in Switzerland and his beloved France,
where his followers were denounced and persecuted as heretics. He is
responsible, on his own frank confession, for the arrest and trial of Servetus,
and he fully assented to his condemnation and death "for heresy and
blasphemy," except that he counselled the magistrate, though in vain, to
mitigate the legal penalty by substituting the sword for the fire.78
But
the punishment was in accordance with the mediaeval laws and wellnigh universal
sentiment of Catholic and Protestant Christendom; it was unconditionally
counselled by four Swiss magistrates which had been consulted before the
execution (Zurich, Berne, Basel, and Schaffhausen), and was expressly approved
by all the surviving reformers: Bullinger, Farel, Beza, Peter Martyr, and (as
we have already seen) even by the mild and gentle Melanchthon. And strange to
say, Servetus himself held, in part at least, the theory under which he
suffered: for he admitted that incorrigible obstinacy and malice deserved
death,79 referring to the case of Ananias and
Sapphira; while schism and heresy should be punished only by excommunication
and exile.
Nor
should we overlook the peculiar aggravation of the case. We may now put a more
favorable construction on Servetus’ mystic and pantheistic or panchristic
Unitarianism than his contemporaries, who seemed to have misunderstood him,
friends as well as foes; but he was certainly a furious fanatic and radical
heretic, and in the opinion of all the churches of his age a reckless
blasphemer, aiming at the destruction of historic Christianity. He was thus
judged from his first book (1531),80 as well as his last (1553),81
and escaped earlier death only by concealment, practicing medicine under a
fictitious name and the protection of a Catholic archbishop. He had abused all
trinitarian Christians, as tritheists and atheists; he had denounced the
orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity, as a dream of St. Augustin, a fiction of
popery, an invention of the devil, and a three-headed Cerberus.82 He had attacked with equal fury
infant-baptism, as a detestable abomination, a killing of the Holy Spirit, an
abolition of regeneration, and overthrow of the entire kingdom of Christ, and
pronounced a woe on all baptizers of infancy who close the kingdom of heaven
against mankind. He had been previously condemned to the stake by the Roman
Catholic tribunal of the inquisition, after a regular trial, in the
archiepiscopal city of Vienne in France, partly on the ground of his letters to
Calvin procured from Geneva, and burned in effigy with his last book after his
escape. He then rushed blindly into the hands of Calvin, whom he denounced,
during the trial, as a liar, a hypocrite, and a Simon Magus, with a view,
apparently, to overthrow his power, in league with his enemies, the party of
the Libertines, which had then the majority in the council of Geneva.83
Considering
all these circumstances Calvin’s conduct is not only explained, but even
justified in part. He acted in harmony with the public law and orthodox
sentiment of his age, and should therefore not be condemned more than his
contemporaries, who would have done the same in his position.84
But
all the humane sentiments are shocked again by the atrocity, of the execution;
while sympathy is roused for the unfortunate sufferer who died true to his
conviction, reconciled to his enemies, and with the repeated prayer in the
midst of the flames: "Jesus, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon
me!"
The
enemies of Calvin raised, in anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets, a loud
protest against the new tribunal of popery and inquisition in Geneva, which had
boasted to be an asylum of all the persecuted. The execution of Servetus was
condemned by his anti-trinitarian sympathizers, especially the Italian refugees
in Switzerland, and also by some orthodox Christians in Basel and elsewhere,
who feared that it would afford a powerful argument to the Romanists for their
persecution of Protestants.
Calvin
felt it necessary, therefore, to come out with a public defense of the
death-penalty for heresy, in the spring of 1554.85 He appealed to the Mosaic law against idolatry and
blasphemy, to the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple-court
(Matt. 21:12), and he tries to refute the arguments for toleration which were
derived from the wise counsel of Gamaliel (Acts 5:34), the parable of the tares
among the wheat (Matt. 13:29), and Christ’s rebuke of Peter for drawing the
sword (Matt. 26:52). The last argument he disposes of by making a distinction
between private vengeance and public punishment.
Beza
also defended, with his usual ability, in a special treatise, the punishment of
heretics, chiefly as a measure of self-defense of the state which had a right
to give laws and a duty to protect religion. He derived the doctrine of
toleration from scepticism and infidelity and called it a diabolical dogma.86
The
burning of the body of Servetus did not destroy his soul. His blood was the
fruitful seed of the doctrine of toleration and the Unitarian heresy, which
assumed an organized form in the Socinian sect, and afterward spread in many
orthodox churches, including Geneva.
Fortunately
the tragedy of 1553 was the last spectacle of burning a heretic in Switzerland,
though several years later the Anti-trinitarian, Valentine Gentile, was
beheaded in Berne (1566).
(c)
In France the Reformed church, being in the minority, was violently and
systematically persecuted by the civil rulers in league with the Roman church,
and it is well for her that she never had a chance to retaliate. She is
emphatically a church of martyrs.
(d)
The Reformed church in Holland, after passing through terrible trials and
persecutions under Spanish rule, showed its intolerance toward the Protestant
Arminians who were defeated by the Synod of Dort (1619). Their pastors and
teachers were deposed and banished. The Arminian controversy was, however,
mixed up with politics; the Calvinists were the national and popular party under
the military lead of Prince Maurice; while the political leaders of
Arminianism, John Van Olden Barneveldt and Hugo Grotius, were suspected of
disloyalty for concluding a truce with Spain (1609), and condemned, the one to
death, the other to perpetual banishment. With a change of administration the
Arminians were allowed to return (1625), and disseminated, with a liberal
theology, principles of religious toleration.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="12" title="Religious Intolerance and Liberty in England and
America">
§ 12.
Religious Intolerance and Liberty in England and America.
The
history of the Reformation in England and Scotland is even more disfigured by
acts of intolerance and persecution than that of the Continent, but resulted at
last in greater gain for religious freedom. The modern ideas of well regulated,
constitutional liberty, both civil and religious, have grown chiefly on English
soil.
At
first it was a battle between persecution and mere toleration, but toleration
once legally secured prepared the way for full religious liberty.
All
parties when persecuted, advocated liberty of conscience, and all parties when
in power, exercised intolerance, but in different degrees. The Episcopalians
before 1689 were less intolerant than the Romanists under Queen Mary; the
Presbyterians before 1660 were less intolerant than the Episcopalians; the
Independents less intolerant (in England) than the Presbyterians (but more
intolerant in New England); the Baptists, Quakers, Socinians and Unitarians
consistently taught freedom of conscience, and were never tempted to exercise
intolerance. Finally all became tolerant in consequence of a legal settlement
in 1689, but even that was restricted by disabling clauses. The Romanists used
fire and sword; the Episcopalians fines, prisons, pillories, nose-slittings,
ear-croppings, and cheek-burnings; the Presbyterians tried depositions and
disabilities; the Independents in New England exiled Roger Williams, the
Baptist (1636), and hanged four Quakers (two men and two women, 1659, 1660 and
1661) in Boston, and nineteen witches in Salem (1692). But all these measures
of repression proved as many failures and made persecution more hateful and at
last impossible.
1.
The first act of the English Reformation, under Henry VIII., was simply the
substitution of a domestic for a foreign popery and tyranny; and it was a
change for the worse. No one was safe who dared to dissent from the creed of
the despotic monarch who proclaimed himself "the supreme head of the
Church of England." At his death (1547), the six bloody articles were
still in force; but they contained some of the chief dogmas of Romanism which
he held in spite of his revolt against the pope.
2.
Under the brief reign of Edward VI. (1547–1553), the Reformation made decided progress,
but Anabaptists were not tolerated; two of them, who held some curious views on
the incarnation, were burnt as obstinate heretics, Joan Bocher, commonly called
Joan of Kent, May 2, 1550, and George Van Pare, a Dutchman April 6, 1551. The.
young king refused at first to sign the death-warrant of the woman, correctly
thinking that the sentence was "a piece of cruelty too like that which
they had condemned in papists;" at last he yielded to Cranmer’s authority,
who argued with him from the law of Moses against blasphemy, but he put his
hand to the warrant with tears in his eyes and charged the archbishop with the
responsibility for the act if it should be wrong.
3.
The reign of the bloody Queen Mary (1553–1558) was a fearful retaliation, but
sealed the doom of popery by the blood of Protestant martyrs, including the
Reformers, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, who were burnt in the market place at
Oxford.
4.
Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), by virtue of her office, as "Defender of the
Faith, and supreme governor of the Church" in her dominions, permanently
established the Reformed religion, but to the exclusion of all dissent. Her
penal code may have been a political necessity, as a protection against
domestic treason and foreign invasion, but it aimed systematically at the
annihilation of both Popery and Puritanism. It acted most severely upon Roman
Catholic priests, who could only save their lives by concealment or exile.
Conformity to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer was
rigidly enforced; attendance upon the Episcopal service was commanded, while
the mass and every other kind of public worship were forbidden under severe
penalties. The rack in the tower was freely employed against noblemen suspected
of disloyalty to the queen-pope. The statute de haereticis comburendis from the
reign of Henry IV. (1401) remained in force, and two Anabaptists were burnt
alive under Elizabeth, and two Arians under her successor. The statute was not
formally abolished till 1677. Ireland was treated ecclesiastically as well as
politically as a conquered province, and England is still suffering from that
cruel polity, which nursed a hereditary hatred of the Catholic people against
their Protestant rulers, and made the removal of the Irish grievances the most
difficult problem of English statesmanship.
Popery
disappeared for a while from British soil, and the Spanish Armada was utterly
defeated. But Puritanism, which fought in the front rank against the big pope
at Rome, could not be defeated by the little popes at home. It broke out at
last in open revolt against the tyranny of the Stuarts, and the cruelties of
the Star Chamber and High-Commission Court, which were not far behind the
Spanish Inquisition, and punished freedom of speech and of the press as a crime
against society.
5.
Puritanism ruled England for about twenty years (1640 to 1660), which form the
most intensely earnest and excited period in her history. It saved the rights
of the people against the oppression of their rulers, but it punished
intolerance with intolerance, and fell into the opposite error of enforcing
Puritan, in the place of Episcopal, uniformity, though with far less severity.
The Long Parliament abolished the Episcopal hierarchy and liturgy (Sept. 10,
1642), expelled about two thousand royalist clergymen from their benefices, and
executed on the block Archbishop Laud (1644) and King Charles I. (1649), as
traitors; thus crowning them with the glory of martyrdom and preparing the way
for the Restoration. Episcopalians now became champions of toleration, and
Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of the English pulpit, raised his eloquent voice
for the Liberty of Prophesying (1647), which, however, he afterward recalled in
part when he was made a bishop by Charles II. (1661).87
The
Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643–1652), which numbered one hundred and
twenty-one divines and several lay-deputies and is one of the most important
ecclesiastical meetings ever held, was intrusted by Parliament with the
impossible task of framing a uniform creed, discipline and ritual for three
kingdoms. The extraordinary religious commotion of the times gave rise to all
sorts of religious opinions from the most rigid orthodoxy to deism and atheism,
and called forth a lively pamphlet war on the subject of toleration, which
became an apple of discord in the Assembly. Thomas Edwards, in his Gangraena
(1645), enumerated, with uncritical exaggeration, no less than sixteen sects
and one hundred and seventy-six miscellaneous "errors, heresies and
blasphemies," exclusive of popery and deism.88
There
were three theories on toleration, which may be best stated in the words of
George Gillespie, one of the Scottish commissioners of the Assembly.89
(a)
The theory of the "Papists who hold it to be not only no sin, but good
service to God to extirpate by fire and sword all that are adversaries to, or
opposers of, the Church and Catholic religion." Under this theory John Hus
and Jerome of Prague were burnt at the Council of Constance. Gillespie calls
it., in the Preface, "the black devil of idolatry and tyranny."
(b)
"The second opinion doth fall short as far as the former doth exceed: that
is, that the magistrate ought not to inflict any punishment, nor put forth any
coërcive power upon heretics and sectaries, but on the contrary grant them
liberty and toleration." This theory is called "the white devil of
heresy and schism," and ascribed to the Donatists (?), Socinians,
Arminians and Independents. But the chief advocate was Roger Williams, the
Baptist, who became the founder of Rhode Island.90 He went to the root of the question, and demanded complete
separation of politics from religion. Long before him, the Puritan Bishop
Hooper, and Robert Browne, the renegade founder of Congregationalism had taught
the primitive Christian principle that the magistrates had no authority over
the church and the conscience, but only over civil matters. Luther expressed
the same view in 1523.91
(c)
"The third opinion is that the magistrate may and ought to exercise his
coërcive power in suppressing and punishing heretics and sectaries less or
more, according as the nature and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and
danger of seducing others may require." For this theory Gillespie quotes
Moses, St. Augustin, Calvin, Beza, Bullinger, Voëtius, John Gerhard, and other
Calvinistic and Lutheran divines. It was held by the Presbyterians in England
and Scotland, including the Scottish commissioners in the Assembly, and
vigorously advocated by Dr. Samuel Rutherford, Professor of Divinity in St.
Andrews,92
and most zealously by Thomas Edwards, a Presbyterian minister in London.93 It had a strong basis in the national
endorsement of the Solemn League and Covenant, and triumphed in the Westminster
Assembly. It may therefore be called the Presbyterian theory of the seventeenth
century. But it was never put into practice by Presbyterians, at least not to
the extent of physical violence, against heretics and schismatics either in
England or Scotland.94
The
Westminster Confession of Faith, in its original shape, declares, on the one
hand, the great principle of religious liberty, that "God alone is Lord of
the conscience," but also, on the other hand, that dangerous heretics
"may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures
of the church, and by the power of the civil magistrate."95 And it assigns to the civil magistrate
the power and duty to preserve "unity and peace in the church," to
suppress "all blasphemies and heresies," to prevent or reform
"all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline," and for this
purpose "to call synods and be present at them."96
6.
The five Independent members of the Assembly under the lead of Dr. Goodwin
protested against the power given to the civil magistrate and to synods.97 The obnoxious clauses of the Confession
were therefore omitted or changed in the Congregational recension called
"the Savoy Declaration" (1658).98
But
the toleration of the Independents, especially after they obtained the
ascendancy under Cromwell’s protectorate differed very little from that of the
Presbyterians. They were spoiled by success.99 They excluded from their program Popery, Prelacy, and
Socinianism. Dr. Owen, their most distinguished divine, who preached by command
a sermon before Parliament on the day after the execution of Charles I.,
entitled "Righteous Zeal encouraged by Divine Protection" (Jer.
15:19, 20), and accepted the appointment as Dean of Christ Church and
Vice-Chancellor of the University at Oxford, laid down no less than sixteen
fundamentals as conditions of toleration.100 He and Dr. Goodwin served on the Commission of the
forty-three Triers which, under Cromwell’s protectorate, took the place of the
Westminster Assembly. Cromwell himself, though the most liberal among the
English rulers and the boldest protector of Protestantism abroad, limited
toleration to Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, all of whom
recognized the sacred Scriptures and the fundamental articles of Christianity;
but he had no toleration for Romanists and Episcopal Royalists, who endangered
his reign and who were suspected of tolerating none but themselves. His great
foreign secretary, John Milton, the most eloquent advocate of liberty in the
English language, defended the execution of the king, and was intolerant to
popery and prelacy.
Had
Cromwell reigned longer, the Triers and the Savoy Conference which he
reluctantly appointed, would probably have repeated the vain attempt of the
Westminster Assembly to impose a uniform creed upon the nation, only with a
little more liberal "accommodation" for orthodox dissenters except
"papists" and "prelatists"). Their brethren in New England
where they had full sway, established a Congregational theocracy which had no room
even for Baptists and Quakers.
7.
Cromwell’s reign was a brief experiment. His son was incompetent to continue
it. Puritanism had not won the heart of England, but prepared its own tomb by
its excesses and blunders. Royalty and Episcopacy, which struck their roots
deep in the past, were restored with the powerful aid of the Presbyterians. And
now followed a reaction in favor of political and ecclesiastical despotism, and
public and private immorality, which for a time ruined all the good which
Puritanism had done.
Charles
II., who "never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one," broke
his solemn pledges and took the lead in intolerance and licentiousness. The Act
of Uniformity was re-enacted May 19, 1662, and went into operation on St.
Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1662, made hideous by the St. Bartholomew
Massacre, nearly a hundred years before. "And now came in," says
Baxter, one of the most moderate as well as most learned and pious of the
Nonconformists, "the great inundation of calamities, which in many streams
overwhelmed thousands of godly Christians, together with their pastors."
All Puritan ministers were expelled from their livings and exposed to
starvation, their assemblies forbidden, and absolute obedience to the king and
conformity to episcopacy were enforced, even in Scotland. The faithful
Presbyterians in that country (the Covenanters) were subjected by the royal
dragonnades to all manner of indignities and atrocities. "They were
hunted"—says an English historian101 — like criminals over the
mountains; their ears were torn from their roots; they were branded with hot
irons; their fingers were wrenched asunder by the thumbkins; the bones of their
legs were shattered in the boots; women were scourged publicly through the
streets; multitudes were transported to the Barbadoes; an infuriated soldiery
was let loose upon them, and encouraged to exercise all their ingenuity in
torturing them."
The
period of the Restoration is, perhaps, the most immoral and disgraceful in
English history. But it led at last to the final overthrow of the treacherous
and semi-popish dynasty of the Stuarts, and inaugurated a new era in the
history of religious liberty. Puritanism was not dead, but produced some of its
best and most lasting works—Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress—in this period of its deepest humiliation and suffering.
8.
The act of Toleration under the reign of William and Mary, 1689, made an end to
violent persecutions in England. And yet it is far from what we now understand
by religious liberty. Toleration is negative, liberty positive; toleration is a
favor, liberty a right; toleration may be withdrawn by the power which grants
it, liberty is as inalienable as conscience itself; toleration is extended to
what cannot be helped and what may be in itself objectionable, liberty is a
priceless gift of the Creator.
The
Toleration of 1689 was an accommodation to a limited number of
Dissenters—Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, who were allowed
liberty of separate organization and public worship on condition of subscribing
thirty-six out of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Roman
Catholics and Unitarians were excluded, and did not acquire toleration in
England till the nineteenth century, the former by the Act of Emancipation
passed April 13, 1829. Even now the Dissenters in England labor under minor
disabilities and social disadvantages, which will continue as long as the
government patronizes an established church. They have to support the
establishment, in addition to their own denomination. Practically, however,
there is more religious liberty in England than anywhere on the Continent, and
as much as in the United States.
9.
The last and most important step in the progress of religious liberty was taken
by the United States of America in the provision of the Federal Constitution of
1787, which excludes all religious tests from the qualifications to any office
or public trust. The first amendment to the Constitution (1789) enacts that
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof."102
Thus
the United States government is by its own free act prevented from ever
establishing a state-church, and on the other hand it is bound to protect
freedom of religion, not only as a matter of opinion, but also in its public
exercise, as one of the inalienable rights of an American citizen, like the
freedom of speech and of the press. History had taught the framers of the
Constitution that persecution is useless as well as hateful, and that it has
its root in the unholy alliance of religion with politics. Providence had made
America a hospitable home for all fugitives from persecution,—Puritans,
Presbyterians, Huguenots, Baptists, Quakers, Reformed, Lutherans, Roman
Catholics, etc.—and foreordained it for the largest development of civil and
religious freedom consistent with order and the well-being of society. When the
colonies, after a successful struggle for independence, coalesced into one
nation they could not grant liberty to one church or sect without granting it
to all. They were thus naturally driven to this result. It was the inevitable
destiny of America. And it involved no injustice or injury to any church or
sect.
The
modern German empire forms in some measure a parallel. When it was formed in
1870 by the free action of the twenty or more German sovereignties, it had to
take them in with their religion, and abstain from all religious and
ecclesiastical legislation which might interfere with the religion of any
separate state.
The
constitutional provision of the United States in regard to religion is the last
outcome of the Reformation in its effect upon toleration and freedom, not
foreseen or dreamed of by the Reformers, but inevitably resulting from their
revolt against papal tyranny. It has grown on Protestant soil with the hearty
support of all sects and parties. It cuts the chief root of papal and any other
persecution, and makes it legally impossible. It separates church and state,
and thus prevents the civil punishment of heresy as a crime against the state.
It renders to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and renders to God the
things that are God’s. It marks a new epoch in the history of legislation and
civilization. It is the American contribution to church history. No part of the
federal constitution is so generally accepted and so heartily approved as that
which guarantees religious liberty, the most sacred and most important of all
liberties. It is regarded almost as an axiom which needs no argument.
Religious
liberty has thus far been fully justified by its effects. It has stimulated the
fullest development of the voluntary principle. The various Christian churches
can live in peace and harmony together, and are fully able to support and to
govern themselves without the aid of the secular power. This has been proven by
the experience of a century, and this experience is the strongest argument in
favor of the separation of church and state. Christianity flourishes best
without a state-church.
The
separation, however, is peaceful, not hostile, as it was in the Ante-Nicene
age, when the pagan state persecuted the church. Nor is it a separation of the
nation from Christianity. The government is bound to protect all forms of
Christianity with its day of rest, its churches, its educational and charitable
institutions.103 Even irreligion
and infidelity are tolerated within the limits of the law of self-preservation.
Religious liberty may, of course, be abused like any other liberty. It has its
necessary boundary in the liberty of others and the essential interests of society.
The United States government would not tolerate, much less protect, a religion
which requires human sacrifices, or sanctions licentious rites, or polygamy, or
any other institution inconsistent with the laws and customs of the land, and
subversive of the foundation of the state and the order of Christian
civilization. Hence the recent prohibition of polygamy in the Territories, and
the unwillingness of Congress to admit Utah into the family of States unless
polygamy is abolished by the Mormons. The majority of the population decides
the religion of a country, and, judged by this test, the American people are as
Christian as any other on earth, only in a broader sense which recognizes all
forms of Christianity. While Jews and infidels are not excluded from the
enjoyment of any civil or political right on account of their religion or
irreligion, they cannot alter the essentially Christian character of the
sentiments, habits and institutions of the nation.
There
are three important institutions in which church and state touch each other
even in the United States, and where a collision of interests may take place:
education in the public schools, marriage, and Sunday as a day of civil and
sacred rest. The Roman Catholics are opposed to public schools unless they can
teach in them their religion which allows no compromise with any other; the
Mormons are opposed to monogamy, which is the law of the land and the basis of
the Christian family; the Jews may demand the protection of their Sabbath on
Saturday, while infidels want no Sabbath at all except perhaps for amusement
and dissipation. But all these questions admit of a peaceful settlement and
equitable adjustment, without a relapse into the barbarous measures of
persecution.
The
law of the United States is supreme in the Territories and the District of
Columbia, but does not forbid any of the States to establish a particular
church, or to continue a previous establishment. The Colonies began with the
European system of state-churchism, only in a milder form, and varying
according to the preferences of the first settlers. In the New England
Colonies—except Rhode Island founded by the Baptist Roger Williams—orthodox
Congregationalism was the established church which all citizens were required
to support; in Virginia and the Southern States, as also in New York, the
Episcopal Church was legally established and supported by the government.104 Even those Colonies which were
professedly founded on the basis of religious toleration, as Maryland and
Pennsylvania, enacted afterwards disabling clauses against Roman Catholics,
Unitarians, Jews and infidels. In Pennsylvania, the Quaker Colony of William
Penn, no one could hold office, from 1693 to 1775, without subscribing a solemn
declaration of belief in the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity and
condemning the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the mass as
idolatrous.105
The
great revolution of legislation began in the Colony of Virginia in 1776, when
Episcopacy was disestablished, and all other churches freed from their
disabilities.106 The change was
brought about by the combined efforts of Thomas Jefferson (the leading
statesman of Virginia, and a firm believer in absolute religious freedom on the
ground of philosophic neutrality), and of all dissenting denominations,
especially the Presbyterians, Baptists and Quakers. The other Colonies or
States gradually followed the example, and now there is no State in which
religious freedom is not fully recognized and protected.
The
example of the United States exerts a silent, but steady and mighty influence
upon Europe in raising the idea of mere toleration to the higher plane of
freedom, in emancipating religion from the control of civil government, and in
proving the advantages of the primitive practice of ecclesiastical self-support
and self-government.
The
best legal remedy against persecution and the best guarantee of religious
freedom is a peaceful separation of church and state; the best moral remedy and
guarantee is a liberal culture, a comprehensive view of the many-sidedness of
truth, a profound regard for the sacredness of conscientious conviction, and a
broad and deep Christian love as described by the Apostle Paul.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="13" title="Chronological Limits">
§ 13.
Chronological Limits.
The
Reformation period begins with Luther’s Theses, a.d. 1517, and ends with the
Peace of Westphalia, a.d. 1648. The last event brought to a close the terrible
Thirty Years’ War and secured a legal existence to the Protestant faith (the
Lutheran and Reformed Confession) throughout Germany.
The
year 1648 marks also an important epoch in the history of English and Scotch
Protestantism, namely, the ratification by the Long Parliament of the doctrinal
standards of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643 to 1652), which are
still in use among the Presbyterian Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland and
the United States.
Within
this period of one hundred and thirty-one years there are several minor epochs,
and the dates vary in different countries.
The
German Reformation, which is essentially Lutheran, divides itself naturally
into four sub-periods:1. From 1517 to the Augsburg Diet and Augsburg
Confession, 1530. 2. From 1530 to the so-called "Peace of Augsburg,"
1555. 3. From 1555 to the "Formula of Concord," 1577, which completed
the Lutheran system of doctrine, or 1580 (when the "Book of Concord"
was published and enforced). 4. From 1580 to the conclusion of the Thirty
Years’ War, 1648.
The
Scandinavian Reformation followed closely in the path of the Lutheran
Reformation of Germany, and extends, likewise, to the Thirty Years’ War, in
which Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, took a leading part as defender of
Protestantism. The Reformation triumphed in Sweden in 1527, in Denmark and
Norway in 1537.
The
Swiss Reformation was begun by Zwingli and completed by Calvin, and is
accordingly divided into two acts: 1. The Reformation of German Switzerland to
the death of Zwingli, 1517 to 1531. 2. The Reformation of French Switzerland to
the death of Calvin, 1564, or we may say, to the death of Beza, 1605.
The
introduction of the Reformed church into Germany, especially the Palatinate,
falls within the second period.
In
the stormy history of French Protestantism, the years 1559, 1598 and 1685, mark
as many epochs. In 1559, the first national synod was held in Paris and gave
the Reformed congregations a compact organization by the adoption of the
Gallican Confession and the Presbyterian form of government. In 1598, the
Reformed church secured a legal existence and a limited measure of freedom by
the edict of Nantes, which King Henry IV. gave to his former
fellow-religionists. But his bigoted grandson, Louis XIV., revoked the edict in
1685. Since that time the French Reformed church continued like a burning bush
in the desert; while thousands of her sons reluctantly left their native land,
and contributed, by their skill, industry and piety, to the prosperity of
Switzerland, Holland, Germany, England, and North America.
The
Reformation in Holland includes the heroic war of emancipation from the Spanish
yoke and passed through the bloody bath of martyrdom, until after unspeakable
sufferings under Charles V. and Philip II., the Utrecht Union of the seven
Northern Provinces (formed in 1579), was reluctantly acknowledged by Spain in
1609. Then followed the internal theological war between Arminianism and
Calvinism, which ended in the victory of the latter at the National Synod of
Dort, 1619.
The
progressive stages of the English Reformation, which followed a course of its
own, were influenced by the changing policy of the rulers, and are marked by
the reigns of Henry VIII., 1527–1547; of Edward VI., 1547–1553; the papal
reaction and period of Protestant martyrdom under Queen Mary, 1553–1558; the
re-establishment of Protestantism under Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1603. Then began
the second Reformation, which was carried on by the people against their
rulers. It was the struggle between Puritanism and the semi-popery of the
Stuart dynasty. Puritanism achieved a temporary triumph, deposed and executed
Charles I. and Archbishop Laud; but Puritanism as a national political power
died with Cromwell, and in 1660 Episcopacy and the Prayer Book were restored
under Charles II., till another revolution under William and Mary in 1688 made
an end to the treacherous rule of the Stuarts and gave toleration to the Dissenters,
who hereafter organized themselves in separate denominations, and represent the
left wing of English Protestantism.
The
Reformation in Scotland, under the lead of John Knox (1505–1572), the Luther of
the North, completed its first act in 1567 with the legal recognition and
establishment by the Scotch Parliament. The second act was a struggle with the
papal reaction under Queen Mary of Scots, till 1590. The third act may be
called the period of anti-Prelacy and union with English Puritanism, and ended
in the final triumph of Presbyterianism in 1690. Since that time, the question
of patronage and the relation of church and state have been the chief topics of
agitation and irritation in the Church of Scotland and gave rise to a number of
secessions; while the Westminster standards of faith and discipline have not
undergone any essential alteration.
The
Reformed faith secured a partial success and toleration in Poland, Hungary,
Transylvania, Bohemia and Moravia, but suffered severely by the Jesuitical
reaction, especially in Bohemia. In Italy and Spain the Reformation was
completely suppressed; and it is only since the overthrow of the temporal rule
of the Pope in 1871, that Protestants are allowed to hold public worship in
Rome and to build churches or chapels.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="14" title="General Literature on the Reformation">
§ 14.
General Literature on the Reformation.
SOURCES.
I. On
The Protestant Side: (1) The works of the Reformers, especially Luther,
Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox. They will be quoted in the
chapters relating to their history.
(2)
Contemporary Historians: Joh. Sleidan (Prof. of law in Strassburg, d. 1556): De
Statu Religionis et Reipublicae Carolo V. Caesare commentarii. Libri XXVI.
Argentor. 1555 fol., best ed. by Am Ende, Francof. ad M. 1785–86, 3 vols. Engl.
transl. by Bohun, London, 1689, 3 vols. fol. French transl. with the notes of
Le Courayer, 1767. Embraces the German and Swiss Reformation.
The
Annales Reformationis of Spalatin, and the Historia Reformationis of Fr.
Myconius, refer only to the Lutheran Reformation. So, also, Löscher’s valuable
collection of documents, 3 vols. See below § 15.
II.
Roman Catholic: (1) Official documents. Leonis X. P. M. Regesta, ed. by
Cardinal Hergenröther under the auspices of Pope Leo XIII., from the Vatican
archives. Freiburg i. B. 1884 sqq., 12 fascic. The first three parts contain
384 pages to a.d. 1514.—Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranae ex tabulariis
secretioribus S. Sedis, 1521–’25, ed. by Petrus Balan, Ratisbonae, 1884 (589
pages). Contains the acts relating to the Diet of Worms, with the reports of
Aleander, the papal legate, and the letters of Clement VII. from 1523–’25. It
includes a document of 1513, heretofore unknown, which disproves the
illegitimate birth of Clement VII. and represents him as the son of Giuliano de
Medici and his wife, Florets. Monumenta Saeculi XVI. Historiam illustrantia,
ed. by Balan, vol. I. Oeniponte, 1885 (489 pages).
(2)
Controversial writings: Joh. Eck (d. 1563): Contra Ludderum, 1530. 2 Parts fol.
Polemical treatises on the Primacy, Penance, the Mass, Purgatory etc. Jo.
Cochlaeus (canon of Breslau, d. 1552): Commentaria de Actis et Scriptis Lutheri
ab Anno Dom. 1517 ad A. 1547 fideliter conscripta. Mogunt. 1549 fol.; Par.
1565; Colon. 1568.—Laur. Surius (a learned Carthusian, d. at Cologne, 1578):
Commentarius rerum in orbe gestarum ab a. 1500–1564. Colon. 1567. Against
Sleidan.
Historical
Representations.
I.
Protestant Works.
(1)
The respective sections in the General Church Histories of Schröckh
(Kirchengesch. seit der Reformation, Leipzig, 1804–’12, 10 vols.), Mosheim,
Gieseler (Bd. III. Abth. I. and II., 1840 and 1852; Engl. transl. N. Y. vols.
IV. and V., 1862 and 1880), Baur (Bd. IV. 1863), Hagenbach (vol. III., also
separately publ. 4th ed. 1870; Engl. transl. by Miss Eveline Moore, Edinburgh,
1878, 2 vols.; especially good on the Zwinglian Reformation). More briefly
treated in the compends of Guericke, Neidner, Hase (11th ed. 1886), Ebrard,
Herzog (vol. IIIrd), Kurtz (10th ed. 887, vol. IInd).
All
these works pay special attention to the Continental Reformation, but very
little to that of England and Scotland.
Neander
comes down only to 1430; his lectures on modern church history (which I heard
in 1840) were never published. Gieseler’s work is most valuable for its
literature down to 1852, and extracts from the sources, but needs an entire
reconstruction, which is contemplated by Prof. Brieger at Leipzig.
(2)
Jean Henri Merle d’aubigne (usually miscalled D’Aubigné, which is simply an
addition indicating the place of his ancestors, d. 1872): Histoire de la
reformation du 16. siècle, Paris, 1835–’53, 5 vols., 4th ed. 1861 sqq.; and
Histoire de la réformation en Europe au temps du Calvin, Par., 1863–’78, 8
vols. (including a posthumous vol.). Also in German by Runkel (Stuttgart, 1848
sqq.), and especially in English (in several editions, some of them mutilated).
Best Engl. ed. by Longman, Green & Co., London, 1865 sqq.; best Am. ed. by
Carter, New York, 1870–’79, the first work in 5, the second in 8 vols. Merle’s
History, owing to its evangelical fervor, intense Protestantism and dramatic
eloquence, has had an enormous circulation in England and America through means
of the Tract Societies and private publishers.
H.
Stebbing: History of the Reformation, London, 1836, 2 vols.
G.
Waddington (Anglican, d. 1869): A History of the Reformation on the Continent.
London, 1841, 3 vols. (Only to the death of Luther, 1546.)
F. A.
Holzhauzen: Der Protestantismus nach seiner geschichtl. Entstehung, Begründung
und Fortbildung. Leipzig, 1846–’59, 3 vols. Comes down to the Westphalian
Treaty. The author expresses his standpoint thus (III. XV.): "Die
christliche Kirche ist ihrer Natur nach wesentlich Eine, und der kirchliche
Auflösungs-process, welcher durch die Reformation herbeigeführt worden ist,
kann keinen anderen Zweck haben, als ein neues höhes positives Kirchenthum
herzustellen."
B.
Ter Haar (of Utrecht) Die Reformationsgeschichte in Schilderungen. Transl. from
the Dutch by C. Gross. Gotha, 5th ed. 1856, 2 vols.
Dan.
Schenkel (d. 1885): Die Refomatoren und die Reformation. Wiesbaden. 1856. Das
Wesen des Protestantismus aus den Quellen des Ref. zeitalters. Schaffhausen, 1862,
3 vols.
Charles
Hardwick: (Anglican, d. 1859): A History of the Christian Church during the
Reformation. Cambridge and London, 1856. Third ed. revised by W. Stubbs (bishop
of Chester), 1873.
J.
Tulloch: (Scotch Presbyt., d. 1886): Leaders of the Reformation: Luther,
Calvin, Latimer, Knox. Edinb., 1859; 3d ed. 1883.
L.
Häusser (d. 1867): Geschichte des Zeitalters der Reformation, 1517–1648. ed. by
Oncken, Berlin, 1868 (867 pages). Abridged EngI. transl. by Mrs. Sturge, N. Y.,
1874.
E. L.
Th. Henke (d. 1872): Neuere Kirgesch. ed. by Dr. Gass, Halle, 1874, 2 vols. The
first vol. treats of the Reformation.
Fr.
Seebohm: The Era of the Protestant Revolution. London and N. York, 1874.
J. A.
Wylie: History of Protestantism. London, 1875–77, 3 vols.
George
P. Fisher (Prof. of Church History in Yale College): The Reformation. New York,
1873. A comprehensive work, clear, calm, judicial, with a useful
bibliographical Appendix (p. 567–591).
J. M.
Lindsay (Presbyt.): The Reformation. Edinb., 1882. (A mere sketch.)
Charles
Beard (Unitarian): The Reformation in its relation to Modern Thought and
Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures. London, 1883; 2d ed., 1885. Very able. German
translation by F. Halverscheid. Berlin, 1884.
John
F. Hurst (Method. Bishop): Short History of the Reformation. New York, 1884
(125 pages).
Ludwig
Keller: Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien. Leipz., 1885 (516
pages). In sympathy with the Waldenses and Anabaptists.
Two
series of biographies of the Reformers, by a number of German scholars the
Lutheran series in 8 vols., Elberfeld, 1861–’75, and the Reformed (Calvinistic)
series in 10 vols., Elberfeld, 1857–’63. The Lutheran series was introduced by
Nitzsch, the Reformed by Hagenbach. The several biographies will be mentioned
in the proper places.
(3)
For the general history of the world and the church during and after the period
of the Reformation, the works of Leopold von Ranke (d. 1886) are of great
importance, namely: Fürsten und Völker von Südeuropa im 16. und 17. Jahrh.
(Berlin 1827, 4th ed. enlarged 1877); Geschichten der romanischen und
germanischen Völker von 1494–1514 (3d ed. 1885); Die römischen Päpste, ihre
Kirche und ihr Staat im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Berlin, 8th ed. 1885, 3 vols. Engl.
trans. by Sarah Austin, Lond. 4th ed. 1867, 3 vols.); Französische Geschichte
im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Stuttgart, 1852, 4th ed. 1877, 6 vols.); Englische
Geschichte vornehmlich im 16. u. 17. Jahrh. (4th ed. 1877, 6 vols.; Engl.
transl. publ. by the Clarendon Press); and especially his classical Deutsche
Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Berlin, 1839–’43, 6th ed. 1880–’82, in
6 vols.; transl. in part by S. Austin, 1845–’47, 3 vols.). Ranke is a master of
objective historiography from the sources in artistic grouping of the salient
points, and is in religious and patriotic sympathy with the German Reformation;
while yet he does full justice to the Catholic church and the papacy as a great
power in the history of religion and civilization. In his 85th year he began to
dictate in manly vigor a Universal History down to the time of Emperor Henry
IV. and Pope Gregory VII., 1881–86; to which were added 2 posthumous vols. by
Dove and Winter, 1888, 9 vols. in all. His library was bought for the
University in Syracuse, N. Y.
For
the general literature see Henry Hallam: Introduction to the Literature of
Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries. London, 1842, etc. N. York ed.,
1880, in 4 vols.
II.
Roman Catholic Works.
(1)
The respective sections in the General Church Histories of Möhler (d. 1838, ed.
from lectures by Gams, Regensburg, 1867–1868, 3 vols.; the third vol. treats of
the Reformation), Alzog (10th ed. 1882, 2 vols.; Engl. transl. by Pabish and
Byrne, Cincinnati, 1874 sqq., 3 vols.), Kraus (2d ed. 1882), and Cardinal
Hergenröther (third ed. 1885). Comp. also, in part, the Histories of the
Council of Trent by Sarpi (d. 1623), and Pallavicini (d. 1667).
(2)
Thuanus (De Thou, a moderate Catholic, d. 1617); Historiarum sui Temporis libri
138. Orleans (Geneva), 1620 sqq., 5 vols. fol. and London, 1733, 7 vols. fol.;
French transl. London, 1734, 16 vols. 4to. Goes from 1546 to 1607.
Louis
Maimbourg (Jesuit, d. at Paris, 1686): Histoire du Lutheranisme Paris, 1680;
Histoire du Calvinisme, 1682. Controversial, and inspired by partisan zeal;
severely handled by R. Bayle in his Critique générale de l’histoire du
Calvinisme de M., Amsterd., 1684.
Bp.
Bossuet (d. 1704): Histoire des variations des églises protestantes. Paris,
1688, 2 vols. and later edd., also in his collected works, 1819 sqq. and 1836
sqq. English transl., Dublin, 1829, 2 vols. German ed. by Mayer, Munich. 1825,
4 vols. A work of great ability, but likewise polemical rather than historical.
It converted Gibbon to Romanism, but left him at last a skeptic, like Bayle,
who was, also, first a Protestant, then a Romanist for a short season.
Kaspar
Riffel: Kirchengesch. Der Neusten Zeit. Mainz, 1844–47, 3 vols.
Martin
John Spalding (since 1864 Archbishop of Baltimore, d. 1872): History of the
Protest. Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, and in England, Ireland,
Scotland, the Netherlands, France., and Northern Europe. Louisville, 1860; 8th ed., revised and
enlarged. Baltimore, 1875, 2 vols. No Index. Against Merle D’Aubigné. The
Archbishop charges D’Aubigné (as he calls him) with being a "bitter
partisan, wholly unreliable as an historian," and says of his work that it
is "little better than a romance," as he "omits more than half
the facts, and either perverts or draws on his imagination for the
remainder." His own impartiality and reliableness as an historian may be
estimated from the following judgments of the Reformers: "Luther, while
under the influence of the Catholic Church, was probably a moderately good man;
he was certainly a very bad one after he left its communion "(I.
72)."Heu! quantum mutatus ab illo!" (77). "His violence often
drove him to the very verge of insanity .... He occasionally inflicted on
Melanchthon personal chastisement" (87). Spalding quotes from Audin, his chief
authority (being apparently quite ignorant of German): "Luther was
possessed not by one, but by a whole troop of devils" (89). Zwingli (or
Zuingle, as he calls him) he charges with "downright paganism" (I.
175), and makes fun of his marriage and the marriages of the other Reformers,
especially Bucer, who "became the husband of no less than three ladies in
succession: and one of them had been already married three times—all too, by a
singular run of good luck, in the reformation line" (176). And this is all
that we learn of the Reformer of Strassburg. For Calvin the author seems to
draw chiefly on the calumnies of Audin, as Audin drew on those of Bolsec. He
describes him as "all head and no heart;" "he crushed the
liberties of the people in the name of liberty;" "he combined the cruelty
of Danton and Robespierre with the eloquence of Murat and Mirabeau, though he
was much cooler, and therefore more successful than any one of them all; he was
a very Nero." Spalding gives credit to Bolsec’s absurd stories of the
monstrous crimes and horrible death of Calvin, so fully contradicted by his
whole life and writings and the testimonies of his nearest friends, as Beza,
Knox, etc. (I. 375, 384, 386, 388, 391). And such a work by a prelate of high
character and position seems to be the principal source from which American
Roman Catholics draw their information of the Reformation and of Protestantism!
The
historico-polemical works of Döllinger and Janssen belong to the history of
the
German Reformation and will be noticed in the next section.
BOOK 1.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION TILL THE DIET OF
AUGSBURG, a.d. 1530.
––––––––––
</div3></div2><div2 type =
"Chapter" n="II" title="LUTHER’S
TRAINING FOR THE REFORMATION, A.D. L483–1517">
CHAPTER
II.
LUTHER’S
TRAINING FOR THE REFORMATION, A.D. L483–1517.
<div3 type = "Section"
n="15" title="Literature of the German Reformation">
§ 15.
Literature of the German Reformation.
Sources.
I.
Protestant Sources:
(1)
The Works of the Reformers, especially Luther and Melanchthon. See § § 17, 32.
The reformatory writings of Luther, from 1517–1524, are in vol. XV. of Walch’s
ed., those from 1525–1537 in vol. XVI., those from 1538–1546 in vol. XVII. See
also the Erlangen ed., vols. 24–32 (issued separately in a second ed. 1883
sqq.), and the Weimar ed., vol. I. sqq.
(2)
Contemporary writers:
G.
Spalatin (Chaplain of Frederick the Wise and Superintendent in Altenburg, d.
1545): Annales Reformationis oder Jahrbücher von der Reform. Lutheri (to 1543).
Ed. by Cyprian, Leipz., 1718.
Frid.
Myconius (or Mekum, Superintendent at Gotha, d. 1546): Historia Reformationis
vom Jahr Christi 1518–1542. Ed. by Cyprian, Leipzig, 1718.
M.
Ratzeberger (a physician, and friend of Luther, d. 1559): Luther und seine
Zeit. Ed. from MS. in Gotha by Neudecker, Jena, 1850 (284 pp.).
(3) Documentary
collections:
V. E.
Löscher (d. 1749): Vollständige Reformations=Acta und Documenta (for the years
1517–’19). Leipzig, 1720–’29, 3 vols.
Ch.
G. Neudecker: Urkunden aus der Reformationszeit, Cassel, 1836; Actenstücke aus
der Zeit der Reform., Nürnberg, 1838; Neue Beiträge, Leipzig, 1841.
C. E.
Förstemann: Archiv. f. d. Gesch. der Reform., Halle, 1831 sqq.; Neues
Urkundenbuch, Hamburg, 1842.
Th.
Brieger: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Reformation. Gotha, 1884
sqq. (Part I. Aleander und Luther, 1521.)
II.
Roman Catholic Sources . See § 14,
p. 89.
Histories.
I.
Protestant Historians :
Lud.
A Seckendorf (a statesman of thorough education and exemplary integrity, d.
1692): Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo. Francof. et
Lips., 1688; Lipsiae, 1694, fol. Against the Jesuit Maimbourg.
Chr.
A. Salig (d. 1738): Vollständige Historie der Augsburger Confession (from
1517–1562). Halle, 1730–’35. 3 vols.
G. J.
Planck (d. 1833): Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veränderungen und der Bildung
unseres protest. Lehrbegriffs bis zur Einführung der Concordienformel. Leipzig,
2d ed., 1791–1800, 6 vols. Important for the doctrinal controversies in the
Luth. Church. Followed by the Geschichte der protest. Theologie von der
Konkordienformel an his in die Mitte des achtzehnten Jahrh. Göttingen, 1831, 1
vol.
H. G.
Kreussler: D. Mart. Luthers Andenken in Münzen nebst Lebensbeschreibungen
merkwürdiger Zeitgenossen desselben. Mit 47 Kupfern und der Ansicht Wittenbergs
und Eisenachs zu Luthers Zeit. Leipzig, 1818. Chiefly interesting for the
numerous illustrations.
Phil.
Marheinecke (d. 1846): Geschichte der teutschen Reformation. Berlin, 2d ed.,
1831, 4 vols. One of the best books, written in Luther-like popularity of
style.
K.
Hagen: Deutschlands literar. und relig. Verhältnisse im Reformationszeitalter.
Erlangen, 1841–’44, sqq., 3 vols.
CH.
G. Neudecker: Gesch. des evang. Protestantismus in Deutschland. Leipzig, 1844,
sq., 2 vols.
C.
Hundeshagen (d. 1873): Der deutsche Protestantismus. Frankfurt, 1846, 3d ed.
1850. Discusses the genius of the Reformation as well as modern church
questions.
H.
Heppe (German Reformed, d. 1879): Gesch. des deutschen Protestantismus in den
Jahren 1555–’85. Marburg, 1852 sqq., 4 vols., 2d ed., 1865 sq. He wrote, also, a
number of other books on the Reformation, especially in Hesse.
Merle
d’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation, see § 14. The first division treats of
the German Reformation and is translated into German by Runkel, Stuttgart,
1848–1854, 5 vols., republ. by the American Tract society. Several English
editions; London and New York.
Wilh.
Gass: Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik. Berlin, 1854–’67, 4 vols.
G.
Plitt: Geschichte der evang. Kirche bis 1530. Erlangen, 1867.
Is.
A. Dorner (d. 1884): Geschichte. der protestantischen Theologie, besonders in
Deutschland. München, 1867. The first Book, pp. 1–420, treats of the
Reformation period of Germany and Switzerland. English translation, Edinburgh,
1871, 2 vols.
Ch.
P. Krauth (d. 1882): The Conservative Reformation. Philadelphia, 1872. A
dogmatico-historical vindication of Lutheranism.
K. F.
A. Kahnis (d. 1888): Die deutsche Reformation. Leipzig, vol. I. 1872 (till
1520, unfinished).
G.
Weber: Zur Geschichte des Reformationszeitalters. Leipzig, 1874.
Fr.
v. Bezold: Gesch. der deutschen Reformation. Berlin, 1886.
The
Elberfeld series of biographies of the Lutheran Reformers, with extracts from
their writings, 1861–1875. It begins with C. Schmidt’s Melanchthon, and ends
with Köstlin’s Luther (the large work in 2 vols., revised 1883).
Schriften
des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte. Halle, 1883 sqq. A series of monographs
on special topics in the Reformation history, especially that of Germany,
published by a Society formed in the year of the Luther celebration for the
literary defence of Protestantism against Romanism. Kolde, Benrath, Holdewey,
Bossert, Walther, are among the contributors. The series includes also an essay
on Wiclif by Buddensieg (1885), one on the Revocation of the edict of Nantes by
Theod. Schott (1885), and one on Ignatius of Loyola by E. Gothein (1885).
Of
Secular histories of Germany during the Reformation period, comp. especially,
Leopold von Ranke: Deutsche Gesch. im Zeitalter der Reformation (6th ed., 1881,
6 vols.), a most important work, see § 14. Also, Karl Ad. Menzel (d. 1855):
Neuere Geschichte der Deutschen seit der Reformation. Berlin, 2d ed., 1854 sq.,
6 vols. Wolfgang Menzel (d. 1873): Geschichte der Deutschen, 6th ed., 1872 sq.,
3 vols. L. Stacke: Deutsche Geschichte. Bielefeld u. Leipzig, 1881, 2 vols.
(Vol. II. by W. Boehm, pp. 37–182.)
Gottlob Egelhaaf (Dr. Phil., Prof. in the Karls-Gymnasium at Heilbronn):
Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Gekrönte Preisschrift des
Allgemeinen Vereins für Deutsche Literatur. Berlin, 1885. In the spirit of
Ranke’s great work on the same topic, with polemic reference to Janssen. It
extends from 1517 to the Peace of Augsburg, 1555. (450 pages.)
II.
Roman Catholic Historians. See the Lit. in § 14.
Ignatius
Döllinger (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in Munich, since 1870 Old Catholic): Die
Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkung im Umfange des Luther.
Bekenntnisses. Regensburg, 1846–’48, 3 vols.; 2d ed., 1853. A learned
collection of testimonies against the Reformation and its effects from
contemporary apostates, humanists, and the Reformers themselves (Luther and
Melanchthon), and those of their followers who complain bitterly of the decay
of morals and the dissensions in the Lutheran church. The author has,
nevertheless, after he seceded from the Roman communion, passed a striking
judgment in favor of Luther’s greatness.
Karl
Werner: Geschichte der kathol. Theologie in Deutschland. München, 1866.
Joh.
Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. Freiburg,
i. B. 1876–’88, 6 vols. (down to 1618). This masterpiece of Ultramontane
historiography is written with great learning and ability from a variety of
sources (especially the archives of Frankfurt, Mainz, Trier, Zürich, and the
Vatican), and soon passed through twelve editions. It called out able defences
of the Reformation by Kawerau (five articles in Luthardt’s "Zeitschrift
für kirchliche Wissenschaft und Kirchl. Leben," 1882 and 1883), Köstlin,
Lenz, Schweizer, Ebrard, Baumgarten, and others, to whom Janssen calmly replied
in An meine Kritiker, Freiburg, i. B., tenth thousand, 1883 (227 pp.), and Ein
Wort an meine Kritiker, Freib. i. B., twelfth thousand, 1883 (144 pp.). He
disclaims all "tendency," and professes to aim only at the historical
truth. Admitted, but his standpoint is false, because he views the main current
of modern history as an apostasy and failure; while it is an onward and
progressive movement of Christianity under the guidance of Divine providence
and the ever present spirit of its Founder. He reads history through the mirror
of Vatican Romanism, and we need not wonder that Pope Leo XIII. has praised
Janssen as "a light of historic science and a man of profound
learning."
Janssen
gives in each volume, in alphabetical order, very full lists of books and
pamphlets, Catholic and Protestant, on the different departments of the history
of Germany from the close of the fifteenth to the close of the sixteenth
century. See vol. I. xxvii.-xliv.; vol. II. xvii.-xxviii.; vol. III. xxv.-xxxix.;
vol. IV. xviii.-xxxi.; vol. V. xxv.-xliii.
For
political history: Fr. v. Buchholz: Ferdinand I. Wien, 1832 sqq., 9 vols.
Hurter: Ferdinand II. Schaffhausen, 1850 sqq.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="16" title="Germany and the Reformation">
§ 16.
Germany and the Reformation.
Germany
invented the art of printing and produced the Reformation. These are the two
greatest levers of modern civilization. While other nations sent expeditions in
quest of empires beyond the sea, the Germans, true to their genius of
inwardness, descended into the depths of the human soul and brought to light
new ideas and principles. Providence, it has been said, gave to France the
dominion of the land, to England the dominion of the sea, to Germany the
dominion of the air. The air is the region of speculation, but also the
necessary condition of life on the land and the sea.
The
characteristic traits which Tacitus ascribes to the heathen Germans, contain
already the germ of Protestantism. The love of personal freedom was as strong
in them as the love of authority was in the Roman race. They considered it
unworthy of the gods to confine them within walls, or to represent them by
images; they preferred an inward spiritual worship which communes directly with
the Deity, to an outward worship which appeals to the senses through forms and
ceremonies, and throws visible media between the finite and the infinite mind.
They resisted the aggression of heathen Rome, and they refused to submit to
Christian Rome when it was forced upon them by Charlemagne.
But
Christianity as a religion was congenial to their instincts. They were finally
Christianized, and even thoroughly Romanized by Boniface and his disciples. Yet
they never felt quite at home under the rule of the papacy. The mediaeval
conflict of the emperor with the pope kept up a political antagonism against
foreign rule; the mysticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries nursed
the love for a piety of less form and more heart, and undermined the prevailing
mechanical legalism; dissatisfaction with the pope increased with his exactions
and abuses, until at last, under the lead of a Saxon monk and priest, all the
national forces combined against the anti-christian tyranny and shook it of
forever. He carried with him the heart of Germany. No less than one hundred
grievances against Roman misrule were brought before the Diet of Nürnberg in
1522.107 Erasmus says that when Luther published
his Theses all the world applauded him.108 It is not impossible that all Germany would have embraced
the Reformation if its force had not been weakened and its progress arrested by
excesses and internal dissensions, which gave mighty aid to the Romanist
reaction.
Next
to Germany, little Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, England and Scotland,
inhabited by kindred races, were most active in completing that great act of
emancipation from popery and inaugurating an era of freedom and independence.
Nationality
has much to do with the type of Christianity. The Oriental church is identified
with the Greek and Slavonic races, and was not affected by the Reformation of
the sixteenth century; hence she is not directly committed for or against it,
and is less hostile to evangelical Protestantism than to Romanism, although she
agrees, in doctrine, discipline and worship, far more with the latter. The
Roman Catholic Church retained her hold upon the Latin races, which were, it
first superficially touched by the Reformation, but reacted, and have ever
since been vacillating between popery and infidelity, or between despotism and
revolution. Even the French, who under Henry IV. were on the very verge of
becoming Protestant, are as a nation more inclined to swing from Bossuet to
Voltaire than to Calvin; although they will always have a respectable minority
of intelligent Protestants. The Celtic races are divided; the Welsh and Scotch
became intensely Protestant, the Irish as intensely Romanist. The Teutonic or
Germanic nations produced the Reformation chiefly, but not exclusively; for the
French Calvin was the greatest theologian among the Reformers, and has exerted
a stronger influence in shaping the doctrine and discipline of Protestantism
outside of Germany than any of them.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="17" title="The Luther Literature">
§ 17.
The Luther Literature.
The
Luther literature is immense and has received large additions since 1883. The
richest collections are in the Royal Library at Berlin (including Dr.
Knaake’s); in the public libraries of Dresden, Weimar, Wittenberg,
Wolfenbüttel, München; in America, in the Theol. Seminary at Hartford
(Congregationalist), which purchased the Beck collection of over 1,200 works,
and in the Union Theol. Sem., New York, which has the oldest editions.
For
the Luther literature comp. J. A. Fabricius: Centifolium Lutheranum, Hamburg,
1728 and 1730, 2 Parts; Vogel: Bibliotheca biographica Lutherana, Halle, 1851,
145 pages; John Edmands: Reading Notes on Luther, Philada., 1883; Beck
(publisher): Bibliotheca Lutherana, Nördlingen, 1883; (185 pages, with titles
of 1236 books, now at Hartford), 1884: Bibliographie der Luther-Literatur des
J. 1883, Frankf. a. M. 1884, enlarged ed. 1887 (52 and 24 pages, incomplete).
luther’s
works.
Oldest
editions: Wittenberg, 12 German vols., 1539–’59,and 7 Latin, 1545–’58; Jena, 8
German and 4 Latin vols., 1555–’58, with 2 supplements by Aurifaber, 1564–’65;
Altenburg, 10 vols., 1661–’64; Leipzig, 22 vols., 1729–’40, fol.—The three best
editions are:
(1)
The Halle edition by Johann Georg Walch, Halle, 1740–1750, in 24 vols., 4to.
Republished with corrections and additions by Dr. Walther, Stöckhardt, Kähler,
etc., Concordia College, St. Louis, 1880 sqq., 25 vols.
(2)
The Erlangen-Frankfurt ed. by Plochmann, Irmischer, and Enders, etc., Erlangen,
and Frankfurt a. M., 1827 sqq., 2d ed., 1862–1883, 101 vols. 8vo. (not yet
finished). German writings, 67 vols.; Opera Latina, 25 vols.; Com. in Ep. and
Gal., 3 vols.; Opera Latina varii argumenti ad reformationis Hist. pertinentia,
7 vols. The most important for our purpose are the Reformations-historische Schriften
(9 vols., second ed., 1883–’85), and the Briefwechsel (of which the first vol.
appeared in 1884; 6 vols. are promised).
(3)
The Weimar edition (the fourth centennial memorial ed., patronized by the
Emperor of Germany), by Drs. Knaake, Kawerau, Bertheau, and other Luther
scholars, Weimar, 1883 sqq. This, when completed, will be the critical standard
edition. It gives the works in chronological order and strict reproduction of
the first prints, with the variations of later edd., even the antiquated and
inconsistent spelling, which greatly embarrasses the reader not thoroughly
familiar with German. The first volume contains Luther’s writings from
1512–1518; the second (1884), the writings from 1518–1519; vols. III. and IV.
(1885–’6), the Commentaries on the Psalms; vol. VI. (1888), the continuation of
the reformatory writings till 1520; several other vols. are in press.
I
have usually indicated, from which of these three editions the quotations are
made. The last was used most as far as it goes, and is quoted as the
"Weimar ed."
The
first collected ed. of Luther’s German works appeared in 1539 with a preface,
in which he expresses a wish that all his books might be forgotten and perish,
and the Bible read more instead.
(See Erl. Frkf. ed. I., pp. 1–6.)
Selections
of Luther’s Works by Pfizer (Frankf., 1837, sqq.); Zimmermann (Frankf., 1846
sq.); Otto von Gerlach (Berlin, 1848, 10 vols., containing the Reformatorische
Schriften).
The
Letters of Luther were separately edited by De Wette, Berlin, 1825, sqq., 5
vols.; vol. VI. by J. C. Seidemann, 1856 (716 pp., with an addition of
Lutherbriefe, 1859); supplemented by C. A. H. Burkhardt, Leipz., 1866 (524
pp.); a revised ed. with comments by Dr. E. L. Enders (pastor at Oberrad near
Frankfurt a. M.), 1884 sqq. (in the Erl. Frankf ed.). The first volume contains
the letters from 1507 to March, 1519. For selection see C. Alfred Hase:
Lutherbriefe in Auswahl und Uebersetzung, Leipzig, 1867 (420 pages). Th. Kolde:
Analecta Lutherana, Briefe und Actenstücke zur Geschichte Luther’s. Gotha,
1883. Contains letters of Luther and to Luther, gathered with great industry
from German and Swiss archives and libraries.
Additional
Works of Luther:
The
Table Talk of Luther is best edited by Aurifaber, 1566, etc. (reprinted in Walch’s
ed. vol. xxii.); by Förstemann and Bindseil, Leipzig, 1844–’48, 4 vols. (the
German Table Talk); by Bindseil: Martini Lutheri Colloquia, Latina, etc.,
Lemgoviae et Detmoldae, 1863–’66, 3 vols.; and in the Frankf. Erl. ed., vols.
57–62. Dr. Conr. Cordatus: Tagebuch über Dr. Luther geführt, 1537, first edited
by Dr. Wrampelmeyer, Halle, 1885, 521 pages. Last and best edition by Hoppe,
St. Louis, 1887 (vol. xxii. of Am. ed. of Walch).
Georg
Buchwald: Andreas Poach’s handschriftl. Sammlung ungedruckter Predigten D.
Martin Luthers aus den Jahren 1528 bis 1546. Aus dem Originale zum ersten Mal
herausgegeben. Leipzig, 1884, to
embrace 3 vols. (Only the first half of the first vol., published 1884, and the
first half of the third vol., 1885; very few copies sold.) The MS. collection of Andreas Poach in
the public library at Zwickau embraces nine volumes of Luther’s sermons from
1528–1546. They are based on stenographic reports of Diaconus Georg Rörer of
Wittenberg (ordained by Luther 1525, d. at Halle, 1557), who took full Latin
notes of Luther’s German sermons, retaining, however, in strange medley a
number of German words and phrases.
P.
Tschackert: Unbekannte Predigten u. Scholien Luthers, Berlin, 1888. MSS. of
sermons from Oct. 23, 1519, to April 2, 1521, discovered in the University
Library at Königsberg. They will be publ. in the Weimar edition.
II.
Biographies of Luther :
(1)
By contemporaries, who may be included in the sources.
Melanchthon
wrote Vita Lutheri, a brief but weighty sketch, 1546, often reprinted,
translated into German by Matthias Ritter, 1555, with Melanchthon’s account of
Luther’s death to the students in the lecture room, the funeral orations of
Bugenhagen and Cruciger (157 pages); a new transl. by Zimmermann, with preface
by G. J. Planck, Göttingen, 1813; ed. of the original in Vitae quatuor
Reformatorum., Lutheri a Melanchthone, Melanchthonis a Camerario, Zwinglii a
Myconio, Calvini a Beza, prefaced by Neander, Berlin, 1841. Justus Jonas gives
an account of Luther’s last sickness and death as an eye-witness, 1546.
Mathesius (Luther’s pupil and friend, d. 1561) preached seventeen sermons on
Luther’s life, first published 1565, and very often since, though mostly
abridged, e.g., an illustrated popular ed. with preface by G. H. v. Schubert,
Stuttgart, 1846; jubilee edition, St. Louis and Dresden, 1883. Joh. Cochlaeus,
a Roman Cath. antagonist of Luther, wrote Commentaria de actis et scriptis
Martini Lutheri Saxonis, chronographica, ex ordine ab anno Dom. 1517 usque ad
annum 1546 (inclusive), fideliter conscripta. Mayence, 1549 fol.
(2)
Later Biographies till 1875 (the best marked *) by
*Walch
(in his ed. of L.’s Works, vol. XXIV. pp. 3–875); Keil (4 parts in 1 vol.,
Leipz., 1764); Schröckh (Leipz., 1778); Ukert (Gotha, 2 vols., 1817); Pfizer
(Stuttgart, 1836); Stang (with illustrations, Stuttg., 1836); Jaekel (Leipz.,
1841, new ed. Elberfeld, 1871); *Meurer (Dresden, 1843–’46, 3 vols. with
illustrations, abridged in 1 vol., 1850, 3d ed., 1870, mostly in Luther’s own
words); *Juergens (Leipz., 1846–’47, 3 vols., reaching to 1517, very thorough,
but unfinished); J. M. Audin (Rom. Cath., Hist. de la vie, des ouvrages et des
doctrines de M. Luth., Paris, 1839, 7th ed., revue et corrigée, 1856, 3 vols.—a
storehouse of calumnies, also in German and English);109 * M. Michelet
(Mémoirs de L., écrits par lui-mème, traduits et mis en ordre, Paris, 1835,
also Brussels, 1845, 2 vols.; the best biography in French; Eng. transl. by
Hazlitt, London, 1846, and by G. H. Smith, London and N. Y., 1846);110
Ledderhose (Karlsruh, 3d ed., 1883; French transl. of the first ed.,
Strassburg, 1837); Genthe (Leipz., 1842, with seventeen steel engravings);
Westermann (Halle, 1845); Weydmann (Luther, ein Charakter—und Spiegelbild für
unsere Zeit, Hamburg, 1850); B. Sears (English, publ. by the Am. Sunday School
Union, Philada., 1850, with special reference to the youth of L.); Jgn.
Döllinger (R. C., Luther, eine Skizze, Freiburg i. B., 1851); König and Gelzer
(with 48 fine illustrations, Hamb. u. Gotha, 1851; Engl. ed. with transl. of
the text by Archdeacon Hare and Cath. Winkworth, Lond. and N. Y., 1856); * Jul.
Hare (Vindication of Luther against his English Assailants, first publ. as a
note in his The Mission of the Comforter, London, 1846, vol. II., 656–878, then
separately, 2d ed., 1855, the best English appreciation of L.); II. Woersley
(Life of Luther, London, 1856, 2 vols.); Wildenhahn (Leipz., 1861); Müller
(Nürnberg, 1867); Henke (Luther u. Melanchthon, Marburg, 1867); H. W. J.
Thiersch (Luther, Gustav Adolf und Maximilian I. von Bayern, Nördlingen, 1869,
pp. 3–66); Vilmar (Luther, Melanchthon und Zwingli, Frankf. a. M., 1869); H.
Lang (Berlin, 1870, rationalistic); Ackermann (Jena, 1871); Gasparin (Luther et
la réforme ait XVe . siècle, Paris, 1873); Schaff (a sketch in Appleton’s
"Cyclopaedia," 1858,
revised 1874); Rietschel (Martin Luther und Ignatius Loyola, Wittenberg, 1879).
(3)
Recent Biographies, published since 1875, by
Jul.
Koestlin (Elberfeld, 1875, 2 vols., 2d ed. revised 1883; 3d ed. unchanged; upon
the whole the best German biography; also an abridged ed. for popular use with
64 illustrations, 3d ed., 1883. English transl. of the small ed. by an
anonymous writer with the author’s sanction, Lond. and N. Y., 1883; another by
Morris, Philad., 1883; comp. also Koestlin’s art. Luther in Herzog, 2d ed.,
vol. IX.; his Festschrift, 1883, in several edd., transl. by Eliz. P. Weir:
Martin Luther the Reformer, London, 1883; and his polemic tract: Luther und
Janssen, der Deutsche Reformator und ein ultramontaner Historiker, Halle, 3d
ed., 1883); V. Hasak (R. Cath., Regensb., 1881); Rein (Leipz., 1883, English
transl. by Behringer, N. Y., 1883); Rogge, (Leipz., 1883); *Plitt and Petersen
(Leipzig, 1883); *MAx Lenz (2nd ed. Berlin, 1883); P. Kuhn (Luther, sa vie et
son oeuvre, Paris, 3 vols.); C. Burk (4th ed., Stuttg., 1884); *Th. Kolde (M.
Luther, Gotha, 1884, 2 vols.); J. A. Froude (Luther, a Short Biography, Lond.
and N. Y., 1883); John Rae (M. Luth.: Lond., 1884); Paul Martin, i.e., M. Rade
of Schönbach (Dr. M. Luther’s Leben, etc., Neusalza, 1885–87, 3 vols.); Peter
Bayne (M. Luth.: his Life and Times, Lond. and N. Y., 1887, 2 vols.).
On
Luther’s wife and his domestic life: W. Beste: Die Gesch. Catherina’s von Bora.
Halle, 1843 (131 pp.). G. Hofmann: Katharina von Bora, oder M. L. als Gatte,
und Vater. Leipzig, 1846. John G. Morris: Life of Cath. von Bora, Baltimore,
1856. Mor. Meurer: Katherina Luther geborne von Bora. Dresden, 1854; 2d ed.,
Leipzig, 1873.
III.
Luther’s Theology .
W.
Beste: Dr. M. Luther’s Glaubenslehre. Halle, 1845 (286 pp.). Theodos. Harnack
(senior): L.’s Theologie, Bd I. Erlang., 1862, Bd. II., 1886. *Jul. Koestlin:
L.’s Theologie. Stuttg., 1863, 2d ed., 1883, 2 vols. By the same: Luther’s
Lehre von der Kirche, 1853, new ed., Gotha, 1868. Ch. H. Weisse; Die
Christologie Luthers, Leipz., 1852 (253 pp.). Luthardt: Die Ethik Luthers,
Leipz., 1867, 2d ed., 1875. Lommatzsch: Luther’s Lehre von ethisch-relig.
Standpunkt aus, Berlin, 1879). H. C. Moenckeberg: Luther’s Lehre von der Kirche.
Hamburg, 1870. Hering: Die Mystik Luther’s. Leipz., 1879. Kattenbusch: Luther’s
Stellung z. den ökumenischen Symbolen. Giessen, 1883.
IV.
Luther as Bible Translator.
G. W.
Panzer: Entwurf einer vollständigen Gesch. der deutschen Bibelübers. Dr. M.
Luther’s von 1517–1581. Nürnberg, 1783. H. Schott: Gesch. der teutschen
Bibelübers. Dr. M. Luther’s. Leipz., 1835. Bindseil: Verzeichniss der
Original-Ausgaben der Luther. Uebersetzung der Bibel. Halle, 1841. Moenckeberg
and Frommann: Vorschläge zur Revision von M. L.’s Bibelübers. Halle, 1861–62.
Theod. Schott: Martin Luther und die deutsche Bibel. Stuttgart, 1883. E. Riehm (Prof. in Halle and one of the
Revisers of the Luther-Bible): Luther als Bibelübersetzer. Gotta. 1884. Comp.
the Probebibel of 1883 (an official revision of Luther’s version), and the
numerous pamphlets for and against it.
V.
Luther as a Preacher.
E.
Jonas: Die Kanzelberedtsamkeit Luther’s. Berlin, 1852 (515 pp.). Best ed. of
his sermons by G. Schlosser: Dr.
Martin Luther’s Evangelien-Predigten auf alle Sonn-und Festtage des
Kirchenjahres aus seiner Haus-und Kirchenpostille, Frankfurt a. M., 1883; 4th
ed., 1885.
VI.
Luther as Poet and Musician .
A. J.
Rambach: Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang. Hamburg, 1813 Aug. Gebauer: Martin Luther und seine
Zeitgenossen als Kirchenliederdichter. Leipzig, 1828 (212 pp.). C. von
Winterfeld: Dr. M. Luth. deutsche geistliche Lieder nebst den wahrend seines
Lebens dazu gebräuchlichen Stimmweisen. Leipzig, 1840 (132 pp., 4to). B. Pick:
Luther as a Hymnist, Philad., 1875; Ein feste Burg (in 21 languages), Chicago,
1883. Bacon and Allen: The Hymns of Martin Luther with his original Tunes.
Germ. and Eng., N. Y., 1883. Dr. Danneil: Luther’s Geistliche Lieder nach
seinen drei Gesangbüchern von 1524, 1529, 1545. Frankfurt a. M., 1883. E.
Achelis: Die Entstehungszeit v. Luther’s geistl. Liedern. Marburg, 1884.
VII.
Special Points in Luther’s Life and Work.
John
G. Morris: Quaint Sayings and Doings concerning Luther. Philadelphia, 1857.
Tuzschmann: Luther in Worms. Darmstadt, 1860. Koehler: Luther’s Reisen.
Eisenach, 1872. W. J. Mann and C. P. Krauth: The Great Reformation and the
Ninety-five Theses. Philad., 1873. Zitzlaff. L. auf der Koburg. Wittenberg,
1882. Kolde. L. auf dem Reichstag zu Worms. Halle, 1883. Glock: Grundriss der
Pädagogik Luther’s. Karlsruh, 1883.
VIII.
Commemorative Addresses of 1883 and 1884.
Festschriften
zur 400 jährigen Jubelfeier der Geburt Dr. Martin Luther’s, herausgegeben vom
königl. Prediger-Seminar in Wittenberg. Wittenberg, 1883. (Addresses by Drs.
Schmieder, Rietschel, and others.) P. Kleinert: L. im Verhältniss zur
Wissenschaft (Academic oration). Berlin, 1883 (35 pp.). Ed. Reuss: Akad.
Festrede zur Lutherfeier. Strassburg, 1883. Th. Brieger: Neue Mittheilungen
über Luther in Worms. Marburg, 1883, and Luther und sein Werk. Marb., 1883. Ad.
Harnack: M. Luther in seiner Bedeutung für die Gesch. der Wissenschaft und der
Bildung. Giessen, 1883 (30 pp.). Vid Upsala Universitets Luthersfest, den 10
Nov., 1883, with an oration of K. H. Gez. von Scheele (Prof. of Theol. at
Upsala, appointed Bishop of Visby in Gothland, 1885). Upsala, 1883. G. N.
Bonwetsch: Unser Reformator Martin Luther. Dorpat, 1883. Appenzeller, Ruetschi,
Oettli, and others: Die Lutherfeier in Bern. Bern, 1883. Prof. Salmond (of
Aberdeen): Martin Luther. Edinburgh, 1883. J. M. Lindsay: M. Luther, in the 9th
ed. of "Encyclop. Brit.," vol. XV. (1883), 71–84. Jean Monod: Luther
j’usqu’en 1520. Montauban, 1883. J. B. Bittinger: M. Luth. Cleveland, 1883. E.
J. Wolf, and others: Addresses on the Reformation. Gettysburg, 1884. The Luther
Document (No. XVII.) of the American Evang. Alliance, with addresses of Rev.
Drs. Wm. M. Taylor and Phillips Brooks. N. Y., 1883. Symposiac on Luther, seven
addresses of the seven Professors of the Union Theol. Seminary in New York,
held Nov. 19, 1883. Jos. A. Seiss: Luther and the Reformation (an eloquent
commemorative oration delivered in Philad., and New York). Philad. 1884. S. M.
Deutsch: Luther’s These vom Jahr 1519 über die päpstliche Gewalt. Berlin, 1884. H. Cremer: Reformation
und Wissenschaft. Gotha, 1883
IX.
Roman Catholic Attacks .
The
Luther-celebration gave rise not only to innumerable Protestant glorifications,
but also to many Roman Catholic defamations of Luther and the Reformation. The
ablest works of this kind are by Janssen (tracts in defence of his famous
History of Germany, noticed in § 15), G. G. Evers, formerly a Lutheran pastor
(Katholisch oder protestantisch?
Hildesheim, 4th ed., 1883; Martin Luther’s Anfänge, Osnabrück, 3d ed.,
1884; Martin Luther, Mainz, 1883 sqq., in several vols.), Westermayer.
(Luther’s Werk im Jahr 1883), Germanus, Herrmann, Roettscher, Dasbach, Roem,
Leogast, etc. See the "Historisch-politische Blätter" of Munich, and
the "Germania" of Berlin, for 1883 and 1884 (the chief organs of
Romanism in Germany), and the Protestant review of these writings by Wilh.
Walther: Luther in neusten römischen Gericht. Halle, 1884 (166 pages).
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="18" title="Luther’s Youth and
Training">
§ 18.
Luther’s Youth and Training.
In
order to understand the genius and history of the German Reformation we must
trace its origin in the personal experience of the monk who shook the world
from his lonely study in Wittenberg, and made pope and emperor tremble at the
power of his word.
All
the Reformers, like the Apostles and Evangelists, were men of humble origin,
and gave proof that God’s Spirit working through his chosen instruments is
mightier than armies and navies. But they were endowed with extraordinary
talents and energy, and providentially prepared for their work. They were also
aided by a combination of favorable circumstances without which they could not
have accomplished their work. They made
the Reformation, and the Reformation made them.
Of all
the Reformers Luther is the first. He is so closely identified with the German
Reformation that the one would have no meaning without the other. His own
history is the formative history of the church which is justly called by his
name, and which is the incarnation and perpetuation of his genius. No other
Reformer has given his name to the church he reformed, and exercised the same
controlling influence over its history. We need not discuss here the advantages
and disadvantages of this characteristic difference; we are only concerned with
the fact.
Martin
Luther was born Nov. 10, 1483, an hour before midnight, at Eisleben in Prussian
Saxony, where he died, Feb. 18, 1546.111
On
the day following he was baptized and received the name of the saint of the
day.
His
parents had recently removed to that town112 from their original home at
Mahra near Eisenach in Thuringia, where Boniface had first preached the gospel
to the Germans. Six months after Luther’s birth they settled at Mansfeld, the
capital of a rich mining district in the Harz mountains, which thus shares with
the Thuringian forest the honor of being the home of the Luther family. They
were very poor, but honest, industrious and pious people from the lower and
uncultivated ranks.
Luther
was never ashamed of his humble, rustic origin. "I am," he said with
pride to Melanchthon, "a peasant’s son; my father, grandfather, all my
ancestors were genuine peasants."113 His mother had to carry the wood from the forest, on her
back, and father and mother, as he said, "worked their flesh off their
bones," to bring up seven children (he had three younger brothers and
three sisters). Afterward his father, as a miner, acquired some property, and
left at his death 1250 guilders, a guilder being worth at that time about
sixteen marks, or four dollars.114
Luther
had a hard youth, without sunny memories, and was brought up under stern
discipline. His mother chastised him, for stealing a paltry nut, till the blood
came; and his father once flogged him so severely that he fled away and bore
him a temporary grudge;115 but Luther recognized their good intentions,
and cherished filial affection, although they knew not, as he said, to
distinguish the ingenia to which education should be adapted. He was taught at
home to pray to God and the saints, to revere the church and the priests, and
was told frightful stories about the devil and witches which haunted his
imagination all his life.
In
the school the discipline was equally severe, and the rod took the place of
kindly admonition. He remembered to have been chastised no less than fifteen
times in one single morning. But he had also better things to say. He learned
the Catechism, i.e.: the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments,
and several Latin and German hymns. He treasured in his memory the proverbial
wisdom of the people and the legendary lore of Dietrich von Bern, of
Eulenspiegel and Markolf.
He
received his elementary education in the schools of Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and
Eisenach. Already in his fourteenth year he had to support himself by singing
in the street.
Frau
Ursula Cotta, the wife of the wealthiest merchant at Eisenach, immortalized
herself by the benevolent interest she took in the poor student. She invited
him to her table "on account of his hearty singing and praying," and
gave him the first impression of a lady of some education and refinement. She
died, 1511, but he kept up an acquaintance with her sons and entertained one of
them who studied at Wittenberg. From her he learned the word: "There is
nothing dearer in this world than the love of woman."116
The
hardships of Luther’s youth and the want of refined breeding show their effects
in his writings and actions. They limited his influence among the higher and
cultivated classes, but increased his power over the middle and lower classes.
He was a man of the people and for the people. He was of the earth earthy, but
with his bold face lifted to heaven. He was not a polished diamond, but a rough
block cut out from a granite mountain and well fitted for a solid base of a
mighty structure. He laid the foundation, and others finished the upper
stories.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="19" title="Luther in the University of Erfurt">
§ 19.
Luther in the University of Erfurt.
At the
age of eighteen, in the year 1501, he entered, as "Martinus Ludher ex
Mansfeld," the University of Erfurt, which had been founded a hundred
years before (1392) and was then one of the best in Germany.117 By that time his father was able to
assist him so that he was free of care and could acquire a little library.
He
studied chiefly scholastic philosophy, namely: logic, rhetoric, physics and
metaphysics. His favorite teacher was Truttvetter, called "Doctor
Erfordiensis."118
The palmy days of scholasticism which reared those venerable cathedrals
of thought in support of the traditional faith of the church in the thirteenth
century, had passed away, and were succeeded by the times of barren disputes
about Realism and Nominalism or the question whether the general ideas (the
universalia) had an objective reality, or a merely nominal, subjective
existence in the mind. Nominalism was then the prevailing system.
On
the other hand the humanistic studies were reviving all over Europe and opened
a new avenue of intellectual culture and free thought. The first Greek book in
Greek letters (a grammar) which was published in Germany, appeared in Erfurt.
John Crotus Rubeanus (Jäger) who studied there since 1498 and became rector of
the University in 1520 and 1521, was one of the leaders of humanism and the
principal author of the first part of the famous anti-monkish Epistolae
obscurorum virorum (1515); he was at first an intimate friend of Hutten and
Luther, and greeted the latter on his way to Worms (1521) as the man who
"first after so many centuries dared to strangle the Roman license with
the sword of the Scripture," but afterward he fell away from the
Reformation (1531) and assailed it bitterly.119
Luther
did not neglect the study of the ancient classics, especially Cicero, Vergil,
Plautus, and Livy.120
He acquired sufficient mastery of Latin to write it with clearness and
vigor, though not with elegance and refinement. The knowledge of Greek he
acquired afterward as professor at Wittenberg. In classical culture he never
attained the height of Erasmus and Melanchthon, of Calvin and Beza; but in
original thought and in the mastery of his own mother tongue he was unrivalled.
He always regarded the languages as the sheath for the sword of the Spirit.
Beside
his literary studies he cultivated his early love for music. He sang, and
played the lute right merrily. He was a poet and musician as well as a
theologian. He prized music as a noble gift of God, as a remedy against sadness
and evil thoughts, and an effective weapon against the assaults of the devil.
His poetic gift shines in his classical hymns. He had a rich font of mother wit
and quaint humor.
His
moral conduct was unblemished; and the mouth of slander did not dare to blacken
his reputation till after the theological passions were roused by the
Reformation. He went regularly to mass and observed the daily devotions of a
sincere Catholic. He chose for his motto: to pray well is half the study. He
was a devout worshipper of the Virgin Mary.
In
his twentieth year he first saw a complete (Latin) Bible in the University
Library, and was surprised and rejoiced to find that it contained so much more
than was ever read or explained in the churches.121 His eye fell upon the story of Samuel and his mother, and he
read it with delight. But he did not begin a systematic study of the Bible till
he entered the convent; nor did he find in it the God of love and mercy, but
rather the God of righteousness and wrath. He was much concerned about his
personal salvation and given to gloomy reflections over his sinful condition.
Once he fell dangerously ill, and was seized with a fit of despair, but an old
priest comforted him, saying: "My dear Baccalaureus, be of good cheer; you
will not die in this sickness: God will yet make a great man out of you for the
comfort of many."
In
1502 he was graduated as Bachelor of Arts, in 1505 as Master of Arts. This
degree, which corresponds to the modern Doctor of Philosophy in Germany, was
bestowed with great solemnity. "What a moment of majesty and
splendor," says Luther, "was that when one took the degree of Master,
and torches were carried before him. I consider that no temporal or worldly joy
can equal it." His talents
and attainments were the wonder of the University.
According
to his father’s ambitious wish, Luther began to prepare himself for the
profession of law, and was presented by him with a copy of the Corpus juris.
But he inclined to theology, when a remarkable providential occurrence opened a
new path for his life.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="20" title="Luther’s
Conversion">
§ 20.
Luther’s Conversion.
In the
summer of 1505 Luther entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt and became a
monk, as he thought, for his life time. The circumstances which led to this
sudden step we gather from his fragmentary utterances which have been
embellished by legendary tradition.
He
was shocked by the sudden death of a friend (afterward called Alexius), who was
either killed in a duel,122
or struck dead by lightning at Luther’s side. Shortly afterward, on the
second of July, 1505, two weeks before his momentous decision, he was overtaken
by a violent thunderstorm near Erfurt, on his return from a visit to his
parents, and was so frightened that he fell to the earth and tremblingly
exclaimed: "Help, beloved Saint Anna! I will become a monk." His friend Crotus (who afterward became an enemy of the
Reformation) inaptly compared this event to the conversion of St. Paul at the
gates of Damascus.123
But Luther was a Christian before he became a monk.
On
the sixteenth of July he assembled his friends who in vain tried to change his
resolution, indulged once more in social song, and bade them farewell. On the
next day they accompanied him, with tears, to the gates of the convent. The
only books he took with him were the Latin poets Vergil and Plautus.
His
father almost went mad, when he heard the news. Luther himself declared in
later years, that his monastic vow was forced from him by terror and the fear
of death and the judgment to come; yet he never doubted that God’s hand was in
it. "I never thought of leaving the convent: I was entirely dead to the
world, until God thought that the time had come."
This
great change has nothing to do with Luther’s Protestantism. It was simply a transition
from secular to religious life—such as St. Bernard and thousands of Catholic
monks before and since passed through. He was never an infidel, nor a wicked
man, but a pious Catholic from early youth; but he now became overwhelmed with
a sense of the vanity of this world and the absorbing importance of saving his
soul, which, according to the prevailing notion of his age, he could best
secure in the quiet retreat of a cloister.
He afterward underwent as it were a
second conversion, from the monastic and legalistic piety of mediaeval
Catholicism to the free evangelical piety of Protestantism, when he awoke to an
experimental knowledge of justification by free grace through faith alone.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="21" title="Luther as a Monk">
§ 21.
Luther as a Monk.
The
Augustinian convent at Erfurt became the cradle of the Lutheran Reformation.
All honor to monasticism: it was, like the law of Israel, a wholesome school of
discipline and a preparation for gospel freedom. Erasmus spent five years
reluctantly in a convent, and after his release ridiculed monkery with the
weapons of irony and sarcasm; Luther was a monk from choice and conviction, and
therefore all the better qualified to refute it afterward from deep experience.
He followed in the steps of St. Paul, who from a Pharisee of the Pharisees
became the strongest opponent of Jewish legalism.
If
there ever was a sincere, earnest, conscientious monk, it was Martin Luther.
His sole motive was concern for his salvation. To this supreme object he
sacrificed the fairest prospects of life. He was dead to the world and was
willing to be buried out of the sight of men that he might win eternal life.
His latter opponents who knew him in convent, have no charge to bring against
his moral character except a certain pride and combativeness, and he himself
complained of his temptations to anger and envy.124
It
was not without significance that the order which he joined, bore the honored
name of the greatest Latin father who, next to St. Paul, was to be Luther’s
chief teacher of theology and religion; but it is an error to suppose that this
order represented the anti-Pelagian or evangelical views of the North African
father; on the contrary it was intensely catholic in doctrine, and given to
excessive worship of the Virgin Mary, and obedience to the papal see which
conferred upon it many special privileges.
St.
Augustin, after his conversion, spent several weeks with some friends in quiet
seclusion on a country-seat near Tagaste, and after his election to the
priesthood, at Hippo in 391, he established in a garden a sort of convent where
with like-minded brethren and students he led an ascetic life of prayer,
meditation and earnest, study of the Scriptures, yet engaged at the same time
in all the public duties of a preacher, pastor and leader in the theological
controversies and ecclesiastical affairs of his age.
His
example served as an inspiration and furnished a sort of authority to several
monastic associations which arose in the thirteenth century. Pope Alexander IV.
(1256) gave them the so-called rule of St. Augustin. They belonged to the
mendicant monks, like the Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites. They laid
great stress on preaching. In other respects they differed little from other
monastic orders. In the beginning of the sixteenth century they numbered more
than a hundred settlements in Germany.
The
Augustinian congregation in Saxony was founded in 1493, and presided over since
1503 by John von Staupitz, the Vicar-General for Germany, and Luther’s friend.
The convent at Erfurt was the largest and most important next to that at
Nürnberg. The monks were respected for their zeal in preaching, pastoral care,
and theological study. They lived on alms, which they collected themselves in
the town and surrounding country. Applicants were received as novices for a
year of probation, during which they could reconsider their resolution;
afterward they were bound by perpetual vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience
to their superiors.
Luther
was welcomed by his brethren with hymns of joy and prayer. He was clothed with
a white woollen shirt, in honor of the pure Virgin, a black cowl and frock,
tied by a leathern girdle. He assumed the most menial offices to subdue his
pride: he swept the floor, begged bread through the streets, and submitted
without a murmur to the ascetic severities. He said twenty-five Paternosters
with the Ave Maria in each of the seven appointed hours of prayer. He was
devoted to the Holy Virgin and even believed, with the Augustinians and
Franciscans, in her immaculate conception, or freedom from hereditary sin—a
doctrine denied by the Dominicans and not made an article of faith till the
year 1854. He regularly confessed his sins to the priest at least once a week.
At the same time a complete copy of the Latin Bible was put into his hands for
study, as was enjoined by the new code of statutes drawn up by Staupitz.
At
the end of the year of probation Luther solemnly promised to live until death
in poverty and chastity according to the rules of the holy father Augustin, to
render obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of the
monastery. He was sprinkled with holy water, as he lay prostrate on the ground
in the form of a cross. He was greeted as an innocent child fresh from baptism,
and assigned to a separate cell with table, bedstead, and chair.125
The
two years which followed, he divided between pious exercises and theological
studies. He read diligently the Scriptures, and the later schoolmen,—especially
Gabriel Biel, whom he knew by heart, and William Occam, whom he esteemed on
account of his subtle acuteness even above St. Thomas and Duns Scotus, without
being affected by his sceptical tendency. He acknowledged the authority of
Aristotle, whom he afterward denounced and disowned as "a damned
heathen."126 He excited the
admiration of his brethren by his ability in disputation on scholastic
questions.
His
heart was not satisfied with brain work. His chief concern was to become a
saint and to earn a place in heaven. "If ever," he said afterward,
"a monk got to heaven by monkery, I would have gotten there." He observed the minutest details of
discipline. No one surpassed him in prayer, fasting, night watches, self-mortification.
He was already held up as a model of sanctity.
But
he was sadly disappointed in his hope to escape sin and temptation behind the
walls of the cloister. He found no peace and rest in all his pious exercises.
The more he seemed to advance externally, the more he felt the burden of sin
within. He had to contend with temptations of anger, envy, hatred and pride. He
saw sin everywhere, even in the smallest trifles. The Scriptures impressed upon
him the terrors of divine justice. He could not trust in God as a reconciled
Father, as a God of love and mercy but trembled before him, as a God of wrath,
as a consuming fire. He could not get over the words: "I, the Lord thy
God, am a jealous God." His
confessor once told him: "Thou art a fool, God is not angry with thee, but
thou art angry with God." He
remembered this afterward as "a great and glorious word," but at that
time it made no impression on him. He could not point to any particular
transgression; it was sin as an all-pervading power and vitiating principle,
sin as a corruption of nature, sin as a state of alienation from God and
hostility to God, that weighed on his mind like an incubus and brought him at
times to the brink of despair.
He
passed through that conflict between the law of God and the law of sin which is
described by Paul (Rom. vii.), and which; ends with the cry: "O wretched
man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" He had not yet learned to add: "I
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is now no condemnation to them
that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
made me free from the law of sin and of death."
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="22" title="Luther and Staupitz">
§ 22.
Luther and Staupitz.
The
mystic writings of Staupitz have been republished in part by Knaake in Johannis
Staupitii Opera. Potsdam, 1867, vol. I. His "Nachfolge Christi" was
first published in 1515; his book "Von der Liebe Gottes" (especially
esteemed by Luther) in 1518, and passed through several editions; republ. by
Liesching, Stuttgart, 1862. His last work "Von, dem heiligen rechten
christlichen Glauben," appeared after his death, 1525, and is directed
against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith without works. His
twenty-four letters have been published by Kolde: Die Deutsche Augustiner Congregation
und Johann von Staupitz. Gotha, 1879, p. 435 sqq.
II.
On Luther and Staupitz: Grimm: De Joh. Staupitio ejusque in sacr. instaur.
meritis, in Illgen’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1837 (VII,
74–79). Ullmann: Die Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. II., 256–284 (very
good, see there the older literature). Döllinger: Die Reformation, I., 153–155.
Kahnis: Deutsche Reformat., I., 150 sqq. Albr. Ritschl: Die Lehre v. der
Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, 2d ed., I., 124–129 (on Staupitz’s theology). Mallet:
in Herzog,2 XIV., 648–653. Paul Zeller: Staupitz. Seine relig. dogmat.
Anschauungen und dogmengesch. Stellung, in the "Theol. Studien und
Kritiken," 1879. Ludwig
Keller: Johann von Staupitz, und das Waldenserthum, in the "Historische
Taschenbuch," ed. by W. Maurenbrecher, Leipzig, 1885, p. 117–167; also his
Johann von Staupitz und die Anfänge der Reformation, Leipzig, 1888. Dr. Keller
connects Staupitz with the Waldenses and Anabaptists, but without proof. Kolde:
Joh. von Staup. ein Waldenser und Wiedertäufer, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift
für Kirchengesch." Gotha, 1885, p. 426–447. Dieckhoff: Die Theol. des Joh.
v. Staup., Leipz., 1887.
In
this state of mental and moral agony, Luther was comforted by an old monk of
the convent (the teacher of the novices) who reminded him of the article on the
forgiveness of sins in the Apostles’ Creed, of Paul’s word that the sinner is
justified by grace through faith, and of an incidental remark of St. Bernard
(in a Sermon on the Canticles) to the same effect.
His
best friend and wisest counsellor was Johann von Staupitz, Doctor of Divinity
and Vicar-General of the Augustinian convents in Germany. Staupitz was a Saxon
nobleman, of fine mind, generous heart, considerable biblical and scholastic
learning, and deep piety, highly esteemed wherever known, and used in important
missions by the Elector Frederick of Saxony. He belonged to the school of
practical mysticism or Catholic pietism, which is best represented by Tauler
and Thomas a Kempis. He cared more for the inner spiritual life than outward
forms and observances, and trusted in the merits of Christ rather than in good
works of his own, as the solid ground of comfort and peace. The love of God and
the imitation of Christ were the ruling ideas of his theology and piety. In his
most popular book, On the Love of God,127 he describes that love as
the inmost being of God, which makes everything lovely, and should make us love
Him above all things; but this love man cannot learn from man, nor from the law
which only brings us to a knowledge of sin, nor from the letter of the
Scripture which kills, but from the Holy Spirit who reveals God’s love in
Christ to our hearts and fills it with the holy flame of gratitude and
consecration. "The law," he says in substance, "makes known the
disease, but cannot heal. But the spirit is hid beneath the letter; the old law
is pregnant with Christ who gives us grace to love God above all things. To
those who find the spirit and are led to Christ by the law, the Scriptures
become a source of edification and comfort. The Jews saw and heard and handled
Christ, but they had him not in their heart, and therefore they were doubly
guilty. And so are those who carry Christ only on their lips. The chief thing
is to have him in our heart. The knowledge of the Christian faith and the love
to God are gifts of pure grace beyond our art and ability, and beyond our works
and merits."
Staupitz
was Luther’s spiritual father, and "first caused the light of the gospel
to shine in the darkness of his heart."128 He directed him from his sins to the merits of Christ, from
the law to the cross, from works to faith, from scholasticism to the study of
the Scriptures, of St. Augustin, and Tauler. He taught him that true repentance
consists not in self-imposed penances and punishments, but in a change of heart
and must proceed from the contemplation of Christ’s sacrifice, in which the
secret of God’s eternal will was revealed. He also prophetically assured him
that God would overrule these trials and temptations for his future usefulness
in the church.129
He
encouraged Luther to enter the priesthood (1507), and brought him to
Wittenberg; he induced him to take the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and to
preach. He stirred him up against popery,130 and protected him in the
transactions with Cardinal Cajetan. He was greeted by Scheurl in 1518 as the
one who would lead the people of Israel out of captivity.
But
when Luther broke with Rome, and Rome with Luther, the friendship cooled down.
Staupitz held fast to the unity of the Catholic Church and was intimidated and
repelled by the excesses of the Reformation. In a letter of April 1, 1524,131
he begs Luther’s pardon for his long silence and significantly says in
conclusion: "May Christ help us to live according to his gospel which now
resounds in our ears and which many carry on their lips; for I see that
countless persons abuse the gospel for the freedom of the flesh.132 Having been the precursor of the holy
evangelical doctrine, I trust that my entreaties may have some effect upon
thee." The sermons which he
preached at Salzburg since 1522 breathe the same spirit and urge Catholic
orthodoxy and obedience.133
His last book, published after his death (1525) under the title,
"Of the holy true Christian Faith," is a virtual protest against
Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and a plea for a practical
Christianity which shows itself in good works. He contrasts the two doctrines
in these words: "The fools say, he who believes in Christ., needs no works;
the Truth says, whosoever will be my disciple, let him follow Me; and whosoever
will follow Me, let him deny himself and carry my cross day by day; and
whosoever loves Me, keeps my commandments .... The evil spirit suggests to
carnal Christians the doctrine that man is justified without works, and appeals
to Paul. But Paul only excluded works of the law which proceed from fear and
selfishness, while in all his epistles he commends as necessary to salvation
such works as are done in obedience to God’s commandments, in faith and love.
Christ fulfilled the taw, the fools would abolish the law; Paul praises the law
as holy and good, the fools scold and abuse it as evil because they walk
according to the flesh and have not the mind of the Spirit."134
Staupitz
withdrew from the conflict, resigned his position, 1520, left his order by
papal dispensation, became abbot of the Benedictine Convent of St. Peter in
Salzburg and died Dec. 28, 1524) in the bosom of the Catholic church which he
never intended to leave.135
He was evangelical, without being a Protestant.136 He cared little for Romanism, less for
Lutheranism, all for practical Christianity. His relation to the Reformation
resembles that of Erasmus with this difference, that he helped to prepare the
way for it in the sphere of discipline and piety, Erasmus in the sphere of
scholarship and illumination. Both were men of mediation and transition; they
beheld from afar the land of promise, but did not enter it.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="23" title="The Victory of Justifying Faith">
§ 23.
The Victory of Justifying Faith.
(Comp.
§ 7.)
The
secret of Luther’s power and influence lies in his heroic faith. It delivered
him from the chaos and torment of ascetic self-mortification and
self-condemnation, gave him rest and peace, and made him a lordly freeman in
Christ, and yet an obedient servant of Christ. This faith breathes through all
his writings, dominated his acts, sustained him in his conflicts and remained
his shield and anchor till the hour of death. This faith was born in the
convent at Erfurt, called into public action at Wittenberg, and made him a
Reformer of the Church.
By
the aid of Staupitz and the old monk, but especially by the continued study of
Paul’s Epistles, be was gradually brought to the conviction that the sinner is
justified by faith alone, without works of law. He experienced this truth in
his heart long before he understood it in all its bearings. He found in it that
peace of conscience which he had sought in vain by his monkish exercises. He
pondered day and night over the meaning of "the righteousness of God
"(Rom. 1:17), and thought that it is the righteous punishment of sinners;
but toward the close of his convent life he came to the conclusion that it is
the righteousness which God freely gives in Christ to those who believe in him.
Righteousness is not to be acquired by man through his own exertions and
merits; it is complete and perfect in Christ, and all the sinner has to do is
to accept it from Him as a free gift. Justification is that judicial act of God
whereby he acquits the sinner of guilt and clothes him with the righteousness
of Christ on the sole condition of personal faith which apprehends and
appropriates Christ and shows its life and power by good works, as a good tree
bringing forth good fruits. For faith in Luther’s system is far more than a
mere assent of the mind to the authority of the church: it is a hearty trust
and full surrender of the whole man to Christ; it lives and moves in Christ as
its element, and is constantly obeying his will and following his example. It
is only in connection with this deeper conception of faith that his doctrine of
justification can be appreciated. Disconnected from it, it is a pernicious
error.
The
Pauline doctrine of justification as set forth in the Epistles to the Romans
and Galatians, had never before been clearly and fully understood, not even by
Augustin and Bernard, who confound justification with sanctification.137 Herein lies the difference between the
Catholic and the Protestant conception. In the Catholic system justification
(dikaivwsi") is a gradual process conditioned by faith and good works; in
the Protestant system it is a single act of God, followed by sanctification. It
is based upon the merits of Christ, conditioned by faith, and manifested by
good works.138
This
experience acted like a new revelation on Luther. It shed light upon the whole
Bible and made it to him a book of life and comfort. He felt relieved of the
terrible load of guilt by an act of free grace. He was led out of the dark
prison house of self-inflicted penance into the daylight and fresh air of God’s
redeeming love. Justification broke the fetters of legalistic slavery, and
filled him with the joy and peace of the state of adoption; it opened to him
the very gates of heaven.
Henceforth
the doctrine of justification by faith alone was for him to the end of life the
sum and substance of the gospel, the heart of theology, the central truth of
Christianity, the article of the standing or falling church. By this standard
he measured every other doctrine and the value of every book of the Bible.
Hence his enthusiasm for Paul, and his dislike of James, whom he could not
reconcile with his favorite apostle. He gave disproportion to solifidianism and
presented it sometimes in most unguarded language, which seemed to justify
antinomian conclusions; but he corrected himself, he expressly condemned
antinomianism, and insisted on good works and a holy life as a necessary
manifestation of faith.139
And it must not be forgotten that the same charge of favoring antinomianism
was made against Paul, who rejects it with pious horror: "Let it never
be!"
Thus
the monastic and ascetic life of Luther was a preparatory school for his
evangelical faith. It served the office of the Mosaic law which, by bringing
the knowledge of sin and guilt, leads as a tutor to Christ (Rom. 3:20; Gal.
3:24). The law convicted, condemned, and killed him; the gospel comforted,
justified, and made him alive. The law enslaved him, the gospel set him free.
He had trembled like a slave; now he rejoiced as a son in his father’s house.
Through the discipline of the law he died to the law, that he might live unto
God (Gal. 2:19).
In
one word, Luther passed through the experience of Paul. He understood him
better than any mediaeval schoolman or ancient father. His commentary on the
Epistle to the Galatians is still one of the best, for its sympathetic grasp of
the contrast between law and gospel, between spiritual slavery and spiritual
freedom.
Luther
held this conviction without dreaming that it conflicted with the traditional
creed and piety of the church. He was brought to it step by step. The old views
and practices ran along side with it, and for several years he continued to be
a sincere and devout Catholic. It was only the war with Tetzel and its
consequences that forced him into the position of a Reformer and emancipated
him from his old connections.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="24" title="Luther Ordained to the Priesthood">
§ 24. Luther
Ordained to the Priesthood.
In the
second year of his monastic life and when he was still in a state of
perplexity, Luther was ordained to the priesthood, and on May 2, 1507, he said
his first mass. This was a great event in the life of a priest. He was so
overwhelmed by the solemnity of offering the tremendous sacrifice for the
living and the dead that he nearly fainted at the altar.
His
father had come with several friends to witness the solemnity and brought him a
present of twenty guilders. He was not yet satisfied with the monastic vows.
"Have you not read in Holy Writ," he said to the brethren at the
entertainment given to the young priest, "that a man must honor father and
mother?" And when he was
reminded, that his son was called to the convent by a voice from heaven, he
answered: "Would to God, it were no spirit of the devil." He was not fully reconciled to his son
till after he had acquired fame and entered the married state.
Luther
performed the duties of the new dignity with conscientious fidelity. He read
mass every morning, and invoked during the week twenty-one particular saints
whom be had chosen as his helpers, three on each day.
But
he was soon to be called to a larger field of influence.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="25" title="Luther in Rome.14">
§ 25.
Luther in Rome.140
"Roma
qua nihil possis visere majus."—(Horace.)
"Vivere
qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma.
Omnia
hic ecce licent, non licet esse probum."
"Wer
christlich leben will und Rein,
Der
zieh am Rom und bleib daheim.
Hie mag
man thun was man nur will,
Allein
fromm sein gilt hier nicht viel."
(Old poetry quoted by Luther, in Walch,
XXII., 2372.)
"Prächtiger,
als wir in unserum Norden,
Wohnt
der Bettler an der Engelspforten,
Denn er sieht das ewig einz’ge Rom:
Ihn
umgibt der Schönheit Glanzgewimmel,
Und ein
zweiter Himmel in den Himmel
Steigt Sancte Peter’s wundersamer Dom.
Aber
Rom in allem seinem Glanze
Ist ein Grab nur der Vergangenheit,
Leben
duftet nur die frische Pflanze,
Die die grüne Stunde streut."—(Schiller.)
An
interesting episode in the history of Luther’s training for the Reformation was
his visit to Rome. It made a deep impression on his mind, and became effective,
not immediately, but several years afterward through the recollection of what
he had seen and heard, as a good Catholic, in the metropolis of Christendom.
In
the autumn of the year 1510,141 after his removal to Wittenberg, but before
his graduation as doctor of divinity, Luther was sent to Rome in the interest
of his order and at the suggestion of Staupitz, who wished to bring about a
disciplinary reform and closer union of the Augustinian convents in Germany,
but met with factious opposition.
In
company with another monk and a lay brother, as the custom was, he traveled on
foot, from convent to convent, spent four weeks in Rome in the Augustinian
convent of Maria del popolo, and returned to Wittenberg in the following
spring. The whole journey must have occupied several months. It was the longest
journey he ever made, and at the same time, his pilgrimage to the shrines of
the holy apostles where he wished to make a general confession of all his sins
and to secure the most efficient absolution.
We
do not know whether he accomplished the object of his mission.142 He left no information about his route,
whether be passed through Switzerland or through the Tyrol, nor about the
sublime scenery of the Alps and the lovely scenery of Italy.143 The beauties of nature made little or
no impression upon the Reformers, and were not properly appreciated before the
close of the eighteenth century.144
Zwingli and Calvin lived on the banks of Swiss lakes and in view of the
Swiss Alps, but never allude to them; they were absorbed in theology and
religion.
In
his later writings and Table-Talk, Luther left some interesting reminiscences
of his journey. He spoke of the fine climate and fertility of Italy, the
temperance of the Italians contrasted with the intemperate Germans, also of
their shrewdness, craftiness, and of the pride with which they looked down upon
the "stupid Germans" and "German beasts," as
semi-barbarians; he praised the hospitals and charitable institutions in
Florence; but he was greatly disappointed with the state of religion in Rome,
which he found just the reverse of what he had expected.
Rome
was at that time filled with enthusiasm for the renaissance of classical
literature and art, but indifferent to religion. Julius II., who sat in Peter’s
chair from 1503 to 1513, bent his energies on the aggrandizement of the secular
dominion of the papacy by means of an unscrupulous diplomacy and bloody wars,
founded the Vatican Museum, and liberally encouraged the great architects and
painters of his age in their immortal works of art. The building of the new
church of St. Peter with its colossal cupola had begun under the direction of
Bramante; the pencil of Michael Angelo was adorning the Sixtine chapel in the
adjoining Vatican Palace with the pictures of the Prophets, Sibyls, and the
last judgment; and the youthful genius of Raphael conceived his inimitable
Madonna, with the Christ-child in her arms, and was transforming the chambers
of the Vatican into galleries of undying beauty. These were the wonders of the
new Italian art; but they had as little interest for the German monk as the
temples and statues of classical Athens had for the Apostle Paul.
When
Luther came in sight of the eternal city he fell upon the earth, raised his
hands and exclaimed, "Hail to thee, holy, Rome!145 Thrice holy for the blood of martyrs
shed here." He passed the
colossal ruins of heathen Rome and the gorgeous palaces of Christian Rome. But
he ran, "like a crazy saint," through all the churches and crypts and
catacombs with an unquestioning faith in the legendary traditions about the
relics and miracles of martyrs.146
He wished that his parents were dead that he might help them out of
purgatory by reading mass in the most holy place, according to the saying:
"Blessed is the mother whose son celebrates mass on Saturday in St. John
of the Lateran." He ascended on bended knees the twenty-eight steps of the
famous Scala Santa (said to have been transported from the Judgment Hall of
Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem), that he might secure the indulgence attached to
this ascetic performance since the days of Pope Leo IV. in 850, but at every
step the word of the Scripture sounded as a significant protest in his ear: "The
just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:17).147
Thus
at the very height of his mediaeval devotion he doubted its efficacy in giving
peace to the troubled conscience. This doubt was strengthened by what he saw
around him. He was favorably struck, indeed, with the business administration
and police regulations of the papal court, but shocked by the unbelief, levity
and immorality of the clergy. Money and luxurious living seemed to have
replaced apostolic poverty and self-denial. He saw nothing but worldly splendor
at the court of Pope Julius II., who had just returned from the sanguinary
siege of a town conducted by him in person. He afterward thundered against him
as a man of blood. He heard of the fearful crimes of Pope Alexander VI. and his
family, which were hardly known and believed in Germany, but freely spoken of
as undoubted facts in the fresh remembrance of all Romans. While he was reading
one mass, a Roman priest would finish seven. He was urged to hurry up (passa,
passa!), and to "send her Son home to our Lady." He heard priests,
when consecrating the elements, repeat in Latin the words: "Bread thou
art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt
remain." The term "a good Christian" (buon Christiano) meant
"a fool." He was told that "if there was a hell, Rome was built
on it," and that this state of things must soon end in a collapse.
He
received the impression that "Rome, once the holiest city, was now the
worst." He compared it to Jerusalem as described by the prophets.148 All these sad experiences did not shake
his faith in the Roman church and hierarchy, so unworthily represented, as the
Jewish hierarchy was at the time of Christ; but they returned to his mind
afterward with double force and gave ease and comfort to his conscience when he
attacked and abused popery as "an institution of the devil."149
Hence
be often declared that he would not have missed "seeing Rome for a hundred
thousand florins; for I might have felt some apprehension that I had done
injustice to the Pope; but as we see, so we speak."
Six
years after his visit the building of St. Peter’s Dome by means of the proceeds
from papal indulgences furnished the occasion for the outbreak of that war
which ended with an irrevocable separation from Rome.
In the Pitti Gallery of Florence there
is a famous picture of Giorgione which represents an unknown monk with strongly
Teutonic features and brilliant eyes, seated between two Italians, playing on a
small organ and looking dreamily to one side. This central figure has recently
been identified by some connoisseurs as a portrait of Luther taken at Florence
a few months before the death of Giorgione in 1511. The identity is open to
doubt, but the resemblance is striking.150
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="26" title="The University of Wittenberg">
§ 26.
The University of Wittenberg.
Grohmann:
Annalen der Universität zu Wittenberg, 1802, 2 vols. Muther: Die Wittenberger
Universitäts und Facultätsstudien v. Jahr 1508. Halle, 1867. K. Schmidt:
Wittenberg unter Kurfürst Friedrich dem Weisen. Erlangen, 1877. Juergens: II,
151 sqq. and 182 sqq. (very thorough). Koestlin, I., 90 sqq. Kolde: Friedrich
der Weise und die Anfänge der Reformation, Erlangen, 1881; and his Leben
Luther’s, 1884, I., 67 sqq.
In the
year 1502 Frederick III., surnamed the Wise, Elector of Saxony ( b. 1463, d.
1525), distinguished among the princes of the sixteenth century for his
intelligence, wisdom, piety, and in cautious protection of the Reformation,
founded from his limited means a new University at Wittenberg, under the patronage
of the Virgin Mary and St. Augustin. The theological faculty was dedicated to
the Apostle Paul, and on the anniversary of his conversion at Damascus a mass
was to be celebrated and a sermon preached in the presence of the rector and
the senate.
Frederick was a devout Catholic, a
zealous collector of relics, a believer in papal indulgences, a pilgrim to the
holy land; but at the same time a friend of liberal learning, a protector of
the person of Luther and of the new theology of the University of Wittenberg,
which he called his daughter, and which be favored to the extent of his power.
Shortly before his death he signified the acceptance of the evangelical faith
by taking the communion in both kinds from Spalatin, his chaplain, counsellor
and biographer, and mediator between him and Luther. He was unmarried and left
no legitimate heir. His brother, John the Constant (1525–1532), and his nephew,
John Frederick the Magnanimous (1532–1547), both firm Protestants, succeeded
him; but the latter was deprived of the electoral dignity and part of his
possessions by his victorious cousin Moritz, Duke of Saxony, after the battle
of Mühlberg (1547). The successors of Moritz were the chief defenders of
Lutheranism in Germany till Augustus I. (1694–1733) sold the faith of his
ancestors for the royal crown of Poland and became a Roman Catholic.
Wittenberg151
was a poor and badly built town of about three thousand inhabitants in a dull,
sandy, sterile plain on the banks of the Elbe, and owes its fame entirely to
the fact that it became the nursery of the Reformation theology. Luther says
that it lay at the extreme boundary of civilization,152 a few steps from
barbarism, and speaks of its citizens as wanting in culture, courtesy and
kindness. He felt at times strongly tempted to leave it. Melanchthon who came
from the fertile Palatinate, complained that he could get nothing fit to eat at
Wittenberg. Myconius, Luther’s friend, describes the houses as "small,
old, ugly, low, wooden." Even the electoral castle is a very unsightly
structure. The Elector laughed when Dr. Pollich first proposed the town as the
seat of the new university. But Wittenberg was one of his two residences (the
other being Torgau), had a new castle-church with considerable endowments and
provision for ten thousand masses per annum and an Augustinian convent which
could furnish a part of the teaching force, and thus cheapen the expenses of
the institution.
The university was opened October 18,
1502. The organization was intrusted to Dr. Pollich, the first rector, who on
account of his extensive learning was called "lux mundi," and who had
accompanied the Elector on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (1493), and to Staupitz,
the first Dean of the theological faculty, who fixed his eye at once upon his
friend Luther as a suitable professor of theology.
Wittenberg
had powerful rivals in the neighboring, older and better endowed Universities
of Erfurt and Leipzig, but soon overshadowed them by the new theology. The
principal professors were members of the Augustinian order, most of them from
Tübingen and Erfurt. The number of students was four hundred and sixteen in the
first semester, then declined to fifty-five in 1505, partly in consequence of
the pestilence, began to rise again in 1507, and when Luther and Melanchthon
stood on the summit of their fame, they attracted thousands of pupils from all
countries of Europe. Melanchthon heard at times eleven languages spoken at his
hospitable table.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="27" title="Luther as Professor till 1517">
§ 27.
Luther as Professor till 1517.
Luther
was suddenly called by Staupitz from the Augustinian Convent of Erfurt to that
of Wittenberg with the expectation of becoming at the same time a lecturer in
the university. He arrived there in October, 1508, was called back to Erfurt in
autumn, 1509, was sent to Rome in behalf of his order, 1510, returned to
Wittenberg, 1511, and continued there till a few days before his death, 1546.
He
lived in the convent, even after his marriage. His plain study, bed-room and
lecture-hall are still shown in the "Lutherhaus." The lowliness of
his work-shop forms a sublime contrast to the grandeur of his work. From their
humble dwellings Luther and Melanchthon exerted a mightier influence than the
contemporary popes and kings from their gorgeous palaces.
Luther
combined the threefold office of sub-prior, preacher and professor. He preached
both in his convent and in the town-church, sometimes daily for a week,
sometimes thrice in one day, during Lent in 1517 twice everyday. He was
supported by the convent. As professor he took no fees from the students and
received only a salary of one hundred guilders, which after his marriage was
raised by the Elector John to two hundred guilders.153
He
first lectured on scholastic philosophy and explained the Aristotelian
dialectics and physics. But he soon passed through the three grades of
bachelor, licentiate, and doctor of divinity (October 18th and 19th, 1512), and
henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the sacred science which was much
more congenial to his taste. Staupitz urged him into these academic dignities,154 and the Elector who had been favorably
impressed with one of his sermons, offered to pay the expenses (fifty guilders)
for the acquisition of the doctorate.155 Afterward in seasons of trouble Luther often took comfort
from the title and office of his doctorate of divinity and his solemn oath to
defend with all his might the Holy Scriptures against all errors.156 He justified the burning of the Pope’s
Bull in the same way. But the oath of ordination and of the doctor of theology
implied also obedience to the Roman church (ecclesiae Romanae obedientiam) and
her defence against all heresies condemned by her.157
With
the year 1512 his academic teaching began in earnest and continued till 1546,
at first in outward harmony with the Roman church, but afterward in open
opposition to it.
He
was well equipped for his position, according to the advantages of his age,
but, very poorly, according to modern requirements, as far as technical
knowledge is concerned.Although a doctor of divinity, he relied for several
years almost exclusively on the Latin version of the Scriptures. Very few
professors knew Greek, and still less, Hebrew. Luther had acquired a
superficial idea of Hebrew at Erfurt from Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica.158 The Greek he learned at Wittenberg, we
do not know exactly when, mostly from books and from his colleagues, Johann
Lange and Melanchthon. As late as Feb. 18th, 1518, he asked Lange, "the
Greek," a question about the difference between ajnavqhma and ajnavqema,
and confessed that he could not draw the Greek letters.159 His herculean labor in translating the
Bible forced him into a closer familiarity with the original languages, though
he never attained to mastery. As a scholar he remained inferior to Reuchlin or
Erasmus or Melanchthon, but as a genius he was their superior, and as a master
of his native German he had no equal in all Germany. Moreover, he turned his
knowledge to the best advantage, and always seized the strong point in
controversy. He studied with all his might and often neglected eating and
sleeping.
Luther
opened his theological teaching with David and Paul, who became the pillars of
his theology. The Psalms and the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians remained
his favorite books. His academic labors as a commentator extended over
thirty-three years, from 1513 to 1546, his labors as a reformer embraced only
twenty-nine years, from 1517 to 1546. Beginning with the Psalms, 1513, he ended
with Genesis, November 17th, 1545) three months before his death.
His
first lectures on the Psalms are still extant and have recently been published
from the manuscript in Wolfenbüttel.160 They are exegetically worthless, but theologically important
as his first attempt to extract a deeper spiritual meaning from the Psalms. He
took Jerome’s Psalter as the textual basis;161 the few Hebrew etymologies
are all derived from Jerome, Augustin (who knew no Hebrew), and Reuchlin’s
Lexicon. He followed closely the mediaeval method of interpretation which
distinguished four different senses, and neglected the grammatical and
historical interpretation. Thus Jerusalem means literally or historically the
city in Palestine, allegorically the good, tropologically virtue, anagogically
reward; Babylon means literally the city or empire of Babylon, allegorically
the evil, tropologically vice, anagogically punishment. Then again one word may
have four bad and four good senses, according as it is understood literally or
figuratively.162 Sometimes he
distinguished six senses. He emphasized the prophetic character of the Psalms,
and found Christ and his work everywhere.163 He had no sympathy with the method of Nicolaus Lyra to
understand the Psalter from the times of the writer. Afterward he learned to
appreciate him.164
He followed Augustin, the Glossa ordinaria, and especially the Quincuplex
Psalterium of Faber Stapulensis (Paris, 1508 and 1513). He far surpassed
himself in his later comments on the Psalms.165 It was only by degrees that he emancipated himself from the
traditional exegesis, and approached the only sound and safe method of
grammatico-historical interpretation of Scripture from the natural meaning of
the words, the situation of the writer and the analogy of his teaching, viewed
in the light of the Scriptures as a whole. He never gave up altogether the
scholalistic and allegorizing method of utilizing exegesis for dogmatic and
devotional purposes, but he assigned it a subordinate place.
"Allegories," he said, "may be used to teach the ignorant common
people, who need to have the same thing impressed in various forms." He
measured the Scriptures by his favorite doctrine of justification by faith, and
hence depreciated important books, especially the Epistle of James and the
Apocalypse. But when his dogmatic conviction required it, he laid too much
stress on the letter, as in the eucharistic controversy.
From
the Psalms he proceeded to the Epistles of Paul. Here be had an opportunity to
expound his ideas of sin and grace, the difference between the letter and the
spirit, between the law and the gospel, and to answer the great practical
question, how a sinner may be justified before a holy God and obtain pardon and
peace. He first lectured on Romans and explained the difference between the
righteousness of faith and the righteousness of works. He never published a
work on Romans except a preface which contains a masterly description of faith.
His lectures on Galatians he began October 27th, 1516, and resumed them
repeatedly. They appeared first in Latin, September, 1519, and in a revised
edition, 1523, with a preface of Melanchthon.166 They are the most popular and effective of his commentaries,
and were often published in different languages. John Bunyan was greatly
benefited by them. Their chief value is that they bring us into living contact
with the central idea of the epistle, namely, evangelical freedom in Christ,
which he reproduced and adapted in the very spirit of Paul. Luther always had a
special preference for this anti-Judaic Epistle and called it his sweetheart or
his wife.167
These
exegetical lectures made a deep impression. They were thoroughly evangelical,
without being anti-catholic. They reached the heart and conscience as well as
the head. They substituted a living theology clothed with flesh and blood for
the skeleton theology of scholasticism. They were delivered with the energy of
intense conviction and the freshness of personal experience. The genius of the
lecturer flashed from his deep dark eyes which seem to have struck every
observer. "This monk," said Dr. Pollich, "will revolutionize the
whole scholastic teaching." Christopher Scheurl commended Luther to the
friendship of Dr. Eck (his later opponent) in January, 1517, as "a divine
who explained the epistles of the man of Tarsus with wonderful genius."
Melanchthon afterward expressed a general judgment when he said that Christ and
the Apostles were brought out again as from the darkness and filth of prison.
</div3> <div3 type = "Section"
n="28" title="Luther and Mysticism. The Theologia
Germanica">
§ 28.
Luther and Mysticism. The Theologia Germanica.
In 1516
Luther read the sermons of Tauler, the mystic revival preacher of Strassburg
(who died in 1361), and discovered the remarkable book called "German
Theology," which he ascribed to Tauler, but which is of a little later
date from a priest and custos of the Deutsch-Herrn Haus of Frankfort, and a
member of the association called "Friends of God." It resembles the
famous work of Thomas a Kempis in exhibiting Christian piety as an humble
imitation of the life of Christ on earth, but goes beyond it, almost to the
very verge of pantheism, by teaching in the strongest terms the annihilation of
self-will and the absorption of the soul in God. Without being polemical, it
represents by its intense inwardness a striking contrast to the then prevailing
practice of religion as a mechanical and monotonous round of outward acts and
observances.
Luther
published a part of this book from an imperfect manuscript, December, 1516, and
from a complete copy, in 1518, with a brief preface of his own.168 He praises it as rich and overprecious
in divine wisdom, though poor and unadorned in words and human wisdom. He
places it next to the Bible and St. Augustin in its teaching about God, Christ,
man, and all things, and says in conclusion that "the German divines are
doubtless the best divines."
There
are various types of mysticism, orthodox and heretical, speculative and
practical.169 Luther came in
contact with the practical and catholic type through Staupitz and the writings
of St. Augustin, St. Bernard, and Tauler. It deepened and spiritualized his
piety and left permanent traces on his theology. The Lutheran church, like the
Catholic, always had room for mystic tendencies. But mysticism alone could not
satisfy him, especially after the Reformation began in earnest. It was too
passive and sentimental and shrunk from conflict. It was a theology of feeling
rather than of action. Luther was a born fighter, and waxed stronger and
stronger in battle. His theology is biblical, with such mystic elements as the
Bible itself contains.170