With regard to supernatural (infused) justice, the Church’s
 representatives, quite differently from Luther, had taught that man by
 his natural powers could only attain to God as the Author of nature
 but not to God as He is in Himself, i.e. to God as He has revealed and
 will communicate Himself in heaven; it is infused, sanctifying grace
 alone that places us in a higher order than that of nature and raises
 us to the status of being children of God; in it we love God, by
 virtue of the “habit” of love bestowed upon us, as He is in Himself,
 i.e. as He wills to be loved; sanctifying grace it is that brings
 us into a true relation with our supernatural and final end, viz.
 the vision of God in heaven, in which sense it may be called a vital
 principle infused into the soul.[191]

 This language Luther either did not or would not understand. On this
 point particularly he had to suffer for his ignorance of the better
 class of theologians. He first embraced Occam’s hypothesis of the
 _possibility_ of an imputation of justice, and then, going further
 along the wrong road, he changed this possibility into a reality;
 soon, owing to his belief in the entire corruption of the natural
 man, imputed justice became, to him, the only justice. In this way
 he deprived theology of supernatural as well as of natural justice;
 for imputed justice is really no justice at all, but merely an alien
 one. “With Luther we have the end of the supernatural. His basic view,
 of justifying faith as the work of God in us performed without our
 co-operation, bears indeed a semblance of the supernatural.... But the
 supernatural is ever something alien.”[192]

 What he had in his mind was always a foreign righteousness produced,
 not by man’s own works and acts performed under the help of grace,
 but only by the work of another; this we are told by Luther in so
 many words: “True and real piety which is of worth in God’s sight
 consists in alien works and not in our own.”[193] “If we wish to work
 for God we must not approach Him with our own works but with foreign
 ones.” “These are the works of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” “All that He
 has is ours.... I may attribute to myself all His works as though I
 had actually done them, if only I believe in Christ.... Our works
 will not suffice, all our powers together are too weak to resist even
 the smallest sin.... Hence when the Law comes and accuses you of not
 having kept it, send it to Christ and say: There is the Man who has
 fulfilled it, to Him I cling, He has fulfilled it for me and bestowed
 His fulfilment of it upon me; then the Law will have to hold its
 tongue.”[194]

_The Book of Concord on the Curtailment of Free-Will._

When orthodox Lutheranism gained a local and temporary victory in 1580
with the so-called Book of Concord, the authors of the book deplored
the inferences drawn from Luther’s moral teaching, particularly from
his denial of free-will, the dangers of which had already long been
apparent.

 “It is not unknown to us,” they say, “that this holy doctrine of the
 malice and impotence of free-will, the doctrine whereby our conversion
 and regeneration is ascribed solely to God and in no way to our own
 powers, has been godlessly, shamelessly and hatefully abused.... Many
 are becoming immoral and savage and neglectful of all pious exercises;
 they say: ‘Since we cannot turn to God of our own natural powers, let
 us remain hostile to God or wait until He converts us by force and
 against our will.’” “It is true that they possess no power to act in
 spiritual things, and that the whole business of conversion is merely
 the work of the Holy Ghost. And thus they refuse to listen to the Word
 of God, or to study it, or to receive the Sacraments; they prefer to
 wait until God infuses His gifts into them directly from above, and
 until they feel and are certain by inward experience that they have
 been converted by God.”

 “Others,” they continue, speaking of the case as a possibility and
 not as a sad reality, “may possibly give themselves up to sad and
 dangerous doubts as to whether they have been predestined by God to
 heaven, and as to whether God will really work His gifts in them by
 the help of the Holy Ghost. Being weak and troubled in mind they
 do not grasp aright our pious doctrine of free-will, and they are
 confirmed in their doubts by the fact that they do not find within
 themselves any firm and ardent faith or hearty devotion to God, but
 only weakness, misery and fear.” The authors then proceed to deal with
 the widespread fear of predestination to hell.[195]

We have as it were a sad monument set up to the morality of the
enslaved will and the doctrine of imputation, when the Book of
Concord, in spite of the sad results it has just admitted, goes on
in the same chapter to insist that all Luther’s principles should be
preserved intact. “This matter Dr. Luther settled most excellently
and thoroughly in his ‘_De servo arbitrio_’ against Erasmus, where he
showed this opinion to be pious and irrefutable. Later on he repeated
and further explained the same doctrine in his splendid Commentary
on Genesis, particularly in his exposition of ch. xxvi. There, too,
he made other matters clear—e.g. the doctrine of the ‘_absoluta
necessitas_’—defended them against the objections of Erasmus and,
by his pious explanations, set them above all evil insinuations and
misrepresentations. All of which we here corroborate and commend to the
diligent study of all.”[196]

Melanchthon’s and his school’s modifications of these extreme doctrines
are here sharply repudiated, though Luther himself “never spoke with
open disapproval” of Melanchthon’s Synergism.[197]

 “From our doctrinal standpoint,” we there read, “it is plain that the
 teaching of the Synergists is false, who allege that man in spiritual
 things is not _altogether_ dead to what is good but merely badly
 wounded and _half_ dead.... They teach wrongly, that after the Holy
 Spirit has given us, through the Evangel, grace, forgiveness and
 salvation, then free-will is able to meet God by its natural powers
 and ... co-operate with the Holy Ghost. In reality the ability to lay
 hold upon grace (‘_facultas applicandi se ad gratiam_’) is solely due
 to the working of the Holy Ghost.”

 What then is man to do, and how are the consequences described above
 to be obviated, on the one hand libertinism, on the other fear of
 predestination to hell?

 Man still possesses a certain freedom, so the Book of Concord teaches,
 e.g. “to be present or not at the Church’s assemblies, to listen or
 close his ears to the Word of God.”

 “The preaching of the Word of God is however the tool whereby the Holy
 Ghost seeks to effect man’s conversion and to make him ready to will
 and to work (‘_in ipsis et velle et perficere operari vult_’).” “Man
 is free to open his ears to the Word of God or to read it even when
 not yet converted to God or born again. In some way or other man still
 has free-will in such outward things even since Adam’s Fall.” Hence,
 by the Word, “by the preaching and contemplation of the sweet Evangel
 of the forgiveness of sins, the spark of ‘faith’ is enkindled in his
 heart.”[198]

 “Although all effort without the power and work of the Holy Spirit is
 worthless, yet neither the preacher nor the hearer must doubt of this
 grace or work of the Holy Spirit,” so long as the preacher proceeds
 according to God’s will and command and “the hearer listens earnestly
 and diligently and dwells on what he hears.” We are not to judge of
 the working of the Holy Ghost by our feelings, but “agreeably with
 the promises of God’s Word.” We must hold that “the Word preached is
 the organ of the Holy Ghost whereby He truly works and acts in our
 hearts.”[199]

 With the help of this queer, misty doctrine which, as we may notice,
 makes of preaching a sort of Sacrament working “_ex opere operato_,”
 Luther’s followers attempted to construct a system out of their
 master’s varying and often so arbitrary statements. At any rate
 they upheld his denial of any natural order of morality distinct
 from the order of grace. It was to remain true that man, “previous
 to conversion, possesses indeed an understanding, but not of divine
 things, and a will, though not for anything good and wholesome.” In
 this respect man stands far below even a stock or stone, because
 he resists the Word and Will of God (which they cannot do) until
 God raises him up from the death of sin, enlightens and creates him
 anew.[200]

 Nevertheless several theses, undoubtedly Luther’s own, are here
 glossed over or quietly bettered. If, for instance, according to
 Luther everything takes place of absolute necessity (a fact to which
 the Formula of Concord draws attention), if man, even in the natural
 acts of the mind, is bound by what is fore-ordained,[201] then even
 the listening to a sermon and the dwelling on it cannot be matters of
 real freedom. Moreover the man troubled with fears on predestination,
 is comforted by the well-known Bible texts, which teach that it is
 the Will of God that all should be saved; whilst nothing is said of
 Luther’s doctrine that it is only the revealed God who speaks thus,
 whereas the hidden God acts quite otherwise, plans and carries out
 the very opposite, “damns even those who have not deserved it—and,
 yet, does not thereby become unjust.”[202] Reference is made to
 Adam’s Fall, whereby nature has been depraved; but nothing is said
 of Luther’s view that Adam himself simply could not avoid falling
 because God did not then “bestow on him the spirit of obedience.”[203]
 But, though these things are passed over in silence, due prominence
 is given to those ideas of Luther’s of which the result is the
 destruction of all moral order, natural as well as supernatural.
 According to the Formula of Concord the natural order was shattered
 by Adam’s Fall; as for the supernatural order it is replaced by the
 alien, mechanical order of imputation.

_Christianity merely Inward. The Church Sundered from the World_

Among the things which Luther did to the detriment of the moral
principle must be numbered his merciless tearing asunder of spiritual
and temporal, of Christian and secular life.

The olden Church sought to permeate the world with the religious
spirit. Luther’s trend was in a great measure towards making the
secular state and its office altogether independent; this, indeed,
the more up-to-date sort of ethics is disposed to reckon among his
greatest achievements. Luther even went so far as to seek to erect into
a regular system this inward, necessary opposition of world and Church.
Of this we have a plain example in certain of his instructions to the
authorities.[204] Whereas the Church had exhorted people in power to
temper with Christianity their administration of civil justice and
their use of physical force—urging that the sovereign was a Christian
not merely in his private but also in his official capacity,—Luther
tells the ruler: The Kingdom of Christ wholly belongs to the order of
grace, but the kingdom of the world and worldly life belong to the
order of the Law; the two kingdoms are of a different species and
belong to different worlds. To the one you belong as a Christian, to
the other as a man and a ruler. Christ has nothing to do with the
regulations of worldly life, but leaves them to the world; earthly
life stands in no need of being outwardly hallowed by the Church.[205]
Certain statements to a different effect will be considered elsewhere.

 “A great distinction,” Luther said in 1523, “must be made between a
 worldling and a Christian, i.e. between a Christian and a worldly
 man. For a Christian is neither man nor woman ... must know nothing
 and possess nothing in the world.... A prince may indeed be a
 Christian, but he must not rule as a Christian, and when he rules
 he does so not as a Christian but as a prince. As an individual he
 is indeed a Christian, but his office or princedom is no business
 of his Christianity.” This seems to him proved by his mystical
 theory that a Christian “must not harm or punish anyone or revenge
 himself, but forgive everyone and endure patiently all injustice or
 evil that befalls him.” The theory, needless to say, is based on
 his misapprehension of the Evangelical Counsels which he makes into
 commands.[206] On such principles as these, he concludes, it was
 impossible for any prince to rule, hence “his being a Christian had
 nothing to do with land and subjects.”[207]

 For the same reason he holds that “every man on this earth” comprises
 two “practically antagonistic personalities,” for “each one has at the
 same time to suffer, and not to suffer, everything.”[208] The dualism
 which Luther here creates is due to his extravagant over-statement of
 the Christian law. The Counsels of Perfection given by Christ in the
 Sermon on the Mount, with which Luther is here dealing (not to resist
 evil, not to go to law, etc., Mt. v. 19 ff.), are not an invitation
 addressed to all Christians, and if higher considerations or some
 duty stands in the way it would certainly denote no perfection to
 follow them. Luther’s misinterpretation necessarily led him to make a
 cleavage between Christian life and life in the world.

 The dualism, however, in so far as it concerned the authorities
 had, however, yet another source. For polemical reasons Luther was
 determined to make an end of the great influence that the olden
 Church had acquired over public life. Hence he absolves the secular
 power from all dependence as the latter had itself sought to do
 even before his time. He refused to see that, in spite of all the
 abuses which had followed on the Church’s interference in politics
 during the Middle Ages, mankind had gained hugely by the guidance of
 religion. To swallow up the secular power in the spiritual had never
 been part of the Church’s teaching, nor was it ever the ideal of her
 enlightened representatives; but, for the morality of the great, for
 the observance of maxims of justice and for the improvement of the
 nations the principle that religion must not be separated from the
 life of the State and from the office of those in authority, but
 must permeate and spiritualise them was, as history proved, truly
 vital. Subsequent to Luther’s day the tendency to separate the two
 undoubtedly made unchecked progress. He himself, however, was not
 consistent in his attitude. On the contrary, he came more and more
 to desiderate the establishment of the closest possible bond between
 the civil authorities and religion—provided only that the ruler’s
 faith was the same as Luther’s. Nevertheless, generally speaking, the
 separation he had advocated of secular from spiritual became the rule
 in the Protestant fold.

 “Lutheranism,” as Friedrich Paulsen said on the strength of his own
 observations in regions partly Catholic and partly Protestant, “which
 is commonly said to have introduced religion into the world and to
 have reconciled public worship with life and the duties of each one’s
 calling has, as a matter of fact, led to the complete alienation and
 isolation of the Church from real life; on the contrary, the older
 Church, despite all her ‘over-worldliness,’ has contrived to make
 herself quite at home in the world, and has spun a thousand threads
 in and around the fabric of its life.” He thinks himself justified in
 stating: “Protestantism is a religion of the individual, Catholicism
 is the religion of the people; the former seeks seclusion, the latter
 publicity. In the one even public worship bears a private character
 and appears as foreign to the world as the pulpit rhetoric of a
 Lutheran preacher of the old school; the [Protestant] Church stands
 outside the bustle of the workaday world in a world of her own.”[209]

We may pass over the fact, that, Luther, by discarding the so-called
Counsels reduced morality to a dead level. In the case of all the
faithful he abased it to the standard of the Law, doing away with that
generous, voluntary service of God which the Church had ever approved
and blessed. We have already shown this elsewhere, more particularly in
connection with the status of the Evangelical Counsels and the striving
after Christian perfection in the monastic life. According to him there
are practically no Counsels for those who wish to pass beyond the
letter of the Law; there is but one uniform moral Law, and, on the true
Christian, even the so-called Counsels are strictly binding.[210]

Life in the world, however, according to his theory has very different
laws; here quite another order obtains, which is, often enough, quite
the opposite to what man, as a Christian, recognises in his heart to
be the true standard. As a Christian he _must_ offer his cheek to the
smiter; as a member of the civil order he may not do so, but, on the
contrary, must everywhere vindicate his rights. Thus his Christianity,
so long as he lives in the world, must perforce be reduced to a matter
of inward feeling; it is constantly exposed to the severest tests, or,
more accurately, constantly in the need of being explained away. The
believer is faced by a twofold order of things, and the regulating of
his moral conduct becomes a problem which can never be satisfactorily
solved.

“Next to the doctrine of Justification there is hardly any other
doctrine which Luther urges so frequently and so diligently as that of
the inward character and nature of Christ’s kingdom, and the difference
thus existing between it and the kingdom of the world, i.e. the domain
of our natural life.”[211]

 Let us listen to Luther’s utterances at various periods on the dualism
 in the moral life of the individual: “The twin kingdoms must be kept
 wide asunder: the spiritual where sin is punished and forgiven,
 and the secular where justice is demanded and dealt out. In God’s
 kingdom which He rules according to the Gospel there is no demanding
 of justice, but all is forgiveness, remission and bestowal, nor is
 there any anger, or punishment, but nothing save brotherly charity
 and service.”[212]—“No rights, anger, or punishment,” this certainly
 would have befitted the invisible, spiritual Church which Luther had
 originally planned to set up in place of the visible one.[213]

 “Christ’s everlasting kingdom ... is to be an eternal spiritual
 kingdom in the hearts of men by the preaching of the Gospel and by
 the Holy Spirit.”[214] “For your own part, hold fast to the Gospel
 and to the Word of Christ so as to be ready to offer the other cheek
 to the smiter, to give your mantle as well as your coat whenever
 it is a question of yourself and your cause.”[215] It is a strict
 command, though at utter variance with the civil law, in which your
 neighbour also is greatly concerned. In so far, therefore, you must
 resist. “Thus you manage perfectly to satisfy at the same time both
 the Kingdom of God and that of the world, both the outward and the
 inward; you suffer evil and injustice and yet at the same time punish
 evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time
 you resist it; for according to the one you look to yourself and to
 yours, and, according to the other, to your neighbour and to his
 rights. As regards yourself and yours, you act according to the Gospel
 and suffer injustice as a true Christian; as regards your neighbour
 and his rights, you act in accordance with charity and permit no
 injustice.”[216]

 If, as is but natural, we ask, how Christ came so strictly to enjoin
 what was almost impossible, Luther replies that He gave His command
 only for Christians, and that real Christians were few in number: “In
 point of fact Christ is speaking only to His dear Christians [when He
 says, ‘that Christians must not go to law,’ etc.], and it is they
 alone who take it and carry it out; they make no mere Counsel of it
 as the Sophists do, but are so transformed by the Spirit that they do
 evil to no one and are ready willingly to suffer evil from anyone.”
 But the world is full of non-Christians and “them the Word does not
 concern at all.”[217] Worldlings must needs tread a very different
 way: “All who are not Christians belong to the kingdom of the world
 and are under the law.” Since they know not the command “Resist not
 evil,” “God has given them another government different from the
 Christian estate, and the Kingdom of God.” There ruleth coercion,
 severity, and, in a word, the Law, “seeing, that, amongst a thousand,
 there is barely one true Christian.” “If anyone wished to govern the
 world according to the Gospel ... dear heart, what would the result
 be! He would be loosening the leashes and chains of the wild and
 savage beasts, and turning them astray to bite and tear everybody....
 Then the wicked would abuse the Christian freedom of the Gospel and
 work their own knavery.”[218]

 Luther clung to the very end of his life to this congeries of
 contradictory theories, which he advocated in 1523, in his passionate
 aversion to the ancient doctrine of perfection. In 1539 or 1540 he put
 forth a declaration against the “Sophists” in defence of his theory of
 the “Counsels,” directed more particularly against the Sorbonne, which
 had insisted that the “_consilia evangelica_,” “were they regarded as
 precepts, would be too heavy a burden for religion.”[219] “They make
 out the Counsels,” he says, “i.e. the commandments of God, to be not
 necessary for eternal life and invite people to take idolatrous, nay,
 diabolical vows. To lower the Divine precepts to the level of counsels
 is a horrible, Satanic blasphemy.” As a Christian “you must rather
 forsake and sacrifice everything”; to this the first table of the Law
 (of Moses, the Law of the love of God) binds you, but, on account of
 the second table (the law of social life), you may and must preserve
 your own for the sake of your family. As a Christian, too, you must
 be willing to suffer at the hands of every man, “but, apart from your
 Christian profession, you must resist evil if you wish to be a good
 citizen of this world.”[220]

 “Hence you see, O Christian brother,” he concludes, “how much you
 owe to the doctrine which has been revived in our day, as against a
 Pharisaical theology which leaves us nothing even of Moses and the Ten
 Commandments, and still less of Christ.”

“Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God—whether it be to
the taste or not of the devil and his brood—that, since the days of
the Apostles, no doctor, scribe, theologian or lawyer has confirmed,
instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well
and lucidly as I have done by the peculiar grace of God. Of this I
am confident. For neither St. Augustine nor St. Ambrose, who are the
greatest authorities in this field, are here equal to me.... Such fame
as this must be and remain known to God and to men even should they go
raving mad over it.”[221]

It is true that his theories contain many an element of good and, had
he not been able to appeal to this, he could never have spoken so
feelingly on the subject.

The good which lies buried in his teaching had, however, always
received its due in Catholicism. Luther, when contrasting the Church’s
alleged aversion for secular life with his own exaltation of the
dignity of the worldly calling, frequently speaks in language both
powerful and fine of the worldly office which God has assigned to
each one, not only to the prince but even to the humble workman and
tiller of the field, and of the noble moral tasks which thus devolve
on the Christian. Yet any aversion to the world as he conceives it had
never been a principle within the Church, though individual writers
may indeed have erred in this direction. The assertion that the olden
Church, owing to her teaching concerning the state of perfection and
the Counsels, had not made sufficient allowance for the dignity of the
secular calling, has already been fully dealt with.

It is true that Luther, to the admiration of his followers, confronted
the old Orders founded by the Church with three new Orders, all
Divinely instituted, viz. the home, the State and the Church.[222] But,
so far from “notably improving” on the “scholastic ethics” of the past,
he did not even contrive to couch his thoughts on these “Orders” in
language as lucid as that used long before his day by the theologians
and moralists of the Church in voicing the same idea; what he says of
these “Orders” also falls short of the past on the score of wealth
and variety.[223] Nevertheless the popular ways he had of depicting
things as he fain would see them, proved alluring, and this gift of
appealing to the people’s fancy and of charming them by the contrast
of new and old, helped to build up the esteem in which he has been
held ever since; his inclination, moreover, to promote the independence
of the individual in the three “Orders,” and to deliver him from all
hierarchical influence must from the outset have won him many friends.

_Divorce of Religion and Morals_

Glancing back at what has already been said concerning Luther’s
abasement of morality and considering it in the light of his theories
of the Law and Gospel, of assurance of salvation and morality, we find
as a main characteristic of Luther’s ethics a far-reaching, dangerous
rift between religion and morals. Morality no longer stands in its old
position at the side of faith.

Faith and the religion which springs from it are by nature closely and
intimately bound up with morality. This is shown by the history of
heathenism in general, of modern unbelief in particular. Heathenism or
unbelief in national life always signifies a moral decline; even in
private life morality reacts on the life of faith and the religious
feeling, and _vice versa_. The harmony between religion and morality
arises from the fact that the love of God proceeds from faith in His
dominion and Fatherly kindness.

Luther, in spite of his assurances concerning the stimulus of the
life of faith and of love, severed the connection between faith and
morality and placed the latter far below the former. His statements
concerning faith working by love, had they been more than mere words,
would, in themselves, have led him back to the very standpoint of the
Church he hated. In reality he regards the “Law” as something utterly
hostile to the “pious” soul; before the true “believer” the Law shrinks
back, though, to the man not yet justified by “faith,” it serves as a
taskmaster and a hangman. The “Law” thus loses the heavenly virtue with
which it was stamped. In Luther’s eyes the only thing of any real value
is that religion which consists in faith in the forgiveness of sins.

 “This,” he says, “is the ‘_Summa Summarum_’ of a truly Christian life,
 to know that in Christ you have a Gracious God ready to forgive you
 your sins and never to think of them again, and that you are now a
 child of everlasting happiness, reigning with Christ over heaven and
 earth.”

 It is true he hastens to add, that, from this saving faith, works of
 morality would “assuredly” flow.[224]

 “Assuredly”? Since Albert Ritschl it has been repeated countless times
 that Luther did no more than “assert that faith by its very nature is
 productive of good works.” As a matter of fact “he is wont to speak in
 much too uncertain a way of the good works which follow faith”; with
 him “faith” is the whole man, whereas the Bible says: “Fear God _and_
 keep His commandments [i.e. religion _plus_ morality]; this is the
 whole man.”[225]

 Luther’s one-sided insistence on a confiding, trusting faith in God,
 at the cost of the moral work, has its root in his theory of the utter
 depravity of man and his entire lack of freedom, in his low esteem
 for the presuppositions of morality, in his conviction that nature
 is capable of nothing, and, owing to its want of self-determination,
 is unable on its own even to be moral at all. If we desire, so he
 says frankly, to honour God’s sublime majesty and to humble fallen
 creatures as they deserve, then let us recognise that God works all
 in all without any possibility of any resistance whatsoever on man’s
 part, God’s action being like to that of the potter on his clay. Just
 as Luther was unable to recognise justification in the sense in which
 it had been taught of yore, so also he entirely failed to appreciate
 the profounder conception of morality.

 His strictures on morality—which had ever been esteemed as the
 voluntary keeping of the Law by man, who by a generous obedience
 renders to God the freedom received—point plainly to the cause of
 his upheaval of the whole field of dogma. At the outset he had set
 himself to oppose self-righteousness, but in doing so he dealt a blow
 at righteousness itself; he had attacked justice by works, but justice
 itself had suffered; he declared war on the wholly imaginary phantom
 of a self-chosen morality based on man-made ordinances and thereby
 degraded morality, if he did not indeed undermine its very foundations.

 What Möhler says of the reformers and their tendency to set aside
 the commands of morality applies in particular to Luther and his
 passionate campaign. It is true he writes, that “the moral freedom
 they had destroyed came to involve the existence of a freedom from
 that moral law which concerns only the seen, bounded world of time,
 but fails to apply in the eternal world, set high above all time and
 space. This does not mean, however, that the reformers were conscious
 of what lay at the base of their system; on the contrary, had they
 seen it, had they perceived whither their doctrines were necessarily
 leading, they would have rejected them as quite unchristian.”[226]

 The following reflection of the famous author of “Catholic Symbolism”
 may also be set on record, the better to safeguard against
 misapprehension anything that may have been said, particularly as it
 touches upon a matter to which we repeatedly have had occasion to
 allude.

 “No one can fail to see the religious element in Protestantism,” he
 says, “who calls to mind the idea of Divine Providence held by Luther
 and Melanchthon when they started the work of the Reformation.... All
 the phenomena of this world [according to it] are God’s own particular
 work and man is merely His instrument. Everything in the history of
 the world is God’s invisible doing which man’s agency merely makes
 visible. Who can fail to see in this a truly religious outlook on all
 things? All is referred back to God, Who is all in all.... In the
 same way the Redeemer also is all in all in the sense that He and His
 Spirit are alone active, and faith and regeneration are solely due to
 Him.”[227]

 Möhler here relates how, according to Luther, Staupitz had said of
 the new teaching at its inception, “What most consoles me is that it
 has again been brought to light how all honour and praise belong to
 God alone, but, to man, nothing at all.” This statement is quite in
 keeping with the vague, mystical world of thought in which Staupitz,
 who was no master of theology or philosophy, lived. But it also
 reflects the impression of many of Luther’s contemporaries who,
 unaware of his misrepresentation of the subject, were attracted by
 the advantage to religion and morality which seemed to accrue from
 Luther’s effort to ascribe all things solely to God.

Where this tendency to subordinate all to God and to exalt the merits
of Christ finds more chastened expression in Luther’s writings, when,
in his hearty, homely fashion, he paints the love of the Master or
His virtues as the pattern of all morality, or pictures in his own
peculiar realistic style the conditions of everyday life the better to
lash abuses, then the reader is able to appreciate the better side of
his ethics and the truly classic example he sometimes sets of moral
exhortations. It would surely be inexplicable how so many earnest
Protestant souls, from his day to our own, should have found and still
find a stimulus in his practical works, for instance, in his Postils,
did these works not really contain a substratum of truth, food for
thought and a certain gift of inspiration. Even the man who studies
the long list of Luther’s practical writings simply from the standpoint
of the scholar and historian—though he may not always share Luther’s
opinions—cannot fail to acknowledge that the warmth with which Luther
speaks of those Christian truths accepted by all, leaves a deep
impression and re-echoes within the soul like a voice from our common
home.

On the one hand Luther rightly retained many profoundly religious
elements of the mediæval theology, indeed, owing to his curious way of
looking at things, he actually outdid in mediævalism the Middle Ages
themselves, for he merged all human freedom in the Divine action, a
thing those Ages had not dared to do.

And yet, on the other hand, to conclude our survey of his “abasement of
practical Christianity,” he is so ultramodern on a capital point of his
ethics as to merit being styled the precursor of modern subjectivism as
applied to morals. For all his new ethical precepts and rules, beyond
the Decalogue and the Natural Law, are devoid of objective obligation;
they lack the sanction which alone would have rendered them capable of
guiding the human conscience.

_The Lack of Obligation and Sanction_

Luther’s moral instructions differed in one weighty particular from
those of the olden Church.

As he himself insists at needless length, they were a collection of
personal opinions and exhortations which appeared to him to be based
on Holy Scripture or the Law of Nature—and in many instances, though
not always, actually did rest on this foundation. When he issued new
pronouncements of a practical character, for instance, concerning
clandestine espousals, or annulled the olden order of public worship,
the sacraments, or the Commandments of the Church, he was wont to
say, that, it was his intention merely to advise consciences and to
arouse the Evangelical consciousness. He took this line partly because
he was conscious of having no personal authority, partly because he
wished to act according to the principles proclaimed in his “Von der
Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” or, again, in order to prevent the
rise of dissent and the resistance he always dreaded to any attempt
to lay down categorical injunctions. Thus his ethical regulations,
so far as they differed from the olden ones, amounted merely to so
many invitations to act according to the standard set up, whereas the
character of the ethical legislation of Catholicism is essentially
binding. Having destroyed the outward authority of the Church, he
had nothing more to count upon than the “ministry of the Word,” and
everything now depended on the minister’s being able to convince the
believer, now freed from the ancient trammels.

 He himself, for instance, once declared that he would “assume no
 authority or right to coerce, for I neither have nor desire any
 such. Let him rule who will or must; I shall instruct and console
 consciences as far as I am able. Who can or wants to obey, let him do
 so; who won’t or can’t, let him leave it alone.”[228]

 He would act “by way of counsel,” so he teaches, “as in conscience
 he would wish to serve good friends, and whoever likes to follow
 his advice must do so at his own risk.”[229] “He gives advice
 agreeably to his own conscience,” writes Luthardt in “Luthers Ethik,”
 “leaving it to others to accept his advice or not on their own
 responsibility.”[230]

 Nor can one well argue that the requisite sanction for the new moral
 rules was the general sanction found in the Scriptural threats of
 Divine chastisements to overtake transgressors. The question is
 whether the Law laid down in the Bible or written in man’s heart is
 really identical with Luther’s. Those who were unable of themselves to
 prove that this was the case were ultimately (so Luther implies) to
 believe it on his authority and conform themselves to his “Evangelical
 consciousness”; thus, for instance, in the matter of religious vows,
 held by Luther to be utterly detestable, and by the Church to be both
 permissible and praiseworthy.

In but few points does the purely subjective character of the new
religion and morality advocated by Luther stand out so clearly as
in this absence of any objective sanction or higher authority for
his new ethics. Christianity hitherto had appealed to the divine,
unchangeable dignity of the Church, which, by her infallible teaching,
her discipline and power to punish, insured the observance of law and
order in the religious domain. But, now, according to the new teaching,
man—who so sadly needs a clear and definite lead for his moral
life—besides the Decalogue, “clear” Bible text and Natural Law, is
left with nothing but “recommendations” devoid of any binding force;
views are dinned into his ears the carrying out of which is left solely
to his feelings, or, as Luther says, to his “conscience.”

Deprived of the quieting guidance of an authority which proclaims
moral obligations and sees that they are carried out, conscience and
personality tend in his system to assume quite a new rôle.

6. The part played by Conscience and Personality. Luther’s warfare with
his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld

Protestants have confidently opined, that “Luther mastered anew the
personal foundation of morality by reinstating conscience in its
rights”; by insisting on feeling he came to restore to “personality
the dignity” which in previous ages it had lost under the ban of a
“legalism” devoid of “morality.”

To counter such views it may be of use to give some account of the way
in which Luther taught conscience to exercise her rights. The part he
assigns to the voice within which judges of good and evil, scarcely
bears out the contention that he really strengthened the “foundation
of morality.” The vague idea of “personality” may for the while be
identified with conscience, especially as in the present connection
“person” stands for the medium of conscience.[231]

_On Conscience and its Exercise in General_

To quiet the conscience, to find some inward support for one’s actions
in the exercise of one’s own will, this is what Luther constantly
insists on in the moral instructions he gives, at the same time
pointing to his own example.[232] What was the nature of his own
example? His rebellion against the Church’s authority was to him the
cause of a long, fierce struggle with himself. He sought to allay the
anxiety which stirred his soul to its depths by the reassuring thought,
that all doubts were from the devil from whom alone all scruples
come; he sternly bade his soul rest secure and as resolutely refused
to hearken to any doubts regarding the truth of his new Evangel. His
new and quite subjective doctrines he defended in the most subjective
way imaginable and, to those of his friends whose consciences were
troubled, he recommends a similar course of action; he even on
several occasions told people thus disturbed in mind whom he wished
to reassure, that they must listen to his, Luther’s, voice as though
it were the voice of God. This was his express advice to his pupil
Schlaginhaufen[233] and, in later days, to his friend Spalatin, who
also had become a prey to melancholy.[234] He himself claimed to have
been delivered from his terrors by having simply accepted as a God-sent
message the encouraging words of Bugenhagen.[235]

 “Conscience is death’s own cruel hangman,” so he told Spalatin; from
 Ambrose and Augustine the latter should learn to place all his trust
 not in conscience but in Christ.[236] It scarcely needs stating that
 here he is misapplying the fine sayings of both these Fathers. They
 would have repudiated with indignation the words of consolation
 which not long after he offered the man suffering from remorse of
 conscience, assuring him that he was as yet a novice in struggling
 against conscience, and had hitherto been “too tender a sinner”; “join
 yourself to us real, big, tough sinners, that you may not belittle
 and put down Christ, Who is the Saviour, not of small, imaginary
 sinners, but of great and real ones”; thus it was that he, Luther,
 had once been consoled in his sadness by Staupitz.[237] Here he is
 applying wrongly a perfectly correct thought of his former Superior.
 Not perhaps quite false, but at any rate thoroughly Lutheran, is the
 accompanying assurance: “I stand firm [in my conscience] and maintain
 my attitude, that you may lean on me in your struggle against Satan
 and be supported by me.”

 Thus does he direct Spalatin, “who was tormented by remorse, to
 comfort himself _against_ his conscience.”[238]

 “To comfort oneself against one’s conscience,” such is the task which
 Luther, in many of his writings, proposes to the believer. Indeed, in
 his eyes the chief thing of all is to “get the better of sin, death,
 hell and our own conscience”; in spite of the opposition of reason to
 Luther’s view of Christ’s satisfaction, we must learn, “through Him
 [Christ] to possess nothing but grace and forgiveness,” of course, in
 the sense taught at Wittenberg.[239]

 A former brother monk, Link, the apostate Augustinian of Nuremberg,
 Luther also encourages, like Spalatin the fallen priest, to kick
 against the prick of conscience: “These are devil’s thoughts and not
 from us, which make us despair,” they must be “left to the devil,” the
 latter always “keeps closest to those who are most pious”; to yield
 to such despairing thoughts “is as bad as giving in and leaving Satan
 supreme.”[240]

 When praising the “sole” help and consolation of the grace of Christ
 he does not omit to point out, directly or otherwise, how, “when in
 despair of himself,” and enduring frightful inward “sufferings” of
 conscience, he had hacked his way through them all and had reached
 a firm faith in Christ minus all works, and had thus become a
 “theologian of the Cross.”[241]

 Even at the commencement of the struggle, in order to encourage
 wavering followers, he allowed to each man’s conscience the right
 to defy any confessor who should forbid Luther’s writings to such
 of his parishioners who came to him: “Absolve me at my own risk,”
 they were to say to him, “I shall not give up the books, for then I
 should be sinning against my conscience.” He argues that, according
 to Rom. xiv. 1, the confessor might not “urge them against their
 conscience.” Was it then enough for a man to have formed himself a
 conscience, for the precept no longer to hold? His admonition was,
 however, intended merely as a counsel for “strong and courageous
 consciences.” If the confessor did not prove amenable, they were
 simply to “go without scruple to the Sacrament,” and if this, too, was
 refused them then they had only to send “Sacrament and Church” about
 their business.[242] Should the confessor require contrition for sins
 committed, this, according to another of his statements, was a clear
 attack on conscience which does not require contrition for absolution,
 but merely faith in Christ; such a priest ought to have the keys taken
 out of his hands and be given a pitchfork instead.[243]

In the above instances the Catholic could find support for his
conscience in the infallible authority of the Church. It was this
authority which forbade him Luther’s writings as heretical, and, in the
case of contrition—which Luther also brings forward—it was likewise
his religious faith, which, consonantly with man’s natural feeling,
demanded such sorrow for sin. In earlier days authority and faith were
the reliable guides of conscience without which it was impossible
to do. Luther left conscience to itself or referred it to his own
words and his reading of Scripture, though this again, as he himself
acknowledged, was not an absolute rule; thus he leaves it a prey to
a most unhappy uncertainty—unless, indeed, it was able to “find
assurance” in the way he wishes.

 Quite early in his career he also gave the following instruction to
 those of the clergy who were living in concubinage on how to form
 their conscience; they were “to salve their conscience” and take the
 female to their “wedded wife,” even though this were against the law,
 fleshly or ghostly. “Your soul’s salvation is of more account than
 any tyrannical laws.... Let him who has the faith to take the risk
 follow me boldly.” “I will not deceive him,” he adds apologetically,
 but at least he had “the power to advise him regarding his sins and
 dangers”; he will show them how they may do what they are doing, “but
 with a good conscience.”[244] For as Luther points out in another
 passage, even though their discarding of their supposed obligation of
 celibacy had taken place with a bad conscience, still the Bible-texts
 subsequently brought forward, read according to the interpretation
 of the new Evangelist, avail to heal their conscience.[245] At any
 rate, so he tells the Teutonic Knights when inviting them to break
 their vow of chastity: “on the Word of God we will risk it and do it
 in the teeth of and contrary to all Councils and Churches! Close eyes
 and ears and take God’s Word to heart.”[246] Better, he cries, go on
 keeping two or three prostitutes than seek of a Council permission to
 marry![247]

 These were matters for “those to risk who have the faith,” so we have
 heard him say. In reality all did depend on people’s faith ... in
 Luther, on their conviction that his doctrine and his moral system
 were right.

But what voice was to decide in the case of those who were wavering?

On the profoundest questions of moral teaching, it is, according to
Luther, the “inward judgment” that is to decide what “spirit” must
be followed. “For every Christian,” he writes, “is enlightened in
heart and conscience by the Holy Ghost and by God’s Grace in such
a way as to be able to judge and decide with the utmost certainty
on all doctrines.” It is to this that the Apostle refers when he
says: “A spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor. iii. 15). Beyond
this, moreover, Scripture constitutes an “outward judgment” whereby
the Spirit is able to convince men, it being a “ghostly light, much
brighter than the sun.”[248] It is highly important “to be certain” of
the meaning of the Bible,[249] though here Luther’s own interpretation
was, needless to say, to hold the field. The preachers instructed by
him were to say: “I know that the doctrine is right in God’s sight” and
“boast” of the inward certainty they shared with him.[250]

Luther’s rules for the guidance of conscience in other matters were
quite similar. Subjectivism becomes a regular system for the guidance
of conscience. In this sense it was to the person that the final
decision was left. But whether this isolation of man from man, this
snatching of the individual from dutiful submission to an authority
holding God’s place, was really a gain to the individual, to religion
and to society, or not rather the reverse, is only to be settled in
the light of the history of private judgment which was the outcome of
Luther’s new principle.

 Of himself Luther repeats again and again, that his knowledge and
 conscience alone sufficed to prove the truth of his position;[251]
 that he had won this assurance at the cost of his struggles with
 conscience and the devil. Ulenberg, the old writer, speaking of these
 utterances in his “Life of Luther,”[252] says that his hero mastered
 his conscience when at the Wartburg, and, from that time, believed
 more firmly than ever that he had gained this assurance by a Divine
 revelation (“_cœlesti quadam revelatione_”), for which reason he had
 then written to his Elector that he had received his lead solely from
 heaven.[253]

 In matters of conscience wherever the troublesome “Law” comes in we
 can always trace the devil’s influence; we “must come to grips with
 him and fight him,”[254] only the man who has been through the mill,
 as he himself had, could boast of having any certainty: “The devil is
 a juggler. Unless God helps us, our work and counsel is of no account;
 whether we turn right or left he remains the Prince of this world. Let
 him who does not know this just try. I have had some experience of
 this. But let no one believe me until he too has experienced it.”[255]

 Not merely in the case of his life-work in general, but even in
 individual matters of importance, the inward struggles and “agonies”
 through which he had passed were signs by which to recognise that he
 was in the right. Thus, for instance, referring to his hostile action
 in Agricola’s case, Luther says: “Oh, how many pangs and agonies did I
 endure about this business. I almost died of anxiety before I brought
 these propositions out into the light of day.”[256] Hence it was
 plain, he argued, how far he was from the palpable arrogance displayed
 by his Antinomian foe, and how evidently his present conduct was
 willed by God.

_The Help of Conscience at Critical Junctures_

It was the part played by subjectivism in Luther’s ethics that led
him in certain circumstances to extend suspiciously the rights of
“conscience.”

In the matter of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse he soothed the Elector
of Saxony by telling him he must ignore the general outcry, since the
Landgrave had acted “from his need of conscience”; in his “conscience”
the Prince regarded his “wedded concubine” as “no mere prostitute.” “By
God’s Grace I am well able to distinguish between what by way of grace
and before God may be permitted in the case of a troubled conscience
and what, apart from such need of conscience, is not right before God
in outward matters.”[257] In his extreme embarrassment, consequent
on this matrimonial tangle, Luther deemed it necessary to make so
hair-splitting a distinction between lawfulness and permissibility when
need of conscience required it. The explanation—that, in such cases,
something must be conceded “before God and by way of grace”—which he
offers together with the Old-Testament texts as justifying the bigamy,
must look like a fatal concession to laxity.

He also appealed to conscience in another marriage question where he
made the lawfulness of bigamy depend entirely on the conscience.

 A man, who, owing to his wife’s illness was prevented from matrimonial
 intercourse, wished, on the strength of Carlstadt’s advice, to take a
 second wife. Luther thereupon wrote to Chancellor Brück, on Jan. 27,
 1524, telling him the Prince should reply as follows: “The husband
 must be sure and convinced in his own conscience by means of the Word
 of God that it is lawful in his case. Therefore let him seek out such
 men as may convince him by the Word of God, whether Carlstadt [who was
 then in disgrace at Court], or some other, matters not at all to the
 Prince. For if the fellow is not sure of his case, then the permission
 of the Prince will not make him so; nor is it for the Prince to decide
 on this point, for it is the priests’ business to expound the Word
 of God, and, as Zacharias says, from their lips the Law of the Lord
 must be learned. I, for my part, admit I can raise no objection if a
 man wishes to take several wives since Holy Scripture does not forbid
 this; but I should not like to see this example introduced amongst
 Christians.... It does not beseem Christians to seize greedily and
 for their own advantage on everything to which their freedom gives
 them a right.... No Christian surely is so God-forsaken as not to be
 able to practise continence when his partner, owing to the Divine
 dispensation, proves unfit for matrimony. Still, we may well let
 things take their course.”[258]

 On the occasion of his own marriage with Bora we may remember how he
 had declared with that defiance of which he was a past master, that
 he would take the step the better to withstand the devil and all his
 foes. (Vol. ii., p. 175 ff.)

 A curious echo of the way in which he could set conscience at defiance
 is to be met with in his instructions to his assistant Justus Jonas,
 who, as soon as his first wife was dead, cast about for a second.
 Luther at first was aghast, owing to Biblical scruples, at the scandal
 which second marriages on the part of the regents of the Church would
 give and entreated him at least to wait a while. When he found it
 impossible to dissuade Jonas, he warned him of the “malicious gossip
 of our foes,” “who are ever eager to make capital out of our example”;
 nevertheless, he goes on to say that he had nothing else to urge
 against another union, so long as Jonas “felt within himself that
 spirit of defiance which would enable him, after the step, to ignore
 all the outcry and the hate of all the devils and of men, and not to
 attempt, nay, to scorn any effort to stop the mouths of men, or to
 crave their favour.”[259]

The “spirit of defiance” which he here requires as a condition for the
step becomes elsewhere a sort of mystical inspiration which may justify
an action of doubtful morality.

 Granted the presence of this inspiration he regards as permissible
 what otherwise would not be so. In a note sent to the Elector of
 Saxony at the time of the Diet of Augsburg regarding the question
 whether it was allowed to offer armed resistance to the Emperor, we
 find this idea expressed in remarkable words. Till then Luther had
 looked upon resistance as forbidden. The predicament of his cause, now
 endangered by the warlike threats of the Emperor, led him to think of
 resistance. He writes: If the Elector wishes to take up arms “he must
 do so under the influence of a singular spirit and faith (‘_vocante
 aliquo singulari spiritu et fide_’). Otherwise he must yield to
 superior force and suffer death together with the other Christians of
 his faith.”[260] It is plain that there would have been but little
 difficulty in finding the peculiar mystical inspiration required;
 no less plain is it, that, once this back door had been opened
 “inspiration” would soon usurp the place of conscience and justify
 steps, that, in themselves, were of a questionable character.

_Conscience in the Religious Question of the Day_

The new method of dealing with conscience is more closely connected
with Luther’s new method of inducing faith than might at first sight
appear.

 The individualism he proclaimed in matters of faith embodied the
 principle, that “each one must, in his own way, lay hold on religious
 experience and thus attain religious conviction.”[261] Luther often
 says, in his idealistic way, that only thus is it possible to arrive
 at the supreme goal, viz. to feel one’s faith within as a kind of
 inspiration; our aim must ever be to feel it “surely and immutably”
 in our conscience and in all the powers of our soul.[262] Everything
 must depend on this experience, the more so as to him faith means
 something very different from what it means to Catholics; it is, he
 says, “no taking it all for true”; “for that would not be Christian
 faith but more an opinion than faith”; on the contrary, each one
 must believe that “he is one of those on whom such grace and mercy
 is bestowed.”[263] Now, such a faith, no matter how profound and
 immutable the feeling be, cannot be reached except at the cost of a
 certain violence to conscience; such coercion is, in fact, essential
 owing to the nature of this faith in personal salvation.

 What, according to Luther, is the general character of faith? Fear and
 struggles, so he teaches, are not merely its usual accompaniments,
 but are also the “sure sign that the Word has touched and moved
 you, that it exercises, urges and compels you”; nay, Confession and
 Communion are really meant only for such troubled ones, “otherwise
 there would be no need of them”—i.e. they would not be necessary
 unless there existed despair of conscience and anxiety concerning
 faith. It was a mistaken practice, he continues, for many to refrain
 from receiving the Sacrament, “preferring to wait until they feel
 the faith within their heart”; in this way all desire to receive is
 extinguished; people should rather approach even when they feel not at
 all their faith; then “you will feel more and more attracted towards
 it”[264]—though this again, according to Luther, is by no means quite
 certain.

 The “inward experience of faith” too often becomes simply the dictate
 of one’s whim. But a whim and order to oneself to think this or that
 does not constitute faith as the word is used in revelation, nor does
 a command imposed on the inward sense of right and wrong amount to a
 pronouncement of conscience.

 Though Luther often held up himself and his temptations regarding
 faith, as an example which might comfort waverers, Protestants have
 nevertheless praised him for the supposed firmness of his faith and
 for his joy of conscience. But was not his “defiant faith” really
 identical with that imposition he was wont to practise on his
 conscience and to dignify by the name of inspiration?

 Yet, in spite of all, he never found a secure foundation. “I know
 what it costs me, for I have daily to struggle with myself,” he told
 his friends in 1538.[265] “I was scarcely able to bring myself to
 believe,” he said in a sermon of the same year, “that the doctrine
 of the Pope and the Fathers was all wrong.”[266] His faith was as
 insecurely fixed, so he quaintly bewailed on another occasion, “as
 the fur trimming on his sleeve.”[267] “Who believes such things?”
 he asks, wildly implicating all people in general, at the conclusion
 of a note jotted down in a Bible and alluding to the hope of life
 everlasting.[268] In 1529 he repeatedly describes to his friends how
 Satan tempts him (“_Satanas fatigat_”) with lack of faith and despair,
 how he was sunk in unspeakable “bitterness of soul,” and, how, for
 this reason as he once says, he was scarce able “with a trembling
 hand” to write to them.[269]

 Calvin, too, was aware of the frequent terrors Luther endured. When
 Pighius, the Catholic writer, alleged Luther’s struggles of conscience
 and temptations concerning the faith as disproving his authority,
 Calvin took good care not to deny them. He boldly replied that this
 only redounded to Luther’s honour since it was the experience of all
 devout people, and particularly of the most famous divines.[270]

Was it possible, according to Luther, to be conscientiously opposed
to his teaching on faith and morals? At least in theory, he does go
so far in certain statements as to recognise the possibility of such
conscientious scruples. In these utterances he would even appear to
surrender the whole weight and authority of his theological and ethical
discoveries, fundamental though they were to his innovations. “I have
served the Church zealously with what God has given me and what I owe
to Him. Whoever does not care for it, let him read or listen to others.
It matters but little should they feel no need of me.”[271] With regard
to public worship, it is left “to each one to make up his conscience
as to how he shall use his freedom.” “I am not your preacher,” so he
wrote to the “Strasburg Christians,” who were inclined to distrust his
exclusiveness; “no one is bound to believe me; let each man look to
himself”;[272] all are to be referred “from Luther,” “to Christ.”[273]

Such statements, however, cannot stand against his constant insistence
on his Divine mission; they are rather of psychological interest as
showing how suddenly he passes from one idea to another. Moreover, his
statement last mentioned, often instanced by Protestants as testifying
to his breadth of mind, is nullified almost on the same page by the
solemn assurance, that, his “Gospel is the true Gospel” and that
everything that contradicts it is “heresy,” for, indeed, as had been
foretold by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), “heresies” must needs
arise.[274]

And, in point of fact, those teachers who felt themselves bound in
conscience to differ from him and go their own way—for instance,
the “Sacramentarians” in their interpretation of the words of
consecration—were made to smart. Of this the example of Schwenckfeld
was a new and striking proof.

The contradiction presented on the one hand by Luther’s disposition
to grant the most absolute freedom of conscience, and on the other
by his rigid exclusiveness, is aptly described by Friedrich Paulsen:
“In the region of morals Luther leaves the decision to the individual
conscience as instructed by the Word of God. To rely on human
authority in questions of morals appeared to him not much better than
blasphemy.... True enough, however, this very Luther, at a later date,
attacked those whose conscience found in God’s Word doctrines at all
different from those taught at Wittenberg.”[275]

Hence, neither to the heretics in his own camp nor to the adherents
of the olden faith would he allow the right of private judgment, so
greatly extolled both by himself and his followers. Nothing had been
dearer to the people of mediæval times, who for all their love of
freedom were faithful children of the Church, than regard and esteem
for the rights of personality in its own domain. Personality, denoting
man’s unfettered and reasonable nature stamped with its own peculiar
individuality, is assuredly something noble. The Catholic Church,
far from setting limits to the development of personality, promoted
both its real freedom and the growth of individuality in ways suited
to man’s nature and his supernatural vocation. Even the monastic
life, so odious to Luther, was anything but “hostile to the ideal of
personality.” An impartial observer, prepared to disregard fortuitous
abuses, could have seen even then, that the religious life strives
after the fairest fruits of ethical personality, which are fostered by
the very sacrifice of self-will: Obedience is but a sacrifice “made in
the interests of personality.”[276] Mere wilfulness and the spirit of
“defiance,” ever ready to overstep the bounds set by reason and grace,
creates, not a person, but a “superman,” whose existence we could well
spare; of such a being Luther’s behaviour reminds us more than once.

After all we have said it would be superfluous to deal in detail with
the opinion expressed above (p. 66) by certain Protestant judges, viz.
that Luther reinstated conscience, which had fallen into the toils
of “legalism,” and set it again on its “true basis,” insisting on
“feeling” and on real “morality.” Nor shall we enquire whether it is
seriously implied, that, before Luther’s day, people were not aware
that the mere “legality” of a deed did not suffice unless first of all
morality was recognised as the true guide of conduct.

We may repeat yet once again that Luther was not the first to brand
“outward holiness-by-works” in the sphere of morality.[277] Berthold
of Ratisbon, whose voice re-echoed through the whole of Germany,
summing up the teaching of the mediæval moral theologians, reprobates
most sternly any false confidence in outward deeds. No heaping up of
external works, no matter how eager, can, according to him, prove
of any profit to the soul, not even if the sinner, after unheard-of
macerations, goes loaded with chains on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and
there lays himself down to die within the very sepulchre of the Lord;
all that, so he points out with an eloquence all his own, would be
thrown away were there lacking the inward spirit of love and contrition
for the sins committed.

The doctrine on contrition of the earlier Catholic theologians and
popular writers, which we have already had occasion to review, forms
an excellent test when compared with Luther’s own, by which to decide
the question: Which is the outward and which the inward morality?
Their doctrine is based both on Scripture and on the traditions of
antiquity. Similarly the Catholic teaching on moral self-adaptation to
Christ, such as we find it, for instance, in St. Benedict’s Prologue
to his world-famous Rule, that textbook of the mediæval ascetics, in
the models and examples of the Fathers and even in the popular Catholic
works of piety so widely read in Luther’s day, strikingly confutes
the charge, that, by the stress it laid on certain commandments and
practices, Catholicism proved it had lost sight of “the existence of
a living personal morality” and that it fell to Luther once more to
recall to life this ideal. The imitation of Christ in the spirit of
love was undoubtedly regarded as the highest aim of morality, and this
aim necessarily included “personal morality” in its most real sense,
and Luther was not in the least necessity of inaugurating any new
ideals of virtue.

_Luther’s Warfare with his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld_

Caspar Schwenckfeld, a man of noble birth hailing from Ossig near Lüben
in Silesia, after having studied at Cologne, Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and
perhaps also at Erfurt, was, in 1519, won over by Luther’s writings
to the religious innovations. Being idealistically inclined, the
Wittenberg preaching against formalism in religion and on the need of
returning to a truly spiritual understanding of the Bible roused him to
enthusiasm. He attempted, with rather more logic than Luther, to put
in practice the latter’s admonitions concerning the inward life and
therefore started a movement, half pietist, half mystic, for bringing
together those who had been really awakened.

Schwenckfeld was a man of broad mind, with considerable independence
of judgment and of a noble and generous disposition. His good position
in the world gave him what many of the other Lutheran leaders lacked,
viz. a free hand. His frank criticism did not spare the faults in
their preaching. The sight of the sordid elements which attached
themselves to Luther strengthened him in his resolve to establish
communities—first of all in Silesia—modelled on the very lines
roughly sketched by Luther, which should present a picture of the
apostolic age of the Church. The Duke of Silesia and many of the
nobility were induced to desert Catholicism, and a wide field was won
in Silesia for the new ideals of Wittenberg.

In spite of his high esteem for Luther, Schwenckfeld wrote, in 1523:
It is evident “that little improvement can be discerned emerging from
the new teaching, and that those who boast of the Evangel lead a bad
and scandalous life.... This moves us not a little, indeed pierces our
heart when we hear of it.”[278] To the Duke he dedicated, in 1524,
a writing entitled: “An exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry
notable Articles of the Evangel, through the wrong understanding
of which the common man is led into the freedom of the flesh and
into error.” The book forms a valuable source of information on the
religious state of the people at the time of the rise of Lutheranism.
Therein he laments, with deep feeling and with an able pen, that so
many Lutherans were being influenced by the most worldly of motives,
and that a pernicious tendency towards freedom from social restrictions
was rife amongst them.[279]

Though Schwenckfeld was all his life equally averse to the demagogue
Anabaptist movement and to Zwinglianism with its rationalistic
tendency, yet his fate led him into ways very much like theirs.
Together with his associate Valentine Krautwald, a former precentor,
he attacked the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, giving,
however, a new interpretation of the words of Institution., different
from that of Zwingli and Œcolampadius. To the fanaticism of the
Anabaptists he approximated by his opposition to any organised Church,
to the sacraments as means of grace, and to all that appeared to him to
deviate from the spirit of the Apostolic Church.

He besought Luther in a personal interview at Wittenberg, on Dec. 1,
1525, to agree to his doctrine of the Sacrament, explaining to him at
the same time its affinity with his supposedly profounder conception
of the atonement, the sacraments and the life of Christ as followed
in his communities; he also invited him in fiery words to throw over
the popular churches in which all the people received the Supper and
rather to establish congregations of awakened Christians. Luther,
though in no unfriendly manner, put him off; throughout the interview
he addressed him as “Dear Caspar,” but he flatly refused to give any
opinion. According to Schwenckfeld’s own account he even allowed that
his doctrine of the Sacrament was “plausible” ... if only it could
be proved, and, on parting, whispered in his ear: “Keep quiet for a
while.”[280]

When, however, the Sacramentarian movement began to assume alarming
dimensions, and the Swiss started quoting Schwenckfeld in favour of
their view of the Sacrament, Luther was exasperated and began to
assail his Silesian fellow-worker. His indignation was increased by
certain charges against the nobleman which reached him from outside
sources. He replied on April 14, 1526, to certain writings sent him by
Schwenckfeld and Krautwald by an unconditional refusal to agree, though
he did so briefly and with reserve.[281] On Jan. 4, of the same year,
referring to Zwingli, Œcolampadius and Schwenckfeld in a writing to
the “Christians of Reutlingen” directed against the Sacramentarians he
said: “Just behold and comprehend the devil and his coarseness”; in it
he had included Schwenckfeld, though without naming him, as a “spirit
and head” among the three who were attacking the Sacrament.[282]

From that time onward the Silesian appeared to him one of the most
dangerous of heretics. He no longer admitted in his case the rights
of conscience and private judgment which Luther claimed so loudly
for himself and defended in the case of his friends, and to which
Schwenckfeld now appealed. It was nothing to him that on many
occasions, and even till his death, Schwenckfeld expressed the highest
esteem for Luther and gratitude for his services in opening up a better
way of theology.

 “Dr. Martin,” Schwenckfeld wrote in 1528, “I would most gladly have
 spared, if only my conscience had allowed it, for I know, praise be to
 God, what I owe to him.”[283]

 It was his purpose to pursue the paths along which Luther had at first
 striven to reach a new world. “A new world is being born and the old
 is dying,” so he wrote in 1528.[284] This new world he sought within
 man, but with the same mistaken enthusiasm with which he taught the
 new resurrection to life. The Divine powers there at work he fancied
 were the Holy Ghost, the Word of God and the Blood of the all-powerful
 Jesus. The latter he wished to reinstate in person as the sole ruler
 of the Church; in raising up to life and in supporting it, Jesus
 was ministering personally. According to him Christ’s manhood was
 not the same as a creature’s; he deified it to such an extent as to
 dissolve it, thus laying himself open to the charge of Eutychianism.
 Regeneration in baptism to him seemed nothing, compared with Christ’s
 raising up of the adult to life.

 He would have it that he himself had passed, in 1527, through an
 overwhelming spiritual experience, the chief crisis of his life,
 when God, as he says, made him “partaker of the heavenly calling,
 received him into His favour, and bestowed upon him a good and joyful
 conscience and knowledge.”[285] On his “conscience and knowledge”
 he insisted from that time with blinded prejudice, and taught
 his followers, likewise with a joyful conscience to embrace the
 illumination from on high. He adhered with greater consistency than
 Luther to the thesis that everyone who has been enlightened has the
 right to judge of doctrine; no “outward office or preaching” might
 stand in the way of such a one. To each there comes some upheaval
 of his earthly destiny; it is then that we receive the infusion of
 the knowledge of salvation given by the Spirit, and of faith in the
 presence of Christ the God-man; it is a spiritual revelation which
 fortifies the conscience by the absolute certainty of salvation and
 guides a man in the freedom of the Spirit through all the scruples of
 conscience he meets in his moral life. His system also comprises a
 theory of practically complete immunity from sin.[286]

 No other mind has given such bold expression as Schwenckfeld to the
 individualism or subjectivism which Luther originally taught; no one
 has ever attempted to calm consciences and fortify them against the
 arbitrariness of religious feeling in words more sympathetic and
 moving.

 Carl Ecke,[287] his most recent biographer, who is full of
 admiration for him, says quite truly of the close connection between
 Schwenckfeld and the earlier Luther, that the chief leaders of the
 incipient Protestant Church, estimable men though some of them were,
 nevertheless misunderstood and repulsed one of the most promising
 Christians of the Reformation age. When he charged them with want of
 logic in their reforming efforts they regarded it as the fanaticism of
 an ignoramus.... In Schwenckfeld 16th-century Protestantism nipped in
 the bud the Christian individualism of the early ages rediscovered by
 Luther, in which lay the hope of a higher unity.[288]

In 1529, two years after his great interior experience, Schwenckfeld
left his home, and, on a hint from the Duke of Silesia, severed his
connection with him, being unwilling to expose him to the risk of
persecution. Thereafter he led a wandering existence for thirty years;
until his seventy-second year he lived with strangers at Strasburg,
Esslingen, Augsburg, Spires, Ulm and elsewhere. After 1540, when
the Lutheran theologians at Schmalkalden published an admonition
against him, his history was more that of a “fugitive” than a mere
“wanderer.”[289]

Still, he was untiringly active in furthering his cause by means of
lectures and circular letters, as well as by an extensive private
correspondence. He scattered the seeds of his peculiar doctrines
amongst the nobility in particular and their dependents in country
parts. Many people of standing either belonged or were well-disposed to
his school, as Duke Christopher of Würtemberg wrote in 1564; according
to him there were many at Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the Tyrol,
in Allgäu, Silesia and one part of the Mark.[290] “The well-known
intolerance of the Reformation and of its preachers,” remarks the
Protestant historian of Schwenckfeld, “could not endure in their body a
man who had his own views on the Sacraments and refused for conscience
sake to take part in the practices of their Church.... He wandered,
like a hunted deer, without hearth or home, through the cities and
forests of South Germany, pursued by Luther and the preachers.”[291] As
late as 1558 Melanchthon incited the authorities against him, declaring
that “such sophistry as his requires to be severely dealt with by the
princes.”[292]

Not long after Schwenckfeld departed this life at Ulm in 1561. His
numerous following in Silesia migrated, first to Saxony, then to
Holland and England, and finally to Pennsylvania, where they still
exist to this day.

Luther’s indignation against Schwenckfeld knew no bounds. In
conversation he spoke of him as Swinesfield,[293] and, in his addresses
and writings, still more commonly as Stinkfield, a name which was also
repeatedly applied by his followers to the man they so disliked.[294]

 In his Table-Talk Luther refers to that “rascal Schwenckfeld,” who
 was the instigator of numerous errors and deceives many people with
 his “honeyed words.”[295] He, like the fanatics, so Luther complains,
 despises “the spoken word,” and yet God willed “to deal with and work
 in us by such means.”[296]

 In 1540 he told his friends that Schwenckfeld was unworthy of being
 refuted by him, no less unworthy than Sebastian Frank, another gifted
 and independent critic of Luther and Lutheranism.[297]

 In 1543, when Schwenckfeld attempted to make advances to Luther
 and sent him a tract together with a letter, Luther sent down to
 the messenger a card on which he acknowledged the receipt of the
 book, but declared that “the senseless fool, beset as he is by the
 devil, understands nothing and does not even know what he is talking
 about.” He had better leave him, Luther, alone and not worry him with
 his “booklets, which the devil himself discharges through him.” In
 the last lines he invokes a sort of curse on Schwenckfeld, and all
 “Sacramentarians and Eutychians” of whom it had been said in the Bible
 (Jer. xxiii. 21): “I did not send prophets, yet they ran: I have not
 spoken to them, yet they prophesy.”[298]

 When giving vent to his grudge against Schwenckfeld in his Table-Talk
 shortly after this, he declared: “He is a poor creature, with neither
 talent nor an enlightened spirit.... He bespirts the people with the
 grand name of Christ.... The dreamer has stolen a few phrases from
 my book, ‘_De ultimis verbis Davidis_’ [of 1543], and with these the
 poor wretch seeks to make a great show.” It was on this occasion that
 Catherine Bora took exception to a word used by her husband, declaring
 that it was “too coarse.”[299]

In his “Kurtz Bekentnis vom heiligen Sacrament” (1545) Luther again
gives vigorous expression to his aversion to the “Fanatics and foes
of the Sacrament, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Œcolampadius and ‘Stinkfield’”;
they were heretics “whom he had warned sufficiently” and who were to be
avoided.[300] He had refused to listen to or to answer that “slanderer
Schwenckfeld” because everything was wasted on him. “This you may well
tell those among whom, no doubt, Stinkfield makes my name to stink. I
like being abused by such slanderers.” If by their attacks upon the
Sacrament they call the “Master of the house Beelzebub, how should they
not abuse His household?”[301]

7. Self-Improvement and the Reformation of the Church

Self-betterment, by the leading of a Christian life and, particularly,
by striving after Christian perfection, had in Catholic times been
inculcated by many writers and even by first-rank theologians. In this
field it was usual to take for granted, both in popular manuals and in
learned treatises, as the general conviction, that religion teaches
people to strive after what is highest, whether in each one’s ordinary
duties of daily life, or in the ecclesiastical or religious state. The
power of the moral teaching was to stand revealed in the struggle after
the ideal thus set forth.

_Did Luther Found a School of True Christian Life?_

Luther, of set purpose, refused to make any attempt to found, in
the strict sense of the term, a spiritual school of Christian life
or perfection. He ever found it a difficult matter even to give any
methodical instructions to this end.

Though he dealt fully and attractively with many details of life, not
only in his sermons and commentaries, but also in special writings
which still serve as inspirations to practical Christianity, yet he
would never consent to draft anything in the shape of a system for
reaching virtue, still less for attaining perfection. On one occasion
he even deliberately refused his friend Bugenhagen’s request that he
would sketch out a rule of Christian life, appealing to his well-known
thesis that “the true Christian has no need of rules for his conduct,
for the spirit of faith guides him to do all that God requires and that
brotherly love demands of him.”[302]

It may indeed be urged that his failure to bequeath to posterity any
regular guide to the spiritual life was due to lack of time, that
his active and unremitting struggle with his opponents left him no
leisure, and, in point of fact, it is quite true that his controversy
did deprive him of the requisite freedom and peace of mind. It may also
be allowed that no one man can do everything and that Luther had not
the methodical mind needed for such a task, which, in his case, was
rendered doubly hard by his revolution in doctrine. The main ground,
however, is that there were too many divergent elements in his moral
teaching which it was impossible to harmonize; so much in it was false
and awry that no logical combination of the whole was possible. Hence
his readiness to invoke the theory, which really sprung from the very
depths of his ethics, viz. that the true Christian has no need of rules
because everything he has to do is the natural outcome of faith.

In his “Sermon von den guten Wercken” (1520), he expressed this in a
way that could not fail to find a following, though it could hardly
be described as in the interests of moral effort. Each one must take
as his first rule of conduct, not on any account to bind himself, but
to keep himself free from all troublesome laws. The very title of the
tract in question, so frequently reprinted during Luther’s lifetime,
would have led people to expect to find in it his practical views on
ethics. Characteristically enough, instead of attempting to define the
exact nature and value of moral effort, Luther penned what, in reality,
was merely an appendix to his new doctrine on faith. He himself, in his
dedication of it to Duke Johann of Saxony, admits this of the first and
principal part: “Here I have striven to show how we must exercise and
make use of faith in all our good works and consider it as the chiefest
of works. If God allows me I shall at some other time deal with faith
itself, how we must each day pray and speak it.”[303]

As, however, no other of Luther’s writings contains so many elements
of moral teaching drawn from his theology, some further remarks on it
may here be in place, especially as he himself set such store on the
sermon, that, while engaged on it, referring evidently to the first
part, he wrote to Spalatin, that, in his opinion it “would be the best
thing he had yet published.”[304] Köstlin felt justified in saying:
“The whole sermon may be termed the Reformer’s first exposition and
vindication of the Evangelical teaching on morals.”[305]

 Starting from his doctrine that good works are only those which God
 has commanded, and that the highest is “faith, or trust in God’s
 mercy,”[306] he endeavours to show, agreeably to his usual idea, that
 from faith the works proceed, and for this reason he lingers over the
 first four commandments of the Decalogue. He explains the principle
 that faith knows no idleness. By this faith the believer is inwardly
 set free from the laws and ceremonies by which men were driven to
 perform good works. If faith reigned in all, then of such there would
 no longer be any need. The Christian must perform good works, but he
 is free to perform works of any kind, no man being bound to one or any
 work, though he finds no fault with those who bind themselves.[307]
 “Here we see, that, by faith, every work and thing is lawful to a
 Christian, though, because the others do not yet believe, he bears
 with them and performs even what he knows is not really binding.”[308]
 Faith issues in works and all works come back to faith, to strengthen
 the assurance of salvation.[309]

 His explanation of the 3rd Commandment, where he speaks of the ghostly
 Sabbath of the soul and of the putting to death of the old man, seems
 like an attempt to lay down some sort of a system of moral injunction,
 and incidentally recalls the pseudo-mystic phase through which Luther
 had passed not so long before. Here we get just a glimpse of his
 theory of human unfreedom and of God’s sole action, so far as this was
 in place in a work intended for the “unschooled laity.”[310]

 In man, because he is “depraved by sin, all works, all words, all
 thoughts, in a word his whole life, is wicked and ungodly. If God is
 to work and live in him all these vices and this wickedness must be
 stamped out.” This he calls “the keeping of the day of rest, when our
 works cease and God alone acts within us.” We must, indeed, “resist
 our flesh and our sins,” yet “our lusts are so many and so diverse,
 and also at times under the inspiration of the Wicked One so clever,
 so subtle and so plausible that no man can of his own keep himself in
 the right way; he must let his hands and feet go, commend himself to
 the Divine guidance, trusting nothing to his reason.... For there is
 nothing more dangerous in us than our reason and our will. And this
 is the highest and the first work of God in us, and the best thing we
 can do, for us to refrain from work, to keep the reason and the will
 idle, to rest and commend ourselves to God in all things, particularly
 when they are running smoothly and well.” “The spiritual Sabbath is
 to leave God alone to work in us and not to do anything ourselves
 with any of our powers.”[311] He harks back here to that idea of
 self-surrender to the sole action of God, under the spell of which he
 had formerly stood: “The works of our flesh must be put to rest and
 die, so that in all things we may keep the ghostly Sabbath, leaving
 our works alone and letting God work in us.... Then man no longer
 guides himself, his lust is stilled and his sadness too; God Himself
 is now his leader; nothing remains but godly desires, joy and peace
 together with all other works and virtues.”[312]

 Though, according to the peculiar mysticism which speaks to the
 “unschooled laity” out of these pages, all works and virtues spring up
 of themselves during the Sabbath rest of the soul, still Luther finds
 it advisable to introduce a chapter on the mortification of the flesh
 by fasting.

 Fasting is to be made use of for the salvation of our own soul, so
 far but no further, as or than each one judges it necessary for the
 repression of the “wantonness of the flesh” and for the “putting to
 death of our lust.”[313] We are not to “regard the work in itself.” Of
 corporal penance and mortification, and fasting in particular, he will
 have it, that they are to be used exclusively to “quench the evil”
 within us, but not on account of any law of Pope or Church. Luther
 dismisses in silence the other motives for penance recommended by the
 Church of yore, in the first place satisfaction for sins committed and
 the desire to obtain graces by reinforcing our prayers by self-imposed
 sacrifices.[314]

 He fancies that a few words will suffice to guard against any abuse
 of the new ascetical doctrine: “People must beware lest this freedom
 degenerate into carelessness and indolence ... into which some indeed
 tumble and then say that there is no need or call that we should fast
 or practise mortification.”[315]

 When, in the 3rd Commandment, he comes to speak of the practice of
 prayer one would naturally have expected him to give some advice and
 directions concerning its different forms, viz. the prayer of praise,
 thanksgiving, petition or penitence. All he seems to know is, however,
 the prayer of petition, in the case of temporal trials and needs, and
 amidst spiritual difficulties.[316]

 Throughout the writing Luther is dominated by the idea that faith in
 Christ the Redeemer, and in personal salvation, must at all costs be
 increased. At the same time he is no less certain that the Papists
 neither prayed aright, nor were able to perform any good works because
 they had no faith.

His exhortations to a devout life (some of them fine enough in
themselves, for instance, what he says on the trusting prayer of the
sinner, on the prayers of the congregation which cry aloud to heaven
and on patience under bitter sufferings), are, as a rule, intermingled
to such an extent with polemical matter, that, instead of a school of
the spiritual life, we seem rather to have before us the turmoil of
the battlefield.[317] To understand this we must bear in mind that he
wrote the book amidst the excitement into which he was thrown by the
launching of the ban.

In the somewhat earlier writing on the Magnificat, which might equally
well have served as a medium for the enforcing of virtue and which in
some parts Luther did so use,[318] we also find the same unbridled
spirit of hatred and abuse. Nor is it lacking even in his later works
of edification. The most peaceable ethical excursus Luther contrives
to disfigure by his bitterness, his calumnies and, not seldom, by his
venom.

In the Sermon on Good Works as soon as he comes to speak of prayer he
has a cut at the formalism of the prayer beloved of the Papists;[319]
he then proceeds to abuse the churches and convents for their mode
of life, their chanting and babbling, all performed in “obstinate
unbelief,” etc. At least one-half of his instruction on fasting
consists in mockery of the fasting as practised by the Papists. His
anger, however, reaches its climax in the 4th Commandment, where
he completely forgets his subject, and, losing all mastery over
himself, wildly storms against the spiritual authorities and their
disorders.[320] The only allusion to anything that by any stretch
of imagination would be termed a work, is the following:[321] The
rascally behaviour of the Church’s officers and episcopal or clerical
functionaries “ought to be repressed by the secular sword because no
other means is available.” “The best thing, and the only remaining
remedy, would be, that the King, Princes, nobles, townships and
congregations should take the law into their hands, so that the bishops
and clergy might have good cause to fear and therefore to obey.” For
everything must make room for the Word of God.

“Neither Rome, nor heaven, nor earth” may decree anything contrary to
the first three Commandments.

In dealing with these first three Commandments the booklet releases
the reader at one stroke from all the Church’s laws hitherto observed.
“Hence I allow each man to choose the day, the food and the amount of
his fasting.”[322] “Where the spirit of Christ is, there all is free,
for faith does not allow itself to be tied down to any work.”[323]

“The Christian who lives by faith has no need of any teacher’s good
works.”[324] Here we can see the chief reason why Luther’s instructions
on virtue and the spiritual life are so meagre.

_A Lutheran Theologian on the Lack of any Teaching Concerning
“Emancipation from the World”_

Even from Protestant theologians we hear the admission that Luther’s
Reformation failed to make sufficient allowance for the doctrine of
piety; he neglected, so they urge, the question of man’s “emancipation
from the world,” so that, even to the present day, Protestantism,
and traditional Lutheran theology in particular, lacks any definite
rule of piety. According to these critics, ever since Luther’s day
practical and adequate instructions had been wanting with regard to
what, subsequent to the reconciliation with the Father brought about by
Justification, still remains “to be done in the Father’s house”; nor
are we told how the life in Christ is to be led, of which nevertheless
the Apostle Paul speaks so eloquently, though this is in reality the
“main question in Christianity” and concerns the “vital interests of
the Church.”

 The remarks just quoted occur in an article by the theologian Julius
 Kaftan, Oberkonsistorialrat at Berlin, published in the “Zeitschrift
 für Theologie und Kirche” in 1908 under the title, “Why does the
 Evangelical Church know no doctrine of the Redemption in the narrower
 sense, and how may this want be remedied?” We all the more gladly
 append some further remarks by a theologian, who, as a rule, is by no
 means favourably disposed to Catholicism.

 According to Kaftan, Luther indeed supplied “all the elements” for the
 upbuilding of a doctrine of “redemption from the world”; he gave “the
 stimulus” to the thought; it is “not as though we had no conception of
 it.”

 But he, and the Reformation as a whole, failed to furnish any “actual,
 detailed doctrine” on this subject because their attack was directed,
 and had to be directed, against the ideal of piety as they found
 it in the Church’s monastic life; they destroyed it, so the author
 opines, because it was only under this distorted monkish shape that
 the “Christian idea of redemption from the world was then met.”[325]
 The Reformation omitted to replace it by a better system. It suffers
 from having fallen into the way of giving “too great prominence to
 the doctrine of Justification,” whereas the salvation “bestowed by
 Christ is not merely Justification and forgiveness of sins,” as the
 traditional Lutheran theology seems on the surface to assume even
 to-day, but rather the “everlasting possession” to be reached by a
 Christ-like life; Justification is but the road to this possession.
 Because people failed to keep this in view the doctrine of the real
 “work of salvation” has from the beginning been made far too little of.

 A further reason which explains the neglect is, according to Kaftan,
 the following: In Catholicism it is the Church which acts as the
 guide to piety and supplies all the spiritual aids required; she acts
 as intermediary between God and the faithful. But “the Evangelical
 teaching rejected the Church (in this connection) as a supernatural
 agency for the dispensation of the means of salvation. In her place
 it set the action of the Spirit working by means of the Word of
 God.” Since this same teaching stops short at the Incarnation and
 Satisfaction of Christ, it has “no room for any doctrine of redemption
 (from the world) as a work of God.”[326] Pietism, with all its
 irregularities, was merely an outcome of this deficiency; but even the
 Pietists never succeeded in formulating such a doctrine of redemption.

 It is to the credit of the author that he feels this want deeply and
 points out the way in which theology can remedy it.[327] He would fain
 see introduced a system of plain directions, though framed on lines
 different from those of the “ostensibly final doctrinal teaching”
 of the Formula of Concord,[328] i.e. instructions to the devout
 Christian how to manifest in his life in the world the death and
 resurrection of Christ which St. Paul experienced in himself. Much too
 much emphasis had been laid in Protestantism on Luther’s friendliness
 to the world and the joy of living, which he was the first to teach
 Christians in opposition to the doctrine of the Middle Ages; yet the
 other idea, of redemption from the world, must nevertheless retain a
 lasting significance in Christianity. Although, before Luther’s day,
 the Church had erroneously striven to attain to the latter solely
 in the monastic life, yet there is no doubt “that the most delicate
 blossoms of pre-Reformation piety sprang from this soil, and that
 the best forces in the Church owed their origin to this source.” Is
 it merely fortuitous, continues the author, “that the ‘Imitation
 of Christ,’ by Thomas à Kempis, should be so widely read throughout
 Christendom, even by Evangelicals? Are there not many Evangelical
 Christians who could witness that this book has been a great help
 to them in a crisis of their inner life? But whoever knows it knows
 what the idea of redemption from the world there signifies.” All this
 leads our author to the conclusion: “The history of Christianity and
 of the Church undoubtedly proves that here [in the case of the defect
 in the Lutheran theology he is instancing] it is really a question of
 a motive power and central thought of our religion.”[329] He points
 out to the world of our day, “that growing civilisation culminates in
 disgust with the world and with civilisation.” “Then,” he continues,
 “the soul again cries for God, for the God Who is above all the world
 and in Whom alone the heart finds rest. As it ever was, so is it still
 to-day.”[330]

It is a satisfaction to hear this call which must rejoice the heart
of every believer. The same, however, had been heard throughout
the ancient Church and had met with a happy response. Not in the
“Imitation” only, but in a hundred other writings of Catholics, mystic
and ascetic, could our author have found the ideals of Christian
perfection and of the rest in God which comes from inward severance
from the world, all expressed with the utmost clearness and the warmest
feeling. Nor was Christian perfection imprisoned within the walls of
the monasteries; it also flourished in the breezy atmosphere of the
world. The Church taught the universality of this ideal of perfect love
of God, of the imitation of Christ and of detachment from the world,
and she recommended it indiscriminately to all classes, inviting people
to practise it under all conditions of life and expending liberally
in all directions her supernatural powers in order to attain her aim.
Among the best of those whose writings inaugurated a school of piety
may be classed St. Bernard and Gerson, in whom Luther had found light
and edification when still a zealous monk. With him, however, the
case was very different. Of the works he bequeathed to posterity the
Protestant theologian referred to above, says regretfully: They contain
neither a “doctrine” nor a definite “scheme of instruction” on “that
side of life which faces God.” “No clear, conclusive thoughts on this
all-important matter are to be found.”

On the other hand it must be added that there is no want of “clear,
conclusive thoughts” to a quite opposite effect; not merely on
enjoyment of the world, but on a kind of sovereignty over it which is
scarcely consistent with the effort after self-betterment.

_The Means of Self-Reform and their Reverse Side_

Self-denial as the most effective means of self-education in the good,
and self-conquest in outward and inward things, receive comparatively
small attention from Luther; rather he is set on delivering people from
the “anxiety-breeding,” traditional prejudice in favour of spiritual
renunciation, obedience to the Church and retrenchment in view of
the evil. This deliverance, thanks to its alluring and attractive
character, was welcomed, in spite of Luther’s repeated warnings against
any excess of the spirit of the world. His abandonment of the path of
perfection so strongly recommended by Christ and his depreciation of
“peculiar” works and “singular” practices were more readily understood
and also more engaging than his words in favour of real works of faith.
He set up his own inward experiences of the difficulty and, as he
thought, utter futility of the conflict with self, together with his
hostility to all spiritual efforts exceeding the common bounds, as the
standard for others, and, in fact, even for the Church; in the Catholic
past, on the other hand, the faithful had been taught to recognise the
standard of the Church, their teacher and guide, as the rule by which
to judge of their own experiences.

Here to prove what we have said, would necessitate the repetition of
what has already been given elsewhere.

Luther’s writings, particularly his letters, also contain certain
instructions, which, fortunately, have not become the common property
of Protestants, but which everybody must feel to be absolutely
opposed to anything like self-betterment. We need only call to mind
his teaching, that temptations to despondency and despair are best
withstood by committing some sin in defiance of the devil, or by
diverting the mind to sensual and carnal distractions.[331] The words:
“What matters it if we commit a fresh sin?”[332] since through faith
we have forgiveness, and the other similar utterance, “Be a sinner and
sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” are characteristic of him,
though he would have been unwilling to see them pressed or taken too
literally. By these and other statements he did, however, seriously
endanger the ethical character of sin; in reality he diminished the
abhorrence for sin, though no doubt he did not fully perceive the
consequences of his act.[333]

To the man who had become sensible of the ensnaring influence of the
world and of its evil effects upon himself, or who on account of his
mental build felt himself endangered by it, Catholic moralists advised
retirement, recollection, self-examination and solitude. Luther was
certainly not furthering the cause of perfection when he repeatedly
insisted, with an emphasis that is barely credible, that solitude must
be avoided as the deadly foe of the true life of the soul, and that
what should be sought was rather company and distraction. Solitude
was a temptation to sin. “I too find,” so he says, “that I never fall
into sin more frequently than when I am alone.... Quietude calls forth
the worst of thoughts. Whatever our trouble be, it then becomes much
more dangerous,” etc.[334] Of course, in the case of persons of gloomy
disposition Luther was quite right in recommending company, but it was
just in doing so that he exceeded the bounds in his praise of sensual
distractions;[335] of his own example, too, he makes far too much. On
the other hand, all the great men in the Church had sought to find the
guiding light of self-knowledge in solitude; this they regarded as a
school for the subjugation of unruly emotions.

Not only were self-control and self-restraint something strange to
Luther,[336] but he often went so far as to adduce curious theoretical
reasonings of his own to prove that they could have no place in
his public life and controversies, and why he and his helpers were
compelled to give the reins to anger, hatred and abuse. Thus the work
of self-improvement was renounced in yet another essential point.

Then again with regard to prayer. His exhortations thereto are numerous
enough and he himself prayed frequently. But it is not necessary to be
an ascetic to see that several things are wanting in his admonitions
to prayer. The first is the salt of contrition and compunction. He
was less alive to the wholesome underlying feeling of melancholy
that characterises the soul which prays to God in the consciousness
of having abused its free-will, than he was to the suggestions of
self-confidence and assurance of salvation. The second thing wanting
is the humility which should permeate prayer even when exalted to the
highest limits of trusting confidence. If man, as Luther taught, is
incapable of any work, then of course there can be no sense of shame
at not having done more to please God and to merit greater grace from
Him. Moreover, Luther indirectly encouraged people to pray in the bold
consciousness of being justified and to look for the keeping of the
law as a natural consequence of such “faith.” Lastly, and this sums
up everything, we miss the spirit of love in his often so strongly
worded and eloquent exhortations to prayer; the spirit which should
have led him to resignation to God’s designs, and to commit his life’s
work to the Will of God with a calm indifference as to its eventual
success.[337] Hardly ever do we find any trace of that zeal for souls
which embraces the whole of God’s broad kingdom even to the heathen,
in short, the whole of the Church’s sphere.[338] On the other hand,
however, he expressly exhorts his followers to increase the ardour of
their prayers, after his own example, by interspersing them with curses
on all whose views were different.[339]

In place of the pleasing variety of the old exercises of prayer—from
the Office recited by the clergy with its daily commemoration of
the Saints down to the multifarious devotions of the people, to say
nothing of the great Sacrifice of the Altar, the very heart’s pulse
of the Church—he recommends as a rule only the Our Father, the Creed
and the Psalms—prayers indeed rich beyond all others and which will
ever hold the first place among Christian devotions. But had they not
been brought closer to the heart formerly in the inner and outer
life of prayer dealt with in the writings of the Catholic masters of
the spiritual life, and exemplified in the churches and monasteries,
and even in private houses and the very streets? But behind all this
rich display Luther saw lurking the demon of “singular works.” The
monk absorbed in contemplation was, in Luther’s eyes, an unhappy
wretch sitting “in filth” up to his neck. Thus he restricts himself
to recommending the old short formulas of prayer. In accordance with
his doctrine that faith alone avails, he desires that sin, and the
intention of sinning, should be withstood by the use of the Our Father:
“That you diligently learn to say the Our Father, the Creed and the Ten
Commandments.”[340] “Grant, O God (thus must you pray), that Thy Name
be hallowed by me, Thy Kingdom come to me, and Thy Will be done in me”;
in this wise they would come to scorn “devil, death and hell.”[341] He
indeed kept in touch with the people by means of the olden prayers,
but, even into them, he knew how to introduce his own new views; the
Kingdom of God, which to him is forgiveness of sins,[342] “must come
to us by faith,” and the chief article of the whole Creed with which
to defy “death, devil and hell” was the “_remissio peccatorum_.” These
remarks must not, however, be understood as detracting from the value
of his fine, practical, and often sympathetic expositions of the Our
Father, whether in his special work on it in 1518 or in the Larger
Catechism.[343]

Of the numerous “man-made laws” which he banished at one stroke by
denying the Church’s authority there is no need to speak here. Without
a doubt the overturning of all these barriers erected against human
lusts and wilfulness was scarcely conducive to the progress of the
individual.

Nor does the absence of any higher standard of life in his own
case[344] serve to recommend his system of ethics. Seeing that, as has
been already pointed out,[345] he himself is disposed to admit his
failings, the apparent confidence with which, in order to exalt his
reform of ethics, he appeals to the biblical verity, that the truth of
a doctrine is proved by its moral fruits, is all the more surprising.

Of this confidence we have a remarkable example in a sermon devoted
to the explanation of the 1st Epistle of St. John. At the same time
the exceptional boldness of his language and the resolute testimony
he bears in his own favour constitute striking proof of how the very
firmness of his attitude impressed his followers and exercised over
many a seductive spell. The weakness of the Reformer’s ethics seems all
at once to vanish before his mighty eloquence.

 The discourse in question, where at the same time he vindicates his
 own conduct, belongs to 1532. About that time he preached frequently
 at Wittenberg on St. John’s sublime words concerning the love of
 God and our neighbour (1 Jo. iv. 16-21). His object was to cleanse
 and better the morals of Wittenberg, the low standard of which he
 deplores, that the results of justification by faith might shine forth
 more brightly. At that very time he was treating with the Elector and
 the Saxon Estates in view of a new visitation of all the parishes to
 be held the next year, which might promote the good of morality. The
 sermons were duly reported by his pupil Cruciger, whose notes were
 published at Wittenberg in 1533 under the general title of “A Sermon
 on Love.”[346]

 Dealing therein with ethical practice he starts by proclaiming that,
 according to the “pious Apostle” whose doctrines he was expounding,
 everything depends on Christians proving by their fruits whether
 they really “walk in love.” Of many, however, who not only declared
 themselves well acquainted with the principles of faith and ethics but
 even professed to be qualified to teach them, it was true that, “if we
 applied and manifested in our lives their ethics after their example,
 then we should be but poorly off.”[347] Such men must, nevertheless,
 be tested by their works. Nor does he exempt himself from this duty of
 putting ethics to a practical test.

 Nowhere else does he insist more boldly than in these sermons on proof
 by actual deeds, even in his own case. According to the words of John,
 so he says, a life of love would give them “confidence in the Day of
 Judgment” (iv. 17). Confidence, nay, a spirit of holy defiance, even
 in the presence of death and judgment, must fill the hearts of all
 who acted aright, owing to the very testimony of their fellow-men to
 the blamelessness of their lives. “We must be able to boast [with
 Christ, ‘the reconciliation for our sins’] not before God alone but
 before God and all Christendom, and against the whole world, that no
 one can truthfully condemn or even accuse us.” “We must be able to
 assure ourselves that we have lived in such a way that no one can take
 scandal at us”; we must have this testimony, “that we have walked on
 earth in simplicity and godly piety, and that no one can charge us
 with having been given to ‘trickery.’” In this wise had Paul countered
 false doctrines by boasting, just as Moses and Samuel had already done
 under the Old Covenant.[348]

 Coming to his own person the speaker thinks he can honestly say the
 same of himself, though, like the rest, he too must confess to being
 still in need of the article of the forgiveness of sins. There were
 false teachers who could not appeal so confidently to the morality
 of their lives, “proud, puffed-up spirits who lay claim to a great
 and wonderful holiness, who want to reform the whole world and to do
 something singular in order that all may say that they alone are true
 Christians. This sort of thing lasts indeed for a while, during which
 they parade and strut, but, when the hour of death comes, that is the
 end of all such idle nonsense.”[349] He himself, with the faithful
 teachers and good Christians, is in a very different case: “If I must
 boast of how I have acted in my position towards everyone then I will
 say: I witness before you and all the world, and know that God too
 witnesses on my behalf together with all His angels, that I have not
 falsified God’s Word, His Baptism or the Sacrament but have preached
 and acted faithfully as much as was in me, and suffered all ill solely
 for God’s and His Word’s sake. Thus must all the Saints boast.”[350]

 He lays the greatest stress on the unanimous testimony which the
 preacher must receive from his fellow-men and from posterity. He must
 be able to say, “you shall be my witnesses,” he “must be able to call
 upon all men to bear him witness”; they must bear us witness on the
 Last Day that we have lived aright and shown by our deeds that we were
 Christians. If this is the case, if they can point to their practice
 of good works, then the preaching of good works can be insisted on
 with all the emphasis required.[351] It is natural, however, that
 towards the end Luther lays greater stress on his teaching than on his
 works.

 On his preaching of the value of good works he solemnly assures us:
 “We can testify before the whole world that we have preached much more
 grandly and forcefully on good works than even those who calumniate
 us.”[352]

_Self-Reform and Hatred of the Foe_

In speaking of Luther, his staunch friends are wont to boast of
his lifelong struggle against the fetters of the Papacy and of the
overwhelming power of his assault on the olden Church; this, so they
imply, redounded to his glory and showed his moral superiority.

In what follows we shall therefore consider some of the main ethical
features of this struggle of Luther’s and of the attitude he adopted
in his conflict with Popery. His very defence of himself and of the
moral effects of his preaching, which we have just heard him pronounce
subsequent to the Diet of Augsburg, invites us to consider in the light
of ethics his public line of action, as traced in his writings of that
period. These years represent a turning-point in his life, and here,
if anywhere, we should be able to detect his higher moral standard
and the power of his new principles to effect a change first of all
in himself. In the sermon of 1532 (above, p. 96) he had said: The new
Gospel which he had “preached rightly and faithfully” made those who
accepted it “to walk in simplicity and godly piety” according to the
law of love, and to stand forth “blameless before all the world.” Could
he truthfully, he, the champion of this Gospel, really lay any claim to
these qualities as here he seems to do, at least indirectly?

His controversial tracts dating from that time display anything but
“simplicity and godly piety.” His hate was without bounds, and his
fury blazed forth in thunderbolts which slew all who dared to attempt
to bridge the chasm between him and the Catholic Church. Reproaching
voices, about him and within him, seemed to him to come from so many
devils. The Coburg, where he stayed, was assuredly “full of devils,”
so he wrote.[353] There, in spite of his previous attempts to jest
and be cheerful,[354] and notwithstanding the violent and distracting
labours in which he was engaged, the devil had actually established an
“embassy,” troubling him with many anxieties and temptations.[355]

The devil he withstood by paroxysms of that hate and rage which he
had always in store for his enemies. “The Castle may be crammed with
devils, yet Christ reigneth there in the midst of His foes!”[356]
He includes in the same category the Papists, and the Turks who then
were threatening Europe: Both are “monsters,” both have been “let
loose by the fury of the devil,” both represent a common “woe doomed
to overwhelm the world in these last days of Christendom.”[357] These
“stout jackasses” (of the Diet of Augsburg), so he cried from the
ramparts of his stronghold, “want to meddle in the business of the
Church. Let them try!”[358] “The very frenzy and madness of our foes of
itself alone proves that we are in the right.”[359] “Their blasphemy,
their murders, their contempt of the Gospel, and other enormities
against it, increase day by day and must bring the Turk into the field
against us.”[360] “I am a preacher of Christ,” so he assures us, “and
Christ is the truth.”—But is hatred a mark of a disciple of Christ, or
of a higher mission for the reformation of doctrine and worship?

Elsewhere Luther himself describes hate as a “true image of the devil;
in fact, it is neither human nor diabolical but the devil himself whose
whole being is nothing but an everlasting burning,” etc. “The devil is
always acting contrary to love.” “Such is his way; God works nothing
but benefits and deeds of charity, while he on the contrary performs
nothing but works of hate.”[361] On other occasions in his sermons he
speaks in familiar and at the same time inspiring words of the beauty
of Christian love. “Love is a great and rich treasure, worth many
hundred thousand gulden, or a great kingdom. Who is there who would
not esteem it highly and pursue it to the limit of his power, nay,
pour out sweat and blood for it if he only hoped or knew how to obtain
it!... What is sun, moon, heavens or all creation, all the angels, all
the saints compared with it? Love is nothing but the one, unspeakable,
eternal good and the highest treasure, which is God Himself.”[362]

But his “Vermanũg an die geistlichen versammelt auff dem Reichstag
zu Augsburg” (which he wrote from the Coburg) was the fruit, not
of love, but of the most glowing hate.[363] In a private letter he
calls it quite rightly, not an “exhortation” (Vermanũg), but “an
invective” against the clergy,[364] and, in another letter, admits
the “violent spirit” in which he had written it; when composing it
the abusive thoughts had rushed in on him like an “uninvited band of
moss-troopers.”[365] But, that he drove them back as he declares he
did, is not discernible from the work in question.

 In the booklet under discussion he several times uses what would seem
 to be words of peace, and, in one passage, even sketches a scheme
 for reunion; but, as a Protestant critic of the latter says, not
 altogether incorrectly, the “idea was of its very nature impossible
 of execution.”[366] Indeed, we may say that Luther himself could see
 well enough that the idea was a mere deception; the best motto for the
 writing would be: Enmity and hatred until death!

 The Catholic members of the Diet are there represented as “obstinate
 and stiff-necked,” and as “bloodhounds raging wantonly”; they had
 hitherto, but all to no purpose, “tried fraud and trickery, force
 and anger, murder and penalties.” To the bishops he cries: “May the
 devil who drives them dog their footsteps, and all our misfortunes
 fall on their head!” He puts them on a level with “procurers and
 whoremongers,” and trounces them as “the biggest robbers of benefices,
 bawds and procurers to be found in all the world.”[367]—There had
 been many cases of infringement of the law of celibacy among both
 lower and higher clergy previous to Luther’s advent, while the
 Wittenberg spirit of freedom set free in the German lands helped
 considerably to increase the evil amongst the ranks of the Catholic
 clergy; but to what unheard-of exaggerations, all steeped in hate,
 did not Luther have recourse the better to inflame the people and to
 defend the illicit marriages of those of the clergy who now were the
 preachers of the new religion? He was about “to sweep out of the house
 the harlots and abducted spouses” of the bishops, and not merely to
 show up the bishops as real “lechers and brothel-keepers” (a favourite
 expression of his), but to drag them still deeper in the mire. It was
 his unclean fancy, which delighted to collect the worst to be found
 in corrupt localities abroad, that led him to say: “And, moreover, we
 shall do clean away with your Roman Sodom, your Italian weddings, your
 Venetian and Turkish brides, and your Florentine bridegrooms!”[368]

 The pious founders of the bishoprics and monasteries, he cries, “never
 intended to found bawdy-houses or Roman robber-churches,” nor yet
 to endow with their money “strumpets and rascals, or Roman thieves
 and robbers.” The bishops, however, are set on “hiding, concealing
 and burying in silence the whole pot-broth of their abominations and
 corrupt, unepiscopal abuses, shame, vice and noxious perversion of
 Christendom, and on seeing them lauded and praised,” whereas it is
 high time that they “spat upon their very selves”; their auxiliary
 bishops “smear the unschooled donkeys with chrism” (ordain priests)
 and these in turn seek “to rise to power”; yet revolt against them
 and against all authority is brewing in the distance; if the bloody
 deeds of Münzer’s time were repeated, then, he, Luther, would not be
 to blame; “men’s minds are prepared and greatly embittered and, that,
 not without due cause”; if you “go to bits” then “your blood be upon
 your own head!” Meanwhile it is too bad that the bishops “should go
 about in mitres and great pomp,” as though we were “old fools”; but
 still worse is it that they should make of all this pomp “articles of
 faith and a matter of conscience, so that people must commit sin if
 they refuse to worship such child’s play; surely this is the devil’s
 own work.” Of such hateful misrepresentations, put forward quite
 seriously, a dozen other instances might be cited from this writing.
 “But that we _must_ look upon such child’s play as articles of faith,
 and befool ourselves with bishops’ mitres, from that we cannot get
 away, no matter how much we may storm or jeer.”[369]

The writing culminates in the following outburst: “In short we and you
alike know that you are living without God’s Word, but that, on our
side, we have God’s Word.”

“If I live I shall be your bane; if I die I shall be your death! For
God Himself has driven me to attack you! I must, as Hosea says, be to
you as a bear and a lion in the way of Assur. You shall have no peace
from me until you amend or rush to your own destruction.”[370]

At a later date, of the saying “If I live,” etc., Luther made the Latin
couplet: “_Pestis eram vivus moriens ero mors tua papa_.” In life,
O Pope, I was thy plague, in dying I shall be thy death. He first
produced this verse at Spalatin’s home at Altenburg on his return
journey from the Coburg; afterwards he frequently repeated it, for
instance, at Schmalkalden in 1537, when he declared, that he would
bequeath his hatred of the Papacy as an heirloom to his disciples.[371]

 As early as 1522 he had also made use of the Bible passage concerning
 the lion and the bear in his “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen
 Standt” with the like assurance of the Divine character of his
 undertaking, and in a form which shows how obsessed he was by the
 spirit of hate: He was sure of his doctrine and by it would judge even
 the angels; without it no one could be saved, for it was God’s and not
 his, for which reason his sentence too was God’s and not his: “Let
 this be my conclusion. If I live you shall have no peace from me, if
 you kill me, you shall have ten times less peace; and I shall be to
 you as Oseas says, xiii. 8, a bear in the path and a lion in the road.
 However you may treat me you shall not have your will, until your
 brazen front and iron neck are broken either unwillingly or by grace.
 Unless you amend, as I would gladly wish, then we may persist, you in
 your anger and hostility and I in paying no heed.”[372]

On another occasion he tells us how he would gladly have left
Wittenberg with Melanchthon and the others who were going by way of
Nuremberg to the Diet of Augsburg, but a friend had said to him: “Hold
your tongue! Your tongue is an evil one!”[373]

After the publication of the “Vermanũg an die Geistlichen,” or
possibly even before, Melanchthon seems to have written to him,
re-echoing the observations of startled and anxious friends, and
saying that the writing had been “variously” appreciated, in itself
a significant remark; Luther himself at that time certainly dreaded
the censure of his adherents. Still, he insists as defiantly as ever
on his “invective”: “Let not your heart be troubled,” he admonishes
Melanchthon, “My God is a God of fools, Who is wont to laugh at the
wise. Whence I trouble myself about them not the least bit.”[374] On
the contrary, he even came near regarding his writing as a special work
of God.

As we have already pointed out, the defiant and violent steps he took,
only too often became in his eyes special works of God. His notorious,
boundless sense of his own greatness, to which this gave rise, is the
first of the phenomena which accompanied his hate; these it will now
be our duty briefly to examine in order better to appreciate the real
strength of his ethical principles in his own case.

_Companion-Phenomena of his Hate_

As a matter of fact Luther’s sense of his superiority was so great that
the opponents he attacked had to listen to language such as no mortal
had ever before dreamed of making use of against the Church.

The Church is being reformed “in my age” in “a Divine way, not after
human ways.” “Were we to fall, then Christ would fall with us.”[375]

Whenever he meets with contradiction, whenever he hears even the hint
of a reproach or accusation, he at once ranges himself—as he does, for
instance, in the “Vermanũg”—on the side of the persecuted “prophets
and apostles,” nay, he even likens himself to Christ.[376] He stood
alone, without miracles, and devoid of holiness, as he himself candidly
informed Henry VIII. of England; nevertheless he pits himself against
the heads of both Church and Empire assembled at the Diet.

All he could appeal to was his degree of Doctor of Theology: “Had I
not been a Doctor, the devil would have given me much trouble, for it
is no small matter to attack the whole Papacy and to charge it” (with
error).[377] In the last instance, however, his self-confidence recalls
him to the proud consciousness of his entire certainty. “Thus our cause
stands firm, because we know how we believe and how we live.”[378]

With these words from his “Vermanũg” he defies the whole of the present
and of the past, the Pope and all his Councils.

He knows—and that suffices—that what he has and proclaims is God’s
Word; “and if you have God’s Word you may say: Now that I have the Word
what need have I to ask what the Councils say?”[379] “Among all the
Councils I have never found one where the Holy Spirit rules.... There
will never be no Council [_sic_], according to the Holy Spirit, where
the people have to agree. God allows this because He Himself wills to
be the Judge and suffers not men to judge. Hence He commands every man
to know what he believes.”[380] Luther only, and those who follow him,
know what they believe; he takes the place of all the councils, Doctors
of the Church, Popes and bishops, in short, of all the ecclesiastical
sources of theology.

“The end of the world may now come,” he said, in 1540, “for all that
pertains to the knowledge of God has now been supplied” (by me).[381]

 With this contempt for the olden Church he combines a most imperious
 exclusiveness in his treatment even of those who like him were
 opposed to the Pope, whether they were individuals or formed schools
 of thought. They must follow his lead, otherwise there awaits them
 the sentence he launched at the Zwinglians from the Coburg: “These
 Sacramentarians are not merely liars but the very embodiment of lying,
 deceit and hypocrisy; this both Carlstadt and Zwingli prove by word
 and deed.” Their books, he says, contain pestilential stuff; they
 refused to retract even when confuted by him, but simply because they
 stood in fear of their own following; he would continue to put them
 to shame by those words, which so angered them: “You have a spirit
 different from ours.” He could not look upon them as brothers; this
 was duly expressed in the article in which he went so far as to
 promise them that love which was due even to enemies. On his own
 authority he curtly dubs them “heretics,” and is resolved in this
 way to tread unharmed with Christ through Satan’s kingdom and all
 his lying artifices.[382] Luther’s aggravating exclusiveness went
 hand-in-hand with his overweening self-confidence.

 In consequence of this treatment the Swiss, through the agency of
 Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, complained to Bucer, “Beware of not
 believing Luther readily or of not yielding to him! He is a scorpion;
 no matter how carefully he is handled he will sting, even though to
 begin with he seems to caress your hand.”[383] To this Bucer, who
 had also ventured to differ from Luther, wrote in his reply: “He has
 flung another scathing book at us.... He speaks, and means to speak,
 much more harshly than heretofore.” “He will not now endure even the
 smallest contradiction, and I am sure that, were I to go any further,
 I should cause such a tragedy that all the churches would once more
 be convulsed.”[384] Another Protestant voice we hear exclaiming with
 a fine irony: “Luther rages, thunders and lightens as though he were
 a Jupiter and had all the bolts of heaven at his command to launch
 against us.... Has he then become an emperor of the Christian army on
 the model of the Pope, so as to be able to issue every pronouncement
 that his brain suggests?”[385] “He confuses the two Natures in Christ
 and brings forward foolish, nay godless, statements. If we may not
 condemn this, then what, pray, may be condemned?”[386]

His natural lack of charity, of which we shall have later on to
add many fresh and appalling examples to those already enumerated,
aggravated his hatred, his sense of his own greatness and his
exclusiveness. What malicious hatred is there not apparent in his
advice that Zwingli and Œcolampadius should be condemned, “even though
this led to violence being offered them.”[387] It is with reluctance
that one gazes on Luther’s abuse of the splendid gifts of mind and
heart with which he had been endowed.

 A recent Protestant biographer of Carlstadt’s laments the “frightful
 harshness of his (Luther’s) polemics.” “How deep the traces left by
 his mode of controversy were, ought not to be overlooked,” so he
 writes. “From that time forward this sort of thing took the place of
 any real discussion of differences of opinion between members of the
 Lutheran camp, nor did people even seem aware of how far they were