CHAPTER VI.
FROM THE DIET OF AUGSBURG TO THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF NÜREMBERG, 1532. DEATH OF THE ELECTOR JOHN.
No sooner had Luther resumed his official duties at Wittenberg, than he again undertook extra and very arduous work. Bugenhagen went in October to Lübeck, as he had previously gone to Brunswick and Hamburg. The most important advance made by the Reformation during those years when its champions had to fight so stoutly at the Diets for their rights, was in the North German cities. Luther, soon after his arrival at Coburg, had received news that Lübeck and Lüneburg had accepted the Reformation. The citizens of Lübeck refused to allow any but Evangelical preachers, and abolished all non-evangelical usages, though an opposition party appealed to the Emperor, and actually induced him to issue a mandate prohibiting the innovations. To organise the new Church, the Lübeckers would have preferred the assistance of Luther himself; but failing him, their delegates begged the Elector John, when at Augsburg, to send them at least Bugenhagen. Under these circumstances Luther agreed that Bugenhagen should be allowed to go, although the Wittenberg congregation and university could hardly spare him. His friend was wanted at Wittenberg, said Luther, all the more because he himself could not be of any use much longer; for what with his failing years and his bad health, so weary was he of life that this accursed world would soon have seen and suffered the last of him.
Nevertheless, he again undertook at once, so far as his health permitted, the official duties of the town pastor, who this time was absent from Wittenberg for a year and a half, until April 1532; Luther, accordingly, not only preached the weekly sermons on Wednesdays and Saturdays, on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, but attended continuously to the care of souls and the ordinary business of his office. He would reproach himself with the fact that under his administration the poor-box of the church was neglected, and that he was often too tired and too lazy to do anything. The pains in his head, the giddiness, and the affections of his heart now recurred, and grew worse in March and June 1531, while the next year they developed symptoms of the utmost gravity and alarm.
All this time he worked with indefatigable industry to finish his translation of the Prophets; in the autumn of 1531 he told Spalatin that he devoted two hours daily to the task of correction. He brought out a new and revised edition of the Psalms, and published some of them with a practical exposition.
In addition to these literary labours, which ever remained his first delight, Luther's chief task was to advise his Elector upon the salient questions, transactions, and dangers of Church politics, which, with the Recess of the Diet and the period thereby allotted for their consideration, had become matters of real urgency. And, in fact, it was to his valuable and conscientious advice that the Protestants in general throughout the Empire looked for guidance.
On November 19 the Recess of the Diet, passed in defiance of the Protestants, was published at Augsburg. They accepted the time allowed them for consideration, but the Emperor and the Empire insisted on maintaining the old ordinances of the Church, and the Protestants were now required to surrender the ecclesiastical and monastic property in their hands. The latter observed, moreover, that the Recess contained no actual promise of peace on the part of the Emperor, but that the States only were commanded to keep peace. In fact, the Emperor had already promised the Pope on October 4 to employ all his force to suppress the Protestants. He immediately subjected the Supreme Court of the Empire—the so-called Imperial Chamber—to a visitation, and instructed it to enforce strictly the contents of the Recess in ecclesiastical and religious matters. Thus the campaign against the Protestants was to begin with the institution of processes at law, with reference particularly to the question of Church property. Furthermore, to secure the authority and continue the policy of the Emperor during his absence, his brother Ferdinand was to be elected King of the Romans. John of Saxony, the only Protestant among the Electors, opposed the election. He appealed to the fact that the nomination was a direct violation of a decision of imperial law, the Golden Bull, which declared that the proposal for such an election, during the lifetime of the Emperor, must first be unanimously resolved on by the Electors. The Emperor had a Papal brief in his hands which empowered him to exclude John, as a heretic, from electing, but he did not find it prudent to make use of it. The election actually took place on January 5, 1531.
The Protestants now sought for protection in a firm, well-organised union among themselves. They assembled for this purpose at Schmalkald at Christmas 1530.
The more imminent, however, the danger to be encountered, the more necessary it became to determine the question whether it was lawful to resist the Emperor. The jurists who advised in favour of resistance, adduced certain arguments, without, however, stating any very clear or forcible reasons of law. They quoted principles of civil law, to show that a judge, whose sentence is appealed against to a higher court, has no right to execute it by force, and that if he does so, resistance may lawfully be offered him; and they proceeded to apply this analogy to the appeal of the Protestants to a future Council, and the action taken against them, while their appeal was still pending, by the Emperor. They were nearer the mark when they argued that, according to the constitution of the Empire and the imperial laws themselves, the sovereignty of the Emperor was in no sense unlimited or incapable of being resisted; but then the difficulty here was, that the right of individual States to oppose decrees, passed at a regular Diet by the Emperor and the majority of the members present, was not yet proved. There was a general want of clearness and precision connected with the theories then being developed of the relations of the different States and the interpretation of their rights. Upon this matter, then, Luther was called on again, with the other Wittenberg theologians, to give an opinion. The jurists also, especially the chancellor Brück, were associated with them in their deliberations.
On the question about Ferdinand's election as King of Rome, Luther strongly advised his Elector to give way. The danger which, in the event of his refusal, menaced both himself and the whole of Germany appeared to Luther far too serious to justify it. The occasion would be used to deprive him of the Electorship, and perhaps give it to Duke George; and Germany would be rent asunder and plunged into war and misery. This, said Luther, was his advice; adding, however, that as he held such a humble position in the world, he did not understand to give much advice in such important matters, nay, he was 'too much like a child in these worldly affairs.'
But a change had now come in his views about the right of resistance; a change which, though in reality but an advance upon his earlier principles, led to an opposite result. He taught that civil authorities and their ordinances were distinctly of God, and by these ordinances he understood, according to the Apostle's words, the different laws of different States, so far as they had anywhere acquired stability. With regard to Germany, as we have seen, his good monarchical principles did not as yet prevent his holding the opinion that the collective body of the princes of the Empire could dethrone an unworthy Emperor. The determining question with him now was what the law of the Empire or the edict of the Emperor himself would decide, in the event of resistance being offered by individual States of the Empire, which found themselves and their subjects injured in their rights and impeded in the fulfilment of their duties. The answer to this, however, he conceived to be a matter no longer for theologians, but for men versed in the law, and for politicians. Theologians could only tell him that though, indeed, a Christian, simply as a Christian, must willingly suffer wrong, yet the secular authorities, and therefore every German prince having authority, were bound to uphold their office given them by God, and protect their subjects from wrong. As to what were the established ordinances and laws of each individual State, that was a matter for jurists to decide, and for the princes to seek their counsel. Accordingly, the Wittenberg theologians declared as their opinion that if those versed in the law could prove that in certain cases, according to the law of the Empire, the supreme authority could be resisted, and that the present case was one of that description, not even theologians could controvert them from Scripture. In condemning previously all resistance, they said, they 'had not known that the sovereign power itself was subject to the law.' The net result was that the allies really considered themselves justified in offering resistance to the Emperor, and prepared to do so. The responsibility, as Luther warned them, must rest with the princes and politicians, inasmuch as it was their duty to see that they had right on their side. 'That is a question,' he said, 'which we neither know nor assert: I leave them to act.'
Luther gave open vent to his indignation at the Recess of the Diet and the violent attacks of the Catholics in two publications, early in 1531, one entitled 'Gloss on the supposed Edict of the Emperor,' and the other, 'Warning to his beloved Germans.' In the former he reviewed the contents of the Edict and the calumnies it heaped upon the Evangelical doctrines, not intending, as he said, to attack his Imperial Majesty, but only the traitors and villains, be they princes or bishops, who sought to work their own wicked will, and chief of all the arch-rogue, the so-called Vicegerent of God, and his legates. The other treatise contemplates the 'very worst evil' of all that then threatened them, namely, a war resulting from the coercive measures of the Emperor and the resistance of the Protestants. As a spiritual pastor and preacher he wished to counsel not war, but peace, as all the world must testify he had always been the most diligent in doing. But he now openly declared that if, which God forbid, it came to war, he would not have those who defended themselves against the bloodthirsty Papists censured as rebellious, but would have it called an act of necessary defence, and justify it by referring to the law and the lawyers.
These publications occasioned fresh dealings with Duke George, who again complained to the Elector about them, and also about certain letters falsely ascribed to Luther, and then published a reply, under an assumed name, to his first pamphlet. Luther answered this 'libel' with a tract entitled 'Against the Assassin at Dresden,' not intended, as many have supposed, to impute murderous designs to the Duke, but referring to the calumnies and anonymous attacks in his book. The tone employed by Luther in this tract reminds us of his saying that 'a rough wedge is wanted for a rough log.' It brought down upon him a fresh admonition from his prince, in reply to which he simply begged that George might for the future leave him in peace.
The imminence of the common danger favoured the attempts of the South German States to effect an agreement with the German Protestants, and the efforts of Butzer in that direction. Luther himself acknowledged in a letter to Butzer, how very necessary a union with them was, and what a scandal was caused to the gospel by their rupture hitherto, nay, that if only they were united, the Papacy, the Turks, the whole world, and the very gates of hell would never be able to work the gospel harm. Nevertheless, his conscience forbade him to overlook the existing differences of doctrine; nor could he imagine why his former opponents, if they now acknowledged the Real Presence of the Body at the Sacrament, could not plainly admit that presence for the mouth and body of all partakers, whether worthy or unworthy. He deemed it sufficient at present, that each party should desist from writing against the other, and wait until 'perhaps God, if they ceased from strife, should vouchsafe further grace.' The new explanations, however, were enough to make the Schmalkaldic allies abandon their scruples to admitting the South Germans, and they were accordingly received into the league.
Thus then, at the end of March 1531, a mutual defensive alliance for six years of the members of the Schmalkaldic League was concluded between the Elector John, the Landgrave Philip, three Dukes of Brunswick Lüneburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, Counts Albert and Gebhard of Mansfeld, the North German towns of Magdeburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, and the South German towns of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, and also Ulm, Reutlingen, Bibrach, and Isny. Even Luther no longer raised any objections.
By this alliance the Protestants presented a firm and powerful front among the constituent portions of the German Empire. Their adversaries were not so agreed in their interests. Between the Dukes of Bavaria, and between the Emperor and Ferdinand, political jealousy prevailed to an extent sufficient to induce the former to combine with the heretics against the newly-elected King. Outside Germany, Denmark reached the hand of fellowship to the Schmalkaldic League; for the exiled King of Denmark, Christian II., who had previously turned to the Saxon Elector and been friendly to Luther, now sought, after returning in all humility to the orthodox Church, to regain his lost sovereignty with the help of his brother-in-law, the Emperor. The King of France also was equally ready to make common cause with the Protestant German princes against the growing power of Charles V.
As for Luther, we find no notice on his part of the schemes and negotiations connected with these political events, much less any active participation in them. There was just then a rupture pending between Henry VIII. of England and the Emperor, and the former was preparing to secede from the Church of Rome. Henry was anxious for a divorce from his wife Katharine of Arragon, an aunt of the Emperor, on the ground of her previous marriage with his deceased brother, which, as he alleged, made his own marriage with her illegal; and since the Pope, in spite of long negotiations, refused, out of regard for the Emperor, to accede to his request, Henry had an opinion prepared by a number of European universities and men of learning, on the legality and validity of his marriage, which in fact for the most part declared against it. A secret commissioner of the former 'Protector of the Faith' was then sent to the Wittenbergers, and to Luther, whom he had so grossly insulted. Luther, however, pronounced (Sept. 5, 1531) against the divorce, on the ground that the marriage, though not contrary to the law of God as set forth in Scripture, was prohibited by the human law of the Church. The political side of the question he disregarded altogether. He expressed himself to Spalatin, in a certain tone of sadness, about the Pope's evil disposition towards the Emperor, the intrigues he seemed to be promoting against him in France, and the animosity of Henry VIII. towards him on account of his decision on the marriage; and added, 'Such is the way of this wicked world; may God take our Emperor under His protection!'
With Charles V. and Ferdinand the question of peace or war was, of necessity, largely governed by the menacing attitude of the Turks; in fact it determined their policy in the matter. Luther kept this danger steadily in view; after the publication of the Recess he promised the wrath of God upon those madmen who would enter upon a war while they had the Turks before their very eyes. Ferdinand in vain sought to conclude a treaty of peace with the Sultan, who demanded him to surrender all the fortresses he still possessed in a part of Hungary, and reserved the right of making further conquests. He was even induced, in March 1581, to advise his brother to effect a peaceful arrangement with the Protestants, in order to ensure their assistance in arms. Attempts at reconciliation were accordingly made through the intervention of the Electors of the Palatinate and Mayence. The term allowed by the Diet (April 15) passed by unnoticed. The Emperor also directed the 'suspension of the proceedings, which he had been authorised by the Recess of Augsburg to set on foot in religious matters, till the approaching Diet.'
The negotiations were languidly protracted through the summer, without effecting any definite result. An opinion, drawn up jointly by Luther, Melancthon, and Bugenhagen, advised against an absolute rejection of the proposed restoration of episcopal power; the only thing necessary to insist upon being that the clergy and congregations should be allowed by the bishops the pure preaching of the gospel which had hitherto been refused them.
About this time Luther had the grief of losing his mother. She died on June 30, after receiving from her son a consolatory letter in her last illness. Of his own physical suffering in this month we have already spoken. On the 26th, he wrote to Link that Satan had sent all his messengers to buffet him (2 Cor. xii. 7), so that he could only rarely write or do anything: the devil would probably soon kill him outright. And yet not his will would be done, but the will of Him who had already overthrown Satan and all his kingdom.
Soon afterwards, the desire of the Catholics for coercive measures was stimulated afresh by the news of a defeat which the Reformed cities in Switzerland had sustained at the hands of the five Catholic Cantons, notwithstanding that the balance of force inclined there far more than in Germany to the side of the Evangelicals. The struggle which Luther was perpetually endeavouring to avert from Germany, culminated in Switzerland in a bloody outbreak, mainly at Zwingli's instigation. Zwingli himself fell on October 11 in the battle of Cappel, a victim of the patriotic schemes by which he had laboured to achieve for his country a grand reform of politics, morality, and the Church, but for which he had failed to enlist any intelligent or unanimous co-operation on the part of his companions in faith. Ferdinand triumphed over this first great victory for the Catholic cause. He was now ready to renounce humbly his claim upon Hungary, so that, by making peace with the Sultan, he might leave his own and the Emperor's hands free in Germany. Luther saw in the fate of Zwingli another judgment of God against the spirit of Münzer, and in the whole course of the war a solemn warning for the members of the Schmalkaldic League not to boast of any human alliance, and to do their utmost to preserve peace.
But the events in Switzerland gave no handle against those who had not joined the Zwinglians, nor were even the latter weakened thereby in power and organisation. The South Germans had now to cling all the more firmly to their alliance with the Lutheran princes and cities; the Zwinglian movement suffered shortly afterwards (Dec. 1) a severe loss in the death of Oecolampadius. Finally the Sultan was not satisfied with Ferdinand's repeated offers, but prepared for a new campaign against Austria in the spring of 1532, and towards the end of April he set out for it.
This checked the feverous desire of Germans for war against their fellow-countrymen, and brought to a practical result the negotiations for a treaty which had been conducted early in 1582 at Schweinfurt, and later on at Nüremberg. They amounted to this: that all idea of an agreement on the religious and ecclesiastical questions in dispute was abandoned until the hoped-for Council should take place, and that, as had long been Luther's opinion, they should rest content with a political peace or modus vivendi, which should recognise both parties in the position they then occupied. The main dispute was on the further question, how far this recognition should extend;—whether only to the Schmalkaldic allies, the immediate parties to the present agreement, or to such other States of the Empire as might go over to the new doctrine from the old Church—which still remained the established Church of the Emperor and the Empire in general—and, perhaps further, to Protestant subjects of Catholic princes of the Empire. There was also still the question as to the validity of Ferdinand's election as King of Rome. Luther was again and again asked for his opinion on this subject.
He was just then suffering from an unusually severe attack, which incessantly reminded him of his approaching end. In addition, he was deeply concerned about the health of his beloved Elector. Early in the morning of January 22 he was seized again, as his friend Dietrich, who lived with him, informs us, with another violent attack in his head and heart. His friends who had come to him began to speak of the effect his death would have on the Papists, when he exclaimed, 'But I shall not die yet, I am certain. God will never strengthen the Papal abominations by letting me die now that Zwingli and Oecolampadius are just gone. Satan would no doubt like to have it so: he dogs my heels every moment; but not his will will be done, but the Lord's.' The physician thought that apoplexy was imminent, and that if so, Luther could hardly recover. The attack however seems to have quickly passed away, but Luther's head remained racked with pain. A few weeks later, towards the end of February, he had to visit the Elector at Torgau, who was lying there in great suffering, and had been compelled to have the great toe of his left foot amputated. Luther writes thence about himself to Dietrich, saying that he was thinking about the preface to his translation of the Prophets, but suffered so severely from giddiness and the torments of Satan, that he well-nigh despaired of living and returning to Wittenberg. 'My head,' he says, 'will do no more: so remember that, if I die, your talents and eloquence will be wanted for the preface.' For a whole month, as he remarked at the beginning of April, he was prevented from reading, writing, and lecturing. He informed Spalatin, in a letter of May 20, which Bugenhagen wrote for him, that at present, God willing, he must take a holiday. And on June 13 he told Amsdorf that his head was gradually recovering through the intercessions of his friends, but that he despaired of regaining his natural powers.
Notwithstanding this condition and frame of mind, Luther continued to send cordial, calm, and encouraging words of peace, concerning the negotiations then pending, both to the Elector John and his son John Frederick.
Concerning Ferdinand's election Luther declared to these two princes on February 12, and again afterwards, that it must not be allowed to embarrass or prevent a treaty of peace. If it violated a trifling article of the Golden Bull, that was no sin against the Holy Ghost, and God could show the Protestants, for a mote like this in the eyes of their enemies, whole beams in their own. It must needs be an intolerable burden to the Elector's conscience if war were to arise in consequence,—a war which might 'well end in rending the Empire asunder and letting in the Turks, to the ruin of the Gospel and everything else.'
An opinion, drawn up on May 16 by Luther and Bugenhagen, was equally decided in counselling submission on the question as to the extension of the truce, if peace itself depended upon it. For if the Emperor, he said, was now pleased to grant security to the now existing Protestant States, he did so as a favour and a personal privilege. They could not coerce him into showing the same favour to others. Others must make the venture by the grace of God, and hope to gain security in like manner. Everyone must accept the gospel at his own peril.
Luther began already to hear the reproach that to adopt such a course would be to renounce brotherly love, for Christians should seek the salvation and welfare of others besides themselves. He was reproached again with disowning by his conduct the Protestant ideal of religious freedom and the equal rights of Confessions. Very differently will he be judged by those who realise the legal and constitutional relations then existing in Germany, and the ecclesiastico-political views shared in common by Protestants and Catholics, and who then ask what was to be gained by a course contrary to that which he advised in the way of peace and positive law. That the sovereigns of Catholic States should secure toleration to the Evangelical worship in their own territories was opposed to those general principles by virtue of which the Protestant rulers took proceedings against their Catholic subjects. According to those principles, nothing was left for subjects who resisted the established religion of the country but to claim free and unmolested departure. Luther observed with justice, 'What thou wilt not have done to thee, do not thou to others.' With regard to the further question as to the princes who should hereafter join the Protestants, it certainly sounds naive to hear Luther speak of a present mere act of favour on the part of the Emperor. But he was strictly right in his idea, that a concession, involving the separation of some of the States of the Empire from the one Church system hitherto established indivisibly throughout the Empire, and their organisation of a separate Church, had no foundation whatever in imperial law as existing before and up to the Reformation, and could in so far be regarded simply as a free concession of the Emperor and Empire to individual members of the general body; who, therefore, had no right to compel the extension of this concession to others, and thereby hazard the peace of the Empire. Something had already been gained by the fact that at least no limitation was expressed. A door was thus left open for extension at a future time; and for those who wished to profit by this fact, the danger, if only peace could be assured, was at any rate diminished. If we may see any merit in the fact that the German nation at that time was spared a bloody war, unbounded in its destructive results, and that a peaceful solution was secured for a number of years, that merit is due in the first place to the great Reformer. He acted throughout like a true patriot and child of his Fatherland, no less than like a true Christian teacher and adviser of conscience.
The negotiations above described involved the further question about a Council, pending which a peaceful agreement was now effected. In the article providing for the convocation of a 'free Christian Council,' the Protestants demanded the addition of the words, 'in which questions should be determined according to the pure Word of God.' On this point, however, Luther was unwilling to prolong the dispute. He remarked with practical wisdom that the addition would be of no service; their opponents would in any case wish to have the credit of having spoken according to the pure Word of God.
In June bad news came again from Nüremberg, tending to the belief that the Papists had thwarted the work of peace. Luther again exclaimed, as he had done after the Diet of Augsburg, 'Well, well! your blood be upon your own heads; we have done enough.'
Towards the end of the month, when the Elector again invited his opinion, he repeated, with even more urgency than before, his warnings to those Protestants also who were 'far too clever and confident, and who, as their language seemed to show, wished to have a peace not open to dispute.' He begged the Elector, in all humility, to 'write in earnest a good, stern letter to our brethren,' that they might see how much the Emperor had graciously conceded to them which could be accepted with a good conscience, and not refuse such a gracious peace for the sake of some paltry, far-fetched point of detail. God would surely heal and provide for such trifling defects.
On July 23 the peace was actually concluded at Nüremberg, and signed by the Emperor on August 2. Both parties were mutually to practise Christian toleration until the Council was held; one of these parties being expressly designated as the Schmalkaldic allies. The value of this treaty for the maintenance of Protestantism in Germany was shown by the indignation displayed by the Papal legates from the first at the Emperor's concessions.
The Elector John was permitted to survive the conclusion of the peace, which he had been foremost among the princes in promoting. Shortly after, on August 15, he was seized with apoplexy when out hunting, and on the following day he breathed his last. Luther and Melancthon, who were summoned to him at Schweinitz, found him unconscious. Luther said his beloved prince, on awakening, would be conscious of everlasting life; just as when he came from hunting on the Lochau heath, he would not know what had happened to him; as said the prophet (Isaiah lvii. 1, 2), 'The righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds.' Luther preached at his funeral at Wittenberg, as he had done seven years before at his brother's, and Spalatin tells us how he wept like a child.
John had, throughout his reign, laboured conscientiously to follow the Word of God, as taught by Luther, and to encounter all dangers and difficulties by the strength of faith. He has rightly earned the surname of 'the Steadfast.' Luther especially praises his conduct at the Diet of Augsburg in this respect; he frequently said to his councillors on that occasion, 'Tell my men of learning that they are to do what is right, to the praise and glory of God, without regard to me, or to my country and people.' Luther distinguished piety and benevolence as the two most prominent features of his character, as wisdom and understanding had been those of the Elector Frederick's. 'Had the two princes,' he said, 'been one, that man would have been a marvel.'