November.
Gottfried has just brought me the letter from Luther to the Archbishop of Mainz; which will at least convince the indulgence-mongers that they have roused the sleeping lion.
He reminds the Archbishop-Elector that a conflagration has already been raised by the protest of one poor insignificant monk against Tetzel; he warns him that the God who gave strength to that feeble human voice because its spoke his truth, "is living still, and will bring down the lofty cedars and the haughty Pharoahs, and can easily humble an Elector of Mainz although there were four Emperors supporting him." He solemnly requires him to put down that avaricious sale of lying pardons at Mainz, or he will speedily publish a denunciation (which he has already written) against "The New School at Halle." "For Luther," he says, "is not dead yet."
We are in great doubt how the Archbishop will bear such a bold remonstrance.
November 20.
The remonstrance has done its work. The Prince Archbishop has written a humble and apologetic letter to Dr. Luther, and the indulgences are once more banished from Halle.
At Wittemberg, however, Dr. Luther's letters do not at all compensate for his absence. There is great confusion here, and not seldom there are encounters between the opposite parties in the streets.
Almost all the monks in the Augustinian Convent refused some weeks since to celebrate private masses or to adore the host. The gentle Dr. Melancthon and the other doctors at first remonstrated, but were at length themselves convinced, and appealed to the Elector of Saxony himself to abolish these idolatrous ceremonies. We do not yet know how he will act. No public alterations have yet been made in the Church services.
But the great event which is agitating Wittemberg now is the abandonment of the cloister and the monastic life by thirteen of the Augustinian monks. The Pastor Feldkirchen declared against priestly vows, and married some months since. But he was only a secular priest; and the opinions of all good men about the marriage of the priests of the parochial churches have long been undivided amongst us.
Concerning the monks, however, it is different. For the priests to marry is merely a change of state; for the monks to abandon their vows is the destruction of their order, and of the monastic life altogether.