It was an easy task for Eck to disprove on theological grounds the statements of Luther.
The Disputation had at least the effect of clearing up the position, and arousing misgivings in many of those who hitherto had been partisans of the Wittenberg Doctor.
Luther himself wrote in a very discontented frame of mind to Spalatin regarding the Disputation, saying that time had been wasted in the useless affair, and that Eck and the theologians of Leipzig only sought worldly honour and on this everything had suffered shipwreck. Only the discussion on the Primacy (i.e. that very one at which the momentous admissions were made) had been fruitful and productive. This is his own impudent way of describing his position as the only right one. “Hardly anything else,” he continues, “was treated worthily. Eck was applauded, he triumphs and reigns, but an end shall be put to this by my publication; for as the Disputation was badly conducted I shall have the Resolutions to the Disputation theses reprinted. These people of Leipzig neither greeted us nor visited us, but treated us as deadly enemies [and yet every consideration had been shown him that circumstances permitted]. Eck they supplied with an escort, they surrounded him constantly, honoured him with feasts and invitations, presented him with a coat and a costly mantle, rode out with him on pleasant excursions, in fact did everything imaginable—to disgrace us.” “There you have the whole tragedy ... it began ill and ended worse.... As a rule, I control my ill-humour, but here I cannot help pouring out my grudge, because after all I am human and see how the shamelessness of our adversaries and their poisonous hatred of so holy a cause have grown beyond measure.”[941]
Obstinately adhering to his standpoint and embittered as he was by the Leipzig “tragedy,” Luther would lend no ear to the proposals for reconciliation and settlement suggested by the Papal Chamberlain Carl von Miltitz.
His attempts in this direction had commenced even before the Disputation. Their continuance revealed on the one hand Luther’s obstinacy, and on the other the inability of this lay Papal official—whose motives were merely political—to see the real seriousness of the matter. The latter, in order to secure apparent victories, went beyond his instructions and the intentions of those who had entrusted him with his mission. Luther on his part did not shrink from diplomatic concessions which could not injure him, but which anyone conversant with the conditions must have seen to be impracticable. The easy triumphs of which Miltitz’s shortsighted love of peace was productive were thus of very doubtful value.[942]
Luther’s edition of the Latin Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, which appeared in September, 1519, assumed all the more importance in his eyes. In this work, written in the language of the learned (above, p. 306), he undertook to defend on the widest basis and before cultured men of every clime his doctrines concerning grace and salvation, faith and righteousness.
Here we have a public manifestation not merely of the doctrines which lay at the back of the schism he had stirred up by his controversy with Tetzel, but also of his wrong new view concerning Holy Scripture.
In the matter of style, Luther was more successful in his shorter works, particularly in his German controversial pamphlets. Writers who opposed him, such as Eck, Emser, Dungersheim, Alveld, Hoogstraaten, Prierias he readily withstood in words full of fire and imagination, although his arguments, as a rule, left much to be desired and were not atoned for by his passionate invective. His main contention, voiced in a more or less coarse form, is, however, always the following: the proofs which you adduce from the teaching of the Church and the Fathers do not move me because Holy Scripture, upon which I take my stand, is above both Church and Fathers.
By the Holy Scripture he, moreover, persists in understanding his own interpretation of the Bible. By a tragic mistake he has come to confound his own personal and altogether subjective interpretation with the objective “Word of God” in the Bible. In the same way he makes not the slightest distinction between the meaning of the “gospel,” which he fancies he has discovered, and the actual Gospel itself.