Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

The work just mentioned, which appeared in 1522, is entitled, “On the Abuse of the Mass.” He dedicated it in the Preface “to the Augustinians of Wittenberg,” his dear brethren, because he had heard in his solitude, so he says, “that they had been the first to commence setting aside the abuse of Masses in their assembly [congregation].”[217] He is desirous of fortifying their “consciences” against the Mass, because he is anxious lest “all should not have the same constancy, and good conscience, in the undertaking of so great and notable a work.” In the same way as he in his struggle had attained to assurance of conscience, so they, too, must act “with a like conscience, faith and trust, and look on the opinion of the whole world as nothing but chaff and straw, knowing that we are sent to a death-struggle against the devil and all his might, yea, against the judgment of God, and, like Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 28), can only overcome by our strength of faith.”

To despise the protests of the world was not so difficult, but to pay “no heed to the devil and the solemn judgment of God” was a harder task.

It would seem that some of the Augustinians were not capable of this, and had become uneasy concerning the innovations. He is thereupon at pains to assure them that he is an expert in the matter; he declares that he has learnt from experience how “our conscience makes us out to be sinners in God’s sight and deserving of eternal reprobation, unless it is well preserved and protected at every point by the holy, strong and veracious Word of God.”[218] This “stronghold” he would fain open to them by demonstrating from the Word of God the horrors of the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Hence he begins by overthrowing, with incredible determination, everything that might be advanced against him and in favour of the Mass in general by the “doctrine and discipline of the Church, the teaching of the Fathers, immemorial custom and usage,” commandments of men and theological faculties, Saints, Fathers, or, in fine, the “Pope and his Gomorrhas.” The utter unrestraint of his language here and there is only matched by the extravagance of his ideas and interpretation of the Bible.

All men are priests, he declares; as to Mass priests there should be none. “I defy the idols and pomps of this world, the Pope and his parsons. You fine priestlings, can you point out to us in all the gospels and epistles a single bit of proof that you are or were intended to act as priests for other Christians?”[219] Whoever dares to adduce the well-known passages in the Bible to the contrary he looks on as a “rude, unlettered donkey.” Why? Because he would not otherwise defend the “smeared and shorn priesthood.” “O worthy patron of the shaven, oily little gods,” he says to him with mocking commiseration.[220] We are the persecuted party, we, who, whilst acknowledging Christ’s presence in the Sacrament, will have nothing to do with the sacrificial character of the Supper. For whoever holds fast simply to Christ’s institution is scolded as a heretic by the Pope. “There they sit, the unlettered, godless hippopotami, on costly, royal thrones, Pope, Cardinal, bishop, monk and parson with their schools of Paris and Louvain, and their dear sisters Sodom and Gomorrah.” As soon as they see the poor, small, despised crew [the opponents of the Mass] they wax wroth, “frown, turn up their noses, hold up their hands in horror, and cry: ‘The heretics do not observe the usage and form of the Roman Church’”; but they themselves are “unlearned dunces and donkeys.”[221]

The author, whose very pen seems steeped in ire, goes off at a tangent to speak of the Pope and of celibacy.

He is never tired of explaining “that the abominable and horrid priesthood of the Papists came into the world from the devil”; “the Pope is a true apostle of his master the hellish fiend, according to whose will he lives and reigns”; he has dropped into the holy kingdom of the priesthood common to all like the “devil’s hog he is, and with his snout” has befouled, yea, destroyed it; with his celibacy he has raised up a priesthood which is “a brew of all abominations.”[222] The devil himself does not suffice to make Luther’s language strong enough for his liking, and he is driven to his imagination for other ugly pictures.

“I believe, that, even had the Pope made fornication obligatory, he would not have given rise to and furthered such great unchastity [as by celibacy].” “Who can sufficiently deplore the fury of the devil with his godless, cursed law?” The “Roman knave” wishes to rule everywhere, and the “universities, those shameless brothels, sit still and say nothing.... They, like obedient children of the Church, carry out the commands of the whoremaster. Every Christian ought to resist him at the risk of his life, even though he had a thousand heads, because we see how the poor, simple, common folk who stand in terror of his childish, shameful Bulls, do, and submit to, whatever the damned Roman rogue invents with the help of the devil.”[223]

Many of his contemporaries may well be excused for having felt that such language was the result of the Pope’s Bull; the curse of the Church had overtaken Luther, in the solitude of the Wartburg it had done its work, and now the spirit of evil and darkness had gained complete mastery.[224]

“So great,” he cries, “is God’s anger over this vale of Tafet and Hinnan that those who are most learned, and live most chastely, do more harm than those who learn nothing and live in fornication.” “O unhappy wretches that we are, who live in these latter days among so many Baalites, Bethelites and Molochites, who all appear so spiritual and Christian, and yet have swallowed up the whole world and themselves desire to be the only Church; they live and laugh in their security and freedom, instead of weeping tears of blood over the cruel murder of the children of our people.”[225]