Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

His spirit of defiance led him to clothe his demands in outrageous forms. On one occasion he declared in language resembling that which he made use of concerning the laws of fasting: “Even though a man has no mind to take a wife he ought, nevertheless, to do so in order to spite and vex the devil and his doctrine.”[308]

The Fathers of the Church accordingly found little favour with him when they required of the clergy, monks and nuns, not merely the observance of celibacy, but also the use of the means enjoined by asceticism for the preservation of chastity; or when they betrayed their preference for the vow of chastity, though without by any means disparaging marriage. They quoted what Our Lord had said of this doctrine: “He that can take it, let him take it” (Matt. xix. 12). The Fathers, in the spirit of St. Paul, who, as one “having obtained mercy of the Lord,” joyfully acquiesced in His “Counsel” of chastity (1 Cor. vii. 25), frequently advocated the doctrine of holy continence. But Luther asks: Of what use were their penitential practices for the preservation of their chastity to the Fathers, even to Augustine, Jerome, Benedict, Bernard, etc., since they themselves allow that they were constantly troubled by temptations of the flesh? In his opinion, as we already know, the attacks of sensuality, the movements of the carnal man and the enduring sense of our own concupiscence are really sins.

Jerome in particular, the zealous advocate of virginity, received at Luther’s hands the roughest treatment. This saint is erroneously reckoned among the Fathers of the Church; he is of no account at all except for the histories he compiled; he was madly in love with the virgin Eustochium; his writings give no proof of faith or true religion; he had not the least idea of the difference between the law and the Gospel, and writes of it as a blind man might write of colour, etc. His invitations to the monastic life are described by Luther as impious, unbelieving and sacrilegious. Scoffing at the Saint’s humble admission of his temptations in his old age and the severe mortifications he practised to overcome them, Luther says: The virgin Eustochium would have been the proper remedy for him. “I am astounded that the holy Fathers tormented themselves so greatly about such childish temptations and never experienced the exalted, spiritual trials [those regarding faith], seeing that they were rulers in the Church and filled high offices. This temptation of evil passions may easily be remedied if there are only virgins or women available.”[309]

All these fell doctrines and allurements which without intermission were poured into the ears of clergy and religious alike, many of whom were uneducated, already tainted with worldliness, or had entered upon their profession without due earnestness, were productive of the expected result in the case of the weak. The sudden force of Luther’s powerful and well-calculated attack upon the clergy and upon monasticism has been aptly compared to the effect of dynamite. But whoever fell, did so of his own free will. Such language was nothing but the bewitching song of the Siren addressed to the basest though most powerful instincts of man.

The historic importance of the attack upon ecclesiastical celibacy is by no means fully gauged if we merely regard it as an effective method of securing preachers, allies and patrons for the new Evangel. It was, indeed, closely bound up with Luther’s whole system, and his early theories on holiness by works and self-righteousness. His war on vows was too spontaneous, too closely connected with his own personal experience, to be accounted for merely by the desire of increasing the number of his followers. The aversion to the practice of good works which marked the commencement of his growth, his loathing for the sacrifices entailed by self-denial, the very stress he lays on the desires of nature as opposed to the promptings of grace, the delusion of evangelical freedom and finally his hatred of those institutions of the old Church which inspired her adherents with such vigorous life wherever they were rightly understood and practised—all this served as an incentive in the struggle.

A strange element which, according to his own statements, formed an undercurrent to all this and which indicates his peculiar state of mind, was that he looked upon the temptations of the flesh as something altogether insignificant in comparison with the exalted spiritual assaults of “blasphemy and despair” of which he had had personal experience.[310] In the passage already referred to, where he chides the Fathers with their “childish temptations,” he says: Why on earth did they make such efforts for the preservation of their beloved chastity, or exert themselves for something entirely, or almost entirely, impossible of attainment? The temptations of the flesh are nothing at all, he proceeds, “compared with the Angel of Satan who buffets us; then indeed we are nailed to the cross, then indeed childish things such as the temptations which worried Jerome and others become of small account.” In Paul’s case, according to him, the “angelus colaphizans” (the angel who buffeted him, 2 Cor. xii. 7) was not a sting of the flesh at all, but exalted pangs of the soul, such as those to which the Psalmist alluded when he said: “God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” where he really means: “God, Thou art become my enemy without a cause,” or again, that a sword has pierced his bowels (pains of the soul). He himself, Luther, had endured such-like things, but “Jerome and the other Fathers never experienced anything of the sort.”[311]

Luther complains as early as 1522, i.e. at the very outset of this “Evangelical” movement, of the character of the auxiliaries who had been attracted to him by his attack on priestly and monastic continence.

In a letter sent to Erfurt he expresses his great dissatisfaction at the fact that, where apostate Augustinians had become pastors, their behaviour, like that of the other preachers drawn from the ranks of the priesthood, had “given occasion to their adversaries to blaspheme” against the evangel. He says he intends sending a circular letter to the “Church at Erfurt” on account of the bad example given.[312] The person to whom these bitter words were addressed, Luther’s intimate friend, Johann Lang, the Erfurt Augustinian, had himself shortly before forsaken the monastery. The circumstances attending his leaving were very distasteful to Luther.

The evangelical life at Erfurt, where many of the priests were taking wives, must be improved, so he writes, even though the “understanding of the Word” had increased greatly there. “The power of the Word is either still hidden” he says, of the new evangel, “or it is far too weak in us all; for we are the same as before, hard, unfeeling, impatient, foolhardy, drunken, dissolute, quarrelsome; in short, the mark of a Christian, viz. abundant charity, is nowhere apparent; on the contrary, the words of Paul are fulfilled, ‘we possess the kingdom of God in speech, but not in power’” (1 Cor. iv. 20).[313] In the same letter he complains of the monks who had left their convents to reinforce the ranks of his party: “I see that many of our monks have left their priory for no other reason than that which brought them in: they follow their bellies and the freedom of the flesh. By them Satan will set up a great stench against the good odour of our work. But what can we do? They are idle people who seek their own, so that it is better they should sin and go to destruction without the cowl than with it.”

Luther complained still more definitely of his “parsons and preachers” in the Preface to the “Larger Catechism” which he composed for them in 1529: Many, he says, despise their office and good doctrine: some simply treated the matter as though they had become “parsons and preachers solely for their belly’s sake”; he would exhort such “lazy paunches or presumptuous saints” to diligence in their office.[314] What he had predicted in 1522 became more and more plainly fulfilled: “It is true that I fear some will take wives or run away, not from Christian conviction, but because they rejoice to find a cloak and reason for their wickedness in the freedom of the evangel.” His consolation, however, is, that it was just as bad and even worse in Popery, and if needs be “we still have the gallows, the wheel, sword and water to deal with such as will not do what is right.”[315]