The poet then directs the attention of the reader to the crowds of people massacred and the strongholds consumed by fire. “The priest, robbed of his means of livelihood and without a church, wanders to and fro; in the families grief and dissension reign; the nun who has forfeited her honour and her chastity, weeps. This, Luther, is the result of your fine writings. Whoever says that you took them from the Word of Christ and that the clear light of the gospel shines through them, must indeed have been struck with blindness. None is more fickle than Luther; nowhere does he remain true to himself; first he commits his cause to the appointed judge, then he refuses to abide by the decision or to acknowledge any jurisdiction on earth. At one time he recognises all the seven Sacraments, at another only three, and no doubt he will soon admit none at all.”
This man, Emser continues, Cordus presumes to compare with Moses, the sublime, divinely appointed leader of the Israelites! This audacious comparison he is at pains to disprove by setting the qualities of the one side by side with those of the other. He says for instance: Moses sanctified the people, “but your Luther gives the reins to sinful lusts. The people, after casting off all the wholesome restrictions of the ancient laws of morality, are bereft of all discipline, of all fear either of God or the authorities; virtue disappears, law and justice totter.... The heart of the German race has been hardened to stone; sunk in the mire, and given over to their passions, they despise all the gifts they have received of God. The children suck in the errors of their parents with their mothers’ milk and follow their example, learn to blaspheme, are proud and thankless and thus become the ruin of their country. To this has your unhappy Moses brought them.” And now Luther was seeking to make further conquests by means of a flood of popular writings, embellished with pictures, verses and songs so as to penetrate more easily into the minds of the unwary; with this aim in view he did not even spare the Bible, circulating false translations and explaining it by venomous glosses. “How many thousand souls have not his writings already brought to eternal perdition! They fancied that in them they found the truth, and were miserably deceived by such doctrines.” What confusion, he says, will not be occasioned in the future among those who hang upon his words, by his translation of the Bible.
“Go now, Cordus, and compare this man with Moses, the liar with the truth-loving saint, the wild stormer with the meek and patient leader of the people. Luther, desirous of leading us out of the Roman bondage, casts us into an unhappy spiritual bondage; he drags us from light into darkness, from heaven down to hell.”
What is pleasing in the long poem, apart from the smooth Latin verse, is the generous recognition which Emser bestows on the numerous other defenders of the Church, who, like himself, as he says, have withstood Luther vigorously and successfully with their pen. Among these he singles out for special mention Eck, Faber, Cochlæus, Dietenberger and others. His frank admission that much in the Church stood in need of improvement and that a real Catholic reformer would be welcome to all, is also worthy of notice. He shares the desire, which at that time was making itself so strongly felt in Catholic circles, that the Emperor, as the highest temporal authority, should now lend his assistance to the Church and give the impetus necessary towards the accomplishment of the longed-for renewal. “ But though we do not defend the old abuses, yet we condemn Luther’s foolish new doctrines. The rule of the earlier ages of the Church ought to shine in front of us to guide our life as well as to determine dogma. We must cling to the narrow way of the gospel and to the apostolic precepts, the decrees of the Fathers and the written and unwritten tradition as taught by the Holy Ghost who guides the Church. For the success of the reform it is certainly not necessary to overthrow the existing human and divine order of things, or to fill the weary world with noisy strife. The Emperor has it in his hands, let him only follow the example of so many of his predecessors who helped the Church to renew her youth, particularly Charles the Great and his pious son Lewis.”
Luther, meanwhile, was straining every nerve in the cause of the intellectual revolution of which the plan floated in his mind. It seemed as though he were incapable of fatigue.
His numerous labours, his constant cares and the excessive mental strain are apparent from his letters. He writes of a supposed portent in the world of nature. “The omen fills me with fear, it can presage nothing but evil.” “I am altogether immersed in Erasmus,” he says, “I shall take care not to let anything slip, for not a single word of his is true:” he writes thus to Spalatin.[613] “Every day I am overwhelmed with complaints from our parishes,” he laments to the pastor of Zwickau: “Satan is busy in our midst. The people absolutely refuse to pay anything towards the support of the preachers.” He intends, he says, to persuade the Elector to organise a visitation of all the churches throughout the land, he is also anxious to introduce uniformity in matters of ritual; all this involves him in a hundred difficulties.[614] Disagreements with the Zwinglians of Strasburg cause some trouble. At the same time the negotiations with the Teutonic Order call for his whole care and attention, the apostasy and marriage of Albert, the Grand Master, greatly raising his hopes.
It was in this frame of mind, and in the midst of all this manifold business, that Luther threw himself into the controversy on man’s free-will. It was his object to establish a literary foundation for his new doctrines as a whole by vindicating a pet doctrine on account of which he had been so mercilessly attacked.[615]
3. The Religion of the Enslaved Will. The Controversy between Luther and Erasmus (1524-1525)
That the will is free is one of the most indisputable facts of our inner consciousness. Where there is reason there must needs be a corresponding freedom, i.e. freedom from interior necessity.