Luther, vol. 3 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

In the same year in which he wrote the above his correspondence begins to betray the anxiety and apprehension which afterwards never ceased to torture him, due partly to what he witnessed of the results of the innovations, partly to his own natural timidity. The Peasant War of 1525 plunged him into dismay. There he saw to what lengths the abuse of evangelical freedom could lead, once the passions of the people were let loose. At the express wish of the Elector Ludwig of the Palatinate he wrote in vigorous and implacable language a refutation of the Peasant Articles; the pen of the scholar was, however, powerless to stay the movement which was carrying away the people.

A work of much greater importance fell to him when he was invited to take part in the Visitation of the churches in the Saxon Electorate, then in a state of utter chaos; it was then that he wrote, in 1527, the Visitation-booklet for the use of the ecclesiastical inspectors.

In the directions he therein gave for the examination of pastors and preachers he modified to such an extent the asperities of the Lutheran principles that he was accused of reacting in the direction of Catholicism, particularly by the stress he laid on the motive of fear of God’s punishments, on greater earnestness in penance and on the keeping of the “law.” Luther’s preaching of the glad Evangel had dazzled people and made them forgetful of the “law” and Commandments. According to Melanchthon this was in great part the fault of the Lutheran preachers.

“In their addresses to the people,” he complains in 1526, “they barely mention the fear of God. Yet this, and not faith alone, is what they ought to teach.... On the other hand, they are all the more zealous in belabouring the Pope.” Besides this they are given to fighting with each other in the pulpit; the authorities ought to see that only the “more reasonable are allowed to preach and that the others hold their tongues, according to Paul’s injunction.”[1065] “They blame our opponents,” he writes of these same preachers in 1528, “for merely serving their bellies by their preaching, but they themselves appear only to work for their own glory, so greatly do they allow themselves to be carried away by anger.”[1066]

“The depravity of the country population” he declares in a letter of the same year to be intolerable; it must necessarily call down the heavy hand of God’s chastisement. “The deepest hatred of the Gospel” was, however, to be found “in those who play the part of our patrons and protectors.” Here he is referring to certain powerful ones; he also laments “the great indifference of the Court.” All this shows the end to be approaching: “Believe me, the Day of Judgment is not far distant.” “When I contemplate the conditions of our age, I am troubled beyond belief.”[1067]

Regarding his recommendation of penance and confession during the Visitations, a conversation which he relates to Camerarius as having taken place at the table of a highly placed patron of the innovations, is very characteristic. A distinguished guest having complained of this recommendation, the patron chimed in with the remark, that the people must “hold tight to the freedom they had secured, otherwise they would again be reduced to servitude by the theologians”; the latter were little by little re-introducing the old traditions. Thus you see, Melanchthon adds, “how, not only our enemies, but even those who are supposed to be favourably bent, judge of us.”[1068] Yet Melanchthon had merely required a general sort of confession as a voluntary preparation for Holy Communion.

Melanchthon was also openly in favour of the penalty of excommunication; in order to keep a watch on the preachers he introduced the system of Superintendents.

In the matter of marriage contracts his experience led him to the following conclusion: “It is clearly expedient that the marriage bond should be tightened rather than loosened”; in this the older Church had been in the right. “You know,” he writes, “what blame (‘quantum sceleris’) our party has incurred by its wrong treatment of marriage matters. All the preachers everywhere ought to exert themselves to put an end to these scandals. But many do nothing but publicly calumniate the monks and the authorities in their discourses.” And yet in the same letter he sanctions the re-marriage of a party divorced for some unknown reason, a sanction he had hitherto been unwilling to grant for fear of the example being followed by others; he only stipulates that his sanction is not to be announced publicly; the sermons must, on the contrary, censure the license which is becoming the fashion.[1069]

Any open and vigorous opposition to Luther’s views, so detrimental to the inviolability of the marriage tie, was not in accordance with Melanchthon’s nature. He, like Luther, condemned the religious vows on the strange ground that those who took them were desirous of gaining merit in the sight of God. Hence he too came to invite nuns to marry.[1070] And yet, at the same time, he, like Luther, again declared virginity to be a “higher gift,” one which even ranked above marriage (“virginitas donum est praestantius coniugio”).[1071]