Luther, vol. 3 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

He was gradually drawn more and more into questions concerning the public position of the Lutherans and had to undertake various journeys on this account, because Luther, being under the Ban, was unable to leave the Electorate, and because his violent temper did not suit him for delicate negotiations. Melanchthon erred rather on the side of timidity.

When, in 1528, in consequence of the Pack business, there seemed a danger of war breaking out on account of religion, he became the prey of great anxiety. He feared for the good name and for the evangelical cause should bloody dissensions arise in the Empire through the fault of the Princes who favoured Luther. On May 18 he wrote to the Elector Johann on no account to commence war on behalf of the Evangel, especially as the Emperor had made proposals of peace. “I must take into consideration, for instance, what a disgrace it would be to the Holy Gospel were your Electoral Highness to commence war without first having tried every means for securing peace.”[1072] There can be no doubt that the terrible experience of the Peasant War made him cautious, but we must not forget, that such considerations did not hinder him from declaring frequently later, particularly previous to the Schmalkalden War, that armed resistance was allowable, nay, called for, nor even from going so far as to address the people in language every whit as warlike as that of Luther.[1073] In the case of the hubbub arising out of the famous forged documents connected with the name of Pack, Luther, however, seemed to him to be going much too far. “Duke George could prove with a clear conscience that it was a question of a mere forgery and of a barefaced deception,”[1074] got up to the detriment of the Catholic party. On Luther’s persisting in his affirmation that a league existed for the destruction of the Evangelicals, and that the “enemies of the Evangel” really cherished “this evil intention and will,”[1075] Duke George did, as a matter of fact, take him severely to task in a work to which Luther at once replied in another teeming with unseemly abuse.[1076]

Melanchthon, like the rest of Luther’s friends who shared his opinion, saw their hopes of peace destroyed. They read with lively disapproval Luther’s charges against the Duke, who was described as a thief, as one “eaten up by Moabitish pride and arrogance,” who played the fool in thus raging against Christ; as one possessed of the devil, who in spite of all his denials meditated the worst against the Lutherans, who allowed himself to be served in his Chancery by a gang of donkeys and who, like all his friends, was devil-ridden. Concerning the impression created, Melanchthon wrote to Myconius that Luther had indeed tried to exercise greater restraint than usual, but that “he ought to have defended himself more becomingly. All of us who have read his pages stand aghast; unfortunately such writings are popular, they pass from hand to hand and are studied, being much thought of by fools (‘praedicantur a stultis’).”[1077]

It was only with difficulty that he and his Wittenberg friends dissuaded Luther from again rushing into the fray.

In 1529 Melanchthon, at Luther’s desire, accompanied the Elector of Saxony to the Diet of Spires. The protest there made by the Lutheran Princes and Estates again caused him great concern as he foresaw the unhappy consequences to Germany of the rupture it betokened, and the danger in which it involved the Protestant cause. The interference of the Zwinglians in German affairs also filled him with apprehension, for of their doctrines, so far as they were opposed to those of Wittenberg, he cherished a deep dislike imbibed from Luther. The political alliance which, at Spires, the Landgrave of Hesse sought to promote between the two parties, appeared to him highly dangerous from the religious point of view. He now regretted that he had formerly allowed himself to be more favourably disposed to Zwinglianism by the Landgrave. In his letters he was quite open in the expression of his annoyance at the results of the Diet of Spires, though he himself had there done his best to increase the falling away from Catholicism, and, with words of peace on his lips, to render the estrangement irremediable. In his first allusion to the now famous protest he speaks of it as a “horrid thing.”[1078] His misgivings increased after his return home, and he looked forward to the future with anxiety. He was pressing in his monitions against any alliance with the Zwinglians. On May 17, 1529, he wrote to Hieronymus Baumgärtner, a member of the Nuremberg Council: “Some of us do not scorn an alliance with the [Zwinglian] Strasburgers, but do you do your utmost to prevent so shameful a thing.”[1079] “The pains of hell have encompassed me,” so he describes to a friend his anxieties. We have delayed too long, “I would rather die than see ours defiled by an alliance with the Zwinglians.”[1080] “I know that the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ is untrue and not to be answered for before God.”[1081]

After he had assisted Luther in the religious discussion held at Marburg between him and Zwingli in the autumn of 1529, and had witnessed the fruitless termination of the conference, he again voiced his intense grief at the discord rampant among the innovators, and the hopelessness of any effort to reunite Christians. “I am quite unable to mitigate the pains I suffer on account of the position of ecclesiastical affairs,” so he complains to Camerarius. “Not a day passes that I do not long for death. But enough of this, for I do not dare to describe in this letter the actual state of things.”[1082]

Luther was much less down-hearted at that time, having just succeeded in overcoming a persistent attack of anxiety and remorse of conscience. His character, so vastly different from that of his friend, now, after the victory he had won over his “temptations,” was more than ever inclined to violence and defiance. Luther, such at least is his own account, refused to entertain any fear concerning the success of his cause, which was God’s, in spite of the storm threatening at Augsburg.

Melanchthon at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530.

At Augsburg the most difficult task imaginable was assigned to Melanchthon, as the principal theological representative of Lutheranism. His attitude at the Diet was far from frank and logical.