Luther, vol. 3 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

In the first stage of his revolt against the Church, Luther had imagined that the new order of things could be brought about amongst his followers merely by his declaiming against outward forms; repeatedly he asserted that the Christian life consisted wholly in faith and charity, that faith would display its power spontaneously in good works, and that thus everything would arrange itself; a new and better Church would spring up within the old one, though minus a hierarchy, minus all false doctrine and holiness-by-works.

Up to the commencement of the ‘twenties his efforts had, in fact, been directed not to the setting up of new congregations but to the reconstruction of the existing Church system. Previous to his drafting of the plan comprised in the writing he sent to Prague, on the appointment of ecclesiastical ministers (vol. ii., p. 111 f.), in which we find the congregational organisation proposed as a model for the German Church, he was as yet merely desirous of paving the way for what he looked on as a reformation within the already existing Church, and this by means of the rulers and nobles.

His work “An den christlichen Adel,” to which we must now return in order to consider it from this particular standpoint, was composed with this object. By it he sought to rouse the rulers and those in power who had opened their hearts to the “Christian” faith, i.e. to the new Evangel, to take in hand the moral and religious reformation on the lines indicated by himself. Thus he appealed, as almost all sectarians had instinctively done from the very first, to the secular authorities and the power of the Princes in order to attain his special ecclesiastical ends. The secular Estates, already covetous of increased power and independence, were invited in these fiery pages to take their stand against the Papacy and the hierarchy, just as they would against “a destroyer of Christendom,”[47] and “to punish them severely” on account of divers disorders and “for their abuse of excommunication and their shocking blasphemies against the name of God,”[48] in short, “to put an end to the whole affair.”[49] The last words, found in the writing “On good works,” were addressed to the “King, the Princes, Nobles, Townships and people generally.”

Thus to force the two powers, secular and ecclesiastical, out of their spheres, handing over the supervision of the Church to the secular authorities[50] can only be characterised as an attack upon the whole Christian and moral order of things, on the whole previous development of the Church and on the highest principles of religion. It is true that the Catholic States had already appropriated many of the rights really appertaining to the Church, but to carry their interference so far as Luther advised, had never yet occurred to them. Indeed, the subversion of order planned by Luther was so great, that the impossibility of carrying out his project must have speedily become apparent to him. As a matter of fact, the actual number of those whose hearts had been awakened by the Evangel to the extent of sharing Luther’s extreme views was not at all considerable.

When anxious friends pointed out to Luther how revolutionary his undertaking was, his excuse was merely this: “I am blameless, seeing that my only object is to induce the nobles of Germany to set a limit to the encroachments of the Romanists by passing resolutions and edicts, not by means of the sword; for to fight against an unwarlike clergy would be like fighting against women and children.”[51] Hence, so long as no blood was shed, the overthrow of the legal status of the Church met with his full approval.

The torrents of angry abuse which Luther soon afterwards poured forth upon those in power because they would not follow his call and allow themselves to be “awakened,” were simply proofs of the futility of his plan.

No demagogue had ever before filled Germany with such noisy abuse of the Princes as Luther now did in works intended for the masses, where he declared, for instance, that “God has sent our Rulers mad”; that “they command their subjects just what they please”; that they are “scamps” and “fools”; that he is forced to resist, “at least by word,” these “ungracious Lords and angry squires” on account of their “blasphemies against the Divine Majesty.”[52] He denounced them to the populace as having heaped together their “gold and goods” unjustly, just as “Nimrod had acquired his goods and his gold.”[53] He accuses them “of allowing everything to drift, and of hindering one another”; “plenty of them even vindicate the cause of Antichrist,”[54] therefore the Judgment of God must fall upon our “raving Princes.” “God has blinded them and made them stupid that they may run headlong to destruction.”[55]

This he wrote on the eve of the fearful events of the Peasant Rising.

Thus his ideal of the future was now shattered, viz. the spiritual society and new Christendom which he had planned to establish with the help of the Princes. “This dream passed rapidly away. All that remained was a deep-seated pessimism.... From that time the persuasion grew on him that the world will always remain the same, that it can never be governed according to the Evangel and can never be rendered really Christian; likewise, that true Christians will always be but few in number.”[56]

Hence these few Christians must become the object of his solicitude. He is more and more inspired by the fantastic notion that Popery is to be speedily overthrown by God Himself, by His Word and by the breath of His Mouth. In the meantime he expects the new Church to develop spontaneously from the congregations by the power of God, even though at first it should consist of only a small number of faithful souls.