In Lauterbach’s Diary we find the following, under date October 7, 1538, concerning Luther and Schenk: At Luther’s table the conversation turned upon Jacob Schenk, “who, in his arrogant and lying fashion was doing all manner of things [so Luther declared] which he afterwards was wont to deny. Wherever he was, he raised up strife, relying on the authority of the Prince and the applause of the people. But he will be put to shame in the end [so Luther went on to say], just as Johann Agricola, who enjoyed great consideration at Court and was almost a Privy Councillor; his reputation vanished without my having any hand in the matter. When Schenk preached at Zeitz he gave general dissatisfaction. The wretched man is puffed up with pride and deceives himself with new-fangled words.... He has concealed his wickedness under a Satanic hypocrisy and is ever aping me. Never shall I trust him again, no, not to all eternity.”[1331]
Lauterbach gives a striking picture of Luther’s behaviour at his encounter with Jacob Schenk on September 11, 1538. Luther and Jonas, after a sermon which had greatly displeased them, paid him a visit. They found him, “sad to relate, impenitent and unabashed, rebellious, ambitious, and perjurious.” Luther pointed out to him his ignorance; how could he, unexperienced as he was, and understanding neither dialectics nor rhetoric, venture thus to oppose his teachers? Schenk replied: “I must do so for the sake of Christ’s Blood and His dear Passion; my own great trouble of conscience also compels me to it” (thus adducing a motive similar to that so often alleged by Luther in his own case). I must “fear God more than all my preceptors; for I have a God as much as you.” Luther replied: “It may be that you understand my doctrine perfectly, but you ought nevertheless, for the honour of God, to honour us as the teachers who first instructed you.” This seems to have made no impression on Schenk. Luther’s parting shot was: “If you are torn to pieces, may the devil lap your blood. We also are ‘in peril from false brethren.’ Poor Freiberg [the scene of Schenk’s labours] will never recover from this. But God, the Avenger, will destroy the man who has defiled His temple. The proverb says: ‘Where heart and mind both are bad, the state of a man indeed is sad.’” At supper, Schenk, seated at table with Luther and Jonas, began to abuse Luther and the inhabitants of Freiberg; after saying much that was scarcely complimentary, he added: “‘When I have made the Court as pious as you have made the world, then my work will be finished.’ In spite of all this impertinence he remained seated, though his hypocritical show of humility revealed how depraved his heart really was. When Luther got up to leave the room Schenk attempted to start the quarrel anew.”[1332] Finally they parted unreconciled.
Schenk subsequently led a wandering existence, ever under suspicion as to the purity of his faith. In 1541 he was at Leipzig and in 1543 he visited Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg. It was given out by adversaries, such as Melanchthon and Alberus, that he ultimately committed suicide, driven thereto by melancholy; the statement is, however, not otherwise confirmed,
Johann Wildenauer (or Silvius), the theologian, was born at Eger in Bohemia, and hence was generally known as Egranus. This priest, who was a man of talent and of Humanistic culture, and an enthusiastic follower of Erasmus, had been won over to the new teaching in the very beginning. After having been preacher at the Marienkirche at Zwickau until Thomas Münzer made any further stay impossible, we find him from 1521-23 and, again, from 1533-34, preacher of the new faith at Joachimstal, where he was one of the predecessors of Mathesius.
Wildenauer was one of the most remarkable and independent characters of the time, but an “extremely restless spirit.”[1333] Although a Lutheran, he openly expressed his dissatisfaction, not only with the moral conditions under Lutheranism, but also with many points of his master’s doctrine, particularly with his theory that faith alone justifies, and that man cannot co-operate in the work of his salvation. Luther became at an early date suspicious and angry concerning him. He wrote to Joachimstal “to warn the people against the dubious doctrines of Egranus,” as Mathesius relates, on the strength of copies of certain letters he had seen.[1334] The more dutiful Mathesius speaks of his predecessor as “a Mameluke and an ungrateful pupil.”[1335] His fault consisted in his following the example of Erasmus, as did in progress of time so many other admirers of the Dutch scholar, and relinquishing more and more his former good opinion of Luther’s person and work; with this change his own sad experiences had not a little to do. To the Catholic Church, which had excommunicated him, he apparently never returned. When, in 1534, he was deprived of his post at Joachimstal, he complained in a letter, that he had been “driven into exile and outlawed by Papists and Lutherans alike.”[1336]
In that same year he published at Leipzig a work entitled “A Christian Instruction on the righteousness of faith and on good works,”[1337] which, in spite of its bitterness, contained many home-truths. There, apart from what he says on doctrinal matters, we find an account of the “temptations and trials” he had to endure for having ventured to teach that “good works and a Christian life, side by side with faith, are useful and necessary for securing eternal life.”[1338]
About this time Luther again sent forth a challenge to Erasmus and to all Erasmians generally who had broken with him, Egranus included.
He told his friends that now his business was to “purify the Church from the brood of Erasmus” (“a fœtibus eius”); he was referring particularly to Egranus, also to Crotus Rubeanus, Wicel, [Œcolampadius, and Campanus.[1339] Erasmus had already “seduced” Zwingli and now he had also “converted Egranus, who believes just as much as he,” viz. nothing.[1340]—Egranus he calls a “proud donkey,” who teaches that Christ must not be exalted so high, having learnt this from Erasmus;[1341] “this proud spirit declared that though Christ had earned it, yet we must merit it.”[1342]—He had long been acquainted with this false spirit, so he wrote in 1533 or 1534 to a Joachimstal burgher; he, like other sectarians, was full of “devil’s venom.” “Even though no syrup or purgative be given them, yet they cannot but expel their poison from mouth and anus. The time will come when they will be unable any longer to pass the matter, and then their belly must burst like that of Judas; for they will not be able to retain what they have stolen and devoured of [the doctrine of] Christ.”[1343]
That Egranus finally drank himself to death with Malmsey “is a despicable calumny, which can be traced back to Mathesius.”[1344] In the sixteenth-century controversies it was the usual thing on either side to calumniate opponents and to make them die the worst death conceivable,[1345] and it would appear, that, in the case of Egranus, at a very early date unfavourable reports were circulated concerning his manner of death. His lamentable end (“misere periit”), Luther likens to that of Zwingli, struck down in the battle of Cappel by a divine judgment.[1346] His death occurred in 1535.
In the “Christian Instruction,” referred to above, Egranus had written: “The new prophets can only tell us that we are freed from sin by Christ; what He commanded or forbade in the Gospel that they pass over as were it not in the Gospel at all.” “If we simply say: Christ has done everything and what we do is of no account, then we are making too much of Christ’s share, for we also must do something to secure our salvation. By such words Christ is made a cloak for our sins, and, as is actually now the case, all seek to conceal and excuse their wickedness and viciousness under the mantle of Christ’s merits.”