The truth is that few of Luther’s assistants promoted his cause with such devotion and determination combined as did Pomeranus, who, for all his zeal, was both practical and sober in his ways. Such were his achievements for the cause, that Luther greets him in the superscription of a letter as “Bishop of the Church of Wittenberg, Legate of Christ’s face and heart to Denmark, my brother and my master.” He thus explains the words “legatus a facie et a corde”: “the Pope boasts of his ‘legati a latere,’ I boast of my pious preachers ‘a facie et a corde.’”[1355] Luther was in the habit of putting Bugenhagen on the same footing with himself and Melanchthon: Luther, Philip, and Pomeranus will support the Evangel as long as they are there, he says, but after this there will come a fall (“fiet lapsus”).[1356] Let those braggarts who pretend they know better “come to me, to Philip, and to Pomeranus ... then they will be nicely confounded.”[1357] Köstlin is, however, rightly of opinion that, as compared with Luther and Melanchthon, Bugenhagen was “merely a subordinate, though endowed by nature with considerable powers of mind and body.”[1358] Yet the sun of Luther’s favour shone upon him. Agricola, “the poor fellow,” says Luther, “looks down on Pomeranus, but the latter is a great theologian and has plenty nerve for his work (‘multum habet nervorum’); Agricola, of course, would make himself out to be more learned than Master Philip or I.”[1359] “Pomeranus is a splendid professor”; “his sermons are full of wealth.”[1360] The truth is that the “wealth,” or rather expansiveness, of his discourses was so great that Luther had to reprove him severely for the length of his sermons.
Johann Bugenhagen, called Pommer or Pomeranus because he hailed from Wollin in Pomerania, after two years spent at the University of Greifswald and a further course devoted mainly to Humanist studies, was ordained priest by the Bishop of Cammin, when “as yet he probably had not begun to study theology.”[1361] At the College at Treptow he earned respect as professor of Humanism and as Rector; in his desire to further the better theology advocated by Erasmus he took to studying the Bible, and, on Luther’s appearance, was soon won over to the cause, though on first reading Luther’s work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” he “had been repelled by the palpable heresies” it contained. He settled at Wittenberg, delivered private lectures on the Psalms, and married, on October 13, 1522, a servant-maid of Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer; in the following year he was inducted at the Schlosskirche as parish-priest of Wittenberg by the magistrates, acting together with Luther. In defiance of right and justice and of the murmurs raised, Luther, from the pulpit, proclaimed him pastor, thus overruling the objections of the Chapter; his choice by the board of magistrates “and by the congregation agreeably with the evangelical teaching of Paul,” Luther held to be quite sufficient.[1362]
As pastor, Bugenhagen displayed great energy not merely in preaching to and instructing the people, but in furthering in every way the spread of Lutheranism in the civic and social life of the Electorate. His practical talents made him eventually the apostle of the new Church, even beyond the confines of Saxony. He successively introduced or organised it in Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, and in Pomerania, his own country; then in Denmark, from 1537-39, where he fixed his residence at Copenhagen. Two main features are apparent in all he did; everywhere the new Churches were established on a strictly civil basis, and, so far as the new religion allowed of it, the old Catholic forms were retained.
In his indefatigable and arduous undertakings Bugenhagen made himself one with Luther, and became, so to speak, a replica of his master. In his scrupulous observance of Luther’s doctrine he was to be outdone by none, save possibly by Amsdorf; in rudeness and want of consideration where the new Evangel was concerned, and in his whole way of thinking, he stood nearest to Luther, the only difference being, that, in his discourses and writings we miss Luther’s imagination and feeling. In the literary field, in addition to the Commentary on the Psalms and other similar writings, he distinguished himself by a work in vindication of the new preaching, addressed to the city of Hamburg and entitled: “Von dem Christen-loven und den rechten guden Werken” (1526), also by the share he took, with Melanchthon and Cruciger, in Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and his labours in connection with the Low-Saxon version. Most important of all, however, were his Church-constitutions. Bugenhagen died at Wittenberg on April 20, 1558, after having already lost his sight—broken down by the bitter trials which had come on him subsequent to Luther’s death.
Such was Luther’s confidence in his friend and appreciation of his power, that, during Bugenhagen’s prolonged absence, we often find Luther expressing his desire to see him again by his side and in charge of the Wittenberg pastorate. “Your absence,” so in 1531 he wrote to him at Lübeck, “is greatly felt by us. I am overburdened with work and my health is not good. I am neglecting the Church-accounts, and the shepherd should be here. I cannot attend to it. The world remains the world and the devil is its God.... Since the world refuses to allow itself to be saved, let it perish. Greet your Eve and Sara in my name and that of my wife and give greetings to all our friends.”[1363]
When Bugenhagen was at Wittenberg Luther loved to open to him the secret recesses of his heart, especially when suffering from “temptations.” Frequently he even aroused in Bugenhagen a sort of echo of his own feelings, which shows us how close a tie existed between them, and gives us an idea of the kind of suggestion Luther was wont to exercise over those who surrendered themselves to his influence.
Bugenhagen, like Luther, was not conscious of any good-will or merit of his own, but—apart from the merits of Christ with which we are bedecked—merely of the oppression arising from his “great weakness” and “secret idolatry against the first Table of the Law of Moses.” Hence, when Luther, in June, 1540, complained that Agricola was after some righteousness of his own, whereas he (Luther) could find nothing of the sort in himself, Bugenhagen at once chimed in with the assurance that he was no less unable to discover any such thing in himself.[1364]
Luther’s anger against the fanatics and Sacramentarians was imbibed by Bugenhagen. To him and his other Table-guests Luther complained that his adversaries, Carlstadt, Grickel and Jeckel (i.e. Agricola and Jacob Schenk), were ignorant braggarts; they accuse us of want of charity because we will not allow them to have their own way, though we read in Paul: “A man that is a heretic avoid.” Bugenhagen was at once ready to propose a drastic remedy. “Doctor, we should do what is commanded in Deuteronomy [xiii. 5 ff.], where Moses says they should be put to death.” Whereupon Luther replied: “Quite so, and the reason is given in the same text: It is better to make away with a man than with God.”[1365] Bugenhagen was also the first to take up his pen in Luther’s defence[1366] when the Swiss heresy concerning the doctrine of the Supper began to be noised abroad owing to a letter of Zwingli’s to Alber at Reutlingen, and to his book, “Commentarius de vera et falsa religione,” of March, 1525. When Melanchthon showed signs of inclining towards the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament, there was soon a rumour at Wittenberg that “Melanchthon and Pomeranus have fallen out badly on the Article concerning the Supper,” and an apprehension of “dreadful dissensions amongst the foremost theologians.”[1367]
In 1532 Luther declared: There must be some ready to show a “brave front” to the devil; “there must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan, as we three [Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen]; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[1368] And on another occasion he described, in Bugenhagen’s presence, how he was wont cynically to mock the devil when “he comes by night to worry me ... by bringing up my sins”; Satan did not, however, torment him about his really grave sins, such as his “celebration of Mass and provocation of God [in the religious life].” “May God preserve me from that! For were I to realise keenly how great these sins were, the horror of it would kill me!” It was on the occasion of this fantastic outburst, employed by Luther to quiet his conscience, that Bugenhagen, not to be outdone in coarseness, uttered the words already recorded (above, p. 178).[1369]
The spiritual kinship between Luther and Bugenhagen produced in the latter a similar liking for coarse language. He was much addicted to the use of strong expressions, witness, for instance, his saying that friars wore ropes around their waists that we might have wherewith to hang them.[1370]