The devil, however, plays the chief part. Luther’s considered judgment on the Zwinglians, for instance, is, that they are “soul-cannibals and soul-assassins,” are “endeviled, devilish, yea, ultra-devilish and possessed of blasphemous hearts and lying lips.”[961]
The Lawyers.
Luther’s aversion for the “Jurists” grew yearly more intense. His chief complaint against them was that they kept to the Canon Law and put hindrances in his way. Their standpoint, however, as regards Canon Law was not without justification. “Any downright abrogation of Canon Law as a whole was out of the question. The law as then practised, not only in the ecclesiastical but even in the secular courts, was too much bound up with Canon Law; when it was discarded, for instance, in the matrimonial cases, dire legal complications threatened throughout the whole of the German Empire.”[962] To this Luther’s eyes were not sufficiently open.
His crusade against the validity of clandestine engagements which he entered upon in opposition to his friend and co-religionist, Hieronymus Schurf, his colleague in the faculty of jurisprudence at the University of Wittenberg, was merely one episode in his resistance to those who represented legalism as then established.
In another and wider sphere his relations with those lawyers, who were the advisers at the Court of his Elector and the other Princes, became more strained. This was as a result of their having a hand in the ordering of Church business. Here again his action was scarcely logical, for he himself, forced by circumstances, had handed over to the State the outward guidance of the Church; that the statesmen would intervene and settle matters according to their own ideas was but natural; and if their way of looking at things failed to agree with Luther’s, this was only what might have been foreseen all along.
In a conference with Melanchthon, Amsdorf and others in Dec., 1538, he complained bitterly of the lawyers and of the “misery of the theologians who were attacked on all sides, especially by the mighty.” To Melchior Kling, a lawyer who was present, he said: “You jurists have a finger in this and are playing us tricks; I advise you to cease and come to the assistance of the nobles. If the theologians fall, that will be the end of the jurists too.” “Do not worry us,” he repeated, “or you will be paid out.” “Had he ten sons, he would take mighty good care that not one was brought up to be a lawyer.” “You jurists stand as much in need of a Luther as the theologians did.” “The lawyer is a foe of Christ; he extols the righteousness of works. If there should be one amongst them who knows better, he is a wonder, is forced to beg his bread and is shunned by all the other men of law.”[963]
On questions affecting conscience he considered that he alone, as theologian and leader of the others, had a right to decide; yet countless cases which came before the courts touched upon matters of conscience. He exclaims, for instance, in 1531: Must not the lawyers come to me to learn what is really lawful? “I am the supreme judge of what is lawful in the domain of conscience.” “If there be a single lawyer in Germany, nay, in the whole world, who understands what is ‘lawful de jure’ and ‘lawful de facto’ then I am ... surprised.” The recorder adds: “When the Doctor swears thus he means it very seriously.” Luther proceeds: “In fine, if the jurists don’t crave forgiveness and crawl humbly to the Evangel, I shall give them such a doing that they will not know how to escape.”[964]
Thus we can understand how, in that same year (1531), when representatives of the secular law interfered in the ecclesiastical affairs at Zwickau against his wishes, he declared: “I will never have any more dealings with those Zwickau people, and I shall carry my resentment with me to the grave.” “If the lawyers touch the Canons they will fly in splinters.... I will fling the Catechism into their midst and so upset them that they won’t know where they are.”[965] If they are going to feed on the “filth of the Pope-Ass,” and “to put on their horns,” then he, too, will put on his and “toss them till the air resounds with their howls.” This from the pulpit on Feb. 23, 1539.[966]