Luther, vol. 4 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

[3. Lamentations over the Wounds of the Church and over Her Persecutions]

With the defenders of the Church the depravity of Luther’s teaching, and the immense injury which his work of apostasy was doing to souls, weighed far more heavily than any of the charges we have heard advanced against his person.

In the beginning, it is true, they were chiefly concerned in refuting his new and daring propositions. But, as the years passed and the ruin increased, startling accounts of the sad state of religion more and more often find a place in their polemics, the writers urging against Lutheranism the decay of faith and morals which had followed in its train. In their words we can feel even to-day the fervour and the profound anxiety with which they sought to admonish their contemporaries against the destroyer of the Sanctuary and his seductive ways.

When Johann Cochlæus composed the Preface to his “Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri,” he could not refrain, at the sight of the state of Germany, from giving lively expression to his grief.

To him “the greatest misfortune, which no tears can sufficiently deplore,” is “the fall of so many immortal souls, destined by the grace of baptism for life everlasting.” “This unhappy strife regarding belief,” he writes at the commencement, “has torn them from the bosom and the unity of the Church and will bring them to eternal destruction!” In addition to this there is “a frightful subversion of all things such as no previous heresy had ever brought about.” The bond of charity and concord which unites Christian people has been loosened, discipline undermined, reverence for God destroyed, wholesome fear extinguished, obedience cast aside, and in their lieu prevails “sinfulness and a freedom that is alien to God.”[1315] In the body of the work he describes with pain and indignation how the uncalled preachers behaved. “They come,” so he says in one passage, “and prate of that false freedom which is to set us free from all laws of Church, Pope, bishops and Councils. With a cloud of Scriptural texts they undertake to prove, that fasting, prayers, vigils and other penitential works are no good whatever, that Christ has sufficiently atoned for our sins, that faith alone suffices, that our good works, far from being deserving, are really sinful, and so forth. In glibness of tongue and in energy they are not to be outdone.”[1316]

Johann Wild, Cathedral preacher at Mayence, also describes in moving words the grievous wounds that were being inflicted on the Church. He was a Franciscan Observantine and was distinguished in his Order for his learning and success. After having been from 1528 preacher at the friary church at Mayence, he was appointed in 1539 to the pulpit of the Cathedral, which he retained till his death in 1554. To him it was in part due that what was then the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Rhine Province was preserved in the Catholic faith. He was a type of those men who attempted to meet the spiritual needs of the day, not by loud-voiced polemics, but in a conciliatory and peaceable fashion, and who insisted that the first requirement was to instruct the people thoroughly in the faith, and to raise the moral tone of the faithful. Luther’s name he does not mention once in the many volumes of his sermons, but the complaints are none the less heart-felt that he pours forth concerning the devastation wrought in the Lord’s vineyard, warning his hearers and exhorting them to pity, labour and prayer in the interests of Catholicism, now in such dire straits.

“Woe to all those,” he cries, “who by their preaching have made the world so frivolous and fearless of God! Our forefathers were better advised in this matter. They too preached grace, but they did not forget penance.”[1317] “But now we see, how, by dint of sermons lacking all sense of modesty and urging faith alone, all fear of God is driven out of the hearts of men.”[1318] “One thing, viz. faith, has been extolled to the skies, the other, viz. good works, has been trodden in the mire. The result is that we are now for the most part merely Christians in name, but, so far as works are concerned, more depraved and wicked than even Jews or Turks. Yet they expect it to be said of them: These are Evangelical preachers, comforting folk, who know how to quiet people’s consciences.”[1319] “All sorts of wickedness, injustice and frivolity increase from day to day.” “Since ever there were Christians in the world a godly life has never been so little esteemed as now.”[1320] This, according to him, is the chief cause of all the “very grievous sufferings of the Church,” in comparison with which the spoliation of the clergy was nothing, of the loss of souls, and ruin of religious life. “The cause of the Church’s pain is that her children have been and are so lamentably led astray, that they refuse any longer to acknowledge their own mother, but avoid and flee from her, despise her old age, mock at her wrinkles, laugh at her feebleness, pay no heed to her admonitions, transgress her laws, forsake her doctrine, reject her commands, despise her sacraments, cling to her enemies, wallow in every sort of sin and defile themselves with all kinds of errors. Who can tell all the misery which is now to be met with among Christians by reason of their sins and errors?” How should this not cause pain to the Church, our loving Mother?[1321]—When the discord was on the point of breaking out into an armed conflict, this patriot, deeply moved at the sight of the dissensions that ravaged the Fatherland, exclaimed: Germany has become a byword to her neighbours. “Everybody wants a bit of us.” We have to submit to bitter scorn. They say: “Ha, these are the haughty Germans who help to destroy all other countries and have a finger in every war; now they are going to set to on each other.... Is it not a lamentable thing that foreigners and aliens should speak thus derisively of us?... We must lay it before God and beg Him to forgive those whose fault it is that we cannot reach any agreement. I have always feared this outcome, yet I ever furthered and counselled peace and unity.”[1322]

In a writing presented at the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541 by Duke William of Bavaria, the acts of violence committed by the protesting Estates for years past were thus summarised: “The Protestants clamour for peace and justice, but in their actions they violate both.” The Catholic Estates “are continually molested on account of their religion, and great loss and injury are inflicted on them. Contrary to the commandment of God, in defiance of law and Christian usages, the Protestants forbid them to preach the Gospel and the Word of God openly; their churches and monasteries are seized by force, their subjects enticed away from them by all manner of devices and taken under the shelter of the Protestants; their religious foundations and property are torn from them mercilessly and used for alien purposes, the graves and monuments of the pious dead, both high and low, are desecrated and destroyed; the pictures and images of our Saviour Jesus Christ, of the chaste Virgin Mary and the dear Saints are pitifully damaged and smashed to pieces.” “The Catholics have no dearer wish than for peace and order and justice; they too were clamouring for these, and not like the Protestants, trying at the same time to upset them. All they asked was to be left in the enjoyment of their holy Christian faith and the ordinances of the Christian Church, and not to have their goods violently taken from them.”[1323]—These complaints were, however, ineffective, as the Protestant party had already the upper hand in the College of Electors.

At the Diet of Worms in 1545 the complaints were renewed on the Catholic side: “The Protestants have made themselves masters of churches and monasteries and have driven into misery all who wished to abide by the old faith. They have invaded bishoprics and have been reckless of justice and peace; have constrained the poor inhabitants to embrace their religion, as, for instance, in the land of Brunswick, where they had no other right than the might of the sword. They trample under foot and oppress everything, and then complain of being themselves oppressed.” “They are insatiable in their demands and are for ever producing fresh cards to play, at every Diet putting forward fresh claims which they insist on having conceded to them before they will take part in the transactions or vote supplies.”[1324] The Catholics further declared in the sittings of a committee at Worms, in answer to the charges of their opponents concerning the real abuses which prevailed among the bishops and elsewhere: “Scandals and abuses innumerable certainly existed and were openly flaunted, and were growing worse and worse nowadays, because, owing to the perilous times and the teaching of novel sects and preachers, all good works were being abandoned, and unbelief and contempt for religion was becoming the custom among high and low. Many thousand livings stood vacant and the people were without helm or rudder.” “Where were the schools and the Divine worship? Where the foundations and endowments for the poor which had been so numerous twenty or thirty years ago?” “What the Protestants call proclaiming the Word of God is for the most part, as they themselves complain, mere slander and abuse of the Pope and the clergy and a general reviling of mankind.” The pulpit has “degenerated into a chair of scurrility at which foreign nations are shuddering.” Not many years before Luther had openly exhorted the preachers to “denounce the Duke of Brunswick in their sermons as a servant of the devil, likewise the Archbishop of Mayence and all followers of the Pope.”[1325]

“If we wish to discover the causes of the war which is undoubtedly at hand,” so the Cologne doctor, Carl van der Plassen, who was well acquainted with the conditions in Germany, wrote from the Diet of Worms, “we must bear in mind all that has happened in Germany since the subjugation of the peasants by the Princes and municipal authorities, all the countless violations of human and Divine law, of the public peace, of property, civic rights, conscience and honour. Let us but reckon up the number of churches and monasteries which have been destroyed and pillaged during these twenty years, and all the accompanying crime and iniquity. And to what purpose have these stolen goods been applied? What has become of all the Church property, all the treasures?... A new religion has been forced upon the people by might and by stratagem, and they have been forbidden under threat of punishment to carry on the old service of God, with its rites and Christian usages. Is this the vaunted freedom of the Gospel, to persecute and coerce others, to imprison them or drive them into exile? Everything that was formerly reverenced has now fallen into contempt, with the result that right and property are no longer respected; the endless disturbances in matters of religion have upset the whole national equilibrium; discipline, loyalty and respectability have vanished.... What misery results from want of clergy and schools even in the lands which have remained Catholic! Princes and towns, making their boast of the Gospel, have not been satisfied with introducing the new Church system into their own territories, but have invaded the Catholic bishoprics and secular dominions and turned everything topsy-turvy in order to set up their own institutions. The Schmalkalden confederates extend their operations from year to year and grow more and more audacious. At this moment they are actually preaching a war of extermination against the Pope and his adherents. There will be no checking them if the sword of the Emperor is not used to restrain them, as it ought to have been long ago.”[1326]