Luther, on the other hand, after the publication of the ninety-five Theses, in his German sermon on Indulgences and Grace,[1334] addressed himself directly to the populace. He poured out his scorn on the school-opinions of the theologians and the “bawling” of the envious; they seek, he says, your “pennies,” not your souls, and preach for the sake of their “money-box.” He appealed very cleverly to their more sordid instincts, hinting that the money might be better spent on the poor in their own neighbourhood than on the building of St. Peter’s; at the end, sure of his success with the multitude, he abused those who called him a heretic, as “darkened intellects who had never even sniffed a Bible ... and had never grasped their own teaching.”
What was the nature of Tetzel’s reply? His “Vorlegung” of the Sermon,[1335] being intended for the people, was naturally written in German, but in the wearisome style of the Latin theology of the Schools. In point of matter and logical accuracy it was indeed far superior to Luther’s superficialities, but the clumsy German in which it was couched and the number of quotations it borrowed from the Fathers could only make it distasteful to the reader. It is hardly possible to recognise in its language the popular orator who was such a favourite with the people. The seriousness of his tone contrasts strangely with Luther’s airy style. It is easy to believe his honest assurance, that he was ready to submit his views to the judgment of the learned and to the ecclesiastical authorities, and to risk even life itself for the holy Faith of the Catholic past. Only towards the end of the short work, when refuting Luther’s twentieth proposition, does Tetzel, not very skilfully, retaliate upon his opponent—though even here he does not name him—for the coarse and abusive language he had used in this thesis. Tetzel says, it would be seen from a consideration of their reasons which of the two it was who had “never sniffed a Bible,” never grasped his own teaching and applied to the study of theology “a brain like a sieve”; which of the two was the schismatic, heretic, etc.
In his reply to the “Vorlegung,” which he published in his own name under the title “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bebstlichen Ablass,”[1336] Luther spared no venom: Sun and moon might well wonder at the light of wisdom displayed by such a poetaster; evidently he had a superabundance of paper and leisure; but his artificial flowers and withered leaves must be scattered to the winds; he had dared to treat “the scriptural text, which is our comfort (Rom. xv. 4), as a sow would treat a sack of oats.” His opponent’s offer to risk a trial by fire or water for the Faith, he treats with the utmost scorn and derision: “My honest advice to him would be, modestly to restrict himself to the juice of the grape and to the steam that arises from the roast goose to which he is so partial.”—Some Protestants have urged that Luther’s rudeness of tone, here displayed for the first time, may be explained by his opponent’s example. How little this defence of Luther accords with the true state of the case is plain from the above.
As regards Silvester Prierias the matter stands somewhat differently. The “Dialogus,” composed by the Master of the Palace in hot haste in reply to Luther’s “arrogant Theses on the power of the Pope” (the ninety-five Indulgence Theses he had nailed to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg), a work written with all the weighty scholarship of the Schoolmen and criticising each thesis in detail, contained in its thirty-three octavo pages a number of exaggerations and words calculated to offend.
The lively Southerner was not content with proving that much in Luther’s Theses was provocative, contrary to dogma, criminal, seductive, sarcastic, etc., but, even in the Dedication to Leo X, he starts off by saying that: Luther had dared to rise up against the truth and the Holy See, but that he, the writer, would see whether “his iron nose and brazen neck were really unbreakable.”[1337] Luther preferred to “snap secretly” rather than to put forward plain doctrines.[1338] “If it is in the nature of dogs to snap, then I feel sure you must have had a dog for your father, for you are ever ready to bite.”[1339] Luther having in one passage put forward a statement that was true, Prierias tells him: “You mix a little truth with much that is false, and thus you are a spiritual leper, for you have a spotted skin that shines partly with true, partly with false colours.”[1340] Referring to the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, he says to Luther rather maliciously: “You blame in the case of the first church of Christendom what was extolled when other churches were being built. Had you received a fat bishopric from the Pope with a plenary indulgence for the erection of your church, then, perhaps, you would have found friendly words in plenty and have belauded the Indulgences on which now you pour contempt.”[1341]
These are lapses in style which a high official of the Pope should have known better than to commit.
Yet it is clear from Luther’s reply that they did not exasperate him nearly so much as did Prierias’s energetic repudiation of his teaching and his calm exposure of the untenable nature of his assertions. What alarmed him was the fact that a highly placed Papal dignitary should have shown the contrast between his innovations and the theology and practice of the Church; he now perceived clearly the practical consequences of his undertaking and the direct entanglement it would involve with Rome. Hence the frame of mind in which he composed his “Responsio ad Dialogum,” etc. (1518),[1342] was not due so much to his opponent’s personalities as to the whole aspect of affairs, to the shakiness of his own position and to his fierce determination to win respect for and to further at the expense of Rome the new doctrine which he now had ready-made in his mind. Whoever recalls the spirit which breathes in his Commentary on Romans and the violent language found in his sermons and letters even before 1518, will readily estimate at its true worth the statement, that what drove him onwards was the insolence of Prierias. Unfortunately, Prierias’s “Dialogue” shares the fate of the Latin works which appeared in Germany in defence of Catholicism in the early days of the struggle with Luther: Save by a few theologians, they are never read, and, indeed, even were they read, it is doubtful whether they would be rightly understood except by those familiar with Scholasticism; hence discretion in passing judgment is doubly necessary.
In the Reply of 1518 now under consideration, Luther, in view of the person and position of his opponent, and of the possible consequences, is more restrained in his abuse than in other writings soon to follow. Yet, anxious as he was to furnish a real answer to the criticisms of an author so weighty, we find irony, rudeness and attempts to render ridiculous the “senile” objections of the “Thomaster,” the “sophist” and all his “taratantara,” intermingled with unwarrantable attacks on “Thomistic” theology, that storehouse whence his opponent purloined “his phrases and his shouting.” The reply opens with the words: “Your Dialogue, Reverend Father, has reached me; it is a rather high-flown writing, quite Italian and Thomistic.” It also ends in the same vein. “If for the future you don’t bring into the arena a Thomas armed with better weapons, then don’t expect to find again such consideration as I have just shown you. I have bridled myself so as not to return evil for evil. Good-bye.”
When, in 1519, the Dominican whom he had thus insulted published, first a “Replica” in the form of a short letter addressed to Luther, and then the “Epitome” (an abstract of his investigations into the theological questions then under discussion), it was impossible for Luther to complain of any too harsh treatment; the tone of the “Replica,” although dealing with Luther’s attacks on the person of the Roman scholar, falls immeasurably short of his assailant’s in point of bitterness. It is conciliatory, indeed proffers an olive-branch, should the Wittenberg professor retract the new doctrines which Rome was determined to condemn.[1343] As for the “Epitome,” it is merely a theological review of the doctrines involved, which it clearly states and establishes whilst vigorously refuting all opinions to the contrary. It is accompanied by a grave warning to Luther not to impugn the authority of the Roman Church.[1344]
This was, however, sufficient to let loose the anger of the German Reformer, who meanwhile had advanced considerably, and whose wrath now manifested itself in his rejoinders. Such was his presumption that he actually reprinted in Germany both works of Prierias as soon as they had been published; the “Replica” he introduced with the derisive remark, that, as the author had threatened to give birth to more, they must pray that he might suffer no abortions.[1345] His reprint of the “Epitome” in 1520 was accompanied by contemptuous and satirical annotations, and by a preface and postscript where he breaks out into the language already described, about Antichrist seated in the Temple of God in the Roman Babylon, about the happiness of the separated Greeks and Bohemians and about the washing of hands in the blood of the Popish Sodom.[1346] It was the seething ferment in Luther’s own mind, not anything that Prierias had said, that was really responsible for such outbursts. The flood-gates had now been thrown open, and even from the Catholic side came many a wave of indignation to lend acrimony to the contest.