Though Luther was unflinching in his advocacy of the Presence of Christ together with his pet theories of Impanation and Ubiquity, yet he waged an implacable war on the Sacrifice of the Mass. As, however, we have reserved this for later consideration we shall here only point out, that both his doctrine and his practice with regard to the Sacrament of the Altar suffered by his unhappy opposition to the Mass in which it is celebrated and offered, even more so than by the modifications he had already introduced into the older doctrine.
Invocation of the Saints.
Among those doctrines of the Church from which Luther cut himself adrift only little by little and at the expense of a wrench, must be numbered those dealing with the invocation of the Saints and with Purgatory.
The grand and inspiring belief of the Church in the Communion of Saints, which weaves a close and common band between the living and those souls who have already passed into heaven and those, again, who are still undergoing purification, had at first taken deep root in Luther’s mind. Later on, however, the foundations of this doctrine became more and more undermined, partly owing to his theories on the Church and the Mediatorship of Christ, partly and even more so by his ardent wish to strike a deadly blow at the practical life of the Catholic Church and all that “Popish” worship had erected on this particular doctrine. Veneration of the Saints and intercession for the dead loomed very large among the religious practices dear to the Christian people, though, at that time, they were disfigured by abuses. Luther adroitly used the abuses as a lever for his work.
As late as 1519, in one of his sermons, he urged his hearers to call upon the angels and the Saints; just as on earth one Christian may pray for another and be asked for his prayers, so, as he justly remarks, is it also with the Saints in heaven.[1752] In his Church-postils, however, he raises his voice to condemn the “awful idolatry” by which (so he thought) the “trust” which we should repose on God alone was put in the Saints.[1753] From that time he never tires of declaring that there was “no text or warrant in Scripture for the worship of the Saints”; all he will sanction is the humble petition to the Saints: “Pray for me.”[1754] He required the Wittenberg Canons to erase from the liturgical prayers all reference to the intercession of the saints, as misleading and likely to give offence;[1755] this, in spite of the fact that the liturgical prayers of the Church’s earliest days loudly voice the opposite view. The “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ” of 1530 gives even stronger expression to his abhorrence for all invocation of the Saints. There he says that the light of the Gospel was now so bright that no one could find any excuse for remaining in darkness.[1756]
In his Schmalkalden Articles the invocation of Saints has become one of the “abuses of Endchrist”; for “though the angels in heaven pray for us,” so he explains, again reverting to the ancient teaching of the Church, “and also the Saints on earth, and, perhaps, even those in heaven, yet it does not follow that we are to invoke the angels and the Saints.”[1757]
Mary.
As long as he admitted the invocation of Saints, Luther assigned a prominent place to that of the Blessed Virgin. “She is to be invoked,” he writes in 1521, “that God may give and do according to her will what we ask.”[1758] After he had changed his mind concerning the saints, he was unwilling to allow this any longer.
Owing, however, to the after effects of his Catholic education, here particularly noticeable in him, we meet with many beautiful sayings of his in support of the worship of Mary, although as time went on he grew ever more hostile to it.
“You know,” so he says in a sermon published in 1522, “that the honour paid to the Mother of God is so deeply implanted in the heart of man that we dislike to hear it spoken against, but would much rather it were fostered and encouraged.”[1759]