Luther, vol. 4 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

This was the bugle-call to the struggle he immediately commenced at Wittenberg against the continued celebration of Mass by the Catholic clergy in the Castle and Collegiate churches of the town. We have already treated of the phases of that campaign in which his impetuosity and intolerance manifested itself in all its nakedness.[1796] From the inglorious combat, thanks to the help of the mob, he was to come forth victorious. On Christmas Day, 1524, for the first time, there was no Mass, and in the following year Justus Jonas wrote of the completion of the work: “On the Saturday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, the whole Pope ... was flung out of All Saints’ church at Wittenberg, together with the stoles, albs, etc.; the olden ceremonies were replaced by pious ones such as accord with Scripture.”[1797]

Luther was convinced that the “whole Pope” could not be destroyed throughout the world save by the abolition everywhere of the Mass. “When once the Mass has been put away,” he declares in 1522, in his screed against Henry VIII., “then I shall think I have overthrown the Pope completely.”[1798]

In this writing his consciousness of his mission and his defiant insistence on the new teaching were largely directed against that palladium of the old Church: “Through me Christ has begun to reveal the abomination standing in the Holy Place” (Dn. ix. 27). It is in denying the sacrificial character of the Mass that he uses those odd words of bravado: “Here I stand, here I sit, here I remain, here I defy with contempt the whole assembly of the Papists,” etc.[1799]

The last act in his warfare on the Mass at the Collegiate church of Wittenberg had been anticipated by Luther’s stormy sermon against the Canon of the Mass (Nov. 27, 1524).[1800] This identical sermon, taken down by his pupil George Rörer, formed the groundwork of the writing he published in 1525, “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse so man den Canon nennet.”[1801]

Here he proceeds on the curious assumption, only to be explained by his perverted enthusiasm, that the mere bringing to light of the Canon (i.e. of the principal part of the Mass, which includes the Consecration and which the priest reads in silence) will suffice to bring about the fall of the whole Eucharistic ritual. The passionate, cynical commentary which he appended to the translation, was, however, far more effective.

The author seems not in the least to realise that the Canon of the Mass is one of the most ancient and most authentic echoes of the early Western Church. It contains sublime religious ideas couched in the simple yet impressive language of the remotest ages of the Church when she was still in touch with classical culture.[1802] Yet Luther’s opinion is that: “It must have been composed by some unlettered monk.”[1803]

He concludes the booklet with a specimen of his usual language: “See, there you have heard the holy, silent Mass and now know what it is, that you may stand aghast at it and cross yourself as though you saw the devil as large as life.” He exhorts the reader to thank God, that “such an abomination has been brought to light,” and “that the great whore of Babylon has been exposed.”

At the same time he tells the secular authorities that it is their bounden duty to interfere “by means of the law” against such defamation of the name of God; “for when an impudent rascal openly blasphemes God in the street, or curses and swears, and the authorities permit it, they become in the sight of God partners in his wickedness. And if in some regions it is forbidden to curse or swear, much more just were it that the secular lords should here do something to prevent and to punish, because such blaspheming and defaming in the Mass is quite as public and as open as when a knave blasphemes in the street. If one is punishable, the other is surely no less so.”[1804]

Thus Luther’s attacks on the Mass in a fatal way became one of the quicksands on which the theory of freedom of conscience and worship which he had put forth at the commencement suffered shipwreck.[1805] Even in the question of the Mass at Wittenberg he had formerly insisted, in opposition to Carlstadt’s violent proceedings, that no religious compulsion should be exercised; this he did, for instance, in the sermons he preached against Carlstadt’s undertaking and particularly in that on Low Masses,[1806] where he declared that faith cannot he held captive or bound, that each one must see for himself what is right or wrong and is not simply to fall in with the “general opinion or to yield to compulsion.” His words were an honourable declaration in favour of freedom of conscience. And now, in his warfare against his fantastic caricature of the Mass, not theoretically only but in practice too (for besides Wittenberg, there was also Altenburg and Erfurt)[1807] he placed the Mass, the most sacred centre of the Church’s worship, on a level with criminal deeds and invited the magistrates to treat it as a sacrilege, since it was the duty of authority “to check all outbreaks of wickedness.”[1808]

When Johann Eck took up his pen to refute Luther’s “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse” he felt it almost superfluous to prove how unfounded the latter’s assertions were, that, by the sacrifice of the Mass, Catholics “denied in deed and in their heart that Christ had blotted out sin”[1809] by His Sacrifice on Golgotha, or that they maintained, that, not the merits of Christ, but rather “our works, must effect this.”[1810] He enters at greater length into the theological proofs of the truly sacrificial character of the consecration and of the correctness and value of the Canon, supplementing the biblical passages on the Sacrifice of the New Covenant by the clear and definite witness of tradition.[1811]