In his war against the Mass Luther was never to yield an inch. His “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse” was followed by fresh pronouncements and writings which bear witness to the intensity of his hatred.
The occasion for another lengthy writing against the Mass and the hierarchy seems to have been furnished in 1533 by the religious conditions in the province of Anhalt, where the Princes, under pressure from their Catholic neighbours, had begun to tolerate the former worship and the saying of Mass. In Dec. of that year Luther published his booklet “Von der Winckelmesse und Pfaffen Weihe.”[1825]
It was designed primarily as a protest against “the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and Ordination,” i.e. against the hierarchy and priesthood, and broadly hinted to the “bishops and priests” that their Order was doomed to destruction. At the Diet of Augsburg he declared his followers had “very humbly informed the Pope and the bishops, that we had no wish forcibly to infringe on their rights and authority in ecclesiastical matters, but that, so long as they did not compel us to any unchristian doctrines, we were quite ready to be ordained and governed by them, and even to assist them in their administration,” but his overtures having been rejected, nothing remained for him but to await the end of the priesthood when God should “in good time” so dispose. “God is wonderful”; He had “overthrown by His word” so much “papistical Mammon-service and idolatry”; “He would also be able to wipe away the rancid Chresam,” i.e. to make an end of the bishops and priests in whose ordination Chrism was used.[1826] Towards the end of the tract he returns to the attack on priestly ordination. He is determined “again to adjudge and commit to the Churches the call, or true ordination and consecration to the office of pastor.” The members of the Church must have the “right and authority to appoint people to the office,” and to entrust it to simple believers of blameless lives, even “without Chrism or butter, grease or lard.”[1827]
The greater portion of the writing is, however, devoted to the “Corner-Mass,” i.e. the Mass generally, which according to the Catholic doctrine is equally valid whether celebrated by the priest alone in a lonely chapel or amid a concourse of faithful who unite their prayers with his and communicate. For reasons readily understood, Luther prefers to use the contemptuous term “Corner-Mass.”
Towards the end he himself sums up the thoughts on the Mass which he has just submitted:[1828]
He had the best grounds for “being affrighted,” that he and others “had once said the Corner-Mass so devoutly.” After the reasons he had advanced, everyone, particularly the Papists to-day, must be driven to despair at the frightful idolatry of the Mass; yet they “wantonly persist in their abomination.” “They pervert Christ’s ordinance, say their Mass not merely in disobedience to God, but also blasphemously and without any command, give the sacrament to no one but keep it for themselves alone, and, to make matters worse, are not even certain whether they are receiving merely bread and wine or the Body and Blood of Christ, because they do not follow Christ’s ordinance.”
Here he plainly enough questions the presence of Christ under the consecrated elements in the “Corner-Mass” and has thus made a notable stride forward in his hostility.
“Nor can anyone be certain,” so he continues his summing up, “whether they [the priests, in the Canon of the Mass] pronounce the Words [of institution] or not; hence no one is bound to believe their secret antics. Neither do they preach to anyone, though Christ commanded it.” In his opinion it was essential both that the words of institution should be spoken aloud, in order to stimulate faith, and that the service should include the preaching of the Word—minor matters, which, however, became of the greatest importance to him when once he had reduced it all to the status of a mere ceremonial of edification.
He boldly concludes. “It is also impossible that they [the Popish sayers of Masses] can be right in their faith.” For, as already demonstrated, “one and the same man could not believe aright and yet knowingly rage against the Word of God. Hence they can neither pray, nor offer thanks in such a way as to be acceptable to God. And, finally, over and above these abominations and crimes, they actually dare to offer to God this sacrament (if what is disgraced by so much blasphemy and abomination can be called a sacrament) and to barter and sell it to other Christians for money.”
The book on the “Winckelmesse” is celebrated for the disputation between Luther and the devil which it describes. The devil sets forth the proofs against the Mass with marvellous skill, and, by his reproaches, drives the quondam monk into desperate straits. Here Luther is describing the deep remorse of conscience which he will have it he had to endure on account of his Masses. He is, however, merely using a literary artifice when he introduces the devil as the speaker; of this there will be more to say later.[1829] Here, in addition to a letter, which so far has received but little attention, in which he himself furnishes the key to the form in which he casts his argument,[1830] we may mention the fact that Luther’s first draft of his writing on the “Winckelmesse,” which has recently been examined, gives a portion of the devil’s arguments against the Mass and without any reference to the devil, as the author’s own; only later on was the devil made the spokesman for Luther’s ideas.[1831] We can see that it was only as the work proceeded that there occurred to Luther the happy thought of making the devil himself speak, not so much to reveal to the world the worthlessness of the Mass, as to cast if possible poor Luther into despair, because of his former Mass-sayings, and to reveal the utter perversity of the Papists, who, far from being in despair, actually boasted of the Mass.