To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.
It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V.[231] Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him.—Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.”[232] He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233] And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.[234]
If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversy of 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.
“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235] “While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236]
His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237]
The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238] In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239] In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.)
This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240] Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542),[241] whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]
In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]
We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,”[244] although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.”—Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.