[1783] Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 243. There were, however, always some voices raised amongst Protestants to demand that the “Sacrifice and Atonement” under some shape or form should be insisted on more than the sermon. The Presence of Christ, as taught by Luther, although this Presence did not involve a sacrifice, was made use of to oppose any further denuding of worship. “No longer is the Sacrifice and the Atonement which takes place at the Altar to be the centre of Divine worship,” Pastor E. Strack wrote in 1904, in “Der alte Glaube,” 1903-4, 5, col. 1255, “but, according to modern views, God is merely present in the listening congregation by virtue of the Word preached from the pulpit. Hence the pulpit becomes the central point, the altar an accessory. To this we cannot agree. Without atonement we have no God; hence no altar either ... and no pulpit.”
[1784] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 24: “Stante missa Lutherus est damnatus, ruente missa totum fundamentum papæ corruit.”
[1785] Ibid., p. 19: “nam ego toto pectore illam adorabam.” But cp. below, p. 509, n. 2.
[1786] Above, vol. i., p. 275.
[1787] Ibid., p. 276.
[1788] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 18.
[1789] Cp. vol. i., p. 15 f. and, besides the references given there, a passage from George Rörer’s MS. of the Table-Talk, given by E. Kroker, “Archiv für RG.,” 5, 1908, p. 354, where Luther, in a paroxysm of terror at the words of the Canon “offero tibi Deo vivo æterno [sic],” says: “Sic perterrefiebam, ut ab altari discedere cogitabam, et fecissem, nisi me retinuisset meus præceptor, quia cogitavi: Who is He with Whom you are speaking? From that time forward I said Mass with terror, and I am thankful to God that He has released me from it.”
[1790] On a solemn occasion, at the conclusion of his “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” in 1528, he has it, that, though he had “spent his youth damnably,” yet his having been a monk and his having said Mass had been his greatest sins. See below, p. 524.
[1791] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 443 ff.; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, pp. 81, 83 seq.
[1792] Ibid., 2, p. 738 ff.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 25 ff.