“That we are now so lazy and cold in the performance of good works,” he says, in a recently published sermon of 1528, “is due to our no longer regarding them as a means of justification. For when we still hoped to be justified by our works our zeal for doing good was a marvel. One sought to excel the other in uprightness and piety. Were the old teaching to be revived to-day and our works made contributory to righteousness, we should be readier and more willing to do what is good. Of this there is, however, no prospect and thus, when it is a question of serving our neighbour and praising God by means of good works, we are sluggish and not disposed to do anything.”[696] “The surer we are of the righteousness which Christ has won for us, the colder and idler we are in teaching the Word, in prayer, in good works and in enduring misfortune.”[697]
“We teach,” he continues, “that we attain to God’s grace without any work on our part. Hence it comes that we are so listless in doing good. When, once upon a time, we believed that God rewarded our works, I ran to the monastery, and you gave ten gulden towards building a church. Men then were glad to do something through their works and to be their own ‘Justus et Salvator’ (Zach. ix., 9).” Now, when asked to give, everybody protests he is poor and a beggar, and says there is no obligation of giving or of performing good works. “We have become worse than formerly and are losing our old righteousness. Moreover, avarice is increasing everywhere.”[698]
Though here Luther finds the reason of the neglect of good works so clearly in his own teaching, yet on other occasions, for instance, in a sermon of 1532, he grows angry when his doctrine is made responsible for the mischief.
Only “clamourers,” so he says, could press such a charge. Yet, at the same time, he fully admits the decline: “I own, and others doubtless do the same, that there is not now such earnestness in the Gospel as formerly under the monks and priests when so many foundations were made, when there was so much building and no one was so poor as not to be able to give. But now there is not a town willing to support a preacher, there is nothing but plundering and thieving among the people and no one can prevent it. Whence comes this shameful plague? The clamourers answer, ‘from the teaching that we must not build upon or trust in works.’ But it is the devil himself who sets down such an effect to pure and wholesome doctrine, whereas it is in reality due to his own and the people’s malice who ill-use such doctrines, and to our old Adam.... We are, all unawares, becoming lazy, careless and remiss.”[699]
“The devil’s malice!” This is another explanation to which Luther and others not unfrequently had recourse. The devil could do such extraordinary and apparently contradictory things! He could even teach men to “pray fervently.” In the Table-Talk, for instance, when asked by his wife why it was, that, whereas in Popery “we prayed so diligently and frequently, we are now so cold and pray so seldom,” Luther put it down to the devil. “The devil made us fervent,” he says; “he ever urges on his servants, but the Holy Ghost teaches and exhorts us how to pray aright; yet we are so tepid and slothful in prayer that nothing comes of it.”[700] Thus it might well be the devil who was answerable for the misuse of the Evangel.
On another occasion, in order to counteract the bad impression made on his contemporaries by the fruits of his preaching, he says: “Our morals only look so bad on account of the sanctity of the Evangel; in Catholic times they stood very low and many vices prevailed, but all this was unperceived amidst the general darkness which shrouded doctrine and the moral standards which then held; now, on the other hand, our eyes have been opened by a purer faith and even small abuses are seen in their true colours.” His words on this subject will be given below.
It even seemed to Luther that the decay of almsgiving and the parsimony displayed towards the churches and the preachers proved the truth of the Evangel (“signum est, verum esse evangelium nostrum”), for, so he teaches in a sermon preached at Wittenberg in 1527, “the devil is the Prince of this world and all its riches, as we learn from the story of Christ’s Temptation. He is now defending his kingdom from the Evangel which has risen up against him. He does not now allow us so many possessions and gifts as he formerly did to those who served him (i.e. the Papists), for their Masses, Vigils, etc.; nay, he robs us of everything and spends it on himself. Formerly we supported many hundred monks and now we cannot raise the needful for one Evangelical preacher, a sign that our Evangel is the true one and that the Pope’s empire was the devil’s own, where he bestowed gifts on his followers with open hands and incited them to luxury, avarice, fornication and gluttony. And their teaching was in conformity therewith, for they urged those works which pleased them.”[701]
The observer may well marvel at such strange trains of thought. Luther’s doctrine has become to him like a pole-star around which the whole firmament must revolve. Experience and logic alike must perforce be moulded at his pleasure to suit the idea which dominates him.
It was impossible to suppress the inexorable question put by his opponents, and the faint-hearted doubts of many of his own followers: Since our Saviour taught: “By their fruits shall you know them,” how can you be a Divinely sent teacher if these are the moral effects of your new Evangel? And yet Luther, to the very close of his career, in tones ever more confident, insists on his higher, nay, Divine, calling, and on his election to “reveal” hidden doctrines of faith, strange to say, those very doctrines to which he, like others too, attributed the decline.
Concerning his Divine mission he had not hesitated to say in so many words: Unless God calls a man to do a work no one who does not wish to be a fool may venture to undertake it; “for a certain Divine call and not a mere whim” is essential to every good work.[702] Hence he frequently sees in success the best test of a good work. In his own case, however, he could point only to one great result, and that a negative one, viz. the harm done to Popery; the Papacy had been no match for him and had failed to check the apostasy. The Papists’ undertaking, such is his proof, is not a success; it goes sideways “after the fashion of the crab.” “Even for those who had a sure Divine vocation it was difficult to undertake and carry through anything good, though God was with them and assisted them; what then could those silly fools, who wished to undertake it without being called, expect to do?” “But I, Dr. Martin, was called and compelled to become a Doctor.... Thus I was obliged to accept the office of a Doctor. Hence, owing to my work, this which you see has befallen the Papacy, and worse things are yet in store for it.” To those who still refused to acknowledge Luther’s call to teach he addresses a sort of command: St. Paul, 1 Cor. xiv., 30, commanded all, even superiors, to be silent and obey “when some other than the chief teacher receives a revelation.” “The work that Luther undertakes,” “the great work of the Reformation,” he assures all, was given not to the other side, but to him alone.[703]—It is no wonder that his gainsayers and the doubters on his own side refused to be convinced by such arguments and appeals to the work of destruction accomplished, but continued to harp on the words: “By their fruits you shall know them,” which text they took literally, viz. as referring to actual fruits of moral improvement.