Luther’s Catechisms were well received and were frequently reprinted.[1910] Many enactments of the secular rulers, particularly in the Saxon lands, insisted that his Shorter Catechism should be learnt by heart and his Larger Catechism be made the basis of the sermons.[1911]
Mathesius wrote: “If Dr. Luther during his career had done nothing more than introduce the two Catechisms into the homes, the schools and the pulpits, reviving prayers before and after meals and on rising and going to bed, even then the whole world could not sufficiently thank or repay him.”[1912]—“Luther’s booklet,” declares O. Albrecht, “became a practical guide to pious patriarchal discipline in the home, and the very foundation of the education of the people in those German lands which had come under the influence of his Reformation.... Even in the Latin schools his Parvus catechismus became, in the 16th century, one of the most widely disseminated handbooks.”[1913]
In the heyday of their triumph the Catechisms were incorporated in the Book of Concord, first in German in 1580 and then in Latin in 1584, and were thus bodily incorporated in the Creed of the Lutheran Evangelical Church. They were accepted “as the layman’s Bible in which all is comprised that is dealt with in Holy Scripture and which it is necessary for a Christian man to know.”[1914] Highly as Luther valued his Catechism,[1915] still he certainly had never intended it to be enforced as a rule of faith, for we have heard him express his readiness to sanction the use of any other short and concise form of instruction. (See above, p. 484.)
Luther had nevertheless taken great pains over his work.
He had been thinking of it long before he actually set to work on it. As early as 1526 he had spoken in his “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts” of the need of a “rude, homely, simple and good work on the Catechism” for the congregation of true Christians which he was planning; indeed, he had already dealt with certain portions of the Catechism in his “Kurcz Form der czehen Gepott” (1520), and in his “Betbüchlin” (1522). It was probably owing to his influence that Jonas and Agricola were entrusted with the drafting of a catechism for boys. While engaged on this work, in 1528, he, as a final preparation for it, preached three courses of sermons on the Catechism. These sermons were first published in 1894 by G. Buchwald in “Die Entstehung der Katechismen Luthers,” being taken from the notes by Rörer; Buchwald draws attention to the close connection existing between the sermons and the text of the Catechism.[1916]
So well did Luther promote the teaching of the elementary truths of religion, that, in a notice given from the pulpit on Nov. 29, 1528, he was able to speak of a rule according to which it was the custom at Wittenberg four times in the year to preach four sermons on the Catechism spread over a fortnight.[1917]
This custom lasted long and spread to other places.[1918] Bugenhagen, so it is said on reliable authority, always carried Luther’s Catechism with him.[1919] He declared, in 1542, that he had already preached about fifty times on the Catechism,[1920] and he seems to have organised and kept up the practice of the “catechism weeks” when pastor of Wittenberg; at any rate the rules he drew up subsequent to 1528 insist repeatedly on such sermons being preached on the Catechism.[1921]