And similarly: “The principles which guided him [in his scheme and arrangement of the Visitation] are precisely the same as appear in his earlier writings.” “It is evident that Luther’s opinions, though ever in a state of growth, were yet in their fundamental lines always the same.”
The opinion expressed by another Protestant theologian comes closer to the truth; he declares openly: The want of logic in Luther’s mode of thought is perhaps “nowhere more apparent than in his views on the authorities and their duty towards religion.... It will never be possible to get away from the contradictions in his theory and between his theory and his practice.”[2303]
It only remains to add, that, of the diverging currents, that one is always the strongest which seems most likely to promote his work, the diffusion of his doctrine and the growth of his Church. A glance at the weathercock of expediency will tell us which tendency we may expect to find predominant, for, as a rule, it is the prospect of success that decides him. At the same time it must be admitted, that, in his zeal for his cause, he is at times hardly aware of the extent to which he is proving untrue to his original plans.
The present-day observer of such vacillation even in matters so far-reaching and fundamental will naturally ask himself how it was that Luther’s fickleness failed to discourage his followers. The answer is, however, not far to seek. He himself, as a general rule, concealed the actual state of the case under the veil of his eloquence, and his partisans were either not aware of how things really stood or else followed him with a blind enthusiasm for the common aims and the common struggle which all his changes and contradictions could not avail to quench. This was the origin of the picture which so many German Protestants cherish of Luther. To them he was a champion of the Church and the State, faithful to his principles to the last. Such a portrait differs widely from that which the historian draws from an impartial study of Luther’s writings and correspondence.[2304]
A Protestant Church-historian, H. Hermelink, recently attempted to place Luther side by side with the “greatest politicians” of our nation.[2305] Although worldly diplomacy and organisation were not Luther’s strong point, still there is much truth in this idea. All that we have said tends to confirm this, though possibly not quite in the sense intended by Hermelink. At the same time what Carl Müller says is also not without its justification: “Luther lacked an insight into the character of the secular government, which, once it has been pushed in a given direction, cannot be expected to stand still at the point which he fixes as the limit of its powers. Thus the longer he lived the more reason he had to complain of the lawyers, and, when he was dead, the process went on even further.”[2306]
END OF VOL. V.
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