Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

But what—and this is the main objection—entitles Luther’s doctrine to be regarded as the standard of belief? This point Luther usually evaded. He says: Those heretics are to be punished “whose teaching is at variance with the public articles of the faith which are plainly grounded on Scripture and believed throughout the world by the whole of Christendom.”[915] “Such articles, common to the whole of Christendom, have already been sufficiently tested, examined, proved and determined by Scripture and by the confession of the whole of Christendom, confirmed by many miracles, sealed by the blood of the holy Martyrs, witnessed to and defended by the books of all the Doctors and are not now to become the prey of faultfinders or cavillers.”[916] A sharp answer, one very much to the point, was given by Bullinger of Zürich, who spoke of it as “truly laughable” that his opponent should suddenly appeal to the fact “of the Church having so long held this.” “If Luther’s argument, based on longstanding usage, be admitted, then is Popery quite in the right when it harps on the Church and her age. But then the whole of Luther’s own doctrine tumbles over, for his teaching is not that which the Roman Church has held for so long.”[917]—Nor is it easy to tell which points of doctrine Luther, in his elastic fashion, included among the articles “clearly founded on Scripture” and held unquestioningly by the whole of Christendom. His words occasionally presuppose that all divergent doctrines, not only those of the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists, but even those of the Papists, were to be punished by the authorities. If everyone is to be punished who teaches “that Christ has not died for our sins but that each one must himself make satisfaction for them,”[918] (a doctrine unjustly foisted on the Papists by Luther), or who “condemns the public ministry and draws the people away from it,” or who “insists that our baptism and preaching are not Christian and therefore that our Church is not the Church of Christ,”[919] etc.,—then many Catholics could not but fall victims to the sword of the authorities. How often did not Luther designate every specifically Catholic doctrine as rank “blasphemy,” and stigmatise every Catholic practice as idolatry? Blasphemy and idolatry were, however, according to him, to be rooted out by violence. Truly his words gave promise of an abundant harvest of persecution.

As a reason of his animus against heretics within his own fold Luther finally brings forward those personal considerations which are familiar to all who have followed his controversies.

His natural foes are those who in their “peculiar wisdom” “seek to teach something besides Christ and beyond our preaching.”[920] Hence he was fond of insisting that Christ was slaying the Papacy through him, and of rejecting all who “make a great pother” and “claim to know something new.” They come, and, like Carlstadt, want to “seize upon the prize and poach upon my preserves.” Had not Carlstadt come along “with the fanatics, Münzer and the Anabaptists, all would have gone well with my undertaking.”[921] These men want to “darken the sun of the Evangel” so that the world “may forget all that has hitherto been taught by us.”[922]

“They want to have nothing to do with me,” he complains of the fanatics, “and I want to have nothing to do with them. They boast that they have nothing from me, for which I heartily thank God; I have borrowed even less from them, for which, too, God be praised.”[923] The rupture with the Swiss came about because they “wished to be first.”[924]

In all these dissensions he finds many a one saying to the Christians: “I am your Pope, what care I for Dr. Martin.” And yet he alone had the right to call himself the “great Doctor” “to whom God first revealed His Word to preach.”[925]

But did not his very self-reliance finally broaden the ideas of the preacher of coercion? Did not Luther in a sermon preached at Eisleben on Feb. 7, 1546, as good as repudiate his former exclusivism?

It is true that this has been confidently asserted by Protestants, but the text of this sermon, known only through Aurifaber’s Notes, does not justify such an inference.[926] In it the preacher is not treating of the attitude of the Christian authorities towards heresy, but is only showing how the faithful and the preachers must behave, surrounded as they are by wicked folk, by Anabaptists and sectarians. The occasion for speaking of this was supplied by the Sunday Gospel of the Tares, Matt. xiii. 24-30, which grow up together with the wheat in God’s field, and which the Lord wishes to be left undisturbed until the Day of Judgment. Hence he explains how this must be understood, the local conditions probably supplying him with a particular reason for doing so, seeing that, in the County of Mansfeld, there must still have been some Catholics and that the Jews stood in favour. The greater part of the Sermon on the Tares is devoted to describing the passions and lusts which Christians must fight against in their own hearts with patience and perseverance. It is only towards the end that he speaks of the wickedness rampant in the world. He refutes the opinion of those, who “would have a Church in which there is no evil but where all are prudent and pious, and pure and holy”; thus “the Anabaptists, Münzer and such like, wish to root out and put to death everything that is not holy.” Hence “how are we to suffer the heretics and yet not to suffer them? How am I to act? If I tear up or root out the tares in one place then I spoil the wheat [according to the Parable], and the weeds will still grow up again elsewhere. Thus if I root out one heretic, yet the same devil-sown seed springs up again in ten other places.” Hence we must look to it that we do not make matters worse by violence and suppression. “Papists and Jews will ever be with us.” “You will not succeed in this world in entirely separating the heretics and false Christians from the just.” “Look to it that you remain master in your own household; see to it, you preachers, parsons and hearers [it is only to these that he is addressing himself, not to the State authorities], that heretics and seditious men, such as Münzer was, do not rule or dominate; grumble in a corner, that indeed they may do, but that they should mount the rostrum, get into the pulpit or go up to the altar, that, so far as in you lies, you must not allow.” Care must be taken that the “pulpit and the Sacrament are kept undefiled.” “By human might and power we cannot root them out, or make them different. For, in this point, they are often far superior to us, can get themselves a following, draw the masses to them, and, on the top of it all, they have on their side the prince of this world, viz. the devil.”

The main thing therefore is that the heretics “should not rule in our Churches.”

But what are we to do against the tares, against the Papists and Sophists, against Cologne, Louvain and the devil’s other thistles? Of boils it holds good: “Let them swell until they burst. So too it is in secular and domestic government: Where [whether in the Town Council or among the servants] we cannot get rid of the wicked without harm or detriment, there we must put up with them until the time is ripe.”