Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

With regard to Melanchthon A. Hänel says: To Protestantism “religious freedom was denied at every point.” When Melanchthon wrote to Calvin in praise of the execution of Servetus, his letter, according to Hänel, “was not, as has been imagined, dictated by the mere passion of the moment, but was the harsh consequence of a harsh doctrine.”[974] It must be admitted, remarks the Protestant theologian A. Hunzinger, “that Melanchthon was wont to lose no time in having recourse to fire and sword. This forms a dark blot on his life. Many a man fell a victim to his memorandum, who certainly had no wish to destroy the ‘regna mundi.’”[975]

In consequence of the precipitate and often brutal intervention of the authorities against real or alleged heretics Melanchthon had afterwards abundant reason to regret his appeal to the secular power. He himself, as early as Aug. 31, 1530, had foretold, “that, later, a far more insufferable tyranny would arise than had ever before been known,” viz. the tyranny due to the interference of the Princes in whose hands the power of persecution had been laid. Hence his exclamation: “If only I could revive the jurisdiction of the bishops! For I see what sort of Church we shall have if the ecclesiastical constitution is destroyed.”[976] As we know, he was anxious gradually to graft the old ecclesiastical constitution on Luther’s congregations.

Coming from Luther and fostered by Melanchthon, these intolerant ideas profoundly influenced all their friends.

Not as though there was ever any lack of opponents of the theory of coercion among the Protestants, or even in Luther’s own flock. On the contrary there were some who had the sense of justice and the courage to resist the current of intolerance coming from Wittenberg. Indeed it was the protests which Luther encountered at Nuremberg which led him to emphasise his harsh demands.

Already in 1530 Luther’s follower Lazarus Spengler wrote from Nuremberg to Veit Dietrich begging him to seek advice of Luther and to request his literary help; in the town there were some who opposed any measures of coercion against the divergent doctrines, “some of ours, who are not fanatics but are regarded as good Christians,” desire that neither the “Sacramentarians nor the Anabaptists” should be prosecuted so long as they do not “stir up revolt,” nor yet the errors prohibited of “the preachers of the godless Mass and other idolatries”; “they appeal on behalf of this to Dr. Luther’s booklet, which he some while ago addressed to Duke Frederick the Elector of Saxony against the fanatic Thomas Münzer, in which he approves this view and admits it to be quite sound.”[977]

At Augsburg (1533) the Lutheran lawyer, Conrad Hel, siding with his Catholic-minded confrères Conrad Peutinger and Johann Rehlinger[978] openly and courageously denied the Town-Councils any rights in the matter. In 1534 Christoph Ehem, a patrician of Augsburg, who also held Lutheran views, wrote a little work in which he demanded universal and unconditional toleration and invited the Council to place some “bridle and restraint” on the new preachers.[979] At that time (1536) the Lutheran preacher Johann Forster protested very strongly against Bucer, and refused to hear of the forcible suppression of Catholic worship in Cathedral churches outside the jurisdiction of the civic authorities; he appealed in this matter to Luther. Bucer just then was bent on suppressing the Catholic worship with the help of the magistrates. Forster was finally silenced by dint of “ranting, raging and shouting” and was indignantly asked: “Whether he wished to tolerate Popery and submit to such idolatry?”[980]

At Strasburg in 1528 the Protestant Town-Clerk, Peter Butz, set a brave example by openly and severely condemning in the Council the system of coercion planned by some of the preachers. Against the intolerance towards sectarians advocated by Bucer, preachers and scholars like Anton Engelbrecht, Wolfgang Schultheiss, Johann Sapidus and Jacob Ziegler were not slow to protest,[981] though they had nothing to say against the violent abolition of Catholic worship.

At Coire the preacher Johann Gantner came into conflict with Bullinger on account of the coercive measures favoured by the latter; he reproached the inhabitants of Zürich and Berne with having fallen away from the freedom of the Evangel into the Mosaic bondage. Gantner and others, in support of their protest, usually appealed against the prevailing tendency to Sebastian Franck’s “Chronica,” published at Strasburg in 1531.[982]

Sebastian Franck, the witty and learned opponent of Luther, “after Luther himself, the best and most popular German prose writer of the day,” took the line of pushing to its bitter end Luther’s subjectivism. He declared that the new preachers had made of Holy Scripture a paper idol for the benefit of their private views, and that the Lutheran Church was the invisible kingdom of Christ and as such numbered among its members men of every sect; hence he argued that what was termed false doctrine and false worship should not be interfered with.[983] As Kawerau points out, Franck found in the 16th century “not a few readers wherever dissatisfaction prevailed with the Papacy of the theologians”;[984] nevertheless, in 1531, he was expelled from Strasburg on account of his liberal views; later on, when he had taken up his residence at Ulm, Melanchthon wrote thither, in 1535, that he should be “dealt with severely” (“severe coercendum”) no less than Schwenckfeld.[985] Driven from Ulm he went to Basle in 1539, but even there the echo of the verdict of the Wittenbergers reached him; in March, 1540, the theologians assembled at Schmalkalden, condemned him and charged him with “inducing people to seek the spirit while neglecting the ‘Word’”; they themselves, they added, had broken with the Churches of the Pope because of their idolatry, but there was “no reason whatever for throwing over the ministry in our own Churches.”[986]