Luther openly admits that it was only gradually that he came to attack the Church so bitterly.
When King Henry VIII reproached him with the contradictions apparent between his earlier and later teaching on the Papacy and the Church, Luther boldly appealed in 1522 in his “Contra Henricum regem Angliæ” to his having only gradually learnt the whole truth: “I did not yet know that the Papacy was contrary to Scripture.… God had then given me a cheerful spirit that suffered itself to be despised [by his opponents].… By dint of so doing they forced me on, so that the further I went the more lies I discovered … until it became plain from Scripture, thanks to God’s Grace, that the Papacy, episcopacy, foundations, cloisters, universities, together with all the monkery, nunnery, Masses, services were nothing but damnable sects of the devil.… Hence it came about that I had to write other books in condemnation and retractation of my earlier ones.”[1154] He will also, so he adds ironically, retract what he had previously said in his “De captivitate Babylonica,” viz. that the Papacy was the prey of a strong Nimrod, as this had scandalised the lying King of England, who was himself the robber of his country. This, in his own style, he now proposes to amend as follows: “I should have said: The Papacy is the arch-devil’s most poisonous abomination hitherto seen on earth.”[1155]
If it was a difficult matter to give an account of Luther’s invisible Church, owing to the changes which took place in his own views, even more difficult is the task of tracing the further growth of his teaching. His invisible Church becomes more and more clearly a visible Church; yet all the while it protests, that, in its nature, it is invisible.
4. The Church becomes visible. Its organisation
What was Luther’s view of the Church’s character when the time came to set up new congregations within the circle of the “Evangel”?
Theologically the question is answered in the authentic publicly accepted explanations he gave of his doctrine on the Church. Of these the oldest is comprised in the Schwabach Articles of 1529,[1156] where we read in Article XII:
There is “no doubt that there is and ever will be on earth a holy Christian Church until the end of the world, as Christ says in Matt, xxviii. 20.… This Church is nothing else than the believers in Christ, who hold, believe and teach the above-mentioned articles and provisions [of the Schwabach Confession], and who, on this account, are persecuted and tormented in the world. For where the Gospel is preached and the sacraments rightly used, there is the holy Christian Church, bound by no laws and outward pomp to place or time, persons or ceremonies.”—“Thus did the Evangelical idea of the Church,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau, “find expression once and for all in the fundamental confessions of Protestantism, faith in Christ being identified with faith in the said ‘articles and provisions.’”[1157]
In the “Augsburg Confession” of 1530—“which Confession,” according to Luther, “was to last till the end of the world and the Last Judgment”[1158]—we read: “The Church is the mateship of the saints (‘congregatio sanctorum’) in which the Evangel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly dispensed.”[1159] The “Apologia” to this Confession contains the following: “The Church is not merely a commonwealth of outward things and rites like other institutions, but it is rather a society of hearts in faith and the Holy Ghost. She has, however, outward signs by which she may be known, viz. the pure doctrine of the Gospel and a dispensing of the sacraments in accordance with Christ’s Gospel.”[1160] Of “Church government” the Confession of Augsburg states: “Concerning the government of the Church we hold that no one may teach publicly or dispense the sacraments without being duly called”; this is further explained in the “Apologia”: “The Church has the command of God to appoint preachers.”[1161]
Regarding the same matter the Schmalkalden Articles of 1537-1538, which also form a part of the “Symbolic Books,” have the following: “The Churches must have power to call, choose and ordain the ministers of the Church, and such power is in fact bestowed on the Church by God … just as, in case of necessity, even a layman can absolve another and become his pastor.… The words of Peter: ‘You are a kingly priesthood’ refer only to the true Church, which, since she alone has the priesthood, must also have the power to choose and ordain ministers. To this the general usage of the Churches also bears witness.”[1162]