Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Thomas Murner, the Strasburg Franciscan, a man who was wont to scourge the failings and abuses in the Church of his day in very outspoken language, frankly admitted in a reply to Luther’s book “An den Adel” that much of the Wittenberg monk’s censure might be useful to those who wanted to put a stop to immorality, and to abuses and obsolete ecclesiastical customs and statutes. He even goes so far as to say to Luther: “Where you speak the truth, there undoubtedly the Holy Spirit speaks through you, for all truth is of God.” He adds, however, “Where you do not speak the truth, there assuredly the devil speaks through you, he who is the father of lies.” Speaking of the pictures of Luther with the symbol of the dove, which even then were common, in his satirical fashion, he suggests an improvement: “They paint the Holy Spirit over your head as though He were speaking through you. Now I learn for the first time that the Holy Spirit can say silly things.… I should suggest that they paint over your head, the Holy Ghost on one side and the devil on the other, and, in the middle, the city of Prague,” (to symbolise the heresy of Hus of which he accused Luther).[1578] Anxious as Murner was to see an end of the real abuses which Luther censured, yet, in the true Catholic spirit, he left to the ecclesiastical authorities the right and duty of taking the initiative, and it was to them that he addressed his urgent exhortations.

Cochlæus is likewise unable to refrain from remarking that, in Luther’s writings, side by side with what is worthless there is much that is good, in his exposition of Holy Scripture, in his exhortations and also in his censures. For many men, and among them some of high standing, believed [at first] that he was guided by the Spirit of God and by zeal for virtue to remove the abuses of the hypocrites, to amend morals to improve the education of the clergy, and to promote in people’s hearts the love and worship of God.“[1579] Cochlæus points out how Luther had taught his followers to steep themselves in the Bible, so that they gained “so much skill and experience” that they had “no scruples in disputing about the faith and the Gospel even with magisters and doctors of Holy Scripture”; they had been much more diligent than the Catholics in learning by heart the Bible in its German dress; they were in the habit “of quoting Scripture more than the priests and monks did, for which reason they accused Catholics of being ignorant of it or not understanding it however learned they might be as theologians”; their teachers “quoted the Greek and Hebrew texts, and the variant readings, scoffed at our theologians when they were ignorant of these things and all agreed in representing Luther as the best theologian in the world.” Cochlæus also admits, that, in the field of historical criticism Luther and his party were ahead of many Catholic preachers, who, albeit in good faith, were fond of adducing “fables and tales invented by men.” He describes the zeal of the Protestant printers, which far exceeded that of the Catholics, the “diligence, care and money” lavished on the writings of their party, and “how carefully and accurately they printed their books”; apostates and escaped monks travelled far and wide through Germany, peddling Lutheran writings “like booksellers.”[1580]—It is notorious, on the other hand, that the Catholic writers were hardly able to find publishers. At Ingolstadt Cochlæus managed to preserve a Catholic printing press, which was in danger of being shut down, and established a second at Mayence whence a large number of good works issued. “Stress must be laid on the self-sacrifice with which Cochlæus, after having by dint of many privations amassed a sum of money for the publication of his own writings, devoted it to the printing of the works of one of his colleagues, being convinced that they would prove of greater benefit to the common cause than his own productions.”[1581]

In all these particulars, in the study of Holy Scripture, in the cultivation of historical and critical research among the clergy, in the use of the vernacular and of the art of printing for the instruction of the faithful, a real, though rather slow, change for the better took place. Had it not been for the misgivings felt even in the highest circles, and for a certain amount of prejudice against anything new, due to the fear of heresy, the gains doubtless would have been even greater and more quickly secured. In all this the Church owed much to Protestant example, for it was the innovators who involuntarily pointed out better methods of satisfying the spiritual needs of the new age, and a more effectual way of exerting a religious influence over the people.

Further examples of this are to be found in the sermons and in the catechism.

Clear-sighted Catholic contemporaries, like the worthy Dominican preacher and writer Johann Mensing, comparing the Bible preaching used and advocated by Luther with the empty, vapid sermons in vogue among many of the Catholic preachers were keenly conscious of what was lacking. At the close of a book written in 1532 Mensing exhorts the Catholic clergy to study Holy Writ and to make more use of it in the pulpit: “There are some now who say that Luther has driven the learned to Scripture. Would to God it were true that our well-beloved masters and brothers, the theologians, would turn their hearts wholly to Holy Scripture and leave out those other questions which serve no useful purpose. Some of them preach the laws and canons of heathen doctors and poets which are of small help to salvation, or they air their own opinions, and, where Scripture and Holy Church or the witness of the olden Doctors is not enough, reinforce them by incredible miracles, whereas, with the aid of Holy Scripture, they ought to endeavour to establish in men’s hearts the fear of God, faith, hope and charity, mildness and pity and such like.” If they learn something from the Lutherans in this then “we may hope that God has permitted Luther’s heresy for our good, it being to our profit that such heresy has arisen, and, as some declare, driven us to the Scriptures.” Mensing wonders, however, whether the dispersal of the monks, the plundering of the convents and lack of stipends for learned theologians and preachers will not make study of any kind a difficult matter for a long while to come.[1582]

In the field of catechetical instruction it was clear that Luther and his followers had given their attention very skilfully to the young, the better to imbue the rising generation with their doctrines. At the time of Luther’s first appearance, as recent research has established, in many parts of Germany there was no regular, systematic religious instruction of the young by the clergy or in the schools, but the children were left to pick up what they could in the home or from the public sermons.[1583] There were indeed regulations in force for the priests and the schools, but they were not acted upon. About the very elementary home instruction, Cochlæus had words of commendation in 1533. As they were taken to the services and the sermons, the children had, he says, “sucked in” their religion “as it were with their mothers’ milk, and this is still the case to-day amongst Catholics.”[1584] In his sermons published in 1510 Gabriel Biel asks for no more than that the parents should impart to their children a knowledge of the things essential and prepare them for their first communion.[1585]

Luther, however, as our readers know, insisted that his preachers must concern themselves directly with the children.

He enjoined on them to preach from the pulpit at set times, even daily if necessary, on the most elementary points of doctrine, and again at home in the house to the children and servants in the mornings and evenings; if they wished to make Christians of them these points would have to be recited or read to them, “and this, not merely in such a way that they learn to say the words by heart, but that they be questioned on them one by one and made to say what each means and how they understand it.”[1586] “Let no one think himself above giving such instruction to the children or look down upon it,” he wrote; “Christ, when He wished to train up men, had to become a man, hence, if we are to train up children, we must become children with them.” At Wittenberg and elsewhere from 1528 onwards four sermons a week for two weeks on end were preached on the Catechism four times a year. When, seeing the importance of the matter, Luther himself took the Catechism in hand he was so anxious to make it popular and practical, that he first published his “Smaller Catechism” (1529) in the form of sheets to hang upon the wall (this method had been used even before his day), and thus to act on the memory through the eye.