“You are free to censure abuses, but is it right on their account to throw the whole Church into confusion? You blame the whole for the misdeeds of some of its parts; pleading the defects you attack what is good and thus unsettle everything.” He too, so he tells his opponents, was at pains to go to the sources of Faith, but he preferred the interpretation of Jerome, Augustine and Chrysostom to theirs; and, again, unable to control his indignation, he exclaims: “What incredible arrogance is this that one man should require his reading to be accounted better than that of all the Fathers of the Church, nay, of the Church herself and the whole of Christendom?”[1602]
When passions were at their height voices such as these failed to secure a hearing. The deep chasm torn open by the wanton act of one man could no longer be bridged over; the bond of religion that had hitherto united the German nation had been rudely severed.
5. Luther as described by the Olden “Orthodox” Lutherans
It is a study that will well repay us to follow through the history of Protestantism the changes that Luther’s description underwent. The awakened historical sense of the present day has already led more than one critic to undertake this task, with a crop of interesting results.[1603]
It would be a mistake to think that Luther’s memory survived anywhere among the orthodox Protestants with that freshness and distinctness which the statements of some of his old friends might lead us to expect. Of the actual personality of the man no clear picture had been transmitted. His words and deeds were commented on according to the outlook of the different schools, needless to say, always with a certain affection and admiration, but no one troubled to leave to posterity a living picture of his unique character as a whole.
Tracing the history of the Protestant representation of Luther down to the present day three periods may be distinguished, the so-called Orthodox one, the Pietistic and Freethinking one that followed, and the last hundred years. Orthodoxy, with its rigid attachment to the formularies of Faith, with the assistance of the State was for a long while able to suppress all contrary tendencies; towards the middle of the 18th century, however, the Pietists and, at the other extreme, a free-thinking party also made their appearance on the field.
Pietism was a reaction against the hard-and-fast doctrinal system of an earlier age, which, clinging desperately to Luther’s doctrine of works, tended to be neglectful of the Christian life and of the revival of morals. If Pietism rather exaggerated the moral side of religion, the so-called “Enlightenment” erred in another direction, setting out as it did to vindicate the rights of reason and, in so doing, making scant account of subordination to the truths of Divine revelation.
On the whole, Orthodoxy retained a supernaturalist view of Luther, though it was apt to assume different colours according to the leanings of the several schools.
Pietism, in its conception of his person, frankly throws over the real Luther and seeks to “vindicate his spirit against the claims of his more orthodox adherents.”