He had begun this writing with an allusion to the devil, viz. to “the wiles of tiresome Satan against the holy Evangel”; he also concludes it in the same vein, speaking of the “tiresome devil,” who secretly plots against the schools and thereby against the salvation of both town and country.[38]
The author goes at some length into the question of languages and declares that the main reason for learning them was a religious one.
Languages enable us “to understand Holy Scripture,” he says, “this was well known to the monasteries and universities of the past, hence they had always frowned on the study of languages”; the devil was afraid that languages would make a hole “which afterwards it would not be easy for him to plug.” But the providence of God has outreached him, for, by “making over Greece to the Turks and sending the Greeks into exile, their language was spread abroad and an impetus was given even to the study of other tongues.” And now, thanks to the languages, the Gospel has been restored to its “earlier purity.” Hence, for the sake of the Bible and the Word of God, let us hark back to the languages. His excellent observations on the importance of the study of languages for those in secular authority, though perfectly honest, hold merely a secondary place. The chief use of the languages is as a weapon against the Papacy. “The dearer the Evangel is to us, the more let us hold fast to the languages!”
So anxious is he to see the future schools thoroughly “Christian,” i.e. Evangelical and all devoted to the service of his cause, that he expressly states that otherwise he “would rather that not a single boy learnt anything but remained quite dumb.” Hence the earlier “universities and monasteries” must be made an end of. Their way of teaching and living “is not the right one for the young.” “It is my earnest opinion, prayer and wish that these donkey-stables and devil-schools should either sink into the abyss or else be transformed into Christian schools. But now that God has bestowed His grace upon us so richly and provided us with so many well able to teach and bring up the young, we are actually in danger of flinging the grace of God to the winds.” “I am of opinion that Germany has never heard so much of God’s Word as now.… God’s Word is a streaming downpour, the like of which must not be expected again.”[39]
Hence the two writings differ but little from his usual polemical and hortatory works. They do not make of Luther the “father of the national schools,” as he has been erroneously termed, because, what he was after was not the real education of the masses but something rather different; still less do the booklets, with their every page reeking of the Word of God which he preached, make him the father of the modern undenominational schools.[40]
In fact, elementary schools as such have scarcely any place in these writings. What concerns him is rather the Latin grammar schools, and only as an afterthought does he passingly allude to the other schools in which children receive their first grounding.[41]
Luther’s standpoint as to the Church’s need of Grammar Schools is always the same, even when he speaks of them in the Table-Talk.
“When we are dead,” he says for instance, “where will others be found to take our place unless there are schools? For the sake of the Churches we must have Christian schools and maintain them.”[42]—“When the schools multiply, things are going well and the Church stands firm.”[43]—“By means of such cuttings and saplings is the Church sown and propagated.”—“The schools are of great advantage in that they undoubtedly preserve the Churches.”[44]
“Hence a reformation of the schools and universities is also called for,” so he writes in a memorandum,[45] immediately after having declared, that “it is necessary to have good and pious preachers; all will depend on men who must be educated in the schools and universities.”[46]
For this reason, viz. on account of the preparation they furnished, he even has a kind word for the schools of former days.