The Landgrave Philip wrote to Luther, and Luther now repeated with warmth his own desire for a 'well-established union,' which would enable the Protestants to oppose a common front to the immoderate arrogance of the Papists. He only warned him again lest the matter should remain 'rotten and unstable in its foundations.' The Landgrave then arranged, with Luther's approval, a conference between Melancthon and Butzer at Cassel for December 27, 1534. Luther sent to them a 'Consideration, whether unity is possible or not.' He repeated in this tract, with studied precision and emphasis, those tenets of his doctrine to which Butzer had referred. The matter, he said, ought not to remain uncertain or ambiguous. But when Butzer now agreed with Luther's own opinion, and sent to him at Wittenberg an explanation that Christ's Body was truly present, but not as food for the stomach, Luther, in January 1535, declared as his judgment, that, since the South German preachers were willing to teach in accordance with the Augsburg Confession, he, for his part, neither could nor would refuse such concord; and since they distinctly confessed that Christ's Body was really and substantially presented and eaten, he could not, if their hearts agreed with their words, find fault with these words. He would only prefer, as there was still too much mistrust among his own brethren, that the act of concord should not be concluded quite so suddenly, but that time should be allowed for a general quieting down. 'Thus,' he said, 'our people will be able to moderate their suspicion or ill-will, and finally let it drop; and if thus the troubled waters are calmed on both sides, a real and permanent union can be ultimately brought about.' Of the Swiss no notice was taken in these negotiations.
Meanwhile Butzer and Philip had to rest content with this; and was it not an important step forwards? This work of union, together with the Council which was to help in uniting the whole Church, took a prominent place during the next few years of Luther's life and labours.
CHAPTER II.
NEGOTIATIONS RESPECTING A COUNCIL AND UNION AMONG THE PROTESTANTS.—THE LEGATE VERGERIUS 1535.—THE WITTENBERG CONCORD 1536.
Pope Paul III., who succeeded Clement VII. in October 1534, seemed at once determined to bring about in reality the promised Council. And in fact he was quite earnest in the matter. He was not so indifferent as his predecessor to the real interests of the Church and the need of certain reforms, and he hoped, like a clever politician, to turn the Council, which could now no longer be evaded, to the advantage of the Papacy. With this object, and with a view in particular of arranging the place where the Council should be held, which he proposed should be Mantua, he sent a nuncio, the Cardinal Vergerius, to Germany.
In August 1535 Luther was desired by his Elector to submit an opinion on the proposals of the Pope. He thought it sufficient to repeat the answer he had given two years before, namely, that the prince had then fully expressed his zeal for the restoration of Church unity by means of a Council, but at the same time had required that its decisions should be strictly according to God's Word, and declared that he could not give any definite consent without his allies. Luther still declined, moreover, to believe that the project of a Council was sincere.
The university of Wittenberg had been removed during the summer to Jena, on account of a fresh outbreak of the plague, or at all events an alarm of it, and there they remained till the following February. Luther, however, would not listen to the idea of leaving Wittenberg. This time he could stay there in all rest and cheerfulness with Bugenhagen, and make merry with the idle fears of others. To the Elector, who was full of anxiety about him, Luther wrote on July 9, saying that only one or two cases of the disease had appeared; the air was not yet poisoned. The dog-days being at hand, and the young people frightened, they might as well be allowed to walk about, to calm their thoughts, until it was seen what would happen. He noticed, however, that some had 'caught ulcers in their pockets, others colic in their books, and others gout in their papers;' some, too, had no doubt eaten their mother's letters, and hence got heart-ache and homesickness. The Christian authorities, he said, must provide some strong medicine against such a disease, lest mortality might arise in consequence,—a medicine that would defy Satan, the enemy of all arts and discipline. He was astonished to find how much more was known of the great plague at Wittenberg in other parts than in the town itself, where in truth it did not exist, and how much bigger and fatter lies grew the farther they travelled. He assured his friend Jonas, who had gone away with the university, that, thanks to God, he was living there in solitude, in perfect health and comfort; only there was a dearth of beer in the town, though he had enough in his own cellar. Nor did Luther afterwards give way to fear when compelled to acknowledge several fatal cases of the plague, and when his own coachman once seemed to be stricken with it. He himself was a sufferer, throughout the winter, from a cough and other catarrhic affections. 'But my greatest illness,' he wrote to a friend, 'is, that the sun has so long shone upon me,—a plague which, as you know well, is very common, and many die of it.'
The Papal nuncio now arrived at Wittenberg, and desired to speak to Luther in person. After an interview at Halle with the Archbishop Albert, he had taken the road through Wittenberg on his way to visit the Elector of Brandenburg at Berlin. On the afternoon of November 6, a Saturday, he entered Wittenberg in state, with twenty-one horses and an ass, intending to take up his quarters there for the night, and was received with all due honour at the Elector's castle by the governor Metzsch. Luther was invited, at the nuncio's request, to sup with him that evening, but as the former declined the invitation, he was asked with Bugenhagen to take breakfast with him the next morning. It was the first time, since his summons by Caietan at Augsburg in 1518, that Luther had to speak with a Papal legate—Luther, who had long since been condemned by the Pope as an abominable child of corruption, and who in turn had declared the Pope to be Antichrist. So important must Vergerius have thought it, to attempt to influence, if even only partially, the powerful adviser of the Protestant princes, and thereby to prevent him from check-mating his plans in regard to a Council. And in this respect Vergerius must have had considerable confidence in himself.
The next morning Luther ordered his barber to come at an unusually early hour. Upon the latter expressing his surprise, Luther said jokingly, 'I have to go to the Papal nuncio; if only I look young when he sees me, he may think "Fie, the devil, if Luther has played us such tricks before he is an old man, what won't he do when he is one?"' Then, in his best clothes and with a gold chain round his neck, he drove to the castle with the town-priest Bugenhagen (Pomeranus). 'Here go,' he said, as he stepped into the carriage, 'the Pope of Germany and Cardinal Pomeranus, the instruments of God!'
Before the legate he 'acted,' as he expressed it, 'the complete Luther.' He employed towards him only the most indispensable forms of civility, and made use of the most ill-humoured language. Thus he asked him whether he was looked upon in Italy as a drunken German. When they came to speak about the settlement of the Church questions in dispute by a Council, Vergerius reminded him that one individual fallible man had no right to consider himself wiser than the Councils, the ancient Fathers, and other theologians of Christendom. To this Luther replied that the Papists were not really in earnest about a Council, and, if it were held, they would only care to treat about such trifles as monks' cowls, priests' tonsures, rules of diet, and so forth; whereupon the legate turned to one of his attendants, who was sitting by, with the words 'he has hit the right nail on the head.' Luther went on to assert that they, the Evangelicals, had no need of a Council, being already fully assured about their own doctrine, though other poor souls might need one, who were led astray by the tyranny of the Popedom. Nevertheless he promised to attend the proposed Council, even though he should be burned by it. It was the same to him, he said, whether it was held at Mantua, Padua, or Florence, or anywhere else. 'Would you come to Bologna?' said Vergerius. Luther asked, thereupon, to whom Bologna belonged, and on being told 'to the Pope,' 'Gracious heavens,' he exclaimed, 'has the Pope seized that town too?—Very well, I will come to you even there.' Vergerius politely hinted that the Pope himself, would not refuse to come to Wittenberg. 'Let him come,' said Luther; 'we shall be very glad to see him.' 'But,' said Vergerius, 'would you have him come with arms or without?' 'As he pleases,' replied Luther; 'we shall be ready to receive him in either way.' When the legate, after their meal, was mounting his horse to depart, he said to Luther, 'Be sure to hold yourself in readiness for the Council.' 'Yes, sir,' was the reply, 'with this my very neck and head.'