Life of Luther

by Julius Köstlin

Still the promise which Luther had given to his Augustinian brethren, only a few weeks before, under pressure from Miltitz, remained as yet unfulfilled. Nor did Miltitz himself wish the threads of the web then spun to slip from his fingers. Even at this hour, with the consent and at the wish of the Elector, an interview had been arranged between Miltitz and Luther at the Castle of Lichtenberg (now Lichtenburg, in the district of Torgau), where the monks of St. Antony were then housed. Just as Miltitz, as we have seen, had thought to be able to avert the bull by getting Luther to write a letter to the Pope, so now he promised the Elector still to conciliate the Pope by that means. Only the letter was to be dated back to the time, before the publication of the bull, when Luther first gave his consent to write it. Its substance was to be as then agreed upon; Luther, as Miltitz expressed it, was to 'eulogise the Pope personally in a manner agreeable to him,' and at the same time submit to him an historical statement of what he had done. Luther consented to publish a letter in these terms, in Latin and German, under date of September 6, and immediately gave effect to his promise.

It is hardly conceivable how Miltitz could still have nurtured such a hope. Neither his wish to ingratiate himself with the Elector Frederick, and to checkmate the plans of Eck whom he detested, nor his personal vanity and flippancy of character, are sufficient to account for it. He must have learnt from his own previous personal intercourse with the Pope, and his experiences of the Papal court, that Leo did not take up Church questions and controversies so gravely and so seriously as not to remain fully open all the time to influences and considerations of other kinds, and that around him were parties and influential personages, arrayed in mutual hostility and rivalry. He must have been strangely ignorant of the state of things at Rome. But as to Luther and his cause there was no longer any hesitation in that quarter.

In what sense Luther himself was willing to comply with the demand of Miltitz, the contents of his letter suffice to show. He makes it clear that nothing was further from his intention than to appease the angry Pontiff by any dexterous artifices or concealments. The assurance required from him, that he had no wish to attack the Pope personally, he construes in its literal terms, apart altogether from the official character and acts of Leo. And in fact against his personal character and conduct he had never said a word. But he takes this opportunity, at the same time, of speaking to him plainly, as a Christian is bound to do to his fellow-Christian; of repeating to him, face to face, the severest charges yet made by him against the Romish chair; of excusing Leo's own conduct in this chair simply and solely on the ground that he regarded him as a victim of the monstrous corruption which surrounded him, and of warning him once more against it as a brother. He tells him to his face that he himself, the Holy Father, must acknowledge that the Papal see was more wicked and shameful than any Sodom, Gomorrah, or Babylon; that God's wrath had fallen upon it without ceasing; that Rome, which had once been the gate of heaven, was now an open jaw of hell. Most earnestly he warns Leo against his flatterers,—the 'ear-ticklers' who would make him a God. He assures him that he wishes him all that is good, and therefore he wishes that he should not be devoured by these jaws of hell, but on the contrary, should be freed from this godless idolatry of parasites, and be placed in a position where he would be able to live on some smaller ecclesiastical preferment, or on his own patrimony. As for the historical retrospect which Miltitz wanted, and which Luther briefly appends to this letter, all that the latter says in vindication of himself is, that it was not his own fault, but that of his enemies, who had driven him further and further onward, that 'no small part of the unchristian doings at Rome had been dragged to light.'

[Illustration: Fig. 23.—TITLE-PAGE, slightly reduced, of the original Tract 'On the Liberty of a Christian Man.' The Saxon swords are represented above, and the arms of Wittenberg below.]

Luther sent with this letter, as a present to the Pope, a pamphlet entitled 'On the Liberty of a Christian Man.' This is no controversial treatise intended for the great struggle of churchmen and theologians, but a tract to minister to 'simple men.' For their benefit he wished to describe compendiously the 'sum of a Christian life'; to deal thoroughly with the question, 'What was a Christian? and how he was to use the liberty which Christ had won and given to him.' He premises as an axiom that a Christian is a free lord over all things, and subject to nobody. He considers, first of all, the new, inner, spiritual man, and asks what makes him a good and free Christian. Nothing external, he says, can make him either good or free. It does not profit the soul if the body puts on sacred vestments, or fasts, or prays with the lips. To make the soul live, and be good and free, there is nothing else in heaven or on earth but the Holy Scriptures, in other words, God's Word of comfort by His dear Son Jesus Christ, through Whom our sins are forgiven us. In this Word the soul has perfect joy, happiness, peace, light, and all good things in abundance. And to obtain this, nothing more is required of the soul than what is told us in the Scriptures, namely, to give itself to Jesus with firm faith and to trust joyfully in Him. At first, no doubt, God's command must terrify a man, seeing that it must be fulfilled, or man condemned; but when once he has been brought thereby to recognise his own worthlessness, then comes God's promise and the gospel, and says, Have faith in Christ, in Whom I promise thee all grace; believe in Him, and thou hast Him. A right faith so blends the soul with God's word, that the virtues of the latter become her own, as the iron becomes glowing hot from its union with the fire. And the soul becomes joined to Christ as a bride to the bridegroom; her wedding-ring is faith. All that Christ, the rich and noble bridegroom possesses, He makes His bride's; all that she has, He takes unto Himself. He takes upon Himself her sins, so that they are swallowed up in Him and in His unconquerable righteousness. Thus the Christian is exalted above all things, and becomes a lord; for nothing can injure his salvation; everything must be subject to him and help towards his salvation; it is a spiritual kingdom. And thus all Christians are priests; they can all approach God through Christ, and pray for others. 'Who can comprehend the honour and dignity of a Christian? Through his kingship he has power over all things, through his priesthood he has power over God, for God does what he desires and prays for.'

But the Christian, as Luther states in his second axiom, is not only this new inner man. He has another will in his flesh, which would make him captive to sin. Accordingly, he dare not be idle, but must work hard to drive out evil lusts and mortify his body. He lives, moreover, among other men on earth, and must labour together with them. And as Christ, though Himself full of the Kingdom of God, for our sake stripped Himself of His power and ministered as a servant, so should we Christians, to whom God through Christ has given the Kingdom of all goodness and blessedness, and therewith all that is sufficient to satisfy us, do freely and cheerfully for our heavenly Father whatever pleases Him, and do unto our neighbours as Christ has done for us. In particular, we must not despise the weakness and weak faith of our neighbour, nor vex him with the use of our liberty, but rather minister with all we have to his improvement. Thus the Christian, who is a free lord and master, becomes a useful servant of all and subject to all. But he does these works, not that he may become thereby good and blessed in the sight of God; he is already blessed through his faith, and what he does now he does freely and gratuitously. Luther thus sums up in conclusion: 'A Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour; in Christ through faith, in his neighbour through love. Through faith he rises above himself in God, from God he descends again below himself through love; and yet remains always in God and in godlike love.'

This tract was a remarkable pendant to Luther's remarkable letter to the Pope. His Holiness, so he wrote to him in his dedication, might taste from its contents what kind of occupation the author would rather, and might with more profit, be engaged in, if only the godless Papal flatterers did not hinder him. And in fact the Pope could plainly see from it how Luther lived and laboured, with his inmost being, in these profound but simple ideas of Christian truth, and how he was inwardly compelled and delighted to represent them in their noble simplicity. The whole tone and tenor of this dedication, so tranquil, fervent, and tender, shows further what profound peace reigned in the soul of this vehement champion of the faith, and what happiness the excommunicated heretic found in his God. Next to Luther's Address to the German Nobility and his Babylonian Captivity, this tract is one of the most important contributions of his pen to the cause of the Reformation. It is clear from its pages that when Luther wrote his letter, at the request of Miltitz, to the Pope, he had no thought of making peace with the Papacy, or of even a moment's truce in the campaign.

The bull of excommunication he met in the manner intimated to Spalatin from the first. He launched a short tract against it, 'On the new Bull and Falsehoods of Eck,' treating it as Eck's forgery. This he followed up with another tract in German and Latin, 'Against the Bull of Antichrist.' He was resolved to unmask the blindness and wickedness of the Roman evil-doers. He saw partly his own real doctrines perverted, partly the Christian and Scriptural truth that his doctrines contained, stigmatised as heresy and condemned. He declared that if the Pope did not retract and condemn this bull, no one would doubt that he was the enemy of God and the disturber of Christianity.

He then solemnly renewed, on November 17, the appeal to a Council, which he had made two years before. But how was his attitude changed since then! He, the accused and condemned heretic, now himself proclaims condemnation and ruin to his enemy, the antichristian power that seeks to domineer the world. Nor is it only from a future Council, and one constituted as the previous great assemblies of the Church, that he expects and demands protection for himself and the Christian truth; again and again he calls upon the Christian laity to assist him. Thus in his appeal now published, he invites the Emperor Charles, the Electors and Princes of the Empire, the counts, barons, and nobles, the town councils, and all Christian authorities throughout Germany, to support him and his appeal, that so the true Christian belief and the freedom of a Council might be saved. Similarly, in the Latin edition of his tract against the bull, he calls upon the Emperor Charles, on Christian kings and princes and all who believe in Christ, together with all Christian bishops and learned doctors, to resist the iniquities of the Popedom. In his German version he defends himself against the charge of stirring up the laity against the Pope and priesthood; but he asks if, indeed, the laity will be reconciled, or the Pope excused, by the command to burn the truth. The Pope himself, he says, and his bishops, priests, and monks are wrestling to their own downfall, through this iniquitous bull, and want to bring upon themselves the hatred of the laity. 'What wonder were it, should princes, nobles, and laymen beat them on the head, and hunt them out of the country?'

Hutten now followed with a stormy demand for a general rising of Germany against the tyranny of Rome, whose hirelings and emissaries were to be chased away by main force. When two papal legates, Aleander and Caraccioli, appeared on the Rhine to execute the bull and work upon the Emperor in person, he was anxious to strike a blow at them on his own account, little good as, on calm reflection, it was evident could have come of it. Luther, on hearing of it, could not refrain remarking in a letter to Spalatin, 'If only he had caught them!'