A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

Among the various duties which belong to the company of believers, Luther selected three as the most outstanding,—those connected with the pastorate, including preaching, dispensing the sacraments, and so forth; the service of Christian charity; and the duty of seeing that the children belonging to the community, and especially “poor, miserable, and deserted children,” were properly educated and trained to become useful members of the commonwealth.

In the few instances of attempts made before the Peasants' War to formulate those conceptions into regulations for communities organised according to evangelical principles, we find the community and the magistracy combining to look after the public worship, the poor, and education. Illustrations may be seen in the Wittenberg ordinance of 1522 (Carlstadt), and the ordinances of Leisnig (1523) and Magdeburg (1524).[373] All three are examples of the [pg 402] local authority within a small community endeavouring, at the prompting of preachers and people, to express in definite regulations some of the demands of the new evangelical life.

Luther himself thought these earlier regulations premature, and insisted that the Wittenberg ordinance should be cancelled. He knew that changes must come; but he hoped to see them make their way gradually, almost imperceptibly, commending themselves to everyone without special enactment prescribed by external authority. He published suggestions for the dispensation of the Lord's Supper and of Baptism in the churches in Wittenberg as early as 1523; he collected and issued a small selection of evangelical hymns which might be sung in Public Worship (1524); during the same year he addressed the burgomasters and councillors of all German towns on the erection and maintenance of Christian schools; and he congratulated more than one municipality on provisions made for the care of the poor.[374] Above all, he had, while in Wartburg, completed a translation of the New Testament which, after revision by Melanchthon and other friends, was published in 1522 (Sept. 21st), and went through sixteen revised editions and more than fifty reimpressions before 1534. The translation of the Old Testament was made by a band of scholars at Wittenberg, published in instalments, and finally in complete form in 1534.

He always cherished the hope that the evangelical faith would spread quietly all over his dear Fatherland if only room were made for the preaching of the gospel. [pg 403] This of itself, he thought, would in due time effect a peaceful transformation of the ecclesiastical life and worship. The Diets of Nürnberg and Speyer had provided a field, always growing wider, for this quiet transformation. Luther was as indifferent to forms of Church government as John Wesley, and, like Wesley, every step he took in providing for a separate organisation was forced upon him as a practical necessity. To the very last he cherished the hope that there might be no need for any great change in the external government of the Church. The Augsburg Confession itself (1530) concludes with the words. “Our meaning is not to have rule taken from the bishops; but this one thing only is requested at their hands, that they would suffer the gospel to be purely taught, and that they would relax a few observances, which cannot be held without sin. But if they will remit none, let them look how they will give account to God for this, that by their obstinacy they afford cause of division and schism, which it were yet fit they should aid in avoiding.”[375] It was not that he believed that the existence of the visible Catholic Church depended on what has been ambiguously called an apostolic succession of bishops, who, through gifts conferred in ordination, create priests, who in turn make Christians out of natural heathen by the sacraments. He did not believe that ordination needed a bishop to confer it; he made his position clear upon this point as early as 1525, and ordination was practised without bishops from that date. But he had no desire to make changes for the sake of change. The Danish Church is at once episcopal and Lutheran to this day.

It ought also to be remembered that Luther and all the Reformers believed and held firmly the doctrine of a visible Catholic Church of Christ, and that the evangelical movement which they headed was the outcome of the centuries of saintly life within that visible Catholic Church. They never for a moment supposed that in withdrawing themselves from the authority of the Bishop [pg 404] of Rome they were separating themselves from the visible Church. Nor did they imagine that in making provision, temporary or permanent, for preaching the word, the dispensation of the sacraments, the exercise of discipline, and so forth, they were founding a new Church, or severing themselves from that visible Church within which they had been baptized. They refused to concede the term Catholic to their opponents, and in the various conferences which they had with them, the Roman Catholics were always officially designated “the adherents of the old religion,” while they were termed “the associates of the Augsburg Confession.”

Luther cherished the hope, as late as 1545, that there might not need to be a permanent change in the external form of the Church in Germany; and this gives all the earlier schemes for the organisation of communities professing the evangelical faith somewhat of a makeshift and temporary appearance, which they in truth possessed.

The Diet of Speyer of 1526 gave the evangelical princes and towns the right, they believed, to reorganise public worship and ecclesiastical organisation within their dominions, and this right was largely taken advantage of. Correspondents from all quarters asked Luther's advice and co-operation, and we can learn from his answers that he was anxious there should be as much local freedom as possible,—that communities should try to find out what suited them best, and that the “use” of Wittenberg should not be held to regulate the custom of all other places.

It was less difficult for the authorities in the towns to take over the charge of the ecclesiastical arrangements. They had during mediæval times some experience in the matter; and city life was so compact that it was easy to regulate the ecclesiastical portion. The prevailing type exhibited in the number of “ordinances” which have come down to us, collected by Richter and Sehling, is that a superintendent, one of the city clergy, was placed over the city churches, and that he was more or less responsible to the city fathers [pg 405] for the ecclesiastical life and rule within the domains of the city.

The ecclesiastical organisation of the territories of the princes was a much more difficult task. Luther proposed to the Elector of Saxony that a careful visitation of his principality should be made, district by district, in order to find out the state of matters and what required to be done.

The correspondence of Luther during the years 1525-1527 shows how urgent the need of such a visitation appeared to him. He had been through the country several times. Parish priests had laid their difficulties before him and had asked his advice. His letters describe graphically their abounding poverty, a poverty increased by the fact that the only application of the new evangelical liberty made by many of the people was to refuse to pay all clerical dues. He came to the conclusion that the “common man” respected neither priest nor preacher, that there was no ecclesiastical supervision in the country districts, and no exercise of authority to maintain even the necessary ecclesiastical buildings. He expressed the fear that if things were allowed to go on as they were doing, there would be soon neither priest's house nor schools nor scholars in many a parish. The reports of the first Saxon Visitation showed that Luther had not exaggerated matters.[376] The district about Wittenberg was in much better order than the others; but in the outlying portions a very bad state of things was disclosed. In a village near Torgau the Visitors discovered an old priest who was hardly able to repeat the Creed or the Lord's Prayer,[377] but who was [pg 406] held in high esteem as an exorcist, and who derived a good income from the exercise of his skill in combating the evil influences of witches. Priests had to be evicted for gross immoralities. Some were tavern-keepers or practised other worldly callings. Village schools were rarely to be found. Some of the peasants complained that the Lord's Prayer was so long that they could not learn it; and in one place the Visitors found that not a single peasant knew any prayer whatsoever.