Produced by Kurt A. Bodling, Ganser Library, Millersville

University, Millersville, PA, USA

Luther Examined and Reexamined A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation

By W.H.T. Dau,
Professor, Concordia Theological Seminary

St. Louis, Mo. Concordia Publishing House 1917

PREFACE. One may deplore the pathetic courage which periodically heartens Catholic writers for the task of writing against Luther, but one can understand the necessity for such efforts, and, accordingly, feel a real pity for those who make them. Attacks on Luther are demanded for Catholics by the law of self-preservation. A recent Catholic writer correctly says: "There is no doubt that the religious problem to-day is still the Luther problem." "Almost every statement of those religious doctrines which are opposed to Catholic moral teaching find their authorization in the theology of Martin Luther."

Rome has never acknowledged her errors nor admitted her moral defeat. The lessons of past history are wasted upon her. Rome is determined to assert to the end that she was not, and cannot be, vanquished. In the age of the Reformation, she admits, she suffered some losses, but she claims that she is fast retrieving these, while Protestantism is decadent and decaying. No opposition to her can hope to succeed.

This is done to bolster up Catholic courage. The intelligent Catholic layman of the present day makes his own observations, and draws his own conclusions as to the status and the future prospect of Protestantism. Therefore, he must be invited to "acquaint himself with the lifestory of the man, whose followers can never explain away the anarchy of that immoral dogma: 'Be a sinner, and sin boldly; but believe more boldly still!' He must be shown the many hideous scenes of coarseness, vulgarity, obscenity, and degrading immorality in Martin Luther's life." When the Catholic rises from the contemplation of these scenes, it is hoped that his mind has become ironclad against Protestant argument. These attacks upon Luther are a plea pro domo, the effort of a strong man armed to keep his palace and his goods in peace.

Occurring, as they do, in this year of the Four-hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation, these attacks, moreover, represent a Catholic counter-demonstration to the Protestant celebration of the Quadricentenary of Luther's Theses. They are the customary cries of dissent and vigorous expressions of disgust which at a public meeting come from parties in the audience that are not pleased with the speaker on the stage. If the counter-demonstration includes in its program the obliging application of eggs in an advanced state of maturity to the speaker, and chooses to emphasize its presence to the very nostrils of the audience, that, too, is part of the prevailing custom. It is aesthetically incorrect, to be sure, but it is in line historically with former demonstrations. No Protestant celebration would seem normal without them. They help Protestants in their preparations for the jubilee to appreciate the remarks of David in Psalm 2, 11: "Rejoice with trembling." And if Shakespeare was correct in the statement: "Sweet are the uses of adversity," they need not be altogether deplored.

An attempt is made in these pages to review the principal charges and arguments of Catholic critics of Luther. The references to Luther's works are to the St. Louis Edition; those to the Book of Concord, to the People's Edition.

Authors must be modest, and as a rule they are. In the domain of historical research there is rarely anything that is final. This observation was forced upon the present writer with unusual power as the rich contents of his subjects opened up to him during his study. He has sought to be comprehensive, at least, as regards essential facts, in every chapter; he does not claim that his presentation is final. He hopes that it may stimulate further research.

This book is frankly polemical. It had to be, or there would have been no need of writing it. It seeks to meet both the assertions and the spirit of Luther's Catholic critics. A review ought to be a mirror, and mirrors must reflect. But there is no malice in the author's effort.

W. H. T. Dau.

Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo.
May 10, 1917.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

l. Luther Worship 2. Luther Hatred 3. Luther Blemishes 4. Luther's Task 5. The Popes in Luther's Time 6. Luther's Birth and Parentage 7. Luther's Great Mistake 8. Luther's Failure as a Monk 9. Professor Luther, D. D. 10. Luther's "Discovery" of the Bible 11. Rome and the Bible 12. Luther's Visit at Rome 13. Pastor Luther 14. The Case of Luther's Friend Myconius 15. Luther's Faith without Works 16. The Fatalist Luther 17. Luther a Teacher of Lawlessness 18. Luther Repudiates the Ten Commandments 19. Luther's Invisible Church 20. Luther on the God-given Supremacy of the Pope 21. Luther the Translator of the Bible 22. Luther a Preacher of Violence against the Hierarchy 23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One 24. Luther the Destroyer of Liberty of Conscience 25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage" 26. Luther an Advocate of Polygamy 27. Luther Announces His Death 28. Luther's View of His Slanderers

1. Luther Worship.

Catholic writers profess themselves shocked by the unblushing veneration which Luther receives from Protestants. Such epithets as "hero of the Reformation," "angel with the everlasting Gospel flying through the midst of heaven," "restorer of the Christian faith," grate on Catholic nerves. Luther's sayings are cited with approval by all sorts of men. Men feel that their cause is greatly strengthened by having Luther on their side. Luther's name is a name to conjure with. Hardly a great man has lived in the last four hundred years but has gone on record as an admirer of Luther. Rome, accordingly, cries out that Luther is become the uncanonized saint of Protestantism, yea, the deified expounder of the evangelical faith.

Coming from a Church that venerates and adores and prays to—you must not say "worships"—as many saints as there are days in the calendar, this stricture is refreshing. Saints not only of questionable sanctity, but of doubtful existence have been worshiped—beg pardon! venerated— by Catholics. What does the common law say about the prosecution coming into court with clean hands? If there is such a thing among Protestants as "religious veneration" of Luther, what shall we call the veneration of Mary among Catholics? Pius IX, on December 8, 1854, proclaimed the "immaculate conception," that is, the sinlessness of Mary from the very first moment of her existence, thus removing her from the sphere of sin-begotten humanity. In 1913, the press of the country was preparing its readers for another move towards the deification of Mary: her "assumption" was to be declared. That is, it was to be declared a Catholic dogma that the corpse of Mary did not see corruption, and was at the moment of her death removed to heaven. The Pasadena Star of August 15th in that year wrote: "It is now known that since his recent illness Pope Pius, realizing that his active pontificate is practically at an end, has expressed to some of the highest dignitaries of the Catholic Church at Rome the desire to round out his career by this last great act." The Western Watchman of July 3d in that year had in its inimitable style referred to the coming dogma, thus: "What Catholic in the world to-day would say that the immaculately conceived body of the Blessed Virgin was allowed to rot in the grave? The Catholic mind would rebel against the thought; and death would be preferred to the blasphemous outrage." The grounds for wanting the "assumption" of Mary fixed in a dogma were these: "Catholics believe in the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin, because their faith instinctively teaches them that such a thing is possible and proper, and that settles it in favor of the belief. The body of our Lord should not taste corruption, neither should the body that gave Him His body. The flesh that was bruised for our sins was the flesh of Mary. The blood that was shed for our salvation was drawn from Mary's veins. It would be improper that the Virgin Mother should be allowed to see corruption if her Son was exempted from the indignity." If any should be so rash as to question the propriety of the new dogma, the writer held out this pleasant prospect to them: "Dogmas are stones at the heads of heretics. . . . The eyes of all Catholics see aright; if they are afflicted with strabismus, the Church resorts to an operation. All Catholics hear aright; if they do not, the Church applies a remedy to their organ of hearing. These surgical operations go under the name of dogmas." The world remembers with what success an operation of this kind was performed on a number of Roman prelates, who questioned the infallibility of the Pope. The dogma was simply declared in 1870, and that put a quietus to all Catholic scruples. Some day the "assumption" of Mary will be proclaimed as a Catholic dogma. We should not feel surprised if ultimately a dogma were published to the effect that the Holy Trinity is a Holy Quartet, with Mary as the fourth person of the Godhead.

The Roman Church is accustomed to speak of her Supreme Pontiff, the Holy Father, the Vicegerent of Christ, His Infallible Holiness, in terms that lift a human being to heights of adoration unknown among Protestants. For centuries the tendency in the Roman Church to make of the Pope "a god on earth" has been felt and expressed in Christendom.

This Church wants to preach to Protestants about the sin of man-worship! Verily, here we have the parable of the mote and the beam in a twentieth century edition. Catholic teachers would be the last ones, we imagine, whom scrupulous Christians would choose for instructing them regarding the sin of idolatry and the means to avoid it.

No Protestant regards Luther as Catholics regard Mary, not even Patrick. Luther has taught them too well for that. Unwittingly the Catholics themselves have immortalized Luther by naming the Evangelical Church after Luther. Luther declined the honor. "I beg," he said, "not to have my name mentioned, and to call people not Lutheran, but Christian. What is Luther? The doctrine is not mine, nor have I been crucified for any one. . . . The papists deserve to have a party-name, for they are not content with the doctrine and name of Christ; they want to be popish also. Well, let them be called popish, for the Pope is their master. I am not, and I do not want to be, anybody's master." (10, 371.)

It is likely that the frequent laudatory mention of Luther's name, especially in connection with the present anniversary of the Reformation, is taken as a challenge by Catholics. If it is that, it is so by the choice of Catholics. It is impossible to speak of a great man without referring to the conflicts that made him great. "He makes no friend," says Tennyson, "who never made a foe." "The man who has no enemies," says Donn Piatt, "has no following." Opposition is one of the accepted marks of greatness. The opposition which great men aroused during their lifetime lives after them, and crops out again on a given occasion. This is deplorable, but it is the ordinary course. Moreover, it is possible that in a season of great joy like that which the Quadricentenary of the Reformation has ushered in orators and writers may fail to put a due check on their enthusiasm and may overstate a fact. Such things happen even among Catholics, we believe, But they will be negligible quantities in the present celebration. The proper corrective for them will be provided by Protestants themselves. The vast majority of those who have embraced the spiritual leadership of Luther in matters pertaining to Christian doctrine and morals will prove again that they are in no danger of inaugurating man-worship. The spirit of Luther is too much alive in them for that. They will, with the Marquis of Brandenburg, declare: "If I be asked whether with heart and lip I confess that faith which God has restored to us by Luther as His instrument, I have no scruple, nor have I a disposition to shrink from the name Lutheran. Thus understood, I am, and shall to my dying hour remain, a Lutheran." They will ever be able to distinguish between the man Luther, prone to error and sin like any other mortal, and the Luther who fought the battle of the Lord and had a mission of everlasting import to the Church and the world. They have shown on numerous occasions that they can be friends of Luther, and yet criticize him or dissent from him. If they had not, there would be no Protestants whom Catholics can quote as "opponents" of Luther. On the other hand, if any one undertakes to enlighten the public with a view of Luther, Protestants will insist that his estimate comport with the facts in the case, and that the name of a great man who deserves well of posterity be not traduced. Why, even the Catholic von Schlegel thinks Luther has not been half esteemed as he ought to be.

2. Luther Hatred.

Catholic writers have found so much to censure in the character and writings of Luther that one is amazed, after reading them, how Luther ever could become regarded as a great and good man. Criminal blindness must have held the eyes, not only of Luther's associates, but of his entire age, yea, of men for centuries after, if they failed to see Luther's constitutional baseness. Quite recently a Catholic writer has told the world in one chapter of his book that "the apostate monk of Wittenberg" was possessed of "a violent, despotic, and uncontrolled nature," that he was "depraved in manners and in speech." He speaks of Luther's "ungovernable transports, riotous proceedings, angry conflicts, and intemperate controversies," of Luther's "contempt of all the accepted forms of human right and all authority, human and divine," of "his unscrupulous mendacity," "his perverse principles," "his wild pronouncements." He calls Luther "a lawless one," "one of the most intolerant of men," "a revolutionist, not a reformer." He says that Luther "attempted reformation and ended in deformation." He charges Luther with having written and preached "not for, but against good works," with having assumed rights to himself in the matter of liberty of conscience which "he unhesitatingly and imperiously denied to all who differed from him," with having "rent asunder the unity of the Church," with having "disgraced the Church by a notoriously wicked and scandalous life," with having "declared it to be the right of every man to interpret the Bible to his own individual conception," with "one day proclaiming the binding force of the Ten Commandments and the next declaring they were not obligatory on Christian observance," with having "reviled and hated and cursed the Church of his fathers."

These opprobrious remarks are only a part of the vileness of which the writer has delivered himself in his first chapter. His whole book bristles with assertions of Luther's inveterate badness. This coarse and crooked Luther, we are told, is the real Luther, the genuine article. The Luther of history is only a Protestant fiction. Protestants like Prof. Seeberg of Berlin, and others, who have criticized Luther, are introduced as witnesses for the Catholic allegation that Luther was a thoroughly bad man. We should like to ascertain the feelings of these Protestants when they are informed what use has been made of their remarks about Luther. Some of them may yet let the world know what they think of the attempt to make them the squires of such knights errant as Denifle and Grisar.

It is about ten years ago since the Jesuit Grisar began to publish his Life of Luther, twice that time, since Denifle painted his caricature of Luther. Several generations ago Janssen, in his History of the German Nation, gave the Catholic interpretation of Luther and the Reformation. Going back still further, we come to the Jesuit Maimbourg, to Witzel, and in Luther's own time to Cochlaeus and Oldecop, all of whom strove to convince the world that Luther was a moral degenerate and a reprobate. The book of Mgr. O'Hare, which has made its appearance on the eve of the Four-hundredth Anniversary of Luther's Theses, is merely another eruption from the same mud volcano that became active in Luther's lifetime. It is the old dirt that has come forth. Rome must periodically relieve itself in this manner, or burst. Rome hated the living Luther, and cannot forget him since he is dead. It hates him still. Its hatred is become full-grown, robust, vigorous with the advancing years. When Rome speaks its mind about Luther, it cannot but speak in terms of malignant scorn. If Luther could read Mgr. O'Hare's book, he would say: "Wes das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund ueber." (Matt. 12, 34: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.")

Luther has done one thing which Rome will never pardon: he dared to attack the supreme authority of the Pope. He made men see the ignominious bondage in which cunning priests had ensnared them, and by restoring them to the liberty with which Christ had made them free Luther caused the papacy an irreparable loss. The papal system of teaching and government was so thoroughly exposed by Luther, and has since been so completely disavowed by a great part of professing Christians that Rome cannot practise its old frauds any longer. Men have become extremely wary of Rome. That is what hurts. The Catholic writer to whom we referred sums up the situation thus: Since Luther "all Protestant mankind descending by ordinary generation have come into the world with a mentality biased, perverted, and prejudiced." That is Rome's way of looking at the matter. The truth is: the world is forewarned, hence forearmed against the pleas of Rome. It pays only an indifferent attention to vilifications of Luther that come from that quarter, because it expects no encomiums and only scant justice for Luther from Rome. But it is the business of the teachers of Protestant principles in religion, particularly of the church historians of Protestantism, to take notice of the campaign of slander that is launched against Luther by Catholic writers at convenient intervals. It is not a task to delight the soul, rather to try the patience, of Christians. For in the study of the causes for these calumnies against a great man of history, and of the possible means for their removal, one is forced invariably to the conclusion that there is but one cause, and that is hatred. What can poor mortal man do to break down such a cause? It does not yield to logic and historical facts, because it is in its very nature unreasoning and unreasonable.

Still, for the hour that God sends to all the Sauls that roam the earth breathing threatening and slaughter, the counter arguments should be ready. No slander against Luther has ever gone unanswered. As the charges against Luther have become stereotyped, so the rejoinder cannot hope to bring forward any new facts. But it seems necessary that each generation in the Church Militant be put through the old drills, and learn its fruitful lessons of spiritual adversity. Thus even these polemical exchanges between Catholics and Protestants become blessings in disguise. But they do not affect Luther. The sublime figure of the courageous confessor of Christ that has stood towering in the annals of the Christian Church for four hundred years stands unshaken, silent, and grand, despite the froth that is dashed against its base and the lightning from angry clouds that strikes its top. "Surely, the wrath of man shall praise thee." (Ps. 76, 10.)

3. Luther Blemishes.

When Luther is charged with immoral conduct, and the specific facts together with the documentary evidence are not submitted along with the charge, little can be done in the way of rebuttal. One can only guess at the grounds on which the charge is based. For instance, when Luther is said to have disgraced the Church by a notoriously wicked and scandalous life, the reason is most likely because he married although he was a monk sworn to remain single. Moreover, he married a noble lady who was a nun, also sworn to celibacy. According to the inscrutable ethics of Rome this is concubinage, although the Scripture plainly declares that a minister of the Church should be the husband of one wife, 1 Tim. 3, 2, and no vows can annul the ordinance and commandment of God: "It is not good that man should be alone." Gen. 2, 18. Comp. 1 Cor. 7, 2, and Augsburg Confession, Art. 27.

When Luther is said to have reviled, hated, and cursed the Church of his fathers, the probable reason is, because he wrote the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and The Papacy at Rome Founded by the Devil. In these writings Luther depicts the true antichristian inwardness of the papacy. By so doing, however, Luther restored the Church of his fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers in Christ down to the first ancestor of our race. Luther's faith is none other than the faith of the true Church in all the ages. Luther's own father and mother died in that faith.

When Luther is said to have taught Nietzsche's insanity about the "Superhuman" (Uebermensch) before Nietzsche, to have put the Ten Commandments out of commission for Christians, and to have preached against good works, the reasons most likely are these: Luther taught salvation in accordance with Rom. 3, 25: "We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law." Luther taught that a person is not saved by his own works, and if he performs good works with that end in view, he shames his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. 10, 4), and he falls under the curse of God for placing his own merits alongside of the merit of the Redeemer's sacrifice. In no other connection has Luther spoken against good works. He has rather taught men how to become fruitful in well-doing by the sanctifying grace of God and according to the inspiring example of the matchless Jesus. Concerning the Law, Luther preached 1 Tim. 1, 9: "The Law is not made for a righteous man," that is, Christians do the works of the Law, not for the Law's sake, but for the sake of Christ, whom they love and whose mind is in them. They must not be driven like slaves to obey God, but their very faith prompts them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world (Tit. 2, 12). But Luther always held that the rule for good works is laid down in the holy Law of God, and only in that; also that the Law must be applied to Christians, in as far as they still live in, the flesh, and are not become altogether spiritual. Luther's public activity as a preacher began with a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, and this effort to expound the divine norm of righteousness was repeated several times during Luther's life. Luther's expositions of the Decalog are among the finest that the world possesses. Moreover, Luther wrote the Small Catechism. Hand any Catholic who talks about Luther having abolished the Ten Commandments this little book. That is a sufficient refutation. What Luther teaches in this book he has given his life to reduce to practise in himself and others. He says in a sermon on Easter Monday, 1530: "When rising in the morning, I pray with my children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and some Psalm. I do this because I want to make myself cling to these truths. I shall not suffer my faith to become mildewed with the imagination that I am above these things (dass ich's koenne)." His sermon on the First Sunday in Advent in the same year he begins thus: "Dear friends, I am now an old Doctor, still I find every day that I must recite with the children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and I have always derived a great benefit and blessing from this practise." (12, 1611. 1641.)

Luther is charged with mendacity, that is, he is said to have lied. The reasons that will be given for this charge, when called for, will probably be these: Luther at various times in his life gave three different years as the year of his birth, three different years as the year when he made his journey to Rome, and advised somebody in 1512 to become a monk when he had already commenced to denounce the monastic life: It is true that Luther did all these things, but it is also true that Luther believed himself right in each of his statements. He was simply mistaken. Other people have misstated the year of their birth without being branded liars on that account. Sometimes even a professor forgets things, and Luther was a professor. What Luther has said about the rigor of his monastic life is perfectly true, but it was no reason why in 1512 he should counsel men to become monks. He had not yet come to the full knowledge of the wrong principles underlying that mode of life. To adduce such inaccuracies as evidence of prevarication is itself an insincere act and puts the claimant by right in the Ananias Club.

Luther is said to have been a glutton and a drunkard. "Let us examine the facts. What is the evidence? Luther's obesity and his gout. Is that evidence? Not in any court. It would be evidence if both conditions were caused, and caused only, by gluttony and tippling. But this notoriously is not the case. Obesity may be due to disease. A man may even eat little and wax stout if what he eats turns into adipose rather than into muscular tissue. As for gout, it is the result of uric acid diathesis. Now uric acid diathesis may be, and very often is, caused by high living, but often, too, it is due to quite different causes. Just as in the case of Bright's disease. I do not deny that Luther drank freely both beer and wine. So did everybody else. People drank beer as we do coffee. . . . Moreover, in the sixteenth century alcoholic beverages were prescribed for the maladies from which Luther suffered much—kidneys and nervous trouble. We now know that in such cases alcohol proves a very poison; but this Luther could not know. But intemperate . . . in his use of strong drink Luther was not. Neither was he a glutton. Before he married, he ate very irregularly, and often completely forgot his meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could maintain strength upon such a diet.—It is further a noteworthy fact that, when we read the sermons of the day, we find nobody who so frequently and so earnestly attacks the prevailing vice of drunkenness as does Luther. Now, whatever Luther may or may not have been, hypocrite he was not. Had he himself been intemperate, he would not have preached against it in such a manner. Furthermore, Luther was under constant espionage. His every move was noted. People knew how many patches there were on his undergarments. Think you, think you for a moment, that the Wittenbergians would have listened meekly to Luther's repeated assaults upon the wide-spread sin of intemperance, had they known him for a confirmed tippler? It is too absurd.—But the best evidence for the defense comes from a mute witness—Luther's industry. He wrote more than four hundred books, brochures, sermons, and so forth, filling more than one hundred volumes of the Erlangen edition. There are extant more than three thousand of his letters, which represent only a small proportion of all that he wrote. Thus we know, for example, that one evening in 1544 Luther wrote ten letters, of which only two have been preserved. He was, furthermore, in frequent conference with leaders in both Church and State. He preached on Sundays and lectured on week-days. Now, a man may, it is true, perform a considerable amount of manual labor even after overeating and overdrinking, but every physician will admit the correctness of my assertion, it is a physiological impossibility that a man could habitually overindulge in food or liquor, or both, and still get over the enormous amount of intellectual work that Luther performed day to day" (Boehmer, The Man Luther, p. 16 f.)

Most shameless have been the charges of lewdness and immorality against Luther. His relation to Frau Cotta has been represented as impure. Think of it, a boy of sixteen to eighteen thus related to an honorable housewife! Illegitimate children have been foisted upon him. A humorous remark about his intention to marry and being unable to choose between several eligible parties has been twisted into an immoral meaning. The fact that he gave shelter overnight to a number of escaped nuns, when he was already a married man, has been meaningly referred to. Boehmer has exhaustively gone into these charges, examining without flinching every asserted fact cited in evidence of Luther's moral corruptness, and has shown the purity of Luther as being above reproach. Not one of the sexual vagaries imputed to Luther rests on a basis of fact. (Boehmer, Luther in Light of Recent Research, pp. 215-223.)

When the modern reader meets with a general charge of badness, or even with the assertion of some specific form of badness, in Luther, he should inquire at once to what particular incident in Luther's life reference is made. These charges have all been examined and the evidence sifted, and that by impartial investigators. Protestants have taken the lead in this work and have not glossed anything over. Boehmer's able treatise has been translated into English. Walther's Fuer Luther wider Rom will, no doubt, be given the public in an English edition soon. Works like these have long blasted the claim of Catholics that Protestants are afraid to have the truth told about Luther. They only demand that the truth be told.

4. Luther's Task.

One blemish in the character of Luther that is often cited with condemnation even by Protestants deserves to be examined separately. It is Luther's violence in controversy, his coarse language, his angry moods. All will agree that violence and coarse speech must not be countenanced in Christians, least of all in teachers of Christianity. In the writings of Luther there occur terms, phrases, passages that sound repulsive. The strongest admirer of Luther will have moments when he wishes certain things could have been said differently. Luther's language cannot be repeated in our times. Some who have tried to do that in all sincerity have found to their dismay that they were wholly misunderstood. What Jove may do any ox may not do, says an old Latin proverb.

Shall we, then, admit Luther's fault and proceed to apologize for him and find plausible reasons for extenuating his indiscretions in speech and his temperamental faults? We shall do neither. We shall let this "foul-mouthed," coarse Luther stand before the bar of public opinion just as he is. His way cannot be our way, but ultimately none of us will be his final judges. The character of the duties which Luther was sent to perform must be his justification.

It is true, indeed, that the manners of the age of Luther were generally rough. Even in polite society language was freely used that would make us gasp. Coarse terms evidently were not felt to be such. In their polemical writings the learned men of the age seem to exhaust a zoological park in their frantic search for striking epithets to hurl at their opponent. It was an age of strong feeling and sturdy diction. It is also true that Luther was a man of the people. With a sort of homely pride he used to declare: "I am a peasant's son; all my forbears were peasants." But all this does not sufficiently explain Luther's "coarseness."

Most people that criticize Luther for his strong speech have read little else of Luther. They are not aware that in the, great mass of his writings there is but a small proportion of matter that would nowadays be declared objectionable. Luther speaks through many pages, yea, through whole books, with perfect calmness. It is interesting to observe how he develops a thought, illustrates a point by an episode from history or from every-day life, urges a lesson with a lively exhortation. He is pleasant, gentle, serious, compassionate, artlessly eloquent, and, withal, perfectly pure in all he says. When Luther becomes "coarse," there is a reason. One must have read much in Luther, one should have read all of Luther, and his "billingsgate" will assume a different meaning. If there is madness in his reckless speech, there is method in it. One must try and understand Luther's objective and purpose.

Luther had a very coarse subject to deal with, and Luther believed that a spade is best called a spade. Luther never struck at wickedness with the straw of a fine circumlocution. He believed that he had the right, yea, the duty, to call coarse things by coarse names; for the Bible does the same. Luther has called the gentlemen at the Pope's court in his day some very descriptive names. He did not merely insinuate that the cardinals of his day were no angels, but said outright what they were. He did not feebly question the holiness of His Holiness, but he called some of the Popes monsters of iniquity and reprobates. We shall show anon that in that age there lived men who spoke of the same matters as Luther, who told tales and used expressions that would render their writings unmailable to-day.

The great men of any age are products of that age. Man is as much the creature of circumstances as circumstances are the creatures of men— Disraeli to the contrary notwithstanding. While men may create situations, they may also be made to fit into a situation. Men have become great for this very reason that they understand the spirit of their age and were able to respond to its call. Back of both men and circumstances, however, stands sovereign Providence, shaping our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

No character-study is just that fails to take into consideration the force of circumstances under which the subject of the study has acted at a given moment in his life. In the case of Luther there is a more than ordinary necessity for adopting this equitable method; for Luther has declared hundreds of times that his stirring utterances and incisive deeds were not the result of long premeditation, or the sudden outbursts of uncontrolled passion,—though neither he nor we would have any interest in denying that he could be angry and did become angry,—but the answer to crying needs of the times. This answer was on many a signal occasion wrung from Luther after much wrestling with God in prayer. He was moved to action by the heroism of that faith which had been kindled in him. He acted in harmony with the particular issue with which he was called upon to deal. Deep compassion at the sight of his suffering fellow-men put strong language on his lips. Between the pleading of friends and the storming of enemies he had no choice but to act as he did. Luther often seems unconscious of the greatness of his acts: he speaks of them as "his poor way of doing things," and invites others to improve what he has attempted. We fear that many in our day fail to see the greatness of the achievement while they stricture the manner of achieving it.

Few men have so utterly lived for a cause, in a cause, and with a cause as Luther. It is the heart of an entire people that cries out through Luther; it is the soul of outraged Christianity that moans in anguish, and speaks with the majesty of righteous anger through Luther. An age of unparalleled ferment that had begun long before Luther has reached its culminating point, and lifts up its strident voice of long-restrained expostulation through Luther. Remove the conditions under which Luther had to live and labor, and the Luther whom men bless or curse becomes an impossibility.

In Luther's life-work there is discernible the influence not only of good men, such as the scholarly Melanchthon, the faithful Jonas, the firm and kind Saxon electors, the eager Amsdorf, the alert Link, but also of evil men like the blunt Tetzel, the wily Prierias, and the horde of ignorant monks which the monasteries and chancelleries of Rome let loose upon one man. The course which Luther had to pursue was shaped for him by others. We do not mean to suggest that Luther in his polemical writings employed the cheap method of replying to the coarse language adopted by his opponents in similar language; but it is fair to him that this fact be recorded. Some people remember very well that Luther addressed the Pope "Most hellish father!" and are horrified, but they forget that the Pope had been extremely lurid in the appellatives which he applied to Luther. "Child of Belial," "son of perdition," were some of the endearing terms with which Luther was to be assured of the loving interest the Holy Father took in him. That Luther called Henry VIII "a damnable and rotten worm" seems to be well remembered, but that the British king had called Luther "a wolf of hell" is forgotten. It goes without saying that the contact with such opponents did for Luther what it does for every person who is not made of granite and cast iron: it roused his temper. It should not have been permitted to do that, we say. Assuredly. Luther thinks so too, but with a reservation, as we shall learn.

The "imperious spirit" and "violent measures" charged against Luther a careful reader of history will rather find on the side of Luther's opponents. They plainly relied on the power of Rome to crush Luther by brute force. What respect could a plain, honest man like Luther conceive for men like Cajetanus, Eck, and Hoogstraten, who were first sent by the Vatican to negotiate his surrender? For publishing simple Bible-truth the cardinal at Augsburg roared and bellowed at him, "Recant! Recant!" Even at this early stage of the affair matters assumed such an ominous aspect that Luther's friends urged him to quietly leave the city. They did not trust the amicable gentleman from the polished circle of the Pope's immediate counselors. At Leipzig, Eck had been driven into the corner by Luther's unanswerable arguments from Scripture; then he turned to abuse and called Luther a Bohemian and a Hussite, and finally left the hall with the air of a victor to celebrate his achievement in the taverns and brothels of the city, where he found his customary delights learned from his masters at Rome. Can any language of contempt in which Luther afterwards spoke of this doughty champion of Rome be too strong? Among the attendants at the Leipzig Debate was Hoogstraten. This gentleman followed the elevating profession of torturing and burning heretics in Germany,—the territory especially assigned to him. It looked as if he had come to Leipzig to follow up Eck's verbal thunder with the inquisitorial lightning, and make of Luther actually another Hus. When he found that he would not have an opportunity for plying his hideous trade this time, he ventured into territory where he was a stranger: he attempted a theological argument with Luther. He asserted that by denying the primacy of the Pope, Luther had contradicted the Scriptures and defied the Council of Nice, and must be suppressed. Luther called him an unsophisticated ass and a bloodthirsty enemy of the truth. Certainly, that does not sound nice, but such things happen, as a rule, when fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

What was the papal bull of excommunication against Luther, with its list of most opprobrious terms, but an unwarranted provocation of Luther, who had a right to expect different treatment from the foremost teacher of Christianity to whom he had entrusted his just grievance as a dutiful son of the Church? Thus we might go on for pages citing instances of reckless attack upon Luther, often by most unworthy persons, that drew from Luther a reply such as his assailants deserved.

It is a gratuitous criticism to say that Christians must not revile when they are reviled. Those who think that Luther did not know this rule of the Christian religion, or did not apply it to himself, do not know the full story of his life. He certainly did wrestle with the flesh and blood in himself. He sighed for peace, but the moment he seemed to become conciliatory and pacific, his enemies set up a shout that he was vanquished. It seemed that they could not be made to comprehend the issues confronting them unless they were blown in upon them on the wings of a hurricane. As early as 1520 Luther replies to an anxious letter of Spalatin, who thought that Luther had used too strong language against the Bishop of Meissen, as follows: "Good God! how excited you are, my Spalatin! You seem even more stirred up than I and the others. Do you not see that my patience in not replying to Emser's and Eck's five or six wagonloads of curses is the sole reason why the framers of this document have dared to attack me with such silly and ridiculous nonsense? For you know how little I cared that my sermon at Leipzig was condemned and suppressed by a public edict; how I despised suspicion, infamy, injury, hatred. Must these audacious persons even be permitted to add to these follies scandalous pamphlets crammed full of falsehoods and blasphemies against Gospel-truth? Do you forbid even to bark at these wolves? The Lord is my witness how I restrained myself lest I should not treat with reverence this accursed and most impotent document issued in the bishop's name. Otherwise I should have said things those heads ought to hear, and I will yet, when they acknowledge their authorship by beginning to defend themselves. I beg, if you think rightly of the Gospel, do not imagine its cause can be accomplished without tumult, scandal, and sedition. Out of the sword you cannot make a feather, nor out of war, peace. The Word of God is a sword, war, ruin, destruction, poison, and, as Amos says, it meets the children of Ephraim like a bear in the way and a lioness in the woods.—I cannot deny that I have been more vehement than is seemly. But since they knew this, they ought not to have stirred up the dog. How difficult it is to temper one's passions and one's pen you can judge even from your own case. This is the reason I have always disliked to engage in public controversy; but the more I dislike it, the more I am involved against my will, and that only by the most atrocious slanders brought against me and the Word of God. If I were not carried away thereby either in temper or pen, even a heart of stone would be moved by the indignity of the thing to take up arms; and how much more I, who am both passionate and possessed of a pen not altogether blunt! By these monstrosities I am driven beyond modesty and decorum. At the same time, I wonder where this new religion came from, that whatever you say against an adversary is slander. What do you think of Christ? Was He a slanderer when He called the Jews an adulterous and perverse generation, the offspring of vipers, hypocrites, sons of the devil? And what about Paul when he used the words dogs, vain babblers, seducers, ignorant, and in Acts 13 so inveighed against a false prophet that he seems almost insane: `Oh, thou full of deceit and of all craft, thou son of the devil, enemy of the truth'? Why did he not gently flatter him, that he might convert him, rather than thunder in such a way? It is not possible, if acquainted with the truth, to be patient with inflexible and ungovernable enemies of the truth. But enough of this nonsense. I see that everybody wishes I were gentle, especially my enemies, who show themselves least so of all. If I am too little gentle, I am at least simple and open, and therein, as I believe, surpass them, for they dispute only in a deceitful fashion." (19, 482 f. Translation by McGiffert.)

Nobody should make Luther any better than he makes himself. Still, the question is pertinent whether violent polemics can ever be engaged in by Christians with a good conscience. Luther has asserted that, while he hurled his terrible denunciations against the adversaries of the truth, his heart was disposed to friendship and peace with them. (16, 1718 f.) Is a state of mind like this altogether inconceivable, viz., that a person can curse another for a certain act and at the same time love him? We think not. In his day this boisterous, turbulent Luther was understood, trusted, and loved by the people. After the publication of the Theses against Tetzel "the hearts of men in all parts of the land turned toward him, and his heart turned toward them. For the religious principles underlying the theses they cared little, for the arguments sustaining them still less. They saw only that here was a man, muzzled by none of the prudential considerations closing the mouths of many in high places, who dared to speak his mind plainly and emphatically, and was able to speak it intelligently and with effect upon a great and growing evil deplored by multitudes. It is such a man the people love and such a man they trust." (McGiffert, Luther, p. 98 f.)

McGiffert has the right perception of the Luther of 1517-1519 when he describes him as "the awakening reformer," thus: "He had the true reformer's conscience—the sense of responsibility for others as well as for himself, and the true reformer's vision of the better things that ought to be. He was never a mere faultfinder, but he was endowed with the gifts of imagination and sympathy, leading him to feel himself a part of every situation he was placed in, and with the irrepressible impulse to action driving him to take upon himself the burden of it. In any crowd of bystanders he would have been first to go to the rescue where need was, and quickest to see the need not obvious to all. The aloofness of the mere observer was not his; he was too completely one with all he saw to stand apart and let it go its way alone. Fearful and distrustful of himself he long was, but his timidity was only the natural shrinking before new and untried duties of a soul that saw more clearly and felt more keenly than most. The imperative demands inevitably made upon him by every situation led him instinctively to dread putting himself where he could not help responding to the call of unfamiliar tasks; but once there, the summons was irresistible, and he threw himself into the new responsibilities with a forgetfulness of self possible only to him who has denied its claims, and with a fearlessness possible only to him who has conquered fear. He might interpret his confidence as trust in God, won by the path of a complete contempt of his own powers; but however understood, it gave him an independence and a disregard of consequences which made his conscience and his vision effective for reform."

McGiffert suggests a comparison of Luther with, let us say, Erasmus. Had he been a humanist, he would have laughed the whole thing [Tetzel's selling of indulgences] to scorn as an exploded superstition beneath the contempt of an intelligent man; had he been a scholastic theologian, he would have sat in his study and drawn fine distinctions to justify the traffic without bothering himself about its influence upon the lives of the vulgar populace. But he was neither humanist nor schoolman. He had a conscience which made indifference impossible, and a simplicity and directness of vision which compelled him to brush aside all equivocation and go straight to the heart of things. With it all he was at once a devout and believing son of the Church, and a practical preacher profoundly concerned for the spiritual and moral welfare of the common people." (p. 66f. 87.) Had Luther considered his personal interests as Erasmus did, he would not have become the Luther that we know. Erasmus in his day was regarded as the wisest of men; Luther in his own view, like Paul, frequently had to make a fool of himself in order to achieve his purpose. For instance, when he wrote against the dullards at the University of Louvain, against the sacrilegious coterie at Rome that was running the Church and the world pretty much as they pleased, or against the brutal "Hans Wurst" (Duke Henry of Brunswick). Erasmus and his school of gentle reformers always counseled a slackening of the pace and the use of the soft pedal. Where is Erasmus to-day in the world's valuation? Even Rome, in whose bosom he nestled, and who fondled him for a season, has cast him aside as worthless. Luther lives yet, to the delight not only of Coleridge, but of millions of the world's best men, who, with the British divine, regard him this very hour as "a purifying and preserving spirit to Christianity at large."

Luther was conscious of the difference in the method of warfare between himself and his colaborer Melanchthon. He says: "I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and altogether warlike. I am born to fight against innumerable monsters and devils. I must remove stumps and stones, cut away thistles and thorns, and clear wild forests; but Master Philip comes along softly and gently, sowing and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God has abundantly bestowed upon him," (14, 176.)

Dr. Tholuck, writing on "Luther's rashness," says: "What would have become of the Church if the Lord's servants and prophets had at all times done nothing else than spread salves upon sores and walk softly?" He introduces Luther in his own defense: "On one occasion, when asked by the Marquis Joachim I why he wrote against the princes, he returned the beautiful answer: 'When God intends to fertilize the ground, He must needs send first of all a good thunderstorm, and afterwards slow and gentle rain, and thus make it thoroughly productive.' Elsewhere he says: 'A willow-branch may be cut with a knife and bent with a finger, but for a great and gnarled oak we must use an ax and a wedge'; and again: 'If my teeth had been less sharp, the Pope would have been more voracious.' 'Of what use is salt,' he exclaims in another passage, 'if it do not bite the tongue? or the blade of a sword unless it be sharp enough to cut? Does not the prophet say, "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and keepeth back his sword from blood"?'"

One reflection suggests itself in this connection that goes far to exonerate Luther: the language which the Bible employs against heretics and ungodly men. It calls them dogs, Ps. 22, 20; 59, 6; Is. 56, 10; Matt. 7, 6; Phil. 3, 2; Rev. 22, 15; swine, Matt. 7, 6; boars and wild beasts, Ps. 80, 13; dromedaries and asses, Jer. 2, 23f.; bullocks, Jer. 31, 18; bellowing bulls, Jer. 50, 11; viper's brood, Matt. 3, 7; foxes, Cant. 2, 5; Luke 13, 32; serpents, Matt. 23, 33; sons of Belial, 1 Sam. 2, 12; children of the devil, Acts 13, 10; Satan's synagog, Rev. 2, 9. As regards its language, the Bible, too, agrees with the conditions of the times in which it was written. When God, to express His righteous anger, addresses the ungodly in such terms of utter contempt, He teaches us how to regard them and, on occasion, to speak of them. This "coarse" Luther is not more vehement and repulsive in his speech than the holy Word of God.

We remarked before that we would not apologize for Luther's rashness and coarse speech. Luther's acts are self-vindicating; they will approve themselves to the discriminating judgment of every reader of history. We can appreciate this sentiment of McGiffert : "As well apologize for the fury of the wind as for the vehemence of Martin Luther." The Psalmist calls upon the forces of nature: "Praise the Lord, fire, and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling His word." (Ps. 148, 7. 8.) God has a mission that our philosophy does not fathom for the mad hurry and destruction of the whirlwind. How silly it would be to criticize a cyclone because it is not a zephyr! We can imagine a scene like this: The battle of Gettysburg is in progress and a gentle lady is permitted to see it from a distance by a grim, warlike guide, and the following conversation ensues:

"Why, they are shooting at each other! Did you see that naughty man stab the pretty soldier right through his uniform?"

"Yes, madam, that is what he is there for."

"But is it not horrid?"

"Yes, madam, it is perfectly horrid. It is hell."

"But what are they doing this beastly work for?"

"Madam, they are fighting for a principle that is to keep this country a united republic."

"Can anything be more horrid?—I mean, not the principle, but this awful butchery."

"Yes, madam, there is something more horrid than that."

"What is it?"

"If there would be no one to fight for that principle."

War is never a pleasant affair. When men are forced to fight for what is dearer to them than life, they will strike hard and deep. It is silly to expect a soldier to walk up to his enemy with a fly brush and shoo him away, or to stop and consider what posterity would probably regard as the least objectionable way for dispatching an enemy. Luther was called to be a warrior; he had to use warriors' methods. Any general in a bloody campaign can be criticized for violence with as much reason as is shown by some critics of Luther.

5. The Popes in Luther's Time.

To judge intelligently the activity of Luther it is necessary to understand the state of the Church in his day and the character of the chief bishops of the Church. When reading modern censures of Luther's attacks upon the papacy, one wonders why nothing is said about the thing that Luther attacked. Catholic critics of Luther surely must know what papal filth lies accumulated in the Commentarii di Marino Sanuto, in Alegretto Alegretti's Diari Sanesi, in the Relazione di Polo Capello, in the Diario de Sebastiano di Branca de Tilini, in the Successo di la Morte di Papa Alessandro, in Tommaso Inghirami's Fea, Notizie Intorno Rafaele Sanzio da Urbino, and others. Ranke worked with these authorities when he wrote his History of the Popes. What about the authorities which Gieseler cites in his Ecclesiastical History— Muratori, Fabronius, Machiavelli, Sabellicus, Raynaldus, Eccardus, Burchardus, etc.? A compassionate age has relegated the exact account of the moral state of the papacy in Luther's days to learned works, and even in these they are given mostly in Latin footnotes. In the language of Augustus Birrell, they are "too coarse."

Luther's life (1483-1546) falls into the administration of nine Popes:
Sixtus IV, 1471-1484; Innocent VIII, 1484-1492; Alexander VI, 1492-1503;
Pius III, 26 days in 1503; Julius II, 1503-1513; Leo X, 1513-1521;
Hadrian VI, 1522-1523; Clement VII, 1523-1534; Paul III, 1534-1549.

Speaking of this series of Popes, the historian Gieseler says: "The succession of Popes which now follows proves the degeneracy of the cardinals (from among whom the Pope is chosen) as to all discipline and sense of shame: they were distinguished for nothing but undisguised meanness and wickedness; they were reprobates."

Of Sixtus IV he says: "His chief motive was the small ambition to raise his family from their low estate to the highest rank." Infamous transactions which resulted in the murder of Julian de Medici while at high mass in church and the hanging of the archbishop of Pisa from a window of the town hall by the exasperated people, wars, conspiracies, alliances, annulments of alliances, in short, all the acts that fill up the turbulent life of a crafty and grasping politician, are recorded for his administration. He did not scruple to employ the authority of his exalted office for the furtherance of his political schemes. Thus he excommunicated Venice and formed a warlike alliance against the city. But the Venetians regarded his religious thunderbolts as little as his physical prowess. "Vexation at this hastened the death of the Pope, who was hated as much as he was despised."

Ranke, on the authority of Alegretti, relates of Pope Sixtus IV: "The Colonna family, opponents of the Pope's nephew Riario, was persecuted by him with the most savage ferocity. He seized on their domain of Marino, and causing the prothonotary Colonna to be attacked in his own house, took him prisoner, and put him to death. The mother of Colonna came to St. Celso, in Banchi, where the corpse lay, and lifting the severed head by its hair, she exclaimed: 'Behold the head of my son. Such is the truth of the Pope. He promised that my son should be set at liberty if Marino were delivered into his hands. He is possessed of Marino, and, behold, we have my son—but dead. Thus does the Pope keep his word.'"

His successor, Innocent VIII, "in defiance of the conditions of his election, sought with a still more profligate vileness to exalt and enrich his seven illegitimate children." He had been elected on the condition that he would make only one blood relative a cardinal, and that certain other benefices of the Church should not be given to any one related to him. The people called him Nocens (the Guilty One, or the Harmful One) instead of Innocent, and immortalized the prolific paternity of this saintly celibate in the following epigram:

Octo Nocens genuit pueros totidemque puellas,
Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem,

that is,

Nocens begat eight boys and an equal number of maidens;
Rightly, then, Rome will be able to call this gentleman father.

"He carried on two wars with Ferdinand, king of Naples, until the year 1492, and brought forward Renatus, duke of Lorraine, as pretender to his crown. True, he proceeded, as his predecessors had done, to encourage princes and people to undertake expeditions against the Turks; but when Dschem, the brother and rival of the Turkish Sultan Bajazet, was delivered over to him at the head of an army against the Turks, he chose rather to detain him in prison on consideration of an annual tribute from the Turkish Sultan." The story how the Pope got possession of the Turkish prince and refused 200,000 ducats ransom for him because he had received an offer of 600,000 from another party, reads like a story of professional brigandage.

Alexander VI, "the most depraved of all the Popes, likewise recognized no loftier aim than to heap honors and possessions upon his five illegitimate children, and among them especially his favorite, Caesar Borgia." The nuptials celebrated for the Pope's daughter Lucretia—who, by the way, was a divorcee—were "by no means peculiarly decorous." The Latin chronicler who has related them reports in this connection that the moral state of the clergy at Rome was indescribably low. The example of the Popes had set the pace for the rest. From the highest to the lowest each priest had his concubine as a substitute for married life ("concubinas in figura matrimonii"), and that, quite openly. The good chronicler remarks: "If God does not provide a restraint, this corruption will pass on to the monks and the religious orders; however, the monasteries of the city are nearly all become brothels already, and no one raises his voice against it." Wading through the mephitic rottenness of these ancient chronicles, one is seized with nausea.

Holy things, religious privileges, had become merchandise with which the Popes trafficked. The chronicler Burchardus relates: "In those days the following couplet was sung in nearly the whole Christian world:

"Vendit Alexander claves, Altaria, Christum,
Emerat ista prius, vendere juste potest."

The meaning of this satire is: Alexander sells the power of the keys of heaven, the right to officiate at the altar, yea, Christ Himself; he had first bought these things himself, therefore he has a right to sell them again. Unblushing perfidy was practised by this Pope in his dealings with kings who were his religious subjects. In a quarrel with Charles VIII of France he threatened the king with excommunication, and sought aid from the Turkish Sultan. "However, when Charles appeared in Rome, the Pope went over to his side immediately, and delivered up to him Prince Dschem; but he took care to have him poisoned immediately, that he might not lose the price set upon his head by the Sultan." Thus he conciliated the French monarch and filled his purse by one and the same act. "By traffic in benefices, sale of indulgences, exercise of the right of spoils, and taxes for the Turkish war, as well as by the murder of rich or troublesome persons, Alexander was seeking to scrape together as much money as possible to support the wanton luxury and shameful licentiousness of his court, and provide treasures for his children." In their correspondence men who had dealings with him would refer to him in such terms as these: "That monstrous head—that infamous beast!" ("Hoc monstruoso capite—hac infami belua!")

"At length the poison which the Pope had meant for a rich cardinal, in order to make himself master of his wealth, brought upon himself well-deserved death." The Pope's butler had been bribed and exchanged the poison-cup intended for the Pope's victim for the Pope's cup, and the Pope took his own medicine.

On the basis of Alegretti's notes, Ranke has drawn a fine pen-picture of the reign of terror which Caesar Borgia, the favorite son of Alexander VI, inaugurated at Rome. "With no relative or favorite would Caesar Borgia endure the participation of his power. His own brother stood in his way: Caesar caused him to be murdered and thrown into the Tiber. His brother-in-law was assailed and stabbed, by his orders, on the steps of his palace. The wounded man was nursed by his wife and sister, the latter preparing his food with her own hands, to secure him from poison; the Pope set a guard upon the house to protect his son-in-law from his son. Caesar laughed these precautions to scorn. 'What cannot be done at noonday,' said he, 'may be brought about in the evening.' When the prince was on the point of recovery, he burst into his chamber, drove out the wife and sister, called in the common executioner, and caused his unfortunate brother-in-law to be strangled. Toward his father, whose life and station he valued only as a means to his own aggrandizement, he displayed not the slightest respect or feeling. He slew Peroto, Alexander's favorite, while the unhappy man clung to his patron for protection, and was wrapped within the pontifical mantle. The blood of the favorite flowed over the face of the Pope.—For a certain time the city of the apostles and the whole state of the Church were in the hands of Caesar Borgia. . . . How did Rome tremble at his name! Caesar required gold, and possessed enemies. Every night were the corpses of murdered men found in the streets, yet none dared move; for who but might fear that his turn would be next? Those whom violence could not reach were taken off by poison. There was but one place on earth where such deeds were possible—that, namely, where unlimited temporal power was united to the highest spiritual authority, where the laws, civil and ecclesiastical, were held in one and the same hand."

Pope Julius, who came into power after the twenty-six days' reign of Pius III, was a warlike man. "He engaged in the boldest operations, risking all to obtain all. He took the field in person, and having stormed Mirandola, he pressed into the city across the frozen ditches and through the breach; the most disastrous reverses could not shake his purpose, but rather seemed to waken new resources in him." "He wrested Perugia and Bologna from their lords. As the powerful state of Venice refused to surrender her conquests, he resolved at length, albeit unwillingly, to avail himself of foreign aid; he joined the League of Cambrai, concluded between France and the Emperor, and assisted with spiritual and temporal weapons to subdue the republic. Venice, now hard pressed, yielded to the Pope, in order to divide this overwhelming alliance. Julius, already alarmed at the progress of the French in Italy, readily granted his forgiveness, and now commenced hostilities against the French and their ally, Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara. He declared that the king of France had forfeited his claim on Naples, and invested Ferdinand the Catholic with the solo dominion of his realm. He issued a sentence of condemnation against the Duke of Ferrara. Lewis XII strove in vain to alarm him by the National Council of Tours,—Germany, by severe gravamina (complaints of national grievances against the Papal See), and by the threat of the Pragmatic Sanction (an imperial order to confirm the decrees of such reform councils as that of Basel). Not even a General Council, summoned at Pisa by the two monarchs for the first of September, 1511, with the dread phantom of a reform of the Church, could bend the violent Pope." The Council of Pisa the Pope neutralized by convening a Lateran Council, which at the Pope's bidding hurled its thundering manifestos in the name of the Almighty against the Pope's enemies. He died while this conflict was raging. Luther was in Rome while the Pope was engaged as just related.

What elements of appalling greed and levity had entered the holiest transactions of the Church can be seen from the following summing up of the situation daring Luther's time: "A large amount of worldly power was at this time conferred in most instances, together with the bishoprics; they were held more or less as sinecures according to the degree of influence or court favor possessed by the recipient or his family. The Roman Curia thought only of how it might best derive advantage from the vacancies and presentations; Alexander extorted double annates or first-fruits, and levied double, nay, triple tithes; there remained few things that had not become matter of purchase. The taxes of the papal chancery rose higher from day to day, and the comptroller, whose duty it was to prevent all abuses in that department, most commonly referred the revision of the imposts to those very men who had fixed their amounts. For every indulgence obtained from the datary's office, a stipulated sum was paid; nearly all the disputes occurring at this period between the states of Europe and the Roman Court arose out of these exactions, which the Curia sought by every possible means to increase, while the people of all countries as zealously strove to restrain them.

"Principles such as these necessarily acted on all ranks affected by the system based on them, from the highest to the lowest. Many ecclesiastics were found ready to renounce their bishoprics; but they retained the greater part of the revenues, and not unfrequently the presentation of the benefices dependent on them also. Even the laws forbidding the son of a clergyman (!) to procure induction to the living of his father, and enacting that no ecclesiastic should dispose of his office by will (!), were continually evaded; for as all could obtain permission to appoint whomsoever he might choose as his coadjutor, provided he were liberal of his money, so the benefices of the Church became in a manner hereditary.

"It followed of necessity that the performance of ecclesiastical duties was grievously neglected. . . . In all places incompetent persons were intrusted with the performance of clerical duties; they were appointed without scrutiny or selection. The incumbents of benefices were principally interested in finding substitutes at the lowest possible cost; thus the mendicant friars were frequently chosen as particularly suitable in this respect. These men occupied the bishoprics under the title (previously unheard of in that sense) of suffragans; the cures they held in the capacity of vicars." (!)

In order not to extend this review too long, we shall refer only to one other Pope, Leo X. It was in the main a prosperous reign that was inaugurated by Leo X. A treaty was concluded with France, which had invaded Italy. By a diplomatic maneuver the Pragmatic Sanction was annulled, and the Lateran Council was ordered to pronounce its death-warrant. France was humbled. "All resistance was vain against the alliance of the highest spiritual with the highest temporal power. Now, at last, the papacy seemed once more to have quelled the hostile spirit which had grown up at Constance and Basel (two church councils which tried to reform the papacy, but failed), and found its stronghold in France, and at this very time it was near its most grievous fall." Two years later Luther, not fathoming as yet the depths of iniquity which he was beginning to lay bare, published his Ninety-Five Theses.

Leo X is the Pope that excommunicated Luther. Ranke describes the closing hours of his life. The Pope had been extremely successful in his political schemes. "Parma and Placentia were recovered, the French were compelled to withdraw, and the Pope might safely calculate on exercising great influence over the new sovereign of Milan. It was a crisis of infinite moment: a new state of things had arisen in politics—a great movement had commenced in the Church. The aspect of affairs permitted Leo to flatter himself that he should retain the power of directing the first, and he had succeeded in repressing the second." (This refers to Luther's protest; the Pope was, of course, mistaken in the view that he had put a stop to Luther's movement by excommunicating him.) "He was still young enough to indulge the anticipation of fully profiting by the results of this auspicious moment. Strange and delusive destiny of man! The Pope was at his villa of Malliana when he received intelligence that his party had triumphantly entered Milan; he abandoned himself to the exultation arising naturally from the successful completion of an important enterprise, and looked cheerfully on at the festivities his people were preparing on the occasion. He paced backward and forward till deep in the night, between the window and the blazing hearth—it was the month of November. Somewhat exhausted, but still in high spirits, he arrived at Rome, and the rejoicings there celebrated for his triumph were not yet concluded, when he was attacked by a mortal disease. 'Pray for me,' said he to his servants, 'that I may yet make you all happy.' We see that he loved life, but his hour was come, he had not time to receive the sacrament nor extreme unction. So suddenly, so prematurely, and surrounded by hopes so bright! he died-'as the poppy fadeth.'" In the record of Sanuto, who is witness for these events, there is a "Lettera di Hieronymo Bon a suo barba, a di 5 Dec." which contains the following: "It is not certainly known whether the Pope died of poison or not. He was opened. Master Fernando judged that he was poisoned, others thought not. Of this last opinion is Master Severino, who saw him opened, and says he was not poisoned." (Ranke, I, 34 ff.; Gieseler, III, 290 ff., at random.)

Out of such conditions grew Luther's work. But on these conditions Catholic critics of Luther maintain a discreet—shall we not say, a guilty?—silence. Few Catholic laymen to whom the horrors of Luther's life are painted with repulsive effect know the horrors which Luther faced. They are only told that Luther attacked "Holy Mother." They are not told that "Holy Mother" had become the harlot of the ages.

6. Luther's Birth and Parentage.

Catholic writers make thorough work in explaining the reasons for Luther's "defection" from Rome. They apply to Luther's stubborn resistance the law of heredity: Luther's wildness was congenital. Some have declared him the illegitimate child of a Bohemian heretic, others, the oaf of a witch, still others, a changeling of Beelzebub, etc.

Many of these writers, giving themselves the airs of painstaking investigators who have made careful research, repeat the tale of Barbour, viz., that Luther was born in the day-and-night room of an inn at Eisleben. If this is so, Luther's mother must have been a traveler on the day of her first confinement. If this were so, the fact could, of course, be easily explained without dishonor to Luther's mother: she merely miscalculated the date of the birth of her first-born,—not an unusual occurrence. Carlyle believed this story, but gave it an almost too honorable turn, by likening the inn at Eisenach to the inn at Bethlehem.

But this story of Luther's birth in a bar-room is not history; it belongs in the realm of mythology. Nobody knows to-day the house where Luther was born. Preserved Smith, his latest American biographer, says there is a house shown at Eisleben as Luther's birthplace, but it is "not well authenticated." (p. 2.) There is a bar and a restaurant in this particular building now, for the accommodation of foreign visitors. It is possible that in this mythical birthplace of Luther you can get a stein of foaming "monk's brew" or a "benedictine" from the monastery at Fecamp, or a "chartreuse" from Tarragona, distilled according to the secret formula of the holy fathers of La Grande Chartreuse. If you sip a sufficient quantity of these persuasive liquors, you will find it possible to believe most anything. And the blessing of the holy fathers who have prepared the beverages for your repast will be given you gratis in addition to their liquors.

The journey of Luther's mother to Eisleben which compelled her to put up at an inn is, likewise, imaginary. Melanchthon, Luther's associate during the greater part of the Reformer's life, investigated the matter and states that Luther was born at his parents' home in Eisenach during their temporary sojourn in that city, prior to their removal to Mansfeld.

These stories about the place and manner of Luther's birth originated in the seventeenth century. They were unknown in Luther's time. Generations after a great man has died gossip becomes busy and begins to relate remarkable incidents of his life. Lincoln did not say or do one half of the interesting things related about him. He has been drawn into that magical circle where myths are formed, because his great name will arouse interest in the wildest tale. That is what has happened to Luther. These "myths" are an unconscious tribute to his greatness. One might let them pass as such and smile at them.

But the Catholic version of Luther's birth is needed by their writers as a corollary to another "fact" which they have discovered about Luther's father Hans. Hans Luther, so their story runs, was a fugitive from justice at the time of his Martin's birth. In a fit of anger he had assaulted or slain a man in his native village of Moehra, and abandoning his small landholdings, he fled with his wife, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Color is lent to this story by the discovery that the Luthers at Moehra were generally violent folk. Research in the official court-dockets at Salzungen, the seat of the judicial district to which Moehra belonged, shows that brawls were frequent in that village, and some Luthers were involved in them. Now follows the Catholic deduction, plausible, reasonable, appealing, just like the "assumption" of Mary: "Out of the gnarly wood of this relationship, consisting mostly of powerful, pugnacious farmers, assertive of their rights, Luther's father grew."

This story was started in Luther's lifetime. George Wicel, who had fallen away from the evangelical faith, accused Luther of having a homicide for a father. In 1565, he published the story under a false name at Paris, but gave no details. In Moehra nothing was known of the matter until the first quarter of the twentieth century. This circumstance alone is damaging to the whole story. Luther was during his lifetime exposed to scrutiny of his most private affairs as no other man. If Wicel's tale could have been authenticated, we may rest assured that would have been done at the time.

In the eighteenth century a mining official in Thuringia by the name of Michaelis told the story of Hans Luther's homicide with the necessary detail to make it appear real. Observe, this was 220 years after the alleged event. It had been this way: Hans Luther had quarreled with a person who was plowing his field, and had accidentally slain the man with the bridle, or halter, of his horse. Several Protestant writers now began to express belief in the story. Travelers came to Moehra for the express purpose of investigating the matter, e.g., Mr. Mayhew of the London Punch. Behold, the story had assumed definite shape through being kept alive a hundred years: the accommodating citizens of Moehra were now able to point out to the inquiring Englishman the very meadow where the homicide had taken place. It takes an Englishman on the average two years and four months to see the point of a joke. By this time, we doubt not, it will be possible to exhibit to any confiding dunce the very horse-bridle with which Hans Luther committed manslaughter, also the actual hole which he knocked into the head of his victim, beautifully surrounded by a border of blue and green, which are the colors which the bruise assumed six hours after the infliction. The border may not be genuine, but we dare any Catholic investigator to disprove the genuineness of the hole.

Writers belonging to a church that is rich in legends of the saints and in relics ought to know how a tale like Wicel's can assume respectability and credibility in the course of time. It is not any more difficult to account for these tales about Hans Luther's homicide than for the existence in our late day of the rope with which Judas hanged himself, or the tears which Peter wept in the night of the betrayal, or the splinters from the cross of the Lord, or the feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel, and sundry other marvels which are exhibited in Catholic churches for the veneration of the faithful.

No historian that has a reputation as a scholar to lose to-day credits the story of Hans Luther's homicide. It is improbable on its face. The small landholdings of Hans at Moehra are not real, but irreal estate. Nobody has found the title for them. There is, however, a very good reason why Hans should want to leave Moehra. He was, according to all that is known of his father's family, the oldest son. According to the old Thuringian law the home place and appurtenances of a peasant freeholder passed to the youngest son. McGiffert regards the custom as "admirably careful of those most needing care." (p. 4.) Luther's father, on coming of age, was by this law compelled to go and seek his fortune elsewhere, because opportunity for rising to independence there was none for him at Moehra.

If Hans was a fugitive from justice, he was certainly unwise in not fleeing far enough. For at Eisenach, whither he went, he was still under the same Saxon jurisdiction as at Moehra. He seems to have had no fear of abiding under the sovereignty which he is claimed to have offended. This observation has led one of the most exact and painstaking of modern biographers of Luther, Koestlin, to say that the homicide story, if it rests on any basis of fact, must either refer to a different Luther, or if to Hans, the incident cannot have been a homicide. It should be remembered that there is no authentic record which in any way incriminates Hans Luther.

Lastly, this homicide Hans Luther, eight years after coming to Mansfeld, is elected by his fellow-townsmen one of the "Vierherren," or aldermen, of the town. Only most trusted and well-reputed persons were given such an office. A homicide would not have been allowed to settle at Mansfeld, much less to govern the town. Any rogue in the town that he had to discipline in his time of office would have thrown his bloody record up to him.

A Catholic writer says: "The wild passion of anger was an unextinguished and unmodified heritage transmitted congenitally to the whole Luther family, and this to such an extent that the Lutherzorn (Luther rage) has attained the currency of a German colloquialism." Mr. Mayhew thinks that "Martin was a veritable chip of the hard old block," the "high-mettled foal cast by a fiery blood-horse." Catholic writers cite Mr. Mayhew as a distinguished Protestant. If you have not heard of him before, look him up in Who is Who? most anywhere.

All this, however, is a desperate attempt to find proof against an assumed criminal by circumstantial evidence. No direct evidence has ever been available to implicate Luther's father in a village brawl. As to the Lutherzorn, Luther has in scores of places explained the real reason of it: Luther did not inherit, but Rome roused it. This Lutherzorn may arise in any person that is not remotely related to the Luthers after reading Catholic biographies of Martin Luther.

7. Luther's Great Mistake.

Catholic writers contend that Luther made a mistake when he became monk. Protestants share this view, but put the emphasis in the sentence: Luther became a monk, at a different place. In the Protestant view the mistake is this, that Luther became a monk, in the Catholic view, it is this, that Luther became a monk. Protestants regard monasticism largely as a perversion of the laws of nature and of Christian morals. In an institution of this kind Luther could not find the relief he sought. His mistake was that he sought it there. Catholics view monkery as the highest ideal of the Christian life, and blame Luther for entering this mode of life when he was altogether unfit for it. They regard Luther as guilty of sacrilege far seeking admission into the order of Augustinian friars. When he was permitted to turn monk, that which is holy was given unto a dog, and pearls were cast before a swine.

Catholics argue that Luther's cheerless boyhood, the poverty of his parents, the hard work and close economy that was the order in the home at Mansfeld, the harsh and cruel treatment which Luther received from parents that were given to "fits of uncontrollable rage" induced in Luther a morose, sullen spirit. He became brooding and stubborn when yet a child. He was a most unruly boy at school. His character was not improved when he was sent abroad for his education and had to sing for his bread or beg in the streets. His rebellious spirit found nourishment in these humiliations. Owing to his melancholy temperament and gloomy fits, he made no friends. He felt himself misunderstood everywhere. Even the little season of sunshine that came into his young life at the Cotta home in Eisenach did not cure him of the morbid feeling that nobody appreciated him. He began to loathe the studies which he was pursuing in accordance with the wish of his father. To certain occurrences, like the slaying of a fellow-student, an accident with which he met on a vacation trip, and a sudden thunderstorm, he gave an ominous interpretation which deepened his despondency. At last he determined, "inconsiderately and precipitately," to enter a cloister. His friends "instinctively felt he was not qualified or fitted for the sublime vocation to which he aspired, and they accordingly used all their powers to dissuade him from the course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, and from the gayety and frolic of the banquet" which he had given his fellow-students as a farewell party "he went to the monastery." He was so reckless that he took this step even without the consent of his parents. "He knew little about the ways of God, and was not well informed of the gravity and responsibilities of the step he was taking." "He was not called by God to conventual life; . . . he was driven by despair, rather than the love of higher perfection, into a religious career." Catholics feel so sure that they have a case against Luther that in all seriousness they ask Protestants the question: Did he act honestly when he knelt before the prior asking to be received into the order?

Luther has later in life given various reasons for entering the monastery. His case was not simple, but complex. One reason, however, which he has assigned is the severe bringing up which he had at his home. Hausrath is satisfied with this one reason, and many Catholic writers adopt his view. But this remark of Luther is evidently misapplied if it is made to mean that Luther sought ease, comfort, leniency in the cloister as a relief from the hard life which he had been leading. Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life. He willingly bowed to "the gentle yoke of Christ"—thus ran the monkish ritual—which the life of an eremite among eremites was to impose on him. His hard life in the days of his boyhood and youth had been an unconscious preparation for this life. He had been strictly trained to fear God and keep His commandments. The holy life of the saints had been held up to him as far back as he could remember as the marvel of Christian perfection. Home and Church had cooperated in deepening the impressions of the sanctity of the monkish life in him. When he saw the emaciated Duke of Anhalt in monk's garb with his beggar's wallet on his back tottering through the streets of Magdeburg, and everybody held his breath at this magnificent spectacle of advanced Christianity, and then broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the Carthusians at Eisenach, weary and wan with many a vigil, somber and taciturn, toiling up the rugged steps to a heaven beyond the common heaven; when he talked with the young priests at the towns where he studied, and all praised the life of a monk to this young seeker after perfect righteousness; when in cloister-ridden Erfurt he observed that the monks were outwardly, at least, treated with peculiar reverence, can any one wonder that in a mind longing for peace with God the resolve silently ripened into the act: I will be a monk?

We, too, would call this an act of despair. We would say with Luther: Despair makes monks. But the despair which we mean, and which Luther meant, is genuine spiritual despair. What Catholics call Luther's despair is really desperation, a reckless, dare-devil plunging of a criminal into a splendid Catholic sanctuary. That Luther's act decidedly was not. By Rome's own teaching Luther belonged in the cloister. That mode of life was originally designed to meet the needs of just such minds as his. His entering the monastery was the logical sequence of his previous Catholic tutelage. Rome has this monk on its conscience, and a good many more besides.

As piety went in those days, Luther had been raised a pious young man. He was morally clean. He was a consistent, yea, a scrupulous member of his Church, regular in his daily devotions, reverencing every ordinance of the Church. Also during his student years he kept himself unspotted from the moral contaminations of the academic life. He abhorred the students who were devoted to King Gambrinus and Knight Tannhaeuser. He loathed the taverns and brothels of Erfurt. The Cotta home was no Bierstube in his day. The banquet-hall where he met his friends the evening before he entered the cloister was no banquet-hall in the modern sense of the term. That he played the lute at this farewell party, and that there were some "honorable maidens" present, is nowadays related with a wink of the eye by Catholics. But there was nothing wrong in all the proceedings of that evening. It was indeed an honorable gathering. Luther was never a prudish man or fanatic. He loved the decent joys and pleasures of life. Luther gathered his friends about him to take a decent leave of them. He did not run away from them secretly, as many monks have done. He opened up his mind to them at this last meeting. The conversation that ensued was a test of the strength of the convictions he had formed. His was an introspective nature. He had wrestled daily with the sin that ever besets us. He knew that with all his conventional religiousness he could not pass muster before God. Over his wash-basin he was overheard moaning: "The more we wash, the more unclean we become." He felt like Paul when he groaned: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7, 24.) He was sorrowing for his poor soul. He was hungering and thirsting for righteousness. "When will I ever attain to that state of mind that I am sure God is pleased with me?" he mused distractedly. What he could not find while engaged in his secular pursuits, that, he was told, the cloister could give him. To obtain that he entered the monastery. If ever Rome had an honest applicant for monkery, Luther is that man.

Nor did he act precipitately. As shown, the thought of this act had been quietly forming in him for years. When he made his rash vow to St. Anna, he still allowed two weeks to pass before he put his resolution into action. Try and picture to yourself his state of mind during those fourteen days! Moving about in his customary surroundings, he was daily probing the correctness of his contemplated change of life. He fought a soul-battle in those days, and the remembrance of his father made that battle none the easier. From the Catholic standpoint Luther deserves an aureole for that struggle. After entering the cloister, he was still at liberty for a year and a half to retrace his fatal step. But his first impressions were favorable; monkery really seemed to bring him heart's ease and peace, and there was no one to disabuse his mind of the delusion. After nearly two years in the monastery, while sitting with his father at the cloister board on the event of his ordination to the priesthood, he declares to his father that he enjoys the quiet, contemplative life that he has chosen. Surely, he made a mistake by becoming monk, but Catholics cannot fault him for that mistake. If the life of monks and nuns is really what they claim that it is: the highest and most perfect form of Christianity, they should consistently give any person credit for making the effort to lead that life. In fact, they ought all to turn monks and nuns to honor their own principles.

8. Luther's Failure as a Monk.

Monasticism is a pagan shoot grafted on a Christian tree. At its base lies the heathenish notion that sin can be extirpated by severe onslaughts upon the body and the physical life. It has existed in Buddhism before some Christians adopted it. In the early days of Christianity it was proclaimed as superior wisdom by the Platonic philosophers. Like many a lie it has been decked out with Bible-texts to give it respectability, and to soothe disquieted consciences. The Scripture-sayings regarding fasting, sexual continence, chastity, crucifying the flesh, etc., are made to stand sponsor for this bastard offspring of the brain of Christian mystics.

With excellent discrimination Mosheim has traced the origin of monasticism to the early Christian fathers. The earliest impulses to monasticism are contained in such writings as the Epistle to Zenas, found among the writings of Justinus, the tracts of Clement of Alexandria on Calumny, Patience, Continence, and other virtues, the tracts of Tertullian on practical duties, such as Chastity, Flight from Persecution, Fasting, Theatrical Exhibitions, the Dress of Females, Prayer, etc. These writings "would be perused with greater profit, were it not for the gloomy and morose spirit which they everywhere breathe. . . . In what estimation they ought to be held, the learned are not agreed. Some hold them to be the very best guides to true piety and a holy life; others, on the contrary, think their precepts were the worst possible, and that the cause of practical religion could not be committed to worse hands. . . . To us it appears that their writings contain many things excellent, well considered, and well calculated to kindle pious emotions; but also many things unduly rigorous, and derived from the Stoic and Academic philosophy; many things vague and indeterminate; and many things positively false, and inconsistent with the precepts of Christ. If one deserves the title of a bad master in morals who has no just ideas of the proper boundaries and limitations of Christian duties, nor clear and distinct conceptions of the different virtues and vices, nor a perception of those general principles to which recurrence should be had in all discussions respecting Christian virtue, and therefore very often talks at random, and blunders in expounding the divine laws; though he may say many excellent things, and excite in us considerable emotion; then I can readily admit that in strict truth this title belongs to many of the Fathers. . . . They admitted, with good intentions no doubt, yet most inconsiderately, a great error in regard to morals, and pernicious to Christianity; an error which, through all succeeding ages to our times, has produced an infinity of mistakes and evils of various kinds. Jesus, our Savior, prescribed one and the same rule of life or duty to all His disciples. But the Christian doctors, either by too great a desire of imitating the nations among whom they lived, or from a natural propensity to austerity and gloom, (a disease that many labor under in Syria, Egypt, and other provinces of the East,) were induced to maintain that Christ had prescribed a twofold rule of holiness and virtue; the one ordinary, the other extraordinary; the one lower, the other higher; the one for men of business, the other for persons of leisure, and such as desired higher glory in the future world. They therefore early divided all that had been taught them either in books or by tradition, respecting a Christian life and morals, into Precepts and Counsels. They gave the name Precepts to those laws which were universally obligatory, or were enacted for all men of all descriptions; but the Counsels pertained solely to those who aspire after superior holiness and a closer union with God. There soon arose, therefore, a class of persons who professed to strive after that extraordinary and more eminent holiness, and who, of course, resolved to obey the Counsels of Christ, that they might have intimate communion with God in this life, and might, on leaving the body, rise without impediment or difficulty to the celestial world. They supposed many things were forbidden to them which were allowed to other Christians, such as wine, flesh, matrimony, and worldly business. They thought they must emaciate their bodies with watching, fasting, toil, and hunger. They considered it a blessed thing to retire to desert places, and by severe meditation to abstract their minds from all external objects, and whatever delights the senses. Both men and women imposed these severe restraints on themselves, with good intentions, I suppose, but setting a bad example, and greatly to the injury of the cause of Christianity. They were, of course, denominated Ascetics, Zealous Ones, Elect, and also Philosophers; and they were distinguished from other Christians, not only by a different appellation, but by peculiarities of dress and demeanor. Those who embraced this austere mode of life lived indeed only for themselves, but they did not withdraw themselves altogether from the society and converse of men. But in process of time, persons of this description at first retired into deserts, and afterwards formed themselves into associations, after the manner of the Essenes and Therapeutae.

"The causes of this institution are at hand. First, the Christians did not like to appear inferior to the Greeks, the Romans, and the other people among whom there were many philosophers and sages, who were distinguished from the vulgar by their dress and their whole mode of life, and who were held in high honor. Now among these philosophers (as is well known) none better pleased the Christians than the Platonists and Pythagoreans, who are known to have recommended two modes of living, the one for philosophers who wished to excel others in virtue, and the other for people engaged in the common affairs of life. The Platonists prescribed the following rule for philosophers: The mind of a wise man must be withdrawn, as far as possible, from the contagious influence of the body. And as the oppressive load of the body and social intercourse are most adverse to this design, therefore all sensual gratifications are to be avoided; the body is to be sustained, or rather mortified, with coarse and slender fare; solitude is to be sought for; and the mind is to be self-collected and absorbed in contemplation, so as to be detached as much as possible from the body. Whoever lives in this manner shall in the present life have converse with God, and, when freed from the load of the body, shall ascend without delay to the celestial mansions, and shall not need, like the souls of other men, to undergo a purgation. The grounds of this system lay in the peculiar sentiments entertained by this sect of philosophers and by their friends, respecting the soul, demons, matter, and the universe. And as these sentiments were embraced by the Christian philosophers, the necessary consequences of them were, of course, to be adopted also.

"What is here stated will excite less surprise if it be remembered that Egypt was the land where this mode of life had its origin. For that country, from some law of nature, has always produced a greater number of gloomy and hypochondriac or melancholy persons than any other; and it still does so. Here it was long before the Savior's birth, not only the Essenes and Therapeutae—those Jewish sects, composed of persons with a morbid melancholy, or rather partially deranged—had their chief residence; but many others also, that they might better please the gods, withdrew themselves as by the instinct of nature from commerce with men and with all pleasures of life. From Egypt this mode of life passed into Syria and the neighboring countries, which in like manner always abounded with unsociable and austere individuals: and from the East it was at last introduced among the nations of Europe. Hence the numerous maladies which still deform the Christian world; hence the celibacy of the clergy; hence the numerous herds of monks; hence the two species of life, the theoretical and mystical." (Eccles. Hist., I, 128 f.)

One may well feel pity for the original monks. Their zeal was heroic, but it was spent upon an issue that is in its very root and core a haughty presumption and a lie. Exhaust all the Scripture-texts which speak of indwelling sin, of the lust that rages in our members, of the duty to keep the body under by fasting and vigilance, and there will not be found enough Bible to cover the nakedness of the monastic principle. Its fundamental thought of a select type of piety to be attained by spectacular efforts at self-mortification flies in the face of the doctrine that we are rid of sin and sanctified by divine grace alone. Monkish holiness is a slander of the Redeemer's all-sufficient sacrifice for sin and of the work of the Holy Spirit. It started in paganism, and wants to drag Christianity back into paganism.

But monasticism in Luther's day was no longer of the sort which one may view with a pathetic interest. The old monastic ideals had been largely abandoned. Instead of crucifying the flesh, the monks were nursing and fondling carnal-mindedness. The cloisters had become cesspools of corruption. Because the reputation of monks was utterly bad, and monks were publicly scorned and derided, Luther's friends tried to dissuade him from entering the cloister. That was the reason, too, why Luther's father was so deeply shocked when he heard of what his Martin had done, and Luther had to assure his father that he had not gone into the herd of monks to seek what people believed men sought in that profligate company. For that reason, too, he had chosen the Augustinian order, because a strong reform movement had been started in that order, and its reputation was better than that of the other orders. Luther meant to be a monk of the original type.

Since the days of Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas the Roman Church teaches that there is in the Church a treasury of supererogatory works, that is, of good works which Christ and the saints have performed in excess of what is ordinarily demanded of every man in the way of upright living. We shall meet with this idea again in another connection. It flows from the monastic principles. Monks must have not only enough sanctity for their own needs, but to spare. Of this superfluous sanctity they may make an assignment in favor of others. Do not smile incredulously; monks actually make such assignments. Luther may not have thought of this when he entered the cloister, but he rejoiced in this scheme of substitutive sanctity later. He thought he had found in monkery a gold-mine of holiness that would be sufficient not only for himself, but also for his parents. While at Rome some years later, he was in a way sorry that his father and mother were not already in purgatory. He had such a fine chance there to accumulate supererogatory good works which he might have transferred to them to shorten their agonies, or release them entirely.

In order to make a successful monk, one must be either a Pharisee or an epicurean. The Pharisee takes an inventory of the works named in the Law of God, and sets out to perform these in an external, mechanical manner. He adds a few works of his own invention for good measure. Every work performed counts; it constitutes merit. On the basis of his two pecks and a half of merit the Pharisee now begins to drive a bargain with God: for so much merit he claims so much distinction and glory. He figures it all out to God, so that God shall not make a mistake at the time of the settlement: I have not been this, nor that, nor the other thing; I have done this, and that, and some more. Consequently . . . ! The epicurean is a jolly fatalist. Whatever is to happen will happen. Why worry? Go along at an even pace; eat, drink, be merry, but for Heaven's sake do not take a serious or tragical view of anything! Take things as they are; if you can improve them, well and good; if not, let it pass; forget it; eat a good meal and go to sleep.

Luther was never an epicurean. The seriousness of life had confronted him at a very early date. The sense of duty was highly developed in him from early youth. In all that he did he felt himself as a being that is responsible to his Maker and Judge. Easy-going indifference and ready self-pity were not in his character. For this Luther is now faulted by Catholics. It is said he extended the rigors of monasticism beyond the bounds of reasonableness. He was too severe with himself. He outraged human nature. Quite correct; but is not monasticism by itself an outrage upon human nature? Luther had endured the monastery for the very purpose of enduring hardness. He did not flinch when the battle into which he had gone commenced in earnest. Luther is said to have been tardy and neglectful in the observance of the rules of the order. Sometimes he would omit the canonical hours, that is, the stated prayers, or some form of prescribed devotion, and then he would endeavor to make up for the loss by redoubled effort, which overtaxed his physical strength. Quite true. It is not such a rare occurrence that a monk forgets the one or the other of the minutiae of the daily monkish routine. The regulations of his orders extended to such things as the posture which he must assume while standing, while sitting, while kneeling; the movement of his arms, of his hands; how to approach, how to move in front of the altar, how to leave it, etc. When his mind was engrossed with the study of the Bible or some commentary of a Church Father, it was easy for Luther to forget parts of the program which he was to carry out. Whenever this happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without a true perception of divine grace and the meaning of the Redeemer's work. However, this study did not at any time permanently affect his vigorous striving after holiness.

When Catholics explain Luther's failure as a monk by such assertions, they involve themselves in self-contradiction. By their own principles monkery is not a natural life; yet, when a monk fails in his monkery, they fault him for not being natural. First, they tell the applicant that he must not be what he is, and afterwards they blame him for wanting to be what they told him to be, and what he finds he cannot be. If this is not adding insult to injury, what is? Francis of Assisi became a great saint by that very inhuman treatment of himself for which Luther is censured. But then Francis of Assisi did not quit his order and did not attack the Pope.

The other reason why Luther failed is, because he could not make a Pharisee of himself, which is only another name for hypocrite. The Law of God had such a terrible meaning to him because he applied it as the Lawgiver wants it applied, to his whole inner life, to the heart, the soul, the mind, and all his powers of intellect and will. It is comparatively easy to make the members of the body go through certain external performances, but to make the mind obey is a different proposition. The discovery which disheartened Luther was, that while he was outwardly leading the life of a blameless monk, his inward life was not improved. Sin was ever present with him, as it is with every human being. He felt the terrible smitings of the accusing conscience because he was keenly alive to the real demands of God's Law. The holy Law of God wrought its will upon him to the fullest extent: it roused him to anger with the God who had given this Law to man; it led him into blasphemous thoughts, so that he recoiled with horror from himself. Does the true Law of God, when properly applied, ever have any other effect upon natural man? Paul says: "It worketh wrath" (Rom. 4, 15), namely, wrath in man against God. It drives man to despair. That is its legitimate function: No person has touched the essence of the Law who has not passed through these awful experiences. Nor did any man ever flee from the Law and run to Christ for shelter but for these unendurable terrors which the Law begets. That was Luther's whole trouble, and that is why he failed as a monk: he had started out to become a saint, and he did not even succeed in making a Pharisee of himself. If Rome has produced a monk that succeeded better than Luther, he ought to be exhibited and examined. He will be found either an angel or a brazen fraud. He will not be a true man.

9. Professor Luther, D. D.

Catholic writers greedily grab every opportunity to belittle Luther's scholarship. Incentives to study at home, they say, he received none. His common school education was wretched. During his high school studies he was favored with good teachers, but hampered by his home-bred roughness and uncouthness and his poverty. He applied himself diligently to his studies, but gave no sign of being a genius. At the University of Erfurt, too, he was studious, but he seems to have made no great impression on the University. "He paid little attention to grammatical details, and never attained to Ciceronian purity and elegance in speech and writing." When he made his A. B:, he ranked thirteenth in a class of fifty-seven. He did a little better in his effort for the title of A. M., when he came out second among seventeen candidates. But Melanchthon is declared entirely wrong when he relates that Luther was the wonder of the University. His theological studies preparatory to his entering the priesthood were very hasty and superficial. Still less prepared was he for the work of a professor. His duties in the cloister left him little time for learned studies. Yet he went to "bibulous Wittenberg," to a little five-year-old university, and lectured "as best he could." By the way, our Catholic friends seem to forget that "bibulous" Wittenberg was a good old Catholic town at the time. All things considered, Luther's advancement was all too rapid; it was not justified by his preparatory studies, which had been "anything but deep, solid, systematic." "The theological culture he received was not on a par with that required now by the average seminarian, let alone a Doctor of Divinity." He accepted the title of D. D. very reluctantly, being conscious that he did not deserve it. A feeling of the insufficiency of his education tormented him all through life. "It cannot be denied that he was industrious, self-reliant, ambitious, but withal, he was not a methodically trained man. At bottom, he was neither a philosopher nor a theologian, and at no time of his life, despite his efforts to acquire knowledge, did he show himself more than superficially equipped to grapple with serious and difficult philosophical and religious problems. His study never rose to brilliancy." Thus runs the Catholic account of Professor and Doctor Luther.

We have not quoted the worst Catholic estimates of Luther's scholarship. He has also been called a dunce, an ignoramus, a barbarian. Again it seems to escape the Catholics that this ill-trained, insufficient, half-baked Doctor of Divinity is a product of their own educational art. Whatever advancement he received in those days was actually forced upon him by Catholics. All his academic and ecclesiastical honors came from Catholic sources, came to him, moreover, as a good Catholic. Also that highest and noblest distinction which made him a duly called and accredited expounder of the Holy Scriptures. If there is fault to be found with anything in this matter, it lies with the Catholic method and process of making a young man within the space of ten years a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts, a priest, a professor, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology; it does not lie with the innocent subject to whom this presto! change! process was applied.

But does this estimate of Luther square with the facts in the case? For a dunce or a mediocre scholar Luther has been a fair success. His little ability and scanty preparation makes his achievements all the more remarkable. The most brilliant minds of the race, for whom the home, the Church and the State, religion, science and art, had done their best, have accomplished immeasurably less than this poor and mostly self-taught country boy. God give His Church many more such dunces!

The net results of Luther's learning are open to inspection by the world in his numerous works. Able scholars of most recent times have looked into Luther's writings with a view of determining how much learned knowledge he had actually acquired, even before he began his reformatory work, They have found that Luther was "very well versed in the favorite Latin authors of the day: Vergil, Terence, Ovid, Aesop, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Silius, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius, Sallust, Quintilian, Varro, Pomponius Mela, the two Plinies, and the Germania of Tacitus." He possessed a creditable amount of knowledge of General History and Church History. He had made a profound study of the leading philosophers and scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages: Thomas of Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Duns Scotus, Occam, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre d'Ailly, Gerson, and Biel. Two of these he knew almost by heart. He had studied the ancient Church Fathers: Irenaeus, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory of Nanzianzen, Jerome, and such later theologians as Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, and Anselm of Canterbury; Tauler, Lefevre, Erasmus, and Pico della Mirandola. "He was quite at home in the exegetical Middle Ages, in the Canon Law, in Aristotle and Porphyry." "He was one of the first German professors to learn Greek and Hebrew." Moreover, Luther possessed, besides knowledge, those indispensable requisites in a good professor: "the faculty of plain, clear, correct, and independent thought, resourcefulness, acumen" (Boehmer, p. 179 f.). He had the courage to tell the Church that it was a shame, that a heathen philosopher, Aristotle, should formulate the doctrines which Christians are to believe and their pastors are to teach. He threw this heathen, who had for ages dominated Christian teaching, out of his lecture-room, and took his students straight to the pure fountain of religious truth, the Word of God. He publicly burned the Canon Law by which the Roman Church had forged chains for the consciences of men, and which she upholds to this day. His lecture-room became crowded with eager and enthusiastic students, and the stripling university planted on the edge of civilization in the sands along the Elbe became for a while the religious and theological hub of the world. The students who gathered about Luther knew that they had a real professor in him. The world of his day came to this fledgling doctor with the weightiest questions, and received answers that satisfied. That part of the intelligent world of to-day which has read and studied Luther endorses the verdict of Luther's contemporaries as regards his ample learning and proficiency as a teacher.

More learned men, indeed, than Luther there have been. Some of these have also made attempts to introduce needed reforms in the corrupt Roman Church. Rome met their learned and labored arguments with the consummate skill of a past master in sophistry. Those learned efforts came to naught. Rome will never be reformed by human learning and scholarship. Scholars are rarely men of action. It is because Professor Luther taught and acted that Rome hates him. He would have been permitted to lecture in peace whatever he wished—others in the universities were doing that at the time—if he had only been careful not to do anything, at least not publicly, against the authority of the Church. That was the unpardonable blunder of Luther that he wanted to live as he believed, and that he taught others to do the same. For this reason he is a dullard, an ignoramus, a poor scholar, a poor writer, in a word, an inferior person from a literary and scholarly point of view.

In Numbers (chap. 22) there is a story told of the prophet Balaam, who went out on a wicked mission for which a great reward had been promised him. He rode along cheerfully, feasting his avaricious heart on the great hoard he would bring back, when suddenly the ass that bore him balked. The prophet began to beat the animal, but it did not budge an inch. All at once this dunce of an ass which had never been put through a spelling-book began to talk and remonstrated with the prophet: "Am I not thine ass? What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me?" To his amazement the prophet was able to understand the ass quite well. This dumb brute made its meaning plain to a learned man. It was an intolerable outrage that an ass should lecture a doctor, and balk him in his designs. Luther is that ass. Rome rode him, and he patiently bore his wicked master until the angel of the Lord stopped him and he would go no further. The only difference is that Balaam had his eyes opened, left off beating his ass, and felt sorry for what he had done. Rome's eyes have not been opened for four hundred years. It is still beating the poor ass. It does not see the Lord who has blocked her path and said, You shall go no further!

In 2 Kings, chap. 5, there is another story told of the Syrian captain Naaman, who came to be healed of his leprosy by the prophet Elijah. With his splendid suite the great statesman drove up in grand style to the prophet's cottage. He expected that the holy man would come out to meet him, and very deferentially engage to do the great lord's bidding. The prophet did not even come out of his hut, but sent Naaman word to go and wash seven times in Jordan and he would be cleansed. Now Naaman flew into a rage, because the prophet had, in the first place, not even deigned to speak to him, and, secondly, had ordered a ridiculously commonplace cure for him. He stormed that he would do no such thing as wash in that old Jordan River. He had better waters at home. Let the prophet keep his old Jordan for such as he was. And he rode off in great dudgeon. Rome is the leprous gentleman, and Luther is the man of God who told her how to become clean. The only difference is this: Naaman listened to wise counsel, and finally did what he had been told to do, and was cleansed. Rome disdains to this day to listen to the ill-bred son of a peasant, the theological upstart Luther, and remains as filthy as she has been.

10. Luther's "Discovery" of the Bible.

Since Luther's study of the Bible has been referred to several times in these pages, it is time that the righteousness of a certain indignation be examined which Catholic writers display. They pretend to be scandalized by the tale that in Luther's time the Bible was such a rare book that it was practically unknown. With the air of outraged innocence some of them rise to protest against the stupid myth that Luther "discovered" the Bible. They claim that their Church had been so eager to spread the Bible, and had published editions of the Bible in such rapid succession, that in Luther's age Christian Europe was full of Bibles. Moreover, that age, they tell us, was an age of intense Bible-study. Not only the theologians, but also the laymen, not only the wealthy and highly educated, but also the common people, had unhindered access to the Bible. The historical data for Rome's alleged zeal in behalf of the Bible these Catholic writers gather largely from Protestant authors. For greater effect they propose to buttress, with the fruits of the laborious research of Protestants, their charge that Luther's ignorance of the Bible was self-inflicted and really inexcusable.

What are the facts in the case? The whole account which we possess of Luther's "discovery" of the Bible is contained in Luther's Table Talk. (22, 897.) This is a book which Luther did not personally compose nor edit. It is a collection of sayings which his guests noted down while at meat with Luther, or afterwards from memory. From a casual remark during a meal Mathesius obtained the information which he published in his biography of Luther, viz., that, when twenty-two years old, Luther one day had found the Bible in a library at Erfurt.

Now, we do not wish to question the general credibility of the Table Talk, nor the authenticity of this particular remark of Luther about his stumbling upon the Bible by accident. But it is certainly germane to our subject to strip the incident of the dramatic features with which Catholic writers claim that most Protestants still surround the event. Did Luther say, and did Mathesius report, that up to the year 1505 he had not known of the Bible? Not at all. He merely stated that up to that time he had not seen a complete copy of the Bible. Luther himself has told scores of times that when a schoolboy at Mansfeld, and later at Magdeburg and Eisenach where he studied, he had heard portions of the Gospels and Epistles read during the regular service at church. Some passages he had learned by heart. Luther's guests would have laughed at him if he had claimed such a "discovery" of the Bible as Catholic writers—and some of their Protestant authorities—think that Mathesius has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with.

What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not be, an unusual occurrence in those days. "Even in the University of Paris, which was considered the mother and queen of all the rest, not a man could be found, when Luther arose, competent to dispute with him out of the Scriptures. This was not strange. Many of the doctors of theology in those times had never read the Bible. Carolostadt expressly tells us this was the case with himself. Whenever one freely read the Bible, he was cried out against, as one making innovations, as a heretic, and exposing Christianity to great danger by making the New Testament known. Many of the monks regarded the Bible as a book which abounded in numerous error." (Mosheim, III, 15.) The spiritual atmosphere in which Luther and all Christians of his time were brought up was unfavorable to real Bible-study.

But before we exhibit the true attitude of Rome toward the Bible, it will be necessary to examine the Catholic claim regarding the extensive dissemination and the intensive study of the Bible among the people in and before Luther's times. Before the age of printing one cannot speak, of course, of "editions" of the Bible. The earliest date for the publication of a printed edition of the Bible is probably 1460— twenty-three years before Luther's birth. That was an event fully as momentous as the opening of the transatlantic cable in our time. Before printing had been invented, the Bible was multiplied by being copied. That was a slow process. Even when a number of copyists wrote at the same time to dictation, it was a tedious process, requiring much time, and not very many would join in such a cooperative effort of Bible production. Besides, few men in those early ages were qualified for this work. A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an ignorant monk and others who were afflicted with the proverbial monks' malady—laziness. It is to the credit of the pious members of the Roman Church in that unhappy age that they manifested such a laudable interest in the Bible. The achievement of copying the entire Bible with one's own hand in that age is so great that it palliates some of the glaring evils of the inhuman system of monasticism. But if every monk in every cloister, every priest in every Catholic parish, every professor in every Catholic university, could have produced twenty copies of the Bible during his lifetime, how little would have been accomplished to make the Bible available for the millions of men then living!

Reading is the correlate of writing. The person who cannot write, as a rule, cannot read. For this reason the Bible must have remained a sealed book to many who had ample opportunity to become acquainted with it. The wide diffusion of Bible knowledge which Catholic writers would lead us to believe always existed in the Roman Church is subject to question. It is true that in the first centuries of the Christian era there was a great hunger and thirst for the Word of God. But that was before the Roman Church came into existence. For it is a reckless assumption that the papacy is an original institution in the Church of Christ, and that Roman Catholicism and Christianity are identical. It is also true that in the early days of the Reformation the people manifested a great desire for the Word of God. It was as new to them as it had been to Luther. They would crowd around a person who was able to read, and would listen for hours. At St. Paul's in London public reading of the Bible became a regular custom. But between the early days of Christianity and the beginning of the Reformation lies a period which. is known as the Dark Ages. No amount of oratory will turn that age into a Bright Age. "From the seventh to the eleventh century books were so scarce that often not one could be found in an entire city, and even rich monasteries possessed only a single text-book." (Universal Encycl., 2, 96.) These conditions were not greatly improved until printing was invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable destitution which I recently observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, know nothing at all of Christian doctrine; and many pastors are quite unfit and incompetent to teach. Yet all are called Christians, have been baptized, and enjoy the use of the Sacraments, although they know neither the Lord's Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten Commandments, and live like the poor brutes and irrational swine." (Preface to the Small Catechism.) Remember, these people lived in that age when Luther was born and grew up, which Catholic writers picture to us as a Bible-knowing and Bible-loving age.

The invention of printing wrought a mighty change in this respect. This glorious art became hallowed from the beginning by being harnessed for service to the Bible. But even this invention did not at once remove the prevailing ignorance. We must not transfer modern conditions to the fifteenth century. In 1906, one of the many Protestant Bible Societies reported that it had disposed in one year of nearly 80,000,000 Bibles and parts of the Bible in many languages. The Bible is perhaps the cheapest book of modern times. It was not so in the days of Gutenberg, Froschauer, Luft, and the Claxtons. Even after printing had been invented, Bibles sold at prices that would be considered prohibitive in our day. When the Duke of Anhalt ordered three copies of the Bible printed on parchment, he was told that for each copy he must furnish 340 calf-skins, and the expense would be sixty gulden. (Luther's Works, 21b, 2378.) But even the low-priced editions of the Bible, printed on common paper (which was not introduced into Europe until the thirteenth century), cost a sum of money which a poor man would consider a fortune, and which even the well-to-do would hesitate to spend in days when money was scarce and its purchasing power was considerably different from what it is to-day. At a period not so very remote from the present a Bible was considered a valuable chattel of which a person would dispose by a special codicil in his will. For generations Bibles would thus be handed down from father to son, not only because of the sacred memories that attached to them as heirlooms, but also because of their actual value in money.

Everything considered, then, we hold the argument that the Bible was a widely diffused book in the days before Luther to be historically untrue, because it implies physical impossibilities. With the magnificent printing and publishing facilities of our times, how many persons are still without the Bible? How many parishioners in all the Catholic churches of this country to-day own a Bible? The modern Bible societies are putting forth an energy in spreading the Bible that is unparalleled in history. Still their annual reports leave the impression that all they accomplish is as a drop in the bucket over and against the enormous Bible-need still unsupplied. Catholic writers paint the Bible-knowledge of the age before Luther in such exceedingly bright colors that one is led to believe that age surpassed ours. They overshoot their aim. Nobody finds fault with the Roman Church for not having invented the printing-press. All would rather be inclined to excuse her little achievement in spreading the Bible during the Middle Ages on the ground of the poor facilities at her command. Every intelligent and fair person will accord the Roman Church every moiety of credit for the amount of Bible-knowledge which she did convey to the people. We heartily join Luther in his belief that even in the darkest days of the papacy men were still saved in the Roman Church, because they clung in their dying hour to simple texts of the Scriptures which they had learned from their priests. (22, 577.) But no one must try and make us believe that the Roman Church before Luther performed marvels in spreading the Bible. She never exhausted even the poor facilities at her command.

Far from wondering, then, that Luther had not seen the complete Bible until his twenty-second year, we regard this as quite natural in view of his lowly extraction, and we consider the censure which superficial Protestant writers have applied to Luther because of his early ignorance of the Bible as uncommonly meretricious. When we bear in mind the known character of the Popes in Luther's days, we doubt whether even they had read the entire Bible. Luther's "discovery" of the Bible, however is not regarded by Protestants as a discovery such as Columbus made when he found the American continent. Luther knew of the existence of the Bible and could cite sayings of the Bible at the time when he found the bulky volume in the library that made such a profound impression upon him.

And yet his find was a true discovery. Luther discovered that his Church had not told him many important and beautiful things that are in the Bible. He became so absorbed with the novel contents of this wonderful book that the desire was wrung from his: heart: Oh, that I could possess this book! But this enthusiastic wish at once became clouded by another discovery which he made while poring over the precious revelation of the very heart of Jesus: his Church had told him things differently from what he found them stated in the Bible. He was shocked when he discovered that in his heart a new faith was springing up which had come to him out of the Bible,—a faith which contradicted the avowed faith of the Roman Church. Poor Luther! He had for the first time come under the influence of that Word which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow (Hebr. 4, 12), and he did not know it. Some of the noblest minds in the ages before him have had to pass through the same experience. With the implicit trust which at that time lie reposed in the Roman Church, Luther suppressed his "heretical" thoughts. He said: "Perhaps I am in error. Dare I believe myself so smart as to know better than the Church?" (Hausrath, 1, 18.) Yes, Luther had really discovered the Bible, namely, the Bible which the Roman Church never has been, and never will be, willing to let the people see while she remains what she is to-day. This "discovery"-tale which so offends Catholic writers could be verified in our day. Let Catholic writers put into the hands of every Catholic of America the true, genuine, unadulterated Word of God, without any glosses and comment, and let them watch what is going to happen. There will be astonishing "discoveries" made by the readers, and those discoveries will be no fabrications.

11. Rome and the Bible.

Catholic writers claim for the Roman Church the distinction which at one time belonged to the Hebrews, that of being the keepers of the oracles of God. They claim that to the jealous vigilance of the Roman Church over the sacred writings of Christianity the world to-day owes the Bible. The pagan emperors of Rome would have destroyed the Bible in the persecutions which they set on foot against the early Christians, if the faithful martyrs had not refused to surrender their sacred writings. Again, the Roman Church is represented as the faithful custodian of the Bible during the political and social upheaval that wrecked the Roman Empire when the barbarian peoples of the North overran Rome and Greece. Only through the care of the Roman Church the Bible is said to have been saved from destruction in the general confusion.

The reasoning of Catholics on this matter is specious. In the first place, the early Christian martyrs were not Roman Catholics. The claim of the Roman Church that the papacy starts with Peter is a myth. In the second place, much patient labor has been expended in the last centuries to collate existing manuscripts of the Bible for the purpose of removing errors that had crept into the text and making the original text of the Bible as accurate as it is possible to make it. In these labors mostly Protestants were engaged. Fell, Mill, Kuster, Bengel, Wetzstein, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, have through three centuries of untiring research cooperated in placing before the world the authentic text of the Bible.

To-day we have not a single one of the autograph manuscripts of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. If the Roman Church existed in the days when Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, Jude, and James wrote, and if she exercised such scrupulous care over the Bible, why has she not preserved a single one of these invaluable documents? We suggest this thought only in view of the unfounded Catholic boast; we do not charge the Catholic Church with a crime for having permitted the autographs of our Bible to become lost, we only hold that the Catholic Church is not entitled to the eulogies which her writers bestow upon her.

Even the condition of the copies that were made from the autograph writings of the apostles does not speak well for the care which the Roman Church took of the Bible, assuming, of course, that she existed in those early centuries. "It is evident that the original purity (of the New Testament text) was early lost. . . . Irenaeus (in the second century) alludes to the differences between the copies. . . . Origen, early in the third century, expressly declares that matters were growing worse. . . . From the fourth century onward we have the manuscript text of each century, the writings of the Fathers, and the various Oriental and Occidental versions, all testifying to varieties of readings." (New Schaff-Herzog Encycl., II, 102.) Our sole purpose in calling attention to this fact, which every scholar to-day knows, is, to bring the fervor of Catholic admiration for the Bible-protecting and Bible-preserving Church of Rome somewhat within the bounds of reason. We do not charge the Roman Church with having corrupted the text, but if the claim of Catholics as to the age of their Church is correct, every corruption in the copies that were made from the original documents occurred while she was exercising her remarkable custodianship over the Bible. That officials of the Church, especially as we approach the Middle Ages, had something to do with corrupting the sacred text is the belief of the authority just quoted. "The early Church," he says, "did not know anything of that anxious clinging to the letter which characterizes the scientific rigor and the piety of modern times, and therefore was not bent upon preserving the exact words. Moreover, the first copies were made rather for private than for public use." Not a few were found in sarcophagi; they had been buried with their owners. "Copyists were careless, often wrote from dictation, and were liable to misunderstand. Attempted improvements of the text in grammar and style; efforts to harmonize the quotations in the New Testament with the Greek of the Septuagint, but especially to harmonize the Gospels; the writing out of abbreviations; incorporation of marginal notes in the text; the embellishing of the Gospel narratives with stories drawn from non-apostolic, though trustworthy, sources,—it is to these that we must attribute the very numerous 'readings' or textual variations. It is true that the copyists were sometimes learned men; but their zeal in making corrections may have obscured the true text as much as the ignorance of the unlearned. The copies, indeed, came under the eye of an official reviser, but he may have sometimes exceeded his functions, and done more harm than good by his changes."

All this happened while the Roman Church, according to Catholic writers, was keeper of the Bible. The honor which these writers assert for their Church is spurious. If there is any class of men for whom the glory must be vindicated of having given to the world the pure Word of God in a reliable text, it is the band of textual, or lower, critics who have gathered and collated all existing manuscripts of the Bible. What an immense amount of painstaking labor this necessitated the reader can guess from the fact that for the New Testament alone about 3,000 manuscripts had to be examined word for word and letter for letter. The men who undertook this gigantic task, arid who are always on the watch for new finds, do not belong in the Roman fold, and did not receive the incentive for their work from the Roman Church. This work started soon after the Reformation, and the intense interest aroused in God's Word by that movement is the true cause of it. The Protestant Church, not the Church of Rome, has given back to the world the pure Word of God in more than one sense.

The official Bible of the Roman Church to-day is the Latin Vulgate. This Bible, which is a revision by Jerome and others of many variant Latin texts in use towards the end of the fourth century, has been elevated to the dignity of the inspired text. The original purpose was good: it was to remove the confusion of many conflicting texts and to establish uniformity in quoting the Bible. The errors of the Vulgate are many, but while it was understood that the Vulgate was merely a translation, the errors could be corrected from the original sources. Little, however, was done in this respect before the Reformation, and since then the Roman Church has become rigid and petrified in its adherence to this Latin Bible. In its fourth session (April 8, 1546) the Council of Trent decreed that "of all Latin editions the old and vulgate edition be held as authoritative in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions; and that no one is to dare or presume under any pretext to reject it." "The meaning of this decree," says Hodge, "is a matter of dispute among Romanists themselves. Some of the more modern and liberal of their theologians say that the council simply intended to determine which among several Latin versions was to be used in the service of the Church. They contend that it was not meant to forbid appeal to the original Scriptures, or to place the Vulgate on a par with them in authority. The earlier and stricter Romanists take the ground that the Synod did intend to forbid an appeal to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and to make the Vulgate the ultimate authority. The language of the council seems to favor this interpretation." We might add, the practise of Romanists, too. At the debate in Leipzig Eck contended that the Latin Vulgate was inspired by the Holy Ghost. (Koestlin, I, 455.)

Whatever knowledge of Scripture the people in the Middle Ages possessed was confined to those who could read Latin. Catholic writers claim this was at that time the universal language of Europe, but they wisely add: "among the educated." One of them says: "Those who could read Latin could read the Bible, and those who could not read Latin could not read anything." Exactly. And now, to prove the wide diffusion of Bible-knowledge in their Church before Luther, these Catholic writers should give us some exact data as to the extent of the Latin scholarship in that age. Fact is, the Latin tongue acted as a lock upon the Scriptures to the common people. Hence arose the desire to have the Bible translated into the vernacular of various European countries.

This desire Rome sought to suppress with brutal rigor. The bloody persecutions of the Waldensians in France, which almost resulted in the extirpation of these peaceful mountain people, of the followers of Wyclif in England, whose remains Rome had exhumed after his death and burned, of the Hussites in Bohemia, were all aimed at translations of the Bible into the languages which the common people understood.

In July, 1199, Pope Innocent III issued a breve, occasioned by the report that parts of the Bible were found in French translation in the diocese of Metz. The breve praises in a general way the zeal for Bible-study, but applies to all who are not officially appointed to engage in such study the prohibition in Ex. 19, 12. 13, not to touch the holy mountain of the Law.

During the reign of his successor, Honorius III, in 1220, laymen in
Germany were forbidden to read the Bible.

Under Gregory IX the same prohibition was issued, in 1229, to laymen in
Great Britain.

In the same year the crusades against the Albigenses were concluded, and the Council of Toulouse issued a severe order, making it a grave offense for a layman to possess a Bible.

In 1234, the Synod of Tarragona demanded the immediate surrender of all translations of the Bible for the purpose of having them burned.

In 1246, the Synod of Baziers issued a prohibition forbidding laymen to possess any theological books whatsoever, and even enjoining the clergy from owning any theological books written in the vernacular.

Eleven years after Luther's death, in 1557, Pope Paul IV published the Roman Index of Forbidden Books, and, with certain exceptions, prohibited laymen from reading the Bible.

Not until the reign of King Edward VI was the "Act inhibiting the reading of the Old and New Testament in English tongue, and the printing, selling, giving, or delivering of any such other books or writings as are therein mentioned and condemned" (namely, in 34 Hen. VIII. Cap. 1) abrogated.

The Council of Trent ordered all Catholic publishers to see to it that their editions have the approval of the respective bishop.

Not until February 28, 1759, did Pope Clement XIII give permission to translate the Bible into all the languages of the Catholic states.

Not until November 17, 1893, did Pope Leo XIII issue an encyclical enjoining upon Catholics the study of the Bible, always, however, in editions approved by the Roman Church. (Kurtz, Kirchengesch. II, 2, 94. 217; Univers. Encycl., under title "Bible"; Peter Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata I, 99; Denzinger, Enchiridion, 1429. 1439. 1567. 1607.)

Catholic writers seek to make a great impression in favor of their Church by enumerating, on the authority of Protestant scholars, the number of German translations of the Bible that are known to have been in existence before Luther. But they omit to inform the public that not a single one of those translations obtained the approbation of a bishop. One cannot view but with a pathetic interest these sacred relies of an age that was hungering for the Word of God. The origin of these early German Bibles has been traced by scholars to Wycliffite and Hussite influences, which Rome never stamped out, though her inquisitors tried their best to do so. The earliest of these Bibles do not state the place nor the year of publication. Can the reader guess why? They were not published at the seat of the German Archbishop, Mainz, but most of them at the free imperial city of Augsburg. Can the reader suggest a reason? Many of them are printed in abnormally small sizes, facilitating quick concealment. Can the reader imagine a cause for this phenomenon? In these old German Bibles particular texts are emphasized, for example, Rom. 8, 18; 1 Cor. 4, 9; 2 Cor. 4, 8 ; 11, 23; 1 Pet. 2, 19; 4, 16; 5, 9; Acts 5, 18. 41; 8, 1; 12, 4; 14, 19. If the reader will take the trouble to look up these texts, he will find that they warn Christians to be prepared to be persecuted for their faith. Has the reader ever heard of such an officer of the Roman Church as the inquisitor, one of whose duties it was to hunt for Bibles among the people? In places these old German Bibles contain significant marginal glosses, for example, at 1 Tim. 2, 5 one of them has this gloss: "Ain mitler Christus, ach merk!" that is: One mediator, Christ—note this well!

In 1486, Archbishop Berchtold of Mainz, Primate of Germany, issued an edict, full of impassioned malice against German translations of the Bible, and against laymen who sought edification from them. He says that "no prudent person will deny that there is need of many supplements and explanations from other writings" than the Bible, to the end, namely, that a person may construe from the German Bibles the true Catholic faith. Fact is, that faith is not in the Bible. This happened three years after the birth of Luther. (Kurtz, II, 2, 304.)

Instead of finding fault, then, with Luther's ignorance of the Bible prior to 1505, we feel surprised that the young man knew as much of the Bible as he did. He must in this respect have surpassed many in his age.

The Roman Church does not permit her laymen to read a Bible that she has not published with annotations. "Believing herself to be the divinely appointed custodian and interpreter of Holy Writ," says a writer in the Catholic Encyclopedia (II, 545), "she cannot, without turning traitor to herself, approve the distribution of Scripture 'without note or comment.'" For this reason the Roman Church has cursed the Bible societies which early in the eighteenth century began to be formed in Protestant Churches, and aimed at supplying the poor with cheap Bibles. In 1816, Pope Pius VII anathematized all Bible societies, declaring them "a pest of Christianity," and renewed the prohibition which his predecessors had issued against translations of the Bible. (Kurtz, II, 2, 94.) Leo XII, on May 5, 1824, in the encyclical Ubi Primum, said: "Ye are aware, venerable brethren, that a certain Bible society is impudently spreading throughout the world, which, despising the traditions of the holy Fathers and the decree of the Council of Trent, is endeavoring to translate, or rather to pervert, the Scriptures into the vernacular of all nations. . . . It is to be feared that by false interpretation the Gospel of Christ will become the gospel of men, or, still worse, the gospel of the devil." Pius IX, on November 9, 1846, in the encyclical Qui Pluribus, said: "These crafty Bible societies, which renew the ancient guile of heretics, cease not to thrust their Bible upon all men, even the unlearned—their Bibles, which have been translated against the laws of the Church and after certain false explanations of the text. Thus the divine traditions, the teaching of the fathers, and the authority of the Catholic Church are rejected, and every one in his own way interprets the words of the Lord, and distorts their meaning, thereby falling into miserable error." (Cath. Encycl. II, 545.) The writer whom we have just quoted says: "The fundamental fallacy of private interpretation of the Scriptures is presupposed by the Bible societies." These papal pronunciamentos arc directed chiefly against the Canstein Bibelgesellschaft and her later sisters, such as the Berliner Bibelgesellschaft, and against the British and American Bible Societies.

The face of the Roman Church is sternly set against the plain text of the Scriptures. To defeat the meaning of the original text, she not only mutilates the text and adds glosses which twist the meaning of the text into an altogether different meaning, but she declares that the Bible is not the only source from which men must obtain revealed truth. Alongside of the Bible she places an unwritten word of God, her so-called traditions. These, she claims, are divine revelations which were handed down orally from generation to generation. The early fathers and the councils of the Church referred to them in defining the true doctrine and prescribing the correct practise of the Church. Nobody has collected these traditions, and nobody will. But to what extent the Roman Church operates with them, is well known.

Speaking of learned Bible-study in the Middle Ages, Mosheim says: "Nearly all the theologians were Positivi and Sententiarii [that is, they taught what the Church ordered to be taught], who deemed it a great achievement, both in speculative and practical theology, either to overwhelm the subject with a torrent of quotations from the fathers, or to anatomize it according to the laws of dialectics [that is, the laws of reasoning, logic]. And whenever they had occasion to speak of the meaning of any text, they appealed invariably to what was called the Glossa Ordinaria [that is, the official explanation], and the phrase Glossa dicit (the Gloss says), was as common and decisive on their lips as anciently the phrase Ipse dixit (he, viz., the teacher, has said) in the Pythagorean school." (III, 15.)

In his controversies with the theologians of Rome, Luther found that they were constantly wriggling out of the plain text of the Bible and running for shelter to the traditions, to the fathers, to the decrees of councils of the Church.

At the Council of Trent some one rose to inquire whether all the traditions recognized as genuine by the Church could not be named; he was told that he was out of order. (Pallavivini, VI, 11, 9; 18, 7.) Hase has invited the Roman Church to say whether all the traditions are now known. He has not been answered. (Protest. Polem., p. 83.) If Romanists answer: Yes, the reasonable request will be made of them to publish those traditions once for all time, in order that men may know all that God is supposed to have really said to men that is not in the Bible. If they answer: No, the conclusion is inevitable that the Christian faith is an uncertain thing. Any tradition may bob up that upsets a part of the Creed.

Add to this the dogma of papal infallibility, promulgated July 18, 1870, which asserts for the Pope "the entire plenitude of supreme power" to determine the faith and morals of Christians, and we have reached a point where it becomes plain to any thoughtful person that the Bible is, from the Catholic view-point, not at all such a necessary book as men have believed. Nor can the faith of a Romanist be a fixed and stable quantity. Any papal deliverance may bring about a change, and the conscientious Catholic must study the news from the Vatican with the same vital interest as the merchant studies the market reports in his morning paper, and a very pertinent question that he may ask his wife over his coffee at the breakfast table would be, "Wife, what do we believe to-day?"

12. Luther's Visit at Rome.

Catholic writers ask the world not to believe Luther's tales about the city of Rome. Luther, they say, came to Rome as a callow rustic comes to a metropolis. To the wily Italians he was German Innocence Abroad; they hoaxed him by telling him absurd tales about the Popes, the priests, the wonders of the city, etc., and the credulous monk believed all they told him. He left Rome with his faith in the Church unimpaired. Later in life, after his "defection" from Rome, he told as true facts and as reminiscences of his visit at the Holy City many of the false stories which had been palmed off on him. This is said to have given rise to the prevailing Protestant view that during his visit at Rome Luther's eyes were opened to the corruption of the Roman Church and his resolution formed to overthrow that Church. Luther himself is said to be responsible for this false view. He fostered it by his tales of what he had seen and heard at Rome with disgust and horror. His horrid impressions are declared pure fiction, and simply serve to show how little the man can be trusted in anything he states.

To leave a way open for a decent retreat, Catholics also point to a difference in temperament between the phlegmatic Luther coming from a northern clime, which through its atmospheric rigors begets somber reflections and gloomy thoughts, and the airy, fairy Italians, who revel in sunshine, flowers, and fruits, drink fiery wines, and naturally grow up into a freedom of manners and lack of restraint that is characteristic of people living in southern climes. All of which means— if it means anything serious—that the Ten Commandments are subject to revision according to the geographic latitude in which a person happens to be. When your austere gentleman, raised among the fens and bogs of the Frisian coast, sees something in a grove in Sicily which he denounces as wicked, you must tell him that there is nothing wrong in what he has seen. He has only omitted to adjust his temperament to the locality. If you follow out this line of thought to the end, you will come to a point where you strike hands with Rudyard Kipling, who has sung enthusiastically about a certain locality beyond Aden where the Ten Commandments do not exist. And to think that this plea is made by people who have charged Luther with having put the Ten Commandments out of commission for himself and others! Italians, lovers of freedom and unrestraint, were the first to fill the world with tales about the moral besottedness of Luther! This goes to show that in any application of the Ten Commandments it matters very much who does the applying.

We have in a previous chapter briefly reviewed the Popes that were contemporaries of Luther. Their character was stamped on the life of the Holy City: The Popes and their following gave Rome its moral, or immoral, face. The chroniclers of those days have described the existing conditions. Luther need not have said one word about what wicked things he had seen and heard at Rome, either ten years, or twenty years, or thirty years after he had been there, and the world would still know the record of the residence of the Popes. Luther really saw very little of what he might have seen, and it is probable that he has told less. But what he did see and hear are facts. He did not grasp their full meaning nor see their true bearing at the time. The real import of his Roman experiences dawned on him at a later period. He spoke as a man of things that he had seen as a child. But that does not alter the facts.

Luther was shocked at the levity of Italian monks who were babbling faulty Latin prayers which they did not understand and remarked laughing to him: "Never mind; the Holy Ghost understands us, and the devil flees apace."

Luther's confidence in the boasted unity of the Roman Church was somewhat shaken when he discovered that he could not read mass in any church in the territory at Milan, because there the Ambrosian form of service was prescribed while he had been trained to the Gregorian.

Luther shook his head at the freedom of certain public manners of the
Italians which reminded him of dogs and of what he had read about
Kerkyra.

Luther heard of a Lenten collation, probably at the abbey of San Benedetto de Larione, where the word "fast" had to be spelled with an e as the second letter.

The loquaciousness, spicy talk, blasphemy, dishonesty, treachery, quarrelsomeness, and deadly animosities of the Italians, Luther regards as strange, considering that they live so near to the Holy City.

He wondered why the Italians do not permit their women to go out of their houses except deeply veiled.

He finds that the Italians show no respect for their beautiful churches and the divine service conducted in them. Even on great festivals the magnificent cathedrals are almost empty, the worshipers are chatting with one another while the service is in progress. Even quarrels are settled at these holy places, sometimes with the knife. When there is a burial, they hurry the corpse to the grave, not even the relatives being in attendance.

He is grieved at the irreligious manner in which the priests at Rome read mass. They hurry through the performance with incredible rapidity. They crowd each other away from the altar in their haste to get their performance finished. "Hurry, hurry! Begone! Come away!" he hears them calling to one-another. Sometimes two priests are reading mass at one altar at the same time. They had finished the whole mass before Luther had reached the Gospel in the service of the mass. And then they would receive money from the bystanders who had come in and had watched them. In a half hour a priest could get a handful of silver. Luther refused such gifts.

Luther heard few preachers at Rome, and those that he heard he did not like. They were very lively in the delivery of their sermons, they would run to and fro in their pulpit, bend far over toward the audience, utter violent cries, change their voice suddenly, and gesticulate like madmen.

Luther saw Pope Julius from a distance several times. He thought it queer that a healthy and strong man like the Pope should have himself carried to church in a litter instead of walking thither, and that such show should be made of his going there and a procession should be formed to accompany him. He saw the Pope sit at the altar and hold out his foot to be kissed by people. He saw the Pope take communion. He did not kneel like other communicants, but sat on his magnificent throne; a cardinal priest handed him the chalice, and he sipped the wine through a silver tube.

However, these and other things did not at the time shake Luther's belief in the Catholic Church. He came to Rome and left Rome a devout Catholic. Staupitz, the vicar of his order, had really gratified him in permitting him to go to Rome as the traveling companion of another monk. Luther had expressed the wish to make a general confession at Rome. With this thought on his mind he started out, and he treated the whole journey as a pilgrimage. After the manner of pious monks the two companions walked one behind the other, reciting prayers and litanies. Whether his general confession and his first mass at Rome, probably at Santa Maria del Popolo, gave him that sense of spiritual satisfaction which he craved, he has not told us. When he had come in sight of the city, he had fallen on his face like the crusaders in sight of Jerusalem, and had fervently blessed that moment. Now he ran through the seven stations of Rome, read masses wherever he could, gathered an abundance of indulgences by going through prescribed forms of worship at many shrines, listened to miracle-tales, knelt before the veil of St. Veronica near the Golden Gate at San Giovanni and before the bronze statue of St. Peter in the chapel of St. Martin, where a crucifix had of its own accord raised itself up and become transfixed in the dome, saw the rope with which Judas hanged himself fastened to the altar of the Apostles Simon and Judas at St. Peter's, the stone in the chapel of St. Petronella on which the penitential tears of Peter had fallen, cutting a groove in it two fingers wide, had the guide show him the Pope's crown, the tiara, which, he thought, cost more money than all the princes of Germany possessed, was perplexed at finding the heads and bodies of Peter and Paul assigned to different places, at the Lateran Church and at San Paolo Fuori, mounted the Scala Santa—Pilate's staircase—on his knees, passed with awe the relief picture in one of the streets which the popular legend declared to be that of the female Pope Johanna and her child, saw the ancient pagan deities of Rome depicted in Santa Maria della Rotonda, the old Pantheon, stared at the head of John the Baptist in San Silvestro in Capite, tried, but failed to read the famous Saturday mass at San Giovanni, the oldest and greatest sanctuary of Christianity, rested from a fatiguing tour through the Lateran in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, where Pope Sylvester II, the Faustus of the Italians, was carried away by the devils, went through the catacombs with its 6 martyred Popes and 176,000 other martyrs, etc., etc.

Looking back to this visit later, Luther remarked, "I believed everything" Just what official Rome expected every devout pilgrim to do, just what it expects them to do to-day. And these Romanists want to point the finger of ridicule at the simpleton, the easy dupe, the holy fool Luther! Does Rome perhaps think the same of all the pious pilgrims that annually crowd Rome? Luther heard himself called "un buon Christiano" at Rome and discovered that that meant as much as "an egregious ass." But he considered that a part of Italian wickedness. The Church, he was sure, approved of all that he did, in fact, had taught him to do all that. It required ten years or more to disabuse his mind of the frauds that had been practised on him, and then he declared that he would not take 100,000 gulden not to have seen with his own eyes how scandalously the Popes were hoodwinking Christians. If it were not for his visit at Rome, he says, he might fear that he was slandering the Popes in what he wrote about them.

While Luther's visit at Rome, then, brought about no spiritual change in him, it helped to give him a good conscience afterwards when his conflict with Rome had begun.

13. Pastor Luther.

Luther's famous protest against the sale of indulgences, published October 31, 1517, in the form of ninety-five theses, is represented by Catholic writers as an outburst of Luther's violent temper and an assault upon the Catholic Church that he had long premeditated. By this time, it is said, Luther had become known to his colleagues as a quarrelsome man, loving disputations and jealous of victory in a debate. His methods of teaching at the university were novel, in defiance of the settled customs of the Church. His dangerous innovations caused the suspicion to spring up that he was plotting rebellion against the authority of the Church. The arrival of the indulgence-hawker Tetzel in the neighborhood of Wittenberg gave him the long-looked-for occasion to strike a blow at the sacred teachings of the Church which he had solemnly promised to support and defend against all heretics, and from whose teachings he had already apostatized in his heart.

The fact is that Luther was so little conscious of an intention to stir up strife for his Church that he was probably the most surprised man in Germany when he observed the excitement which his Theses were causing. The method he had chosen for voicing his opinion had no revolutionary element in it. It was an invitation to the learned doctors to debate with him the doctrinal grounds for the sale of indulgences. Catholic writers point to the fact that Luther declared at a later time that he did not know what an indulgence was when he attacked Tetzel. They seek to prove from this remark of Luther that it was not conscientious scruples, but the desire to cause trouble in the Church that prompted Luther to his action. They do not see that this remark speaks volumes for Luther. By his Theses he meant to get at the truth of the teaching concerning indulgences. His Theses were written in Latin, not in the people's language. Others translated them into German and scattered them broadcast throughout Germany. The Theses are no labored effort to set up, by skilful, logical argument and in carefully chosen terms, a new dogma in oppositon [tr. note: sic] to the teaching of the Church, but they are exceptions hurriedly thrown on paper, like the notes jotted down by a speaker to guide him in a discussion of his subject. Last, not least, the Theses, while contradicting the prevailing practise of selling indulgences, breathe loyalty to the Catholic Church. From our modern standpoint Luther appears in the Theses as half Protestant, or evangelical, half Roman Catholic. In his own view he was altogether Catholic. His Theses were merely a call: Let there be light! Let our consciences be duly instructed!

We still have a letter which Luther wrote to Pope Leo X about six months after he had published the Theses. This letter shows in what an orderly and quiet way Luther proceeded in his attack upon the traffic in indulgences, and how much he believed himself in accord with the Pope and the Church. We shall quote a few statements from this letter: "In these latter days a jubilee of papal indulgences began to be preached, and the preachers, thinking everything allowed them under the protection of your name, dared to teach impiety and heresy openly, to the grave scandal and mockery of ecclesiastical powers, totally disregarding the provisions of the Canon Law about the misconduct of officials. . . . They met with great success, the people were sucked dry on false pretenses, . . . but the oppressors lived on the fat and sweetness of the land. They avoided scandals only by the terror of your name, the threat of the stake, and the brand of heresy, . . . if, indeed, this can be called avoiding scandals and not rather exciting schisms and revolt by crass tyranny. . . .

"I privately warned some of the dignitaries of the Church. By some the admonition was well received, by others ridiculed, by others treated in various ways, for the terror of your name and the dread of censure are strong. At length, when I could do nothing else, I determined to stop their mad career if only for a moment; I resolved to call their assertions in question. So I published some propositions for debate, inviting only the more learned to discuss them with me, as ought to be plain to my opponents from the preface to my Theses. [This was, by the way, a common practise in those days among the learned professors at universities.] Yet this is the flame with which they seek to set the world on fire! . . ." (15, 401; transl. by Preserved Smith.)

Luther's publication of the Theses was the act of a conscientious Christian pastor. Being a priest, Luther had to hear confession. Through the confessional he learned how the common people viewed the indulgences: they actually believed that by buying indulgences they were freed from all the guilt and punishment of their sins. Absolution became a plain business transaction: you pay your money and you take your goods. Luther wrote this to his archbishop the same day on which he published his Theses. "Papal indulgences," he says in the letter to Albert, Archbishop of Mayence and Primate of Germany, "for the building of St. Peter's are hawked about under your illustrious sanction. I do not now accuse the sermons of the preachers who advertise them, for I have not seen the same, but I regret that the people have conceived about them the most erroneous ideas. Forsooth, these unhappy souls believe that, if they buy letters of pardon, they are sure of their salvation; likewise, that souls fly out of purgatory as soon as money is cast into the chest; in short, that the, grace conferred is so great that there is no sin whatever which cannot be absolved thereby, even if, as they say, taking an impossible example, a man should violate the mother of God. They also believe that indulgences free them from all penalty and guilt." (15, 391; transl. by Preserved Smith, p. 42.)

Luther had preached against the popular belief in indulgences, pilgrimages to shrines of the saints and their relics, for two years before he published his Theses. He was confident that the Church could not countenance this belief. Forgiveness of sins is to the penitent in heart who are sorry for their sins, and their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who atoned for them, and in whom we have the forgiveness of sin by the redemption through His blood. This is the Scriptural doctrine of penitence,—that sorrowful, contrite, and believing attitude of the heart which is the characteristic of true Christians throughout their lives. Through penitence we become absolved in the sight of God from all guilt and punishment of our sins, and the minister, by announcing this fact, is to convey to the penitent the assurance that his sins have been forgiven. Whatever penances or pious exercises the Church may impose an sinners who have confessed their sins can only be imposed as a wholesome disciplinary measure and as aids to the needed reformation of life. These penances, since they originate in the choice of the Church, may also be remitted by the Church, and for these penances the Church may accept a commutation in money, which payment, however, cannot supersede the paramount duty of the penitent to amend his sinful conduct. Such were Luther's views in brief outline at the time he published his Theses. If we are to take modern Catholic critics of Luther seriously, that has also been the teaching of their Church on the subject of indulgences. They claim that the good intentions of the Popes were grossly misinterpreted and the system of indulgences was put to uses for which it was never intended. If that is the case, why do they attack Luther for his attempt to have the abuses corrected? According to their own presentation of the true teaching of the Church on the subject of indulgences, Luther was the most dutiful son of the Church in his day in what he did on All Souls' Eve, 1517.

But the Roman teaching on indulgences is not such an innocent affair as Catholics would have us believe. The practise of substituting for penances some good work or contribution to a pious purpose had arisen in the Church at a very early time. "This," says Preserved Smith, who has well condensed the history of indulgences, "was the seed of indulgence which would never have grown to its later enormous proportions had it not been for the crusades. Mohammed promised his followers paradise if they fell in battle against unbelievers, but Christian warriors were at first without this comforting assurance. Their faith was not long left in doubt, however, for as early as 855 Leo IV promised heaven to the Franks who died fighting against the Moslems. A quarter of a century later John VIII proclaimed absolution for all sins and remission of all penalties to soldiers in the holy war, and from this time on the 'crusade indulgence' became a regular means of recruiting, used, for example, by Leo IX in 1052 and by Urban II in 1095. By this time the practise had grown up of regarding an indulgence as a remission not only of penance, but of the pains of purgatory. The means which had proved successful in getting soldiers for the crusade were first used in 1145 or 1146 to get money for the same end, pardon being assured to those who gave enough to fit out one soldier on the same terms as if they had gone themselves.

"When the crusades ceased, in the thirteenth century, indulgences did not fall into desuetude. At the jubilee of Pope Boniface VIII, in 1300, a plenary indulgence was granted to all who made a pilgrimage to Rome. The Pope reaped such an enormous harvest from the gifts of these pilgrims that he saw fit to employ similar means at frequent intervals, and soon extended the same privileges as were granted to pilgrims to all who contributed for some pious purpose at their own homes. Agents were sent out to sell these pardons, and were given power to confess and absolve, so that in 1393 Boniface IX was able to announce complete remission of both guilt and penalty to the purchasers of his letters.

"Having assumed the right to free living men from future punishment, it was but a step for the Popes to proclaim that they had the power to deliver the souls of the dead from purgatory. The existence of this power was an open question until decided by Calixtus III in 1457, but full use of the faculty was not made until twenty years later, after which it became of all branches of the indulgence trade the most profitable."

The reader will note that the indulgence trade in its latest form had not become a general thing until about six years before Luther's birth. It was a comparatively new thing that Luther attacked. In our remarks on monasticism in a previous chapter we alluded to the Roman teaching concerning the Treasure of the Merits of the Saints, or the Treasure of the Church. This teaching greatly fructified the theory of indulgences. It has never been shown, and never will be, how this Treasure originates. In the work of our Redeemer there was nothing superabundant that the Scriptures name. He fulfilled the entire Law for man, and His merits are of inestimable value. But they were all needed for the work of satisfying divine justice. Moreover, all these merits of Christ are freely given to each and every believer and cancel all his guilt, according to the statement of Paul: "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth." As regards the merits of the saints, which they accumulated by doing good works in excess of what they were required to do, this is a purely imaginary asset of the papal bank of Rome. Every man, with all that he is and has and is able to do, owes himself wholly to God. At the best he can only do his duty. There is no chance for doing good works in excess of duty. If he were really to do all, he would only do what it was his duty to do, Luke 17, 10, and would be told to regard himself, even in that most favorable case, as an unprofitable servant.

But supposing there were superabundant merits, supererogatory works of Christ and the saints, who has determined their quantity? Who takes the inventory of this stock of the papal bank of Rome? Is he the same party who determines the length of a person's stay in purgatory and can tell how much he has been in arrears in the matter of goodness and virtuousness, and how much cash will purchase his release? How is this intelligence conveyed to purgatory that Mr. So-and-so is free to proceed to heaven? A multitude of such questions arising in all thinking minds that want to arrive at rock bottom facts in so serious a matter always baffle the theologians of Rome. They owe the world an answer on these questions for four hundred years. Is the world doing Rome an injustice when it regards the sale of indulgences a pure confidence game in holy disguise, the offer of a fictitious value for good cash, the boldest and baldest gold-bricking that mankind has heen [tr. note: sic] subjected to?

The sale of indulgences which was started in Luther's days was a particularly offensive enterprise. "It was not so much the theory of the Church that excited Luther's indignation as it was the practises of some of her agents. They encouraged the common man to believe that the purchase of a papal pardon would assure him impunity without any real repentance on his part. Moreover, whatever the theoretical worth of indulgences, the motive of their sale was notoriously the greed of unscrupulous ecclesiastics. The 'holy trade' as it was called had become so thoroughly commercialized by 1500 that a banking house, the Fuggers of Augsburg, were the direct agents of the Curia in Germany. In return for their services in forwarding the Pope's bulls, and in hiring sellers of pardons, this wealthy house made a secret agreement in 1507 by which it received one-third of the total profits of the trade, and in 1514 formally took over the whole management of the business in return for the modest commission of one-half the net receipts. Naturally not a word was said by the preachers to the people as to the destination of so large a portion of their money, but enough was known to make many men regard indulgences as an open scandal.

"The history of the particular trade attacked by Luther is one of special infamy. Albert of Brandenburg, a prince of the enterprising house of Hohenzollern, was bred to the Church and rapidly rose by political influence to the highest ecclesiastical position in Germany. In 1513, he was elected, at the age of twenty-three, Archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of the bishopric of Halberstadt,—an uncanonical accumulation of sees confirmed by the Pope in return for a large payment. Hardly had Albert paid this before he was elected Archbishop and Elector of Mayence and Primate of Germany (March 9, 1514). As he was not yet of canonical age to possess even one bishopric, not to mention three of the greatest in the empire, the Pope refused to confirm his nomination except for an enormous sum. The Curia at first demanded twelve thousand ducats for the twelve apostles. Albert offered seven for the seven deadly sins. The average between apostles and sins was struck at ten thousand ducats, or fifty thousand dollars, a sum equal in purchasing power to near a million to-day. Albert borrowed this, too, from the Fuggers, and was accordingly confirmed on August 15, 1514.

"In order to allow the new prelate to recoup himself, Leo obligingly declared an indulgence for the benefit of St. Peter's Church, to run eight years from March 31, 1515. By this transaction, one of the most disgraceful in the history of the papacy, as well as in that of the house of Brandenburg, the Curia made a vast sum. Albert did not come off so well. First, a number of princes, including the rulers of both Saxonies, forbade the trade in their dominions, and the profits of what remained were deeply cut by the unexpected attack of a young monk." (Preserved Smith, p. 86 ff.)

Luther had ample reason to dread the demoralizing effect of the indulgence-venders' activity upon the common people. In the sermons of Tetzel the church where he happened to do business was raised to equal dignity with St. Peter's at Rome. Instead of confessing to an ordinary priest, he told the masses they had now the rare privilege of confessing to an Apostolical Vicar, specially detailed for this work. With consummate skill he worked on the tender feelings of parents, of mothers, who were mourning the loss of children, or of children who had lost their parents. He impersonated the departed in their agonies in purgatory, he made the people hear the pitiful moaning of the victims in the purgatorial fires, and transmitted their heartrending appeals for speedy help to the living. He clinched the argument by playing on the people's covetousness: for the fourth part of a gulden they could transfer a suffering soul safely to the home of the eternal paradise. Had they ever had a greater bargain offered to them? Never would they have this indispensable means of salvation brought within easier reach. Now was the time, now or never! "0 ye murderers, ye usurers, ye robbers, ye slaves of vice," he cried out, "now is the time for you to hear the voice of God, who does not desire the death of the sinner, but would have the sinner repent and live. Turn, then, O Jerusalem, to the Lord, thy God!" He declared that the red cross of the indulgence-venders, with the papal arms, raised in a church, possessed the same virtue as the cross of Christ. If Peter were present in person, he would not possess greater authority, nor could he dispense grace more effectually than he. Yea, he would not trade his glory as an indulgence-seller with Peter's glory; for he had saved more souls by selling the indulgences than Peter by preaching. Every time a coin clinked in his money chest a liberated soul was soaring to heaven.

Catholic writers declare that the people were told that they must repent in order to obtain forgiveness. So they were, in the manner aforestated. Repenting meant buying a letter of pardon from the Pope. That is the reason why Luther worded the first two of his Ninety-five Theses as he did: "Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying: Poenitentiam agite! meant that the whole life of the faithful should be repentance. And these words cannot refer to penance—that is, confession and satisfaction." The Latin phrase "poenitentiam agere" has a double meaning: it may mean "repent" and "do penance." Our Lord used the phrase in the first, the indulgence-sellers in the second sense. Since the people had been raised in the belief that the Church had the authority from God to impose church fines on them for their trespasses, by which they were to remove the temporal punishment of their sins, this was called "doing penance,"—they were actually led to believe that the were obeying a command of Christ in buying a letter of indulgence. And not only did the people believe that they were purchasing release from temporal punishment, but from the guilt of sin and all its effects. The common man from the fields and the streets did not make the fine distinction of the hair-splitting theologians: his bargain meant to him that hell was closed and heaven open for him.

Another favorite defense of modern Catholic writers is, that the money paid for an indulgence was not meant to purchase anything, but was to be viewed as a thank-offering which the grateful hearts of the pardoned prompted them to make to the Church who had brought them the pardon free, gratis, and for nothing. This is Cardinal Gibbons's argument. He points triumphantly to the fact that the letters of indulgence were never handed the applicants at the same desk at which the "thank-offerings" were received. He does not say which desk the applicant approached first. But, supposing he obtained the letter first and then, with a heart bounding with joy and gratitude, hurried to the other desk, we have an interesting psychological problem confronting us. The two acts, the delivery of the letter of indulgence and the surrendering of the thank-offering, we are told, are independent the one of the other. Both are free acts, the one the free forgiveness of the Church, the other the free giving of the pardoned. The Church's grant of pardon has nothing to do with the payment of indulgence-money, and the indulgence-money is not related to the letter of indulgence. Now, then, the purchaser of an indulgence performs this remarkable feat: when he stands at the desk where the letter is handed to him, he does not think of any cost that he incurs. He views the letter as a pure gift. Then, obeying a sudden impulse of gratitude, he turns to the other desk and hands the official some money. He manages to think that he is not paying for anything, that would be utterly improper. How could a person pay for a donation, especially such a donation of spiritual and heavenly treasures? One disturbing element, however, remains: the amount of the thank-offering was fixed beforehand for particular sins, probably to regulate the recipient's gratitude and make it adequate. The writer has resolved to test the psychology of this process on himself the next time the Boston Symphony Company comes to town. He will try and think of the great singers as true benefactors of mankind, who go about the country bestowing favors on the public, and when he comes to the ticket-window he will merely make a thank-offering for the pleasure he is receiving. The scheme ought to work as well in this instance as in the other.

14. The Case of Luther's Friend Myconius.

There is a remarkable instance recorded in the annals of the Reformation which strikingly illustrates the operations of the indulgence-venders. This record deserves not to be forgotten. Gustav Freitag, the famous writer of German history, has embodied it in his sketch "Doktor Luther."

Frederic Mecum, in Latin Myconius, had become a monk in the Franciscan order. He had had an experience with Tetzel which caused him to turn to Luther with joy and wonder when the latter had published his Theses. Few of the writings of Myconius, who afterwards became the evangelical pastor of the city of Gotha, have been preserved. In the ducal library at Gotha Freitag found [tr. note: sic] an account in Latin of the incident to which we have referred. It is as follows: "John Tetzel, of Pirna in Meissen, a Dominican friar, was a powerful peddler of indulgences or the remission of sins by the Roman Pope. He tarried with this purpose of his for two years in the city of Annaberg, new at that time, and deceived the people so much that they all believed there was no other way of obtaining the forgiveness of sins and eternal life except to make amends with our works; concerning this making of amends, however, he said that it was impossible. But a single way was still left, that is, if we purchased the same for money from the Roman Pope, bought for ourselves, therefore, the Pope's indulgence, which he called the forgiveness of sins and a certain entrance into eternal life. Here I might tell wonders upon wonders and incredible things, what kind of sermons I heard Tetzel preach these two years in Annaberg, for I heard him preach quite diligently, and he preached every day; I could repeat his sermons to others, too, with all the gestures and intonations; not that I made him an object of ridicule, but I was entirely in earnest. For I considered everything as oracles and divine words, which one had to believe, and what came from the Pope I regarded as if coming from Christ Himself.

"Finally, at Pentecost, in the year of our Lord 1510, he threatened he would lay down the red cross and lock the door of heaven and put out the sun, and it would never again come about that the forgiveness of sins and eternal life could be obtained for so little money. Yes, he said, it was not to be expected that such charitableness of the Pope should come hither again as long as the world would stand. He also exhorted that every one should attend well to the salvation of his own soul and to that of his deceased and living friends. For now was at hand, according to him, the day of his salvation and the accepted time. And he said: 'Let no one under any condition neglect his own salvation; for if you do not have the Pope's letters, you cannot be absolved and delivered by any human being from many sins and "reserved cases"' (that is, cases with which an ordinary priest was not qualified to deal). On the doors and walls of the church printed letters were publicly posted in which it was ordered that one should henceforth not sell the letters of indulgence and the full power at the close as dear as in the beginning, in order to give the German people a sign of gratitude for their devotion; and at the end of the letter at the foot was written in addition, 'Pauperibus dentur gratis,' to the needy the letters of indulgence are to be given for nothing, without money, for the sake of God.

"Then I began to deal with the deputies of this indulgence-peddler; but, in truth, I was impelled and urged to do so by the Holy Ghost, although I myself did not understand at the time what I was doing.

"My dear father had taught me in my childhood the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Christian Creed, and compelled me always to pray. For, he said, we had everything from God alone, gratis, for nothing, and He would also govern and lead us if we prayed with diligence. Of the indulgences and Roman remission of sins he said that they were only snares with which one tricked the simple out of their money and took it from their purses, that the forgiveness of sins and eternal life could certainly not be purchased and acquired with money. But the priests or preachers became angry and enraged when one said such things. Because I heard then nothing else in the sermons every day but the greatest praise of the remission of sins, I was filled with doubt as to whom I was to believe more, my father or the priests as teachers of the Church. I was in doubt, but still I believed the priests more than the instruction of my father. But one thing I did not grant, that the forgiveness of sins could not be acquired unless it was purchased with money, above all by the poor. On this account I was wonderfully well pleased with the little clause at the end of the Pope's letter, 'Pauperibus gratis dentur propter Deum.'

"And as they, in three days, intended to lay down the cross with special magnificence and cut off the steps and ladders to heaven, I was impelled by my spirit to go to the commissioners and ask for the letters of the forgiveness of sins 'out of mercy for the poor.' I declared also that I was a sinner and poor and in need of the forgiveness of sins, which was granted through divine grace. On the second day, around evening, I entered Hans Pflock's house where Tetzel was assembled with the father-confessors and crowds of priests, and I addressed them in Latin and requested that they might allow me, poor man, to ask, according to the command in the Pope's letter, for the absolution of all my sins for nothing and for the sake of God, 'etiam nullo casu reservato,' without reserving a single case, and in regard to the same they should give me the Pope's 'literas testimoniales,' or written testimony. Then the priests were astonished at my Latin speech, for that was a rare thing at this time, especially in the case of young boys; and they soon went out of the room into the small chamber which I was alongside, to the commissioner Tetzel. They made my desire known to him, and also asked in my behalf that he might give me the letters of indulgence for nothing. Finally, after long counsel, they returned and brought this answer: _'Dear son, we have put your petition before the commissioner with all diligence, and he confesses that he would gladly grant your request, but that he could not; and although he might wish to do so, the concession would nevertheless be naught and ineffective. For he declared unto us that it was clearly written in the Pope's letter that those would certainly share in the exceeding generous indulgences and treasures of the Church and the merits of Christ qui porrigerent manum adjutricem, who offered a helping hand; that is, those who would give money.' And all that they told me in German, for there was not one among them who could have spoken three Latin words correctly with any one.

"In return, however, I entreated anew, and proved from the Pope's letter which had been posted that the Holy Father, the Pope, had commanded that such letters should be given to the poor for nothing, for the sake of the Lord; and especially because there had also been written there 'ad mandatum domini Papae proprium,' that is, at the Pope's own command.

"Then they went in again and asked the proud, haughty friar, that he might kindly grant my request and let me go from him with the letter of indulgence, since I was a clever and fluently-speaking young man and worthy of having something exceptional granted me. But they came out again and brought again the answer, _'de manu auxiliatrice,' concerning the helping hand, which alone was fit for the holy indulgence. I, however, remained firm and said that they were doing me, a poor man, an injustice; the one whom both God and the Pope were unwilling to shut out of divine grace was rejected by them for some few pennies which I did not have. Then a contention arose that I should at least give something small, in order that the helping-hand might not be lacking, that I should only give a groschen; I said, 'I do not have it, I am poor.' At last it came to the point where I was to give six pfennigs; then I answered again that I did not have a single pfennig. They tried to console me and spoke with one another. Finally I heard that they were worried about two things, in the first place, that I should in no case be allowed to go without a letter of indulgence, for this might be a plan devised by others, and that some bad affair might hereafter result from it, since it was clear in the Pope's letter that it should be given to the poor for nothing. Again, however, something would nevertheless have to be taken from me in order that the others might not hear that the letters of indulgence were being given out for nothing; for the whole pack of pupils and beggars would then come running, and each one would want the same for nothing. They should not have found it necessary to be worried about that, for the poor beggars were looking more for their blessed bread to drive away their hunger.

"After they had held their deliberation, they came again to me and one gave me six pfennigs that I should give them to the commissioner. Through this contribution I, too, should become, according to them, a builder of the Church of St. Peter, at Rome, likewise a slayer of the Turk, and should furthermore share in the grace of Christ and the indulgences. But then I said frankly, impelled by the Spirit, if I wished to buy indulgences and the remission of sins for money, I could in all likelihood sell a book and buy them for my own money. I wanted them, however, for nothing, as gifts, for the sake of God, or they would have to give an account before God for having neglected and trifled away my soul's salvation on account of six pfennigs, since, as they knew, both God and the Pope wished that my soul should share in the forgiveness of all my sins for nothing, through grace. This I said, and yet, in truth, I did not know how matters stood with the letters of indulgence.

"At last, after a long conversation, the priests asked me by whom I had been sent to them, and who had instructed me to carry on such dealings with them. Then I told them the pure, simple truth, as it was, that I had not been exhorted or urged by any one at all or brought to it by any advisers, but that I had made such a request alone, without counsel of any man, only with the confidence and trust in the gracious forgiveness of sins which is given for nothing; and that I had never spoken or had dealings with such great people during all my life. For I was by nature timid, and if I had not been forced by my great thirst for God's grace, I should not have undertaken anything so great and mixed with such people and requested anything like that of them. Then the letters of indulgence were again promised me, but yet in such a way that I should buy them for six pfennigs which were to be given to me, as far as I was concerned, for nothing. I, however, continued to insist that the letters of indulgence should be given to me for nothing by him who had the power to give them; if not, I should commend and refer the matter to God. And so I was dismissed by them.

"The holy thieves, notwithstanding, became sad in consequence of these dealings; I, however, was partly downcast that I had received no letter of indulgence, partly I rejoiced, too, that there was, in spite of all, still One in heaven who was willing to forgive the penitent sinner his sins without money and loan, according to the words that I had often sung in church: 'As true as I live, says the Lord, I desire not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live.' Oh, dear Lord and God, Thou knowest that I am not lying in this matter, or inventing anything about myself.

"While doing this, I was so moved that I, on returning to my inn, almost gushed forth and melted to tears. Thus I came to my inn, went to my room, and took the cross which always lay upon the little table in my study-room, placed it upon the bench, and fell down upon the floor before it. I cannot describe it here, but at that time I was able to feel the spirit of prayer and divine grace which Thou, my Lord and God, pouredst out over me. The essential import of the same, however, was this: I asked that Thou, dear God, mightst be willing to be my Father, that Thou mightst be willing to forgive me for my sins, that I submitted myself wholly to Thee, that Thou mightst make of me now whatsoever pleased Thee, and because the priests did not wish to be gracious to me without money, that Thou mightst be willing to be my gracious God and Father.

"Then I felt that my whole heart was changed. I was disgusted with everything in this world, and it seemed to me that I had quite enough of this life. One thing only did I desire, that is, to live for God, that I might be pleasing to Him. But who was there at that time who would have taught me how I had to go about it? For the word, life, and light of mankind was buried throughout the whole world in the deepest darkness of human ordinances and of the quite foolish good works. Of Christ there was complete silence, nothing was known about Him, or, if mention was made of Him, He was represented unto us as a dreadful, fearful Judge, whom scarcely His mother and all the saints in heaven could reconcile and make merciful with bloody tears; and yet it was done in such a way that He, Christ, thrust the human being who did penance into the pains of purgatory seven years for each capital sin. It was claimed that the pain of purgatory differed from the pain of hell in nothing except that it was not to last forever. The Holy Ghost, however, now brought me the hope that God would be merciful unto me.

"And now I began to take counsel a few days with myself as to how I might take up some other vocation in life. For I saw the sin of the world and of the whole human race; I saw my manifold sin, which was very great. I had also heard something of the secret holiness and the pure, innocent life of the monks, how they served God day and night, were separated from all the wicked life of the world, and lived very sober, pious, and virtuous lives, read masses, sang psalms, fasted, and prayed at all times. I had also seen this sham life, but I did not know and understand that it was the greatest idolatry and hypocrisy.

"Thereupon I made my decision known to the preceptor, Master Andreas Staffelstein, who was the chief regent of the school; he advised me straightway to enter the Franciscan cloister, the rebuilding of which had been begun at that time. And in order that I might not become differently minded in consequence of long delay, he straightway went with me himself to the monks, praised my intellect and ability, declared in terms of praise that he bad considered me the only one among his pupils of whom he was entirely confident that I should become a very devout man.

"I wished, however, first to announce my intention to my parents, too, and hear their ideas about the matter, since I was a lone son and heir of my parents. The monks, however, taught me from St. Jerome that I should drop father and mother, and not take them into consideration, and run to the cross of Christ. They quoted, too, the words of Christ, 'No one who lays hands to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.' All of this was bound to impel and enjoin me to become a monk. I will not speak here of many ropes and fetters with which they bound and tied my conscience. For they said that I could never become blessed if I did not soon accept and use the grace offered by God. Thereupon I, who would rather have been willing to die than be without the grace of God and eternal life, straightway promised and engaged to come into the cloister again in three days and begin the year of probation, as they called it, in the cloister; that is, I wanted to become a pious, devout, and God-fearing monk.

"In the year of Christ 1510, the 14th of July, at two o'clock in the afternoon, I entered the cloister, accompanied by my preceptor, some few of my school-comrades, and some very devout matrons, to whom I had in part made known the reason why I was entering the spiritual order. And so I blessed my companions to the cloister, all of whom, amid tears, wished me God's grace and blessing. And thus I entered the cloister. Dear God, Thou knowest that this is all true. I did not seek idleness or provision for my stomach, nor the appearance of great holiness, but I wished to be pleasing unto Thee—Thee I wished to serve.

"Thus I at that time groped about in very great darkness" (p. 38 ff.)*
*This account is published by the courtesy of the Lutheran
Publication Society of Philadelphia; it is taken from their publication
Doctor Luther, by Gustav Freitag.

Few Christians can read this old record without pity stirring in them. The man of whom Myconius tells all this, Tetzel, has been recently represented to the American public as a theologian far superior to Luther, calm, considerate, kind, and of his actions the public has been advised that they were so utterly correct that the Roman Catholic Church of to-day does not hesitate one moment to do what Tetzel did. So mote it be! We admire the writer's honesty, and blush for his brazen boldness.

15. Luther's Faith without Works.

Out of Luther's opposition to the sale of indulgences there grew in the course of time one of the fundamental principles of Protestantism: complete, universal, and free salvation of sinners by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. In the controversies which started immediately after the publication of the Ninety-five Theses, Luther was led step by step to a greater clearness in his view of sin and grace, faith and works, human reason and the divine revelation. Not yet realizing the full import of his act, Luther had in the Theses made that article of the Christian faith with which the Church either stands or falls the issue of his lifelong conflict with Rome—the article of the justification of a sinner before God. It is, therefore, convenient to review the misrepresentations which Luther has suffered from Catholic writers because of his teaching on the subject of justification at this early stage in our review, though in doing so a great many things will have to be anticipated.

Catholic writers charge Luther with having perverted the meaning of justifying faith. Luther held that justifying faith is essentially the assurance that since Christ lived on earth as a man, labored, suffered, died, and rose again in the place of sinners, the world en masse and every individual sinner are without guilt in the estimation of God. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." (2 Cor. 5, 19.) To this reconciliation the sinner has contributed nothing. It has been accomplished without him. He cannot add anything to it. God only asks the sinner to believe in his salvation as finished by Jesus Christ. To believe this fact does not mean to perform a work of merit in consideration of which God is willing to bestow salvation on the believer, but it means to accept the work of Christ as performed in our place, to rejoice therein, and to repose a sure confidence in this salvation in defiance of the accusations of our own conscience, the incriminations which the broken Law of God hurls at us, and the terrors of the final judgment. The believer regards himself as righteous before God not because of any good work that he has done, but because of the work which Christ has performed in his place. The believer holds that, when God, by raising Christ from the dead, accepted His work as a sufficient atonement for men's guilt and an adequate fulfilment of the divine Law, He accepted each and every sinner. The believer is certain that through the work of his Great Brother, Christ, he has been restored to a child relationship with God and enjoys child's privileges with his Father in heaven. The idea that he himself has done anything to bring about this blessed state of affairs is utterly foreign to this faith in Christ.

Catholic writers assert that the doctrine which we have just outlined is not Scriptural, but represents the grossest perversion of Scripture. They say this doctrine originated in "the erratic brain of Luther." Luther "was not an exact thinker, and being unable to analyze an idea into its constituents, as is necessary for one who will apprehend it correctly, he failed to grasp questions which by the general mass of the people were thoroughly and correctly understood. . . . He allowed himself to cultivate an unnecessary antipathy to so-called 'holiness by works,' and this attitude, combined with his tendency to look at the worst side of things, and his knowledge of some real abuses then prevalent in the practise of works, doubtless contributed to develop his dislike for good works in general, and led him by degrees to strike at the very roots of the Catholic system of sacraments and grace, of penance and satisfaction, in fact, all the instruments or means instituted by God both for conferring and increasing His saving relationship with man." Luther's teaching on justification is said to be the inevitable reverse of his former self-exaltation. Abandoning the indispensable virtue of humility, he had become a prey to spiritual pride, and had entered the monastery to achieve perfect righteousness by his own works. He had disregarded the wise counsels of his brethren, who had warned him not to depend too much on his own powers, but seek the aid of God. Then failing to make himself perfect, he had run to the other extreme and declared that there was nothing good in man at all, and that man could not of himself perform any worthy action. Finally he had hit upon the idea that justification means, "not an infusion of justice into the heart of the person justified, but a mere external imputation of it." Faith, in Luther's view, thus becomes an assurance that this imputation has taken place, and man accordingly need not give himself any more trouble about his salvation.

This teaching, Catholic writers contend, subverts the prominent teaching of the Scriptures that man must obey God and keep His commandments, that he must be perfect, even as his Father in heaven is perfect, that he must follow in the footsteps of Jesus who said: "I am not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it." Furthermore, this teaching is said to dehumanize man and make out of him a stock and a stone, utterly unfit for any spiritual effort. God, they say, constituted man a rational being and imposed certain precepts on him which he was free to keep or violate as he might choose unto eternal happiness or eternal misery. The sin which all inherit from Adam has weakened the powers of man to do good, but it has not entirely abolished them. There is still something good in man by nature, and if he wants to please God and obtain His aid in his good endeavors, he must at least do as much as is still in his power to do, and believe that God for Jesus' sake will assist him to become perfect, if not in this life, then, at any rate, in the life to come. He cannot avoid sin altogether, but he can avoid sin to a certain extent; he can at least lead an outwardly decent life. That is worth something, that is "meritorious." He may not feel a very deep contrition over his wrong-doings, but he can feel at least an attrition, that is, a little sorrow, or he can wish that he might feel sorry. That is worth something; that is "meritorious." He cannot love God with all his heart and all his soul, and all his strength, but he can love Him some. That is worth something; that is "meritorious." Accordingly, when the rich young man asked the Lord what he must do to gain heaven, the Lord did not say, "Believe in Me, Accept Me for your personal Savior, Have faith in Me," but He said: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Paul, likewise teaches that faith and love must cooperate in man, for "faith worketh by love." Therefore, "faith in love and love in faith justify," but not faith alone. Faith without works is dead and cannot justify. A live faith is a faith that has works to show as its credentials that it is real faith. Hence, faith alone does not justify, but faith and works. Love is the fulfilment of the Law; faith works by love, hence, by the fulfilment of the Law. Therefore, faith alone does not justify, but faith plus the fulfilment of the Law. In endless variations Catholic writers thus seek to upset with Scripture Luther's teaching that man is justified by faith in Christ alone, and that all the righteousness which a sinner can present before God without fear that it will be rejected is a borrowed righteousness, not his own work-righteousness.

We might express a just surprise that Catholics should be offended at the doctrine that the righteousness of Christ is imputed, that is, reckoned or counted, to the sinner as his own. For, does not their system of indulgences rest on a theory of imputation? Do they not, by selling from the Treasure of the Church the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints to the sinner who has not a sufficient amount of them, make those merits the sinner's own by just such a process of imputation? They surely cannot infuse those merits into the sinner. But Catholics probably object to the Protestant imputation-teaching because that is too cheap and easy, and because Protestant success has spoiled a lucrative Catholic imputation-business.—This in passing. Let the Bible decided [tr. note: sic] whether Luther was right in teaching justification by faith alone, by faith without works.

What does the Bible say about the condition of natural man after the fall? It says: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," that is, corrupt (John 3, 6); "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. 8, 21); "They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Ps. 14, 3); "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one" (Job 14, 4); "There is here no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3, 22. 23).

What does the Bible say about the powers of natural man after the fall in reference to spiritual matters? It says: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2, 14); "Ye were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2, 1); "The carnal mind," that is, the mind of flesh, the natural mind of man, "is enmity against God" (Rom. 8, 7); "Without Me"—Jesus is the Speaker—"ye can do nothing" John 15, 5).

What does the Bible say about the value of man's works of righteousness performed by his natural powers? It says: "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" (Is. 64, 6); "A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit" (Matt. 7, 17).

What does the Bible say about man's ability to fulfil the Law of God? It says: "Cursed is he that confirmeth not all the words of this Law to do them" (Deut. 27, 26) ; "Whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (Jas. 2, 10) ; "What the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8, 38); "The Law worketh wrath," that is, by convincing man that he has not fulfilled it and never will fulfil it, it rouses man's anger against God who has laid this unattainable Law upon him (Rom. 4, 15).

What does the Bible say about the relation of Christ to the Law and to sin? It says: "God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that He might redeem them that were under the Law" (Gal. 4, 4); "Christ is the end of the Law 'for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Rom. 10, 4); "God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteous of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5, 21); "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law; being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Gal. 3, 13).

What does the Bible say about faith without works as a means of justification? It says: "We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law" (Rom. 3, 28); "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Rom. 4, 5); "I rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the Law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the Law, blameless. [The speaker is the apostle Paul.] But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless; and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3, 3-9) ; "If by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace; otherwise work is no more work" (Rom. 11, 6). (The Catholic Bible omits the last half of this text.)

What does the Bible say about faith being assurance of pardon and everlasting life? It says: "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord" (Rom. 8, 31-39); "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day" (2 Tim. 1, 12).

Here we rest our case. If Luther was wrong in teaching the justification of the sinner by faith, without the deeds of the Law, then Paul was wrong, Jesus Christ was wrong, the apostles and prophets were wrong, the whole Bible is wrong. Catholics must square themselves to these texts before they dare to open their mouths against Luther. If Luther was a heretic, the Lord Jesus made him one, and He is making a heretic of every reader of the texts aforecited. Rome will have to answer to Him.

But what about the answer of the Lord to the rich young man? What about the commandment to be perfect? Does not the doctrine of justification by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law, abolish the holy and good Law of God? Not at all. When Paul expounds to the Galatians the doctrine of justification by faith as compared with justification by works, he arrays the Law against the Gospel, and raises this question: "Is the Law, then, against the promises of God?" His answer reveals the whole difficulty that attends every effort to obtain righteousness by fulfilling the Law, he says: "God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily, righteousness should have been by the Law." (Gal. 3, 21.) Christ expressed the same truth when He said to the lawyer: "Do this, and thou shalt live." (Luke 10, 28.) The reason why the Law makes no person righteous is not because it is not a sufficient rule or norm of good works by which men could earn eternal life, but because it does not furnish man any ability to achieve that righteousness which it demands. No law does that. The law only creates duties, and insists on their fulfilment under threat of punishment. It is not the function of the law to make doers of the law. Originally the Law was issued to men who were able to fulfil it, because they were created after the image of God, in perfect holiness and righteousness. That they lost this concreate [tr. note: sic] ability through the fall is no reason why God should change or abrogate His Law. He purposes to help them in another way, by sending them His Son for a Redeemer, who fulfils the Law in their stead. But this wonderful plan of God for the rescue of lost man is not appreciated by any one who still believes, as the Catholics do, that he has some good powers in him left which he can develop with the help of God to such an extent that he can make himself righteous. To such a person Jesus says to-day as He said to the rich young man: "Keep the commandments!" That means, since you believe in your ability, proceed to employ it. Your reward is sure, provided only you do what the Law demands. But just as surely the curse of God rests on you if you do not do it. When you have become convinced that it is impossible to fulfil the Law, you may ask a different question, a question which the knowledge of your spiritual disability has wrested from you as it did from the jailer at Philippi: "What must I do to be saved?" and you will not receive the answer: "Keep the commandments!" but: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," (Acts 16, 29. 30.) Not a word will be said any more about anything that you must do. You will be told: All that you ought to have done has been accomplished by One who died with the exclamation: "It is finished!" (John 19, 30), and who now sends His messengers abroad inviting men to His free salvation: "Come, for all things are now ready!" (Luke 14, 17.) "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good" (Is. 55, 1. 2.) When you have wearied yourself to death by your efforts to achieve righteousness, as Paul did when he was still the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus, as Luther did while he was still in the bondage of popery, when you have become hot in your confused and despairing mind against God and the Law, which you cannot fulfil, you will appreciate the voice that calls to you as it has called to millions before you: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11, 28.) And if you are wise, then, with the wisdom which the Spirit gives the children of God, you will not delay a minute, but come rejoicing that you need not get salvation by works, and will sing:

Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Rome has cursed Luther for teaching justification by faith, without the deeds of the Law. The principles which he had timidly uttered in the Theses led to bolder declarations later, when the full light of the blessed Gospel had come to him. It brought him the curse of the Pope in the bull Exsurge, Domine! of June 15, 1520. The following estimate by a recent Catholic writer is a fair sample of the sentiments cherished by official Rome for Luther: "From out the vast number whom the enemy of man raised up to invent heresies, which, St. Cyprian says, 'destroy faith and divide unity,' not one, or all together, ever equaled or surpassed Martin Luther in the wide range of his errors, the ferocity with which he promulgated them, and the harm he did in leading souls away from the Church, the fountain of everlasting truth. The heresies of Sabellius, Arius, Pelagius, and other rebellious men were insignificant as compared with those Luther formulated and proclaimed four hundred years ago, and which, unfortunately, have ever since done service against the Church of the living God. In Luther most, if not all, former heresies meet, and reach their climax. To enumerate fully all the wicked, false, and perverse teachings of the arch-heretic would require a volume many times larger than the Bible, and every one of the lies and falsehoods that have been used against the Catholic Church may be traced back to him as to their original formulator." The cause for this undisguised hatred of Luther is chiefly Luther's teaching of justification by faith, without works. In its Sixth Session the Council of Trent condemned the following doctrines:

On Free Will: Canon IV: "If any one says that the free will of man, when moved and stirred by God, cannot, by giving assent, cooperate with God, who is stirring and calling man, so that he disposes and prepares himself for obtaining the grace of justification, or that he cannot dissent if he wills, but, like some inanimate thing, does absolutely nothing and is purely passive,—let him be accursed."

On Justification: Canon IX: "If any one says that the ungodly are justified by faith alone, in the sense that nothing else is required on their part that might cooperate to the end of obtaining the grace of justification, and that it is in no wise necessary that they be prepared and disposed (for this grace) by a movement of the will,—let him be accursed."

Canon XI: "If any one says that man is justified either by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone or by the remission of his sins alone, without grace and love being diffused through his heart by the Holy Spirit and inhering therein, or that the grace whereby we are justified is merely the good will of God,—let him be accursed."

Canon XII: "If any one says that justifying faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy which forgives sins for Christ's sake, or that it is this trust alone by which we are justified,—let him be accursed."

Canon XXIV: "If any one says that righteousness, after having been received, is not conserved nor augmented before God by good works, but that these works are merely the fruits or signs of the justification which one has obtained, and that they are not a reason why justification is increased,—let him be accursed."

It is a well-known characteristic of the decrees of the Council of Trent that truth and error appear skilfully interwoven in them. They are like a double motion that is offered in a deliberative body: they contain things which one must affirm, and other things which one must negative. They cannot be voted on—many of them—except after a division of the question. They contain "riders" like those in a bill that comes before a legislative body: in order to pass the bill at all, the "rider" must be passed along with the bill. But enough crops out in these decrees to show that the Catholic Church is not willing to let the merits of Christ be regarded as the only thing that justifies the sinner. He must cooperate with the Holy Spirit to the end of being justified. He must prepare and dispose himself for receiving justifying grace, and this grace is infused into him, and manifests itself in holy movements of the heart and by good works, in acts of love. The Roman Catholic Christian is taught to believe that he is justified partly by what Christ has done, partly by what he himself is doing. He cannot subscribe to Paul's statement: "By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast." (Eph. 2, 8. 9.) Nor is his justification ever complete, because his love is never perfect. It must be increased even after his death. The Roman purgatory contains sinners whom God had justified as far as He could, the sinners remaining in arrears with their, part of the contract. Accordingly, the sinner can never have the assurance that he will enter heaven. It would be presumptuous for him to think so. He must live on and work on at his poor dying rate, and hope for the best.

This teaching of the Church of Rome subverts Christianity. It strikes at the root of the faith that saves. It is a relapse into paganism and an affront offered to the Savior. It borrows the language of Scripture to express the most hideous error. By this teaching Rome does not drive men into purgatory,—which does not exist,—but into hell. It is only by a miracle of divine grace that sinners are saved where such teaching prevails: they must forget what is told them about the necessity of their own works and cling only to the Redeemer, and must thus practically repudiate the teaching of their Church. Some do this, and escape the pernicious consequences of the error of their Church. All of them will rise up in the Judgment to accuse their teachers of a heresy the worst imaginable.

Rome has, indeed, assailed "the article with which the Church either stands or falls." All its other errors, crass, grotesque, and repulsive though they are, are mere child's play in comparison with this damning and destructive error of justification by works. Luther rightly estimated the virulence of this abysmal heresy when he said that those who attacked his teaching of justification by grace through faith alone were aiming at his throat. Rome's teaching on justification is an attempt to strike at the vitals of Christian faith and life. It sinks the dagger into the heart of Christianity.

16. The Fatalist Luther.

Catholic writers have discovered a fatalistic tendency in Luther's teaching of justification by faith without works. They declare that Luther's theory of the utter depravity of man by reason of inherited sin and his incapacity to perform any work that can be accounted good in the sight of God kills every ambition to virtuous living in man. They argue that when you tell a person that he is not capable to do good, he is apt to believe you and make no effort to perform a good deed. The situation becomes still worse when the divine predestination is introduced at this point, as has been done, they say, by Luther. If God has determined all things beforehand by a sovereign decree, if there really is no such thing as human choice, and all things occur according to a foreordained plan, man no longer has any responsibility. He is reduced to an automaton. Free will is denied him; he cannot elect by voluntary choice to engage in any God-pleasing action; for he is told that his natural reason is blinded by sin and his understanding darkened, rendering it impossible for him to discern good and evil, and leading him constantly into errors of judgment on what is right or wrong, while he is made to believe that his will is enslaved by evil lusts and passions, ever prone to wickedness and averse to godliness. As a consequence, it is claimed, man must necessarily become morally indifferent: he will not fight against sin nor follow after righteousness, because he has become convinced that it is useless for him to make any effort either in the one direction or in the other. The doctrine of man's natural depravity and the divine foreordination of all things, it is held, must drive man either to despair, insanity, and suicide, or land him hopelessly in fatalism: he will simply continue his physical life in a mechanical way, like a brute or a plant; he merely vegetates.

These fatal tendencies which are charged against Luther are refuted by no one more effectually than by Luther himself. As regards the doctrine of original sin and man's natural depravity, Luther preached that with apostolic force and precision. That doctrine is a Bible-doctrine. No person has read his Bible aright, no expounder of Scripture has begun to explain the divine plan of salvation for sinners, if he has failed to find this teaching in the Bible. This doctrine is, indeed, extremely humiliating to the pride of man; it opens up appalling views of the misery of the human race under sin. We can understand why men would want to get away from this doctrine. But no one confers any benefit on men by minimizing the importance of the Bible-teaching, or by weakening the statements of Scripture regarding this matter. Any teaching which admits the least good quality in man by which he can prepare or dispose himself so as to induce God to view him with favor is a contradiction of the passages of Scripture which were cited in a previous chapter, and works a delusion upon men that will prove just as fatal as when a physician withholds from his patient the full knowledge of his critical condition. Yea, it is worse; for a physician who is not frank and sincere to his patient may deprive the latter of his physical life, but the teacher of God's Word who instils in men false notions of their moral and spiritual power robs them of life eternal.

Luther avoided this error. He led men to a true estimate of themselves as they are by nature. But over and against the fell power of sin he magnified the greater power of divine grace. "Where sin abounded, grace hath much more abounded" (Rom. 5, 20),—along this line Luther found the solution for the awful difficulty which confronts every man when he studies the Bible-doctrine of original sin, and when he discovers, moreover, that this Bible-doctrine is borne out fully by his own experience. Just for this reason, because man can do nothing to restore himself to the divine favor, God by His grace proposes to do all, and has sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to do all, and, last not least, publishes the fact that all has been done in the Gospel of the forgiveness of sin by grace through faith in Christ. Luther has taught men to confess: "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him," but he taught them also to follow up this true confession with the other: "The Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith."

The Gospel is called in the Scriptures "the Word of Life," not only because it speaks of the life everlasting which God has prepared for His children, but also because it gives life. It approaches man, dead in trespasses and sins, and quickens him into new life. It removes from the mind of man its natural blindness and from the will of man its innate impotency. It regenerates all the dead powers of the soul, and makes man walk in newness of life. The difficulty which original sin has created is not greater than the means and instruments which God has provided for coping with it. "God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all." (Rom. 11, 32.)

This is the only true salvation, every other is fictitious. It teaches man both to face the fearful odds against him because of his corruption, and to relish all the more the points in his favor by reason of God's redeeming and regenerating grace. It starts its work with crushing man's pride and self-confidence utterly, and hurling him into the abyss of despair, but it lifts him out of despair with a mighty power that breaks the power of evil in him. This change is brought about in such a gentle, tender way that the sinner has no sensation of being coerced into the new life by some farce which he cannot resist. It wins him over to God and his Christ in spite of his resistance, and makes out of his unwilling heart a willing one, which gladly coincides with the leadings of grace.

The Roman scheme of salvation might be called the ostrich method: it teaches men the foolish strategy of the bird of the desert, which hides its head in the sand when it sees an enemy approaching, and then imagines the enemy does not exist. Original sin may be disputed out of the Bible by a false interpretation, but it is not thereby ruled out of existence. When face to face with his God—if no sooner, then in the hour of death—every man feels that he is utterly corrupt and worthless, and he will curse any teacher that caused him to believe otherwise. Free will is not created by assertions. Let the apostles of free will only try, and they will find out that their freedom is nil. Catholics denounce Luther for having declared the free will of man to be nothing than a word without substance: we hear the sound when the word is pronounced, and grasp its grammatical meaning, but we do not realize it in ourselves. Every person, however, who has truly come to know himself will side with Luther, or rather with the Bible. Furthermore, to the same extent to which the Roman view exalts man's natural powers for good, it lowers and limits the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and begets a false confidence and security that is rudely shaken when the first slip and fall occurs in the person's Christian life. He has never really laid hold of the grace of God, because he has not been taught to trust only to the grace of God to lead and preserve him in the way of life. He will begin to distrust the Gospel as a very inefficient instrument, and this will lead him to become indifferent to it, and finally fall away from it entirely. A real danger of apostasy and despair exists wherever the Roman dogma of man's natural free will is proclaimed.

It is, however, doing Luther a flagrant injustice when he is made to deny that man has no longer any natural reason and will in the secular affairs of this life. Luther used to divide the entire life of man into two hemispheres, the upper embracing man's relation to God, holy things, the interests of the soul here and hereafter, and the lower, embracing the purely human, temporal, and secular interests of man. It is only in the higher hemisphere that Luther denies the existence of free will. Throughout his writings Luther asserts the existence, the actual operation, and the necessity of human free will, though sadly weakened by sin, in the affairs of this present life. It will be sufficient to cite as evidence the Augsburg Confession which was drawn up with Luther's aid and submitted to Emperor Charles V in 1530 as the joint belief of Luther and his followers. "Of the Freedom of the Will," say the Protestant confessors, "they teach that man's will has some liberty for the attainment of civil righteousness and for the choice of things subject to reason. Nevertheless, it has not power, without the Holy Ghost, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual righteousness, since the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2, 14); but this righteousness is wrought in the heart when the Holy Ghost is received through the Word. These things are said in as many words by Augustine in his Hypognosticon (Book III): 'We grant that all men have a certain freedom of will in judging according to natural reason; not such freedom, however, whereby it is capable, without God, either to begin, much less to complete aught in things pertaining to God, but only in works of this life, whether good or evil. "Good" I call those works which spring from the good in Nature, that is, to have a will to labor in the field, to eat and drink, to have a friend, to clothe oneself, to build a house, to marry, to keep cattle, to learn divers useful arts, or whatsoever good pertains to this life, none of which things are without dependence on the providence of God; yea, of Him and through Him they are and have their beginning. "Evil" I call such things as, to have a will to worship an idol, to commit murder,' etc." (Art. 18.)

Luther has always held that there is a natural intelligence and wisdom, a natural will-power and energy which men employ in their daily occupations, their trades and professions, their trade and commerce, their literature and art, their culture and refinement, yea, that there is also a natural knowledge of God even among the Gentiles, who yet "know not God," and a seeming performance of the things which God has commanded. But these natural abilities do not reach into the higher hemisphere; they cannot pass muster at the bar of divine justice. They do not spring from right motives, nor do they aim at right ends; they are determined by man's self-interest. They come short of that glory which God ought to receive from worshipers in spirit and in truth (Rom. 3, 23; John 4, 23); they are evil in as far as they are the corrupt fruits of corrupt trees. In condemning the moral quality of these natural works of civil righteousness, Luther has said no more than Christ and His apostles have said.

Luther taught the Bible-doctrine that there is in God a hidden will which He has reserved to His majesty (Dent. 29); that His judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out (Rom. 11, 33); that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without His will, and that the very hairs of our head are numbered (Matt. 10, 29. 30); that no evil can occur anywhere without His permission (Amos 3, 6; Is. 45, 7). To deny these truths is to reject the Bible and to destroy the sovereign omniscience and omnipotence of God. Those who attack Luther for believing that also the evil in this world is related to God will have to change their bill of indictment: their charge is really directed against Scripture. Luther has, however, warned men not to attempt a study of this secret will of God, for the plain reason that it is secret, and it would be blasphemous presumption to try and find it out. All our dealings with God must be on the basis of His revealed will. If we only will study that, we will be fully occupied our whole life.

As regards the Scriptural doctrine of predestination, that those who ultimately attain to the life everlasting have been chosen to that end, Luther has warned men not to study this doctrine outside of Christ and the Gospel. God has told His children for their comfort amid the vicissitudes of this life that He has secured their eternal happiness against all dangers, but He has not asked them, nor does He permit them, to find out a priori whether this or that person is elect. Jesus Christ is the Book of Life in which the elect are to find their names recorded, and in the general way of salvation through repentance, faith, and sanctification of life they are to be led to the heritage of the saints in light. In his summary of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of Romans, Luther states that by His eternal election God has taken our salvation entirely out of our hands and placed it in His own hands. "And this is most highly necessary. For we are so feeble and fickle that, if salvation depended upon us, not a person would be saved; the devil would overcome them all. But since God is reliable and His election cannot fail or be thwarted by any one, we still have hope over and against sin. But at this point a limit must be fixed for the presumptuous spirits who soar too high. They lead their reason first to this subject, they start at the pinnacle, they want to explore first the abyss of the divine election, and wrestle vainly with the question whether they are elect. These people bring about their own overthrow: they are either driven to despair or become reckless.—Follow the order of this Epistle: First, occupy yourself with Christ and the Gospel, in order that you may learn to know your sin and His grace; next, begin to wrestle with your sin, as chapters 1-8 teach you to do. Then, after you have reached the doctrine concerning crosses and tribulations in the eighth chapter, you will rightly learn the doctrine of election in chapters 9-11, because you will realize what a comfort this doctrine contains. For the doctrine of election can be studied without injury and secret anger against God only by those who have passed through suffering, crosses, and anguish of death. Accordingly, the old Adam in you must be dead before you can bear this subject and drink this strong wine. See that you do not drink wine while you are still a babe. There is a proper time, age, and manner for propounding the various doctrines of God to men." What is there fatalistic about this?

17. Luther a Teacher of Lawlessness.

Luther's teaching on the forgiveness of sin is sternly rebuked by Catholic writers because of its immoral tendencies. They say, when the forgiveness of sins is made as easy as Luther makes it, the people will cease being afraid if sinning.

The danger of the Gospel of the gracious forgiveness of sins being misapplied has always existed in the Church. Every student of church history knows this. Catholic writers know this. Paul wrestled with this practical perversion of the loving intentions of our heavenly Father in his day. After declaring to the Romans: "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," he raises the question: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" He returns this horrified answer: "God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Rom. 5, 20-6, 2.) Actually there were people in the apostle's days who drew from his evangelical teaching this pernicious inference, that by sinning they gave the forgiving grace of God a larger opportunity to exert itself, hence, that they were glorifying grace by committing more sin. This meant putting a premium on sinning. For God's sake, how can you conceive a thought like that? the apostle exclaims. He repudiates the idea as blasphemous, which it is. To sin in the assurance that sin will be forgiven is not honoring, but dishonoring God and His grace; it is not exalting, but traducing faith; it is not Christian, but devilish. Summarizing the contents of Romans, chapter 5, Luther says: "In the fifth chapter Paul comes to speak of the fruits and works of faith, such as peace, joy, love of God and all men, and in addition to these, security, boldness, cheerfulness, courage and hope amid tribulations and suffering. All these effects follow where there is genuine faith, because of the superabundant blessing which God has conferred upon us in Christ by causing Him to die for us before we could pray that He might do this, yea, while we were yet His enemies. Accordingly, we conclude that faith justifies without works of any kind, and yet it does not follow that we must not do any good works. Genuine good works cannot fail to flow from faith,—works of which the self-righteous know nothing, and in the place of which they invent their own works, in which there is neither peace, joy, security, love, hope, boldness, nor any other of the characteristics of a genuine Christian work and faith." In his Preface to Romans, Luther meets a somewhat different objection to faith: Christians, after they have begun to believe, still discover sin in themselves, and on account of this imagine that faith alone cannot save them. There must be something done in addition to believing to insure their salvation. In replying to this scruple, Luther has given a classical description of the quality and power of faith. This description serves to blast the Catholic charge that Luther's easy way of justifying the sinner leads to increased sinning. Luther says: "Faith is not the human notion and dream which some regard as faith. When they observe that no improvement of life nor any good works flow from faith even where people hear and talk much about faith, they fall into this error that they declare: faith is not sufficient, you must do works if you wish to become godly and be saved. The reason is, these people, when they hear the Gospel, hurriedly formulate by their own powers a thought in their heart which asserts: I believe. This thought they regard as genuine faith. However, as their faith is but a human figment and idea that never reaches the bottom of the heart, it is inert and effects no improvement. Genuine faith, however, is a divine work in us by which we are changed and born anew of God. (John 1, 13.) It slays the old Adam, and makes us entirely new men in our heart, mind, ideas, and all our powers. It brings us the Holy Spirit. Oh, this faith is a lively, active, busy, mighty thing! It is impossible for faith not to be active without ceasing. Faith does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question has been asked, it has accomplished good works; yea, it is always engaged in doing good works. Whoever does not do such good works is void of faith; he gropes and mopes about, looking for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith nor what good works are, though he may prate and babble ever so much about faith and good works."

There has never been a time when the Gospel and the grace of God have not been wrested to wicked purposes by insincere men, hypocrites, and bold spirits. For this reason God has instructed Christians: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." (Matt. 7, 6.) The danger of misapplied grace is a present-day danger in every evangelical community. Earnest Christian ministers and laymen strive with this misapplication wherever they discover it. Can they do any more?

Rome will say: Why do you not do as we do in our Church? We do not preach the Gospel in such a reckless fashion, we make men work for their salvation. Rome would abolish or considerably limit the preaching of free and abundant grace to the sinner. We recoil from this suggestion because it makes the entire work of Christ of none effect, and wipes out the grandest portions of our Bible. If every abuse of something that is good must be stopped by abolishing the proper use, then let us give up eating because some make gluttons of themselves; drinking, because some are drunkards; wearing clothes, because there is much vanity in dresses; marriage, because some marriages are shamefully conducted, etc., etc.

The Roman Church does not operate on evangelical principles. Does it succeed better in cultivating true holiness among its members by its system of penances and its teaching of the meritoriousness of men's acts of piety? Catholics say to us sneeringly: It is easy to have faith; it is very convenient, when you wish to indulge, or have indulged, some passion, to remember that there is grace for forgiveness. But is any great difficulty connected with going through a penance that the priest has imposed, buying a wax candle, reciting sixteen Paternosters and ten Ave Marias, and then sitting down and saying to yourself: "Good boy! you've done it, you have squared your account again with the Almighty"? What sanctifying virtue lies in abstaining from beefsteak on Friday? Rome nowhere has improved men by her mechanical piety. What she has accomplished was made possible by the fear of purgatorial torments, by slavish dread of her mysterious powers, by ambition and bigotry. We would not exchange our abused treasures for her system of workmongery.

But the Catholic charge of tendencies to lawlessness that are said to be contained in. Luther's teaching of faith without works are more serious. Luther is cited by them as declaring that one may commit innumerable sins, and they will not harm one as long as one keeps on believing in the grace of forgiveness. It is true, Luther has spoken words to this effect, and that, on quite a number of occasions. Worse than that, what Luther has said is actually true. As a matter of fact, no sin can deprive the believer of salvation. There is only one sin that ultimately damns, final impenitence and unbelief, by which is understood the rejection of the atonement which Christ offered for the sins of the world. That atonement is actually the full satisfaction rendered to our Judge for all the sins which we have done, are doing, and will be doing till the end of our lives. For the person that dies a perfect saint, sinless and impeccable, is still to be born. The comfort that I derive from my Redeemer to-day will be my comfort to-morrow, that will be my only prop and stay in my dying hour. I shall need Him every hour. This is a perfectly Christian thought. St. John writes: "My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin,"— mark this well: "If any man sin," though he ought not to sin,—what does the apostle say to him? He does not say: Then you are damned! or: It will require so many fasts, masses, and candles to restore you! but this is what he says: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2, 1. 2.) John, then, must be included in the Catholic indictment of Luther. Luther would not have been a preacher of the genuine and full Gospel if he had not declared the impossibility of any sin or any number of sins depriving a believer of salvation.

But if the Catholics mean to say that Luther's evangelical declaration means that no believer can fall from grace by sinning, that he may sin and remain in a state of grace,—that is simply slander. Luther holds, indeed, that a person does not cease to be a Christian by every slip and fault, but he insists that no dereliction of duty, no deviation from the rule of godly living can be treated with indifference. It must be repented of, God's forgiveness must be sought, and only in this way will the Holy Spirit again be bestowed on the sinner. God may bear awhile with a Christian who has fallen into sin, but the backslider has no pleasant time with his God while he stays a backslider. This being a question of every-day, practical Christianity, Luther frequently touches this subject in his sermons, both in the Church Postil, the House Postil, and in his occasional sermons. Luther's Catholic critics could disabuse their mind about the tendencies to lawlessness in Luther's teaching if they would look up references such as these: 9, 730. 1456 f.; 11, 1790; 12, 448. 433; 13, 394; 6, 294. 1604. In one of these references (9, 1456) Luther comments on 1 John 3, 6: "Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him," as follows: "'Seeing' and 'knowing' in the phraseology of John is as much as believing. `That every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life' (John 6, 40). 'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.' Accordingly, he that sins does not believe in Him; for faith and sin cannot coexist. We may fall, but we may not cling to sin. The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness, not of sin." In the Smalcald Articles Luther says: "But if certain sectarists would arise, some of whom are perhaps already present, and in the time of the insurrection of the peasants came to my view, holding that all those who have once received the Spirit or the forgiveness of sins, or have become believers, even though they would afterwards sin, would still remain in the faith, and sin would not injure them, and cry thus: 'Do whatever you please; if you believe, it is all nothing; faith blots out all sins,' etc. They say, besides, that if any one sins after he has received faith and the Spirit, he never truly had the Spirit and faith. I have seen and heard of many men so insane, and I fear that such a devil is still remaining in some. If, therefore, I say, such persons would hereafter also arise, it is necessary to know and teach that if saints who still have and feel original sin, and also daily repent and strive with it, fall in some way into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be completed, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it do what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are not there present. For St. John says (1. Ep. 3, 9): 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, . . . and he cannot sin.' And yet that is also the truth which the same St. John says (1. Ep. 1, 8): 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'" (Part III, Art. 3, §§ 42-45; p. 329.) The Lutheran Church has received this statement of Luther into her confessional writings. This is the Luther of whom a modern Catholic critic says: "This thought of the all-forgiving nature of faith so dominated his mind that it excluded the notion of contrition, penance, good works, or effort on the part of the believer, and thus his teaching destroyed root and branch the whole idea of human culpability and responsibility for the breaking of the Commandments."

It is amazing boldness in Catholics to prefer this charge against Luther, when they themselves teach a worse doctrine than they impute to Luther. The Council of Trent in its Sixth Session, Canon 15, also in its Sixteenth Session, Canon 15, Coster in his Enchiridion, in the chapter on Faith, p. 178, Bellarminus on Justification, chapter 15, declare it to be Catholic teaching that the believer cannot lose his faith by any, even the worst, sin he may commit. They speak of believing fornicators, believing adulterers, believing thieves, believing misers, believing drunkards, believing slanderers, etc. The very teaching which Catholics falsely ascribe to Luther is an accepted dogma of their own Church. Their charge against Luther is, at best, the trick of crying, "Hold thief!" to divert attention from themselves.

But did not Luther in the plainest terms advise his friends Weller and Melanchthon to practise immoralities as a means for overcoming their despondency? Is he not reported in his Table Talk to have said that looking at a pretty woman or taking a hearty drink would dispel gloomy thoughts? that one should sin to spite the devil? Yes; and now that these matters are paraded in public, it is best that the public be given a complete account of what Luther wrote to Weller and Melanchthon. There are three letters extant written to Weller during Luther's exile at Castle Coburg while the Diet of Augsburg was in progress. On June 19, 1530, Luther writes: "Grace and peace in Christ! I have received two letters from you, my dear Jerome [this was Weller's first name], both of which truly delighted me; the second, however, was more than delightful because in that you write concerning my son Johnny, stating that you are his teacher, and that he is an active and diligent pupil. If I could, I would like to show you some favor in return; Christ will recompense you for what I am too little able to do. Magister Veit has, moreover, informed me that you are at times afflicted with the spirit of despondency. This affliction is most harmful to young people, as Scripture says: 'A broken spirit drieth the bones' (Prov. 17, 22). The Holy Spirit everywhere forbids such melancholy, as, for instance, in Eccles. 11., 9: 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth,' and in the verse immediately following: 'Remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh.' Ecclesiasticus, likewise, says, chap. 30, 22-25: 'The gladness of the heart is the life of man, and the joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days. Love thine own soul, and comfort thy heart, remove sorrow far from the; for sorrow hath killed many, and there is no profit therein. Envy and wrath shorten the life, and carefulness bringeth age before the time. A cheerful and good heart will have a care of his meat and diet.' Moreover, Paul says 2 Cor. 7, 10: 'The sorrow of the world worketh death.' Above all, therefore, you must firmly cling to this thought, that these evil and melancholy thoughts are not of God, but of the devil; for God is not a God of melancholy, but a God of comfort and gladness, as Christ Himself says: 'God is not the God of the dead, but of the living' (Matt. 22, 32). What else does living mean than to be glad in the Lord? Accordingly, become used to different thoughts, in order to drive away these evil thoughts, and say: The Lord has not sent you. This chiding which you experience is not of Him who has called you. In the beginning the struggle is grievous, but by practise it becomes more easy. You are not the only one who has to endure such thoughts, all the saints were afflicted by them, but they fought against them and conquered. Therefore, do not yield to these evils, but meet them bravely. The greatest task in this struggle is not to regard these thoughts, not to explore them, not to pursue the matters suggested, but despise them like the hissing of a goose and pass them by. The person that has learned to do this will conquer; whoever has not learned it will be conquered. For to muse upon these thoughts and debate with them means to stimulate them and make them stronger. Take the people of Israel as an example: they overcame the serpents, not by looking at them and wrestling with them, but by turning their eyes away from them and looking in a different direction, namely, at the brazen serpent, and they conquered. In this struggle that is the right and sure way of winning the victory. A person afflicted with such thoughts said to a certain wise man: What evil thoughts come into my mind! He received the answer: Well, let them pass out again. That remark taught the person a fine lesson. Another answered the same question thus: You cannot keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building their nests in your hair. Accordingly, you will do the correct thing when you are merry and engage in some pleasant pastime with some one, and not scruple afterwards over having done so. For God is not pleased with sadness, for which there is no reason. The sorrow over our sins is brief and at the same time is made pleasant to us by the promise of grace and the forgiveness of sins. But the other sorrow is of the devil and without promise; it is sheer worry over useless and impossible things which concern God. I shall have more to say to you when I return. Meanwhile give my greetings to your brother; I began writing to him, but the messenger who is to take this letter along is in a hurry. I shall write to him later, also to Schneidewein and others. I commend your pupil to you. May the Spirit of Christ comfort and gladden your heart! Amen.' (21a, 1487 ff.)

The second letter to Weller was presumably written some time in July. It reads as follows: "Grace and peace in Christ. My dearest Jerome, you must firmly believe that your affliction is of the devil, and that you are plagued in this manner because you believe in Christ. For you see that the most wrathful enemies of the Gospel, as, for instance, Eck, Zwingli, and others, are suffered to be at ease and happy. All of us who are Christians must have the devil for our adversary and enemy, as Peter says: 'Your adversary, the devil, goeth about,' etc., 1 Pet. 5, 8. Dearest Jerome, you must rejoice over these onslaughts of the devil, because they are a sure sign that you have a gracious and merciful God. You will say: This affliction is more grievous than I can bear; you fear that you will be overcome and vanquished, so that you are driven to blasphemy and despair. I know these tricks of Satan: if he cannot overcome the person whom he afflicts at the first onset, he seeks to exhaust and weaken him by incessantly attacking him, in order that the person may succumb and acknowledge himself beaten. Accordingly, whenever this affliction befalls you, beware lest you enter into an argument with the devil, or muse upon these death-dealing thoughts. For this means nothing else than to yield to the devil and succumb to him. You must rather take pains to treat these thoughts which the devil instils in you with the severest contempt. In afflictions and conflicts of this kind contempt is the best and easiest way for overcoming the devil. Make up your mind to laugh at your adversary, and find some one whom you can engage in a conversation. You must by all means avoid being alone, for then the devil will make his strongest effort to catch you; he lies in wait for you when you are alone. In a case like this the devil is overcome by scorning and despising him, not by opposing him and arguing with him. My dear Jerome, you must engage in merry talk and games with my wife and the rest, so as to defeat these devilish thoughts, and you must be intent on being cheerful. This affliction is more necessary to you than food and drink. I shall relate to you what happened to me when I was about your age. When I entered the cloister, it happened that at first I always walked about sad and melancholy, and could not shake off my sadness. Accordingly, I sought counsel and confessed to Dr. Staupitz, —I am glad to mention this man's name. I opened my heart to him, telling him with what horrid and terrible thoughts I was being visited. He said in reply: Martin, you do not know how useful and necessary this affliction is to you; for God does not exercise you thus without a purpose. You will see that He will employ you as His servant to accomplish great things by you. This came true. For I became a great doctor—I may justly say this of myself—; but at the time when I was suffering these afflictions I would never have believed that this could come to pass. No doubt, that is what is going to happen to you: you will become a great man. In the mean time be careful to keep a brave and stout heart, and impress on your mind this thought that such remarks which fall from the lips chiefly of learned and great men contain a prediction and prophecy. I remember well how a certain party whom I was comforting for the loss of his son said to me: Martin, you will see, you will become a great man. I often remembered this remark, for, as I said, such remarks contain a prediction and a prophecy. Therefore, be cheerful and brave, and cast these exceedingly terrifying thoughts entirely from you. Whenever the devil worries you with these thoughts, seek the company of men at once, or drink somewhat more liberally, jest and play some jolly prank, or do anything exhilarating. Occasionally a person must drink somewhat more liberally, engage in plays, and jests, or even commit some little sin from hatred and contempt of the devil, so as to leave him no room for raising scruples in our conscience about the most trifling matters. For when we are overanxious and careful for fear that we may be doing wrong in any matter, we shall be conquered. Accordingly, if the devil should say to you: By all means, do not drink! you must tell him: Just because you forbid it, I shall drink, and that, liberally. In this manner you must always do the contrary of what Satan forbids. When I drink my wine unmixed, prattle with the greatest unconcern, eat more frequently, do you think that I have any other reason for doing these things than to scorn and spite the devil who has attempted to spite and scorn me? Would God I could commit some real brave sin to ridicule the devil, that he might see that I acknowledge no sin and am not conscious of having committed any. We must put the whole law entirely out of our eyes and hearts,—we, I say, whom the devil thus assails and torments. Whenever the devil charges us with our sins and pronounces us guilty of death and hell, we ought to say to him: I admit that I deserve death and hell; what, then, will happen to me? Why, you will be eternally damned! By no means; for I know One who has suffered and made satisfaction for me. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He abides, there will I also abide." (21a, 1532 ff.)

The third letter to Weller is dated August 15th. It reads as follows: "Grace and peace in Christ. I have forgotten, my dear Jerome, what I wrote you in my former letter concerning the spirit of melancholy, and I may now be writing you the same things and harping on the same string. Nevertheless, I shall repeat what I said, because we all share each other's afflictions, and as I am suffering in your behalf, so you, no doubt, are suffering in mine. It is one and the same adversary that hates and persecutes every individual brother of Christ. Moreover, we are one body, and in this body one member suffers for every other member, and that, for the sole reason that we worship Christ. Thus it happens that one is forced to bear the other's burden. See, then, that you learn to despise your adversary. For you have not sufficiently learned to understand this spirit, who is an enemy to spiritual gladness. You may rest assured that you are not the only one who bears this cross and are not suffering alone. We are all bearing it with you and are suffering with you. God, who commanded: 'Thou shalt not kill,' certainly declares by this commandment that He is opposed to these melancholy and death-bringing thoughts, and that He, on the contrary, would have us cherish lively and exceedingly cheerful thoughts. So the Psalmist declares, saying: 'In His favor is life,' Ps. 30, 5 [Luther understands this to mean: He favors life] and in Ezekiel God says: 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live' (chap. 33, 11). On the other hand, etc. Now, then, since it is certain that such melancholy is displeasing to God, we have this reliable comfort that if this demon cannot be entirely removed from us, divine strength will be supplied to us, so that we may not feel the affliction so much. I know that it is not in our power to remove these thoughts at our option, but I also know that they shall not gain the upper hand; for we are told: 'He shall not suffer the righteous to be moved,' if we only learn to cast our burden upon Him. The Lord Jesus, the mighty Warrior and unconquerable Victor, will be your aid. Amen." (21a, 1543 f.)

These three letters constitute the whole evidence for the Catholic charge against Luther that he offered advice to Weller that is immoral and demoralizing. The indictment culminates in these three distinct points: Luther advises Weller 1. to drink freely and be frivolous; 2. to commit sin to spite the devil; 3. to have no regard for the Ten Commandments. Since we shall take up the last point in a separate chapter, we limit our remarks to the first two points.

When Luther advises Weller to drink somewhat more liberally, that does not mean that Luther advises Weller to get drunk. This, however, is exactly what Luther is made to say by his Catholic critics. They make no effort to understand the situation as it confronted Luther, but pounce upon a remark that can easily be understood to convey an offensive meaning. Neither does what Luther says about his own drinking mean that he ever got drunk. We have spoken of this matter in a previous chapter, and do not wish to repeat. Luther's remarks about jesting, merry plays, and jolly pranks in which he would have Weller engage are likewise vitiated by the Catholic insinuation that he advises indecent frivolities, yea, immoralities. Why, all the merriment which he urges upon Weller is to take place in Luther's home and family circle, in the presence of Luther's wife and children, in the presence of Weller's little pupil Hans, who at that time was about four years old. The friends of the family members of the Faculty at the University, ministers, students who either stayed at Luther's home, like Weller, or frequently visited there, are also included in this circle whose company Weller is urged to seek. Imagine a young man coming into this circle drunk, or half drunk, and disporting himself hilariously before the company! We believe that not even all Catholics can be made to believe the insinuations of their writers against Luther when all the facts in the case are presented to them.

Let us, moreover, remind ourselves once more that, to measure the social proprieties of the sixteenth century by modern standards, is unfair. A degree of culture in regard to manners and speech can be reached by very refined people that grows away from naturalness. The old Latin saying: Naturalia non sunt turpia (We need not feel ashamed of our natural acts), will never lose its force. There are expressions in Luther's writings—and in the Bible—that nowadays are considered unchaste, but are in themselves chaste and pure. Even the extremest naturalness that speaks with brutal frankness about certain matters is a better criterion of moral purity than the supersensitive prudishness that squirms and blushes, or pretends to blush, at the remotest reference to such matters. It all depends on the thoughts which the heart connects with the words which the mouth utters. This applies also to the manner in which former centuries have spoken about drinking. We sometimes begin to move uneasily, as if something Pecksniffian had come into our presence, when we behold the twentieth century sitting in judgment on the manners and morals of the sixteenth century.

In Luther's remarks about sinning to spite the devil we have always heard an echo from his life at the cloister. One's judgment about the monastic life is somewhat mitigated when one hears how Dr. Staupitz and the brethren in the convent at Erfurt would occasionally speak to Luther about the latter's sins. Staupitz called them "Puppensuenden." It is not easy to render this term by a short and apt English term; "peccadillo" would come near the meaning. A child playing with a doll will treat it as if it were a human being, will dress it, talk to it, and pretend to receive answers from it, etc. That is the way, good Catholics were telling Luther, he was treating his sins. His sins were no real sins, or he had magnified their sinfulness out of all proportion. This same advice Luther hands on to another who was becoming a hypochondriac as he had been. When the mind is in a morbid state it imagines faults, errors, sins, where there are none. The melancholy person in his self-scrutiny becomes an intolerant tyrant to himself. He will flay his poor soul for trifles as if they were the blackest crimes: In such moments the devil is very busy about the victim of gloom and despair. Luther has diagnosed the case of Weller with the skill of a nervous specialist. He counsels Weller not to judge himself according to the devil's prompting, and, in order to break Satan's thrall over him, to wrench himself free from his false notions of what is sinful. In offering this advice, Luther uses such expressions as: "Sin, commit sin," but the whole context shows that he advises Weller to do that which is in itself not sinful, but looks like sin to Weller in his present condition. When Luther declares he would like to commit a real brave sin himself as a taunt to the devil, he adds: "Would that I could!" That means, that, as a matter of fact, he could not do it and did not do it, because it was wrong. What bold immoral act did Weller commit in consequence of Luther's advice? What immoralities are there in Luther's own life? Luther's letters did not convey the meaning to his morbid young friend that Catholic writers think and claim they did.

Luther's advice to Melanchthon which is so revolting to Catholics that they have made it the slogan in their campaign against Luther refers to a state of affairs that is identical with what we noted in our review of the correspondence with Weller. It is contained in a letter which Luther wrote August 1, 1521, while he was an exile in the Wartburg. He says to his despondent friend and colleague at the University of Wittenberg: "If you are a preacher of grace, do not preach a fictitious, but the true grace. If grace is of the true sort, you will also have to bear true, not fictitious, sins. God does not save those who only acknowledge themselves sinners in a feigned manner. Be a sinner, then, and sin bravely, but believe more bravely still and rejoice in Christ, who is the Victor over sin, death, and the world. We must sin as long as we are in this world; the present life is not an abode of righteousness; however, we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, says Peter (2. Ep. 3, 13). We are satisfied, by the richness of God's glory, to have come to the knowledge of the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world. No sin shall wrest us from Him, were we even in one day to commit fornication and manslaughter a thousand times. Do you think the price paltry and the payment small that has been made for us by this great Lamb?" (15, 2589.)

"Be a sinner, and sin bravely, but believe more bravely still"—this is the chef d'oeuvre of the muck-rakers in Luther's life. The reader has the entire passage which contains the outrageous statement of Luther before him, and will be able to judge the connection in which the words occur. What caused Luther to write those words? Did Melanchthon contemplate some crime which he was too timid to perpetrate? According to the horrified expressions of Catholics that must have been the situation. Luther, in their view, says to Melanchthon: Philip, you are a simpleton. Why scruple about a sin? You are still confined in the trammels of very narrow-minded moral views. You must get rid of them. Have the courage to be wicked, Make a hero of yourself by executing some bold piece of iniquity. Be an "Uebermensch." Sin with brazen unconcern; be a fornicator, a murderer, a liar, a thief, defy every moral statute, —only do not forget to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. His grace is intended, not for hesitating, craven sinners, but for audacious, spirited, high-minded criminals.

This, we are asked to believe, is the sentiment of the same Luther who in his correspondence with Weller declares that he could not if he would commit a brave sin to spite the devil. Can the reader induce himself to believe that Luther advised Melanchthon to do what he himself knew was a moral impossibility to himself because of his relation to God? And again we put the question which we put in connection with the Weller letters: What brave sin did Melanchthon actually commit upon being thus advised by Luther?

One glance at the context, a calm reflection upon the tenor of this entire passage in the letter to Melanchthon, suffices to convince every unbiased reader that Luther is concerned about Melanchthon as he was about Weller: he fears his young colleague is becoming a prey to morbid self-incrimination. It is again a case of "Puppensuenden" being expanded till they seem ethical monstrosities. But, as the opening words of the paragraph show, Luther had another purpose in writing to Melanchthon as he did. Melanchthon was a public preacher and expounder of the doctrine of evangelical grace. He must not preach that doctrine mincingly, haltingly. Is that possible? Indeed, it is. Just as there are preachers afraid to preach the divine Law and to tell men that they are under the curse of God and merit damnation, so there are preachers afraid, actually afraid, to preach the full Gospel, without any limiting clauses and provisos. Just as there are teachers of Christianity who promptly put on the soft pedal when they reach the critical point in their public deliverances where they must reprove sin, and who hate intensive preaching of the Ten Commandments, so there are evangelical teachers who dole out Gospel grace in dribbles and homeopathic doses, as if it were the most virulent poison, of which the sinner must not be given too much. Luther tells Melanchthon: If you are afraid to draw every stop in the organ when you play the tune of Love Divine, All Love Excelling, you had better quit the organ. There are some sinners in this world that will not understand your faint evangelical whispers; they need to have the truth that Christ forgives their sins, all their sins,—their worst sins, blown into them with all the trumpets that made the walls of Jericho fall. If Melanchthon did not require a strong faith in the forgiving grace of God for himself, he needed it as a teacher of that grace to others; he must, therefore, familiarize himself with the immensity and power of that grace.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the Catholic writers who express their extreme disgust at the immoral principles of Luther belong to a Church whose theologians have made very questionable distinctions between venial sins and others. Papal dispensations and decisions of Catholic casuists, especially in the order of the Jesuits, have startled the world by their moral perverseness. Yea, the very principles of probabilism and mental reservation which the Jesuits have espoused are antiethical. In accordance with the principle last named, "when important interests are at stake, a negative or modifying clause may remain unuttered which would completely reverse the statement actually made. This principle justified unlimited lying when one's interest or convenience seemed to require it. Where the same word or phrase has more than one sense, it may be employed in an unusual sense with the expectation that it will be understood in the usual. [This is called "amphibology" by them.] Such evasions may be used under oath in a civil court. Equally destructive of good morals was the teaching of many Jesuit casuists that moral obligation may be evaded by directing the intention when committing an immoral act to an end worthy in itself; as in murder, to the vindication of one's honor; in theft, to the supplying of one's needs or those of the poor; in fornication or adultery, to the maintenance of one's health or comfort. Nothing did more to bring upon the society the fear and distrust of the nations and of individuals than the justification and recommendation by several of their writers of the assassination of tyrants, the term 'tyrant' being made to include all persons in authority who oppose the work of the papal church or order. The question has been much discussed, Jesuits always taking the negative side, whether the Jesuits have taught that 'the end justifies the means.' It may not be possible to find this maxim in these precise words in Jesuit writings; but that they have always taught that for the 'greater glory of God,' identified by them with the extension of Roman Catholic (Jesuit) influence, the principles of ordinary morality may be set aside, seems certain. The doctrine of philosophical sin, in accordance with which actual attention to the sinfulness of an act when it is being committed is requisite to its sinfulness for the person committing it, was widely advocated by members of the society. The repudiation of some of the most scandalous maxims of Jesuit writers by later writers, or the placing of books containing scandalous maxims on the Index, does not relieve the society or the Roman Catholic Church from responsibility, as such books must have received authoritative approval before publication, and the censuring of them does not necessarily involve an adverse attitude toward the teaching itself, but way be a more measure of expediency." (A. H. Newman, in New Schaff-Herzog Encycl., 6, 146.)

18. Luther, Repudiates the Ten Commandments?

In Luther's correspondence with Weller there occurs a remark to the effect that Weller must put the Decalog out of his mind. Similar statements occur in great number throughout Luther's writings. In some of these statements Luther speaks in terms of deep scorn and contempt of the Law, and considers it the greatest affront that can be offered Christians to place them under the Law of Moses. He declares that Moses must be regarded by Christians as if he were a heretic, excommunicated by the Church, and assigns him to the gallows. Some of the strongest invectives of this kind are found in his exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians. These stern utterances of Luther against the Law serve the Catholics as the basis for their charge that Luther is the most destructive spirit that has arisen within the Church. He is said to have destroyed the only perfect norm of right and wrong by his violent onslaughts on Moses. Once the commandments of God are abrogated, the feeling of duty and responsibility, they argue, is plucked from the hearts of men, and license and vice rush in upon the world with the force of a springtide.

The reader will remember what has been said in a previous chapter about Luther's labors to expound and apply the divine Law, also about the intimate and loving relation which he maintained to the Ten Commandments to the end of his life. Luther has spoken of Moses as a teacher of true holiness in terms of unbounded admiration and praise. Ho declares the writings of Moses the principal part of our Bible, because all the prophets and apostles have drawn their teaching from Moses and have expanded the teaching of Moses. Christ Himself has appealed to Moses as an authority in matters of religion. The greatest distinction of Moses in Luther's view is that he has prophesied concerning Christ, and by revealing the people's sin through the teaching of the Law has made them see and feel the necessity of a redemption through the Mediator. However, also the laws of Moses are exceedingly fine, Luther thinks. The Ten Commandments are essentially the natural moral law implanted in the hearts of man. But also his forensic laws, his civil statutes, his ecclesiastical ordinances, his regulations regarding the hygiene, and the public order that must be maintained in a great commonwealth, are wise and salutary. The Catholics are forced to admit that alongside of the open contempt which Luther occasionally voices for Moses and the Mosaic righteousness inculcated by the Law there runs a cordial esteem of the great prophet. Luther regards the Law of Moses as divine; it is to him just as much the Word of God as any other portion of the Scriptures. To save their faces in a debate they must concede this point, but they charge Luther with being a most disorderly reasoner, driven about in his public utterances by momentary impulses: He will set up a rule to-day which he knocks down to-morrow. He will cite the same Principle for or against a matter. He is so erratic that he can be adduced as authority by both sides to a controversy. The Catholic may succeed with certain people in getting rid of Luther on the claim that his is a confused mind, and that in weighty affairs he adopts the policy of the opportunist. Most men will demand a better explanation of the seeming self-contradiction in Luther's attitude toward the divine Law.

There is only one connection in which Luther speaks disparagingly of the Law, and we shall show that what he says is no real disparagement, but the correct Scriptural valuation of the Law. Luther holds that the Ten Commandments do not save any person nor contribute the least part to his salvation. They must be entirely left out of account when such questions are to be answered as these: How do I obtain a gracious God? How is my sin to be forgiven? How do I obtain a good conscience? How can I come to I live righteously? How can I hope to die calmly, in the confidence that I am going to heaven? On such occasions Luther says: Turn your eyes away from Moses and his Law; he cannot help you; you apply at the wrong office when you come to him for rest for your soul here and hereafter. He gives you no comfort, and he cannot, because it is not his function to do so. It is Another's business to do that. Him you grossly dishonor and traduce when you refuse to come to Him for what He alone can give, and when you go to some one who does not give you what you need, though you pretend that you get it from this other. A proper relation to God is established for us only by Jesus Christ. He is the exclusive Mediator appointed by God for His dealing with man and for man in his dealings with God. There is salvation in none other; nor can our hope of heaven be placed on any other foundation than that which God laid when He appointed Christ our Redeemer (Acts 4, 12; 1 Cor. 3, 11).

This is Bible-doctrine. "The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," says John (chap. 1, 17). Here the two fundamental teachings of the Scriptures are strictly set apart the one from the other. They have much in common: they have the same holy Author, God; their contents are holy; they serve holy ends. But they are differently related to sinful man: the Law tells man what he must do, the Gospel, what Christ has done for him; the Law issues demands, the Gospel, gratuitous offers; the Law holds out rewards for merits or severe penalties, the Gospel, free and unconditioned gifts; the Law terrifies, the Gospel cheers the sinner; the Law turns the sinner against God by proving to him his incapacity to practise it, the Gospel draws the sinner to God and makes him a willing servant of God.

Paul demands of the Christian minister that he "rightly divide the Word of Truth" (2 Tim. 2, 15). To preach the Bible-doctrine of salvation aright and with salutary effect, the Law and the Gospel must be kept apart as far as East is from the West. The Law is truth, but, it is not the truth that saves, because it knows of no grace for the breakers of the Law. The Gospel teaches holiness and righteousness, however, not such as the sinner achieves by his own effort, but such as has been achieved for the sinner by his Substitute, Jesus Christ. The Gospel is not for men who imagine that they can do the commandments of God; Jesus Christ says: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance" (Matt. 9, 13). On the other hand, the Law is not for sinners who know themselves saved. "The Law is not made for a righteous man" (1 Tim. 1, 9). Christians employ the Law for the regulation of their lives, as a pattern and index of holy works which are pleasing to God and as a deterrent from evil works, but they do not seek their salvation, neither wholly nor in part, in the Law, nor do they look to the Law for strength to do the will of God. Moreover Christians, while they are still in the flesh, apply the Law to the old Adam in themselves; they bruise the flesh with its deceitful lusts with the scourge of Moses, and thus they are in a sense under the Law, and can never be without the Law while they live. But in another sense they are not under the Law: all their life is determined by divine grace; their faith, their hope, their charity, is entirely from the Gospel, and the new man in them acknowledges no master except Jesus Christ, who is all in all to them (Eph. 1, 23).

When Luther directed men for their salvation away from the Law, he did what Christ Himself had done when He called to the multitudes: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11, 28). The people to whom these words were addressed had the Law of Moses and wearied themselves with its fulfilment, such as it was under the direction of teachers and guides who had misinterpreted and were misapplying that Law continually. Even in that false view of the Law which they had been taught, and which did not at all exhaust its meaning, there was no ease of conscience, no assurance of divine favor, no rest for their souls. Christ with His gracious summons told them, in effect: You must forget the Law and the ordinances of your elders and your miserable works of legal service. You must turn your back upon Moses. In Me, only in Me, is your help.

Moses himself never conceived his mission to be what the Catholics declare it to be by their doctrine of salvation by faith plus works. Moses directed his people to the greater Prophet who was to come in the future, and told them: "Unto Him shall ye hearken" (Deut. 18, 15). Jesus was pointed out to the world as that Prophet of whom Moses had spoken, when the Father at the baptism and the transfiguration of Christ repeated from heaven the warning cry of Israel's greatest teacher under the old dispensation (Matt. 3, 17; 17, 5).

But was it necessary, in speaking of the inability of the Law to save men, to use such strong and contemptuous terms as Luther has used? Yes. The Catholics do not seen to know in what strong terms the Bible has rejected the Law as a means of salvation. Paul denounces the Galatians again and again as "foolish," "bewitched," and bastards of a bondwoman, because they think they will be saved by their works done according to the Law (chap. 3, 1. 3; 4, 21 ff.). He calls them godless infidels, slaves, silly children still in their nonage, because they imagine that they become acceptable to God by their own righteousness (chap. 4, 9; 3, 23 ff.). Yea, he reprobates their legal service when he says: "As many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse" (chap. 3, 10). How contemptuous does it not sound to hear him call the legal ordinances which the Galatians were observing "beggarly elements" (chap. 4, 9), and the law a "schoolmaster" (chap. 3, 24), that is, a tutor fit only for little abecedarians who cannot be treated as full-grown persons that are able to make a right use of their privileges as children and heirs of God. Why do not the Catholics turn up their nose at Paul, as they do at Luther, when Paul calls all his legal righteousness "dung" (Phil. 2, 8), or when he speaks slightingly of the observance on which the Colossians prided themselves as "rudiments of the world" (Col. 2, 20)? Why does he call the Law "the handwriting of ordinances that has been blotted out" (Col. 2, 14) but to declare to the Colossians that they are to fear the Law as little as a debtor fears a canceled note that had been drawn against him? What was it that Paul rebuked Peter for when he told him that he was building again the things which they both had destroyed (Gal. 2, 18)? Mark you, he says, "destroyed." Why, it was this very thing for which Luther is faulted by Rome, the Law as an instrument for obtaining righteousness before God. Could a person renounce the Law in more determined, one might almost say, ruthless fashion, than by saying: "I am dead to the Law, that I might live unto God"? Paul is the person who thus speaks of the Law (Gal. 2, 19). The Catholics have again taken hold of the wrong man when they assail Luther for repudiating the Law of God; they must start higher up; they will find the real culprit whom they are trying to prosecute among the holy apostles. Yea, even the apostles will decline the honor of being the original criminals, they will pass the charges preferred against them higher up still; for what contemptuous terms were used by them in speaking of the Law were inspired terms which they received from God the Holy Ghost. That contempt for the Law which Luther voices under very particular circumstances Luther has learned from his Bible and under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.

That contempt is a mark of every evangelical preacher to-day. If ministers of the Gospel to-day do not denounce the Law when falsely applied, they betray a sacred trust and become traitors to Christ and the Church. For every one who teaches men to seek their salvation in any manner and to any degree in their own works serves not Christ, but Antichrist. This is such a fearful calamity that no terms should be regarded as too scathing in which to rebuke legalistic tendencies. These tendencies are the bane and blight of Christianity; if they are not rooted out, Christianity will perish from off the face of the earth. Workmongers are missionaries of the father of lies and the murderer from the beginning: so far as in them lies, they slay the souls of men by their false teaching of the Law.

However, Luther reveals another attitude toward the Law. At three distinct times in his public career he had to do with people who had assumed a hostile attitude to the Law of God. If the contention of Luther's Catholic critics were true, Luther ought to have hailed these occasions with delight and made common cause with the repudiators of the Law. While he was at the Wartburg, a disturbance broke out at Wittenberg. Under the leadership of Carlstadt, a professor at the University, men broke into the churches and smashed images. Church ordinances of age-long standing were to be abrogated, the cloisters were to be thrown open, and a new order of things was to be inaugurated by violence. Against the will of the Elector of Saxony, who had afforded Luther an asylum in his castle, Luther, at the risk of his life, came out of his seclusion, boldly went to Wittenberg, and preached a series of sermons by which he quelled the riotous uprising. Even before his return to Wittenberg he had published a treatise in which he warned Christians to avoid tumult and violent proceedings. The eight sermons which he preached to the excited people of Wittenberg are an invaluable evidence that Luther meant to proceed in the way of order. The mass and the confessional would have been abolished at that time, had it not been for Luther's interference. He made some lifelong enemies by insisting that the reformatory movement must be conservative. He held that before men's consciences had been liberated by the teaching of Christ, they were not qualified for exercising true Christian liberty, and their violent proceedings were nothing but carnal license. Everybody knows how deeply Luther himself was interested in the abolition of the idolatrous Mass and the spiritual peonage which Rome had created for men by means of the confessional. Only a person who puts principles above policies could have acted as Luther did in those turbulent days. He wanted for his followers, not wanton rebels and frenzied enthusiasts, but men who respect the Word of Cod, discreet and gentle men whose weapons of warfare were not carnal. A man who is so cautious as not to approve the putting down of acknowledged evils because he is convinced that the attempt is premature and exceeds the limits of propriety, will not lend his hand to abolishing the divine norm of right, the holy commandments of God.

The second occasion on which Luther in a most impressive manner showed his profound regard for the maintenance of human and divine laws was during the bloody uprising of the peasants. While thoroughly in sympathy with the rebellious peasants in their righteous grievances against their secular and spiritual oppressors, the barons and the bishops, and pleading the peasants' cause in its just demands before their lords, he unflinchingly rebuked their extreme demands and their still extremer actions. If by his preaching of the Gospel Luther had been the instigator of the peasants' uprising, what a brazen hypocrite he must have been in denouncing acts which he must have acknowledged to be fruits of his teaching! Among the noblemen of Germany Luther counted not a few frank admirers and staunch supporters of his reformatory work. Their influence was of the highest value to him in those critical days when his own life was not safe. Yet he rebuked the sins of the high and mighty, their avarice and insolence, which had brought on this terrible disturbance. In his writings dealing with this sad conflict Luther impresses one like one of the ancient prophets who stand like a rock amid the raging billows of popular passions and with even-handed justice deliver the oracles of God to high and low, calling upon all to bow before the supreme will of the righteous Lawgiver. Would the great lords of the land have meekly taken Luther's rebuke if they had been able to charge Luther with being an accessory to the peasants' crimes?

The third occasion on which Luther's innocence of the charges of Romanists that he was an instigator of lawlessness was most effectually vindicated was the Antinomian controversy. This episode, more than any other, embittered the life of the aging Reformer. The Antinomians drew from the evangelical teachings those disastrous consequences which the Catholics impute to Luther: they claimed that the Law is not in any way applicable to Christians. They insisted that the Ten Commandments must not be preached to Christians at all. Christians, they claimed, determine in the exercise of their sovereign liberty what they may or may not do. Being under grace, they are superior to the Law and a law unto themselves. At first Luther had been inclined to treat this error mildly, because it seemed incredible to him that enlightened children of God could so fatally misread the teaching of God's Word. He thought the Antinomians were either misunderstood by people who had no conception of the Gospel and of evangelical liberty, or they were grossly slandered by persons ill-disposed to them because of their successful preaching of the Gospel. When their error had been established beyond a doubt, he did not hesitate a moment to attack it. In sermons and public disputations, before the common people of Wittenberg and the learned doctors and the students of the University, he defended the holy Law of God as the norm of right conduct and the mirror showing up the sinfulness of man also for Christians, and he insisted that those who had fallen into this error must publicly recant. It was due to Luther's unrelenting opposition that Agricola, one of the leaders of the Antinomians and at one time a dear friend of Luther, withdrew his false teaching and offered apologies in a published discourse. To his guests Luther in those days remarked at the table: "Satan, like a furious harlot, rages in the Antinomians, as Melanchthon writes from Frankfort. The devil will do much harm through them and cause infinite and vexatious evils. If they carry their lawless principles into the State as well as the Church, the magistrate will say: I am a Christian, therefore the law does not pertain to me. Even a Christian hangman would repudiate the law. If they teach only free grace, infinite license will follow, and all discipline will be at an end." (Preserved Smith, p. 283.) Luther held that forbidding the preaching of the Law meant to prohibit preaching God's truth (20, 1635), and to abrogate the Law he regarded as tantamount to abrogating the Gospel (22, 1029).

Far from repudiating the Ten Commandments, then, Luther, by insisting on a distinction between Law and Gospel, and assigning to each a separate sphere of operation in the lives of Christians, has done more than any other teacher in the Church since the days of Paul to impress men with a sincere respect of the Law, and to honor it by obedience to its precepts.