By REV. D. A. MACFARLANE, M.A.
1.
ONE of the outstanding episodes connected with the Reformation is known by the above name. Some time prior to this meeting, an envoy of the name of Miltitz, a Saxon, came from Rome and had a conference with Luther. The upshot of this conference was that Luther agreed not to write nor act in the matter of Tetzel’s indulgencies if those opposed to Luther would also refrain from doing so. Miltitz is reported to have been overjoyed at this. It looked as if Luther were efficiently muzzled at last. But Luther’s foes duly freed him. They unbound the fetters which Miltitz got on him without realising this. The main agent in setting the controversy ablaze again was Doctor John Eeckius or Eek. He intended to extinguish it thoroughly. The outcome here was the Leipsic Disputation. Eek and Carlstadt had a pen-controversy for a time, but agreed to meet at Leipsic and thresh the matter out orally. Carlstadt was a fellow-labourer of Luther, and had a position in the Wittenberg Cathedral. Many illustrious persons were, of course, expected to congregate at Leipsic, as they duly did. Some of these were Duke George of Saxony, John of Saxony, John of Anhalt and others. Hoffman and some of his brethren of the Leipsic University were to be umpires. Little more perhaps need be said of Chancellor Hoffman and his confreres than that they refused to come to any decision, nor did they send up a reference to Pope or Council.
The disputation was really to have been between Eck and Carlstadt, but historians tell us that before the day arrived, Eck had begun to aim at higher game. Eck’s ambition now was to break a lance with the Monk of Wittenberg—with Luther himself. By this time Eck published Thirteen Theses in which he impugned the views of Luther. Luther, on his side, really came to Leipsic as a spectator, being at first forbidden by Duke George to take part in the fray. Later on, Duke George, who proved a fool, allowed him, and the Pleisenberg Hall which had become pretty thin in numbers before the end of the Carlstadt—Eck controversy, filled up when the report went abroad that Luther was to take the cudgels up. Mosellanus, Greek Professor in Leipsic University said of Luther that his learning and knowledge of the Scriptures were beyond compare, but that it were, perhaps, to be wished that he had a little more judgment in arranging his material,—also, that he was more sarcastic in his rejoinders than was becoming in a theologian.
Mosellanus further remarks of Carlstadt that he had the same qualities as distinguished Luther but in an inferior degree. Of Eck he says that if his intellect were equal to his memory, he would be faultless, but that he was “slow of comprehension and lacked judgment, without which all other gifts are useless.” Eck had the bad fault, which did not die with him, of darting off from the matter in hand, and pouncing on another, when finding himself in a difficulty; and of even adopting the view of his antagonist, and changing the form of expression,—dexterously charging him at the same time with the very absurdity which he himself had previously been defending.
They met in the Church of St. Thomas, Leipsic, on the 27th of June, 1519. Mass was sung, and before they began, all fell on their knees and sang the “Veni, Sanete Spiritus.” The historian whom we are mainly drawing from for our narrative remarks: “The Church now stood on the line that divided the night from the day. The champions of the darkness and the heralds of the light were still mingled in one assembly. A little while and they would be parted, never again to meet; but as yet they assemble under the same roof, they bow their heads in the same prayer, and they raise aloft their voices in the same invocation to the Holy Spirit. That prayer was to be answered. The Spirit was to descend; the dead were to draw to the dead, the living to the living, and a holy Church was to look forth “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.” “The battle,” says our historian, “continued to be waged on this and the sixteen following days. The questions discussed were those . . . that constitute an essential and eternal difference between the Roman and the Protestant Churches The discussion was also of the last importance practically. It convinced them (the Reformers) . . . that the diversity was not on the surface merely . . . but in the very first principles upon which the Papal system is founded. The form which the question took was one touching the human will. What is the moral condition of man’s will? in other words, what is the moral condition of man himself? As the will is, so is the man himself, for the will or heart is but a term expressive of the final outcome of the man; it is the faculty which concentrates all the findings of his animal, intellectual, and spiritual nature,—body, mind, and soul,—and sends them forth in the form of wish and act. Is man able to choose that which is spiritually good? In other words, when sin and holiness are put before him, and he must make his choice between the two, will the findings of his whole nature, as summed up and expressed in his choice, be on the side of holiness? Dr. Eck and the Roman theologians at Leipsic maintained the affirmative, asserting that man has the power, without the aid of the Spirit of God, and simply of himself, to choose what is spiritually good, and to obey God. Luther, Carlstadt, and the new theologians maintained the negative, affirming that man lost this power when he fell; that he is now unable morally to choose holiness; and that, till his nature be renewed by the Holy Spirit, he cannot love or serve God.
So much for the perspicuous narrative of our historian. It merely remains to add that Dr. Eck returned, mortified, to Rome and with Cajetan and others, constrained the Pope to issue a Bull against Luther. This was the Bull which Luther took in 1520 and, along with certain books,—a copy of the canon law being one of the principle ones,—publicly burned outside the city-wall of Wittemberg. Luther thereby was self-excluded from the Church of Rome. He had turned his back on both Pope and General Council of the Church.