8. “I Hope that the Lord Will Deliver Me from Fear”
J H Merle d’Aubigné
Luther’s teaching produced its natural fruits. Many of his disciples already felt impelled to profess publicly the truths which their master’s lessons had revealed to them. Among his hearers was a young scholar, Bernard of Feldkirchen, a professor in the university. Five years later he was the first of the evangelical clerics to marry. Luther wished Feldkirchen to argue for certain theses, or propositions, at a disputation in 1516. Luther’s doctrines gained additional publicity at this meeting. It made a great noise and has been considered the beginning of the Reformation.
This was Luther’s first attack on the dominion of the papacy. Weak as it was, it caused him some uneasiness. “I allow these propositions to be printed,” he said many years later, when publishing them in his works, “principally so that the greatness of my cause, and the success with which God has crowned it, may not make me vain. For they fully manifest my humiliation – that is to say, the infirmity and ignorance, the fear and trembling with which I began this conflict. I was alone; I had thrown myself imprudently into this business. Unable to retract, I conceded many important points to the Pope, and I even adored him.”
Some of the propositions were as follows: “The old Adam is called the flesh, not only because he is led by the lusts of the flesh, but also because even if he is chaste, prudent and righteous, he is not born again of God by the Holy Ghost.” “A man who has no part in the grace of God, cannot keep the commandments of God or prepare himself, either wholly or in part, to receive grace, but he rests of necessity under the power of sin.” “The will of man without grace is not free, but is enslaved, and that too with its own consent.” “Jesus Christ, our strength and our righteousness, He who tries the heart and reins, is the only discerning and judge of our merits.” “Since all is possible, through Christ, to the believer, it is superstitious to seek for other help, either in man’s will or in the saints.”
The Reformation was about to burst forth. God was preparing the instrument He was to use. The Elector had built a new church at Wittenberg, which he called All Saints, and sent Staupitz into the Netherlands to collect relics to adorn the new building. The vicar-general commissioned Luther to replace him during his absence, and in particular to make a visitation of the 40 monasteries of Misnia and Thuringia. Everywhere Luther tried to establish the truths that he had discovered and to enlighten the members of his order. “Do not bind yourselves to Aristotle, or to any other teacher of a deceitful philosophy,” he said to the monks, “but read the Word of God with diligence. Do not look for salvation in your own strength or in your good works, but in the merits of Christ and in God’s grace.”
An Augustine monk of Dresden had fled from his convent, and was at Mentz, where the prior of the Augustines had received him. Luther wrote to the prior, begging him to send back the stray sheep, and added these words so full of charity and truth: “I know that offences must come. It is no marvel that man falls; but it is so that he may rise again and stand upright. Peter fell so that he might know he was but a man. . . . The very angels – a thing that exceeds all imagination – have fallen in heaven, and Adam in paradise. Why then should we be surprised if a reed is shaken by the whirlwind, or if a smoking taper is extinguished?”
From Dresden Luther proceeded to Erfurt to discharge the functions of vicar-general in that very convent where, 11 years before, he had wound up the clock, opened the gates, and swept out the church. He nominated to the priorship of the convent his friend John Lange, a learned and pious but severe man: he exhorted him to be affable and patient. “Put on,” he wrote to him shortly afterwards, “a spirit of meekness towards the prior of Nuremberg: this is but proper, seeing he has assumed a spirit of bitterness and harshness. Bitterness is not expelled by bitterness, that is to say, the devil by the devil; but sweetness dispels bitterness, that is to say, the finger of God casts out the evil spirit.” We must regret that on various occasions Luther did not remember this excellent advice. At Neustadt there was nothing but disunion. Dissensions and quarrels reigned in the convent, and all the monks were at war with their prior. They assailed Luther with their complaints. The prior Michael Dressel laid all his troubles before Luther, who said, “You seek peace, but it is the peace of the world, and not the peace of Christ that you seek. Do you not know that our God has set His peace in the midst of war? He whom no one disturbs does not have peace. But he who, troubled by all men and by the things of this life, bears all with tranquillity and joy, he possesses true peace. You say with Israel: Peace, peace! And there is no peace. Say rather with Christ: The cross, the cross; and there will be no cross.” On his return to Wittenberg, Luther permitted the monks to elect another prior; he wished to put an end to these dissensions.
Luther returned to Wittenberg after an absence of six weeks. He was afflicted at all he had seen, but the journey gave him a better knowledge of the Church and of the world, increased his confidence in his interaction with society, and gave him many opportunities of founding schools, of pressing the fundamental truth that “Holy Scripture alone shows us the way to heaven”, and of exhorting the brethren to live together in holiness, chastity and peace. There is no doubt that much good seed was sown in the different Augustine convents during this journey.
The monastic orders, which had long been the support of Rome, did more perhaps for the Reformation than against it. This is true of the Augustines in particular. Almost all the pious men in the cloisters turned towards the gospel. As yet nothing was known in the world of Luther’s new ideas, while they were already the chief topic of conversation in the monasteries. Many a cloister thus became a nursery of reformers. As soon as the great struggle took place, pious and able men issued from their obscurity and abandoned the seclusion of a monastic life for the active career of ministers of God’s Word. At the period of this inspection Luther awakened many drowsy souls by his words. Hence 1516 has been named “the morning star of the gospel day”.
Luther resumed his usual occupation. He was at this period overwhelmed with work: it was not enough that he was professor, preacher and confessor; he was burdened still further by many temporal tasks for his order and his convent. “I need almost continually,” he writes, “two secretaries; for I do nothing else all the day long but write letters. I am preacher to the convent; I read the prayers at the table; I am pastor and parish minister, director of studies . . . inspector of the fish-ponds at Litzkau, counsel to the inns of Herzberg at Torgau, lecturer on Paul, and commentator on the Psalms . . . without speaking of my struggles with flesh and blood, with the devil and the world. . . . Learn from this what an idle man I am!” About this time the plague broke out in Wittenberg. Many students and teachers left the city. Luther remained. “I am not certain”, he wrote to his friend at Erfurt, “if the plague will let me finish the Epistle to the Galatians. Its attacks are sudden and violent: it is making great ravages among the young in particular. You advise me to flee. Whither shall I flee? I hope that the world will not come to an end if brother Martin dies. If the pestilence spreads, I shall disperse the brothers in every direction; but as for me, my place is here; duty does not permit me to desert my post, until He who has called me shall summon me away. Not that I have no fear of death (for I am not Paul, I am only his commentator) but I hope that the Lord will deliver me from fear.” Such was Luther’s resolution. Shall he then shrink before Rome? Shall he yield through fear of the scaffold?