J H Merle d’Aubigné
Luther displayed the same courage before the mighty of this world, that he had shown amid the most formidable dangers. The Elector was very pleased with Staupitz the vicar-general, who had made a rich harvest of relics in the Netherlands. Luther gave an account of them to Spalatin. A bishopric seemed to the only worthy reward for the services of the vicar-general. Luther strongly disapproved of such an idea. “There are many things which please your prince,” he wrote, “and which, nevertheless, are displeasing to God. I do not deny that [the Elector] is skilful in the matters of this world; but in what concerns God and the salvation of souls, I account him . . . sevenfold blind. I do not say this behind their backs, like a slanderer; I do not conceal it from them, for I am ready myself, and on all occasions, to tell it them both to their faces. Why would you”, he continues, “surround this man [Staupitz] with all the whirlwinds and tempests of episcopal cares?”
The Elector was not offended with Luther’s frankness. “The prince”, wrote Spalatin, “often speaks of you, and in honourable terms.” Frederick sent the monk some very fine cloth for a gown. “I am not worthy that any man should think of me”, said Luther, “much less a prince, and so great a prince as he. Those are my best friends who think the worst of me. Thank our prince for his kindness to me; but I cannot allow myself to be praised either by you or by any man, for all man’s praise is vain, and only that which comes from God is true.”
Duke George of Saxony had often manifested a desire for a Reformation.
1This is a further abridged extract from d’Aubigné’s The History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, vol 1. Last month we saw Luther feeling his way towards a more scriptural, though still imperfect, understanding of doctrine and church principles. The article closed by noting Luther’s courage in remaining at his post when the plague was raging in Wittenberg.
He would have been delighted to humiliate the Church and the clergy, to humble the bishops, whose princely retinue far surpassed his own; but it was another thing to receive into his heart the evangelical doctrine that would humble it, to acknowledge himself a guilty sinner, incapable of being saved except by grace alone. He would willingly have reformed others, but he did not care to reform himself. He would perhaps have set his hand to the task of compelling the Bishop of Mentz to be contented with a single bishopric and to keep no more than 14 horses in his stables, as he said more than once, but when he saw a simple monk undertake this work, and the Reformation gaining numerous supporters among the people, he became the most violent adversary of reform.
In July 1517, Duke George requested Staupitz to send him an eloquent and learned preacher. Luther was recommended to him as a man of extensive learning and irreproachable conduct. The prince invited him to preach at Dresden in the castle chapel. When the day arrived, the Duke and his court gathered in the chapel. Luther joyfully seized this opportunity of testifying to the truth before such an assembly. He selected his text from the Gospel reading for the day: “Then came to Him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons . . .” (Mt 20:20-23). He preached on the unreasonable desires and prayers of men, and then spoke emphatically on the assurance of salvation. He established it on this foundation: those who receive the Word of God by faith are the true disciples of Jesus Christ, who are elected to eternal life. He next spoke of election, and showed that this doctrine, if presented in union with the work of Christ, has great power to dispel the terrors of conscience; so that men, instead of fleeing far from the righteous God at the sight of their unworthiness, are gently led to seek refuge in Him.
The word of truth made a deep impression on his hearers. Two in particular seemed to pay great attention to the sermon. The first was a lady on the court benches, showing profound emotion. It was Madame de la Sale, first lady to the Duchess. The other was Jerome Emser, counsellor and secretary to the Duke. Emser possessed great talents and extensive knowledge. A skilful politician, he would have desired to pass at Rome for a defender of the papacy, yet shine in Germany among the learned men of the age. But under this pliant mind was concealed a violent character. It was in the palace chapel at Dresden that Luther and Emser first met; they were afterwards to break more than one lance together.
The dinner hour arrived for the inhabitants of the palace, and the conversation naturally fell on that morning’s preacher. “How were you pleased with the sermon?” said the Duke to Madame de la Sale. “If I could hear but one more like it,” she replied, “I should die in peace.” “And I”, George
replied angrily, “would rather give a large sum not to have heard it; for such discourses are only calculated to make people sin with assurance.”
Then the courtiers expressed their uncontrolled dissatisfaction. Each one had his censure ready. He is an ignorant fellow, said some; he is a proud monk, said others. The truth had fallen into the midst of a court little prepared to receive it. But while the Word of God was thus an occasion of stumbling to many, it was a blessing for the first lady. She fell sick a month later and confidently embraced the grace of the Saviour and died with joy. As for the Duke, it was perhaps not in vain that he heard Luther’s testimony to the truth. Whatever may have been his opposition to the Reformation during his life, we know that, at his death, he declared he had no hope save in the merits of Jesus Christ.
Luther returned to Wittenberg and zealously resumed his work. He was preparing six or seven young theologians who were shortly to sit an examination for a licence to teach. What rejoiced him most of all was that their promotion would tend to the discredit of Aristotle.2 “I could desire to multiply the number of his enemies as soon as possible”, he said. So about then he published some theses which merit our attention.
Free will was the great subject he treated. There had long been a struggle, more or less keen, between the two doctrines of man’s liberty and his enslavement. Some, like Pelagius,3 had taught that man possessed in himself the power of loving God and of doing good works. Luther denied this liberty – not to deprive man of it, but that he might obtain it. The struggle is not, as is generally said, between liberty and slavery; it is between a liberty proceeding from man, and one from God. Those who style themselves the partisans of liberty say to man: You have power to perform good works; you have no need of greater liberty. On the contrary, the partisans of servitude say, True liberty is what you need, and God offers it to you in His gospel. Such was the contest in the times of Paul, of Augustine and of Luther.
But we would deceive ourselves if we summed up all the Reformation in that particular question. It is only one of the numerous doctrines Luther maintained. The Reformation was a noble emancipation of the human mind. Snapping the numerous bonds with which the Roman hierarchy had bound men’s minds, it restored the ideas of liberty, of what is right, of free examination; it set free its own age, ourselves and remotest posterity. It desired to lead back the human will and render it entirely subject to God’s will. But what kind of philosophy does not know that entire conformity with the will of God is the sole, supreme and perfect liberty; and that man will be really
2A Greek philosopher whose ideas were used to support some Roman Catholic doctrines.
3A monk of the fourth century.
free only when sovereign righteousness and eternal truth alone have dominion over him?
Here are some of the 99 propositions Luther put forth in the Church against the Pelagian rationalism of the theology of the Middle Ages:
“It is true that man, who has become a corrupt tree, can will or do naught but evil.”
“It is false that the will, left to itself, can do good as well as evil; for it is not free, but in bondage.”
“It is not in the power of man’s will to choose or reject whatever is offered to it.”
“Man cannot, of his own nature, will God to be God. He would prefer to be God himself and prefer that God were not God.”
“The excellent, infallible, and sole preparation for grace is the eternal election and predestination of God.”
“It is false to say that if man does all that he can, he removes the obstacles to grace.”
“On the side of man there is nothing that goes before grace, unless it is impotence and even rebellion.”
“We do not become righteous by doing what is righteous; but having become righteous, we do what is righteous.”
“Man is a greater enemy to the grace of God than he is to the law itself.”
“He who is without God’s grace sins continually, even should he neither rob, murder, or commit adultery.”
“He sins, in that he does not fulfil the law spiritually.”
“The law of God and the will of man are two adversaries that, without the grace of God, can never be reconciled.”
“What the law commands, the will never wishes, unless through fear . . . it puts on the appearance of willing.”
“The law makes sin abound, for it exasperates and repels the will.”
“But the grace of God makes righteousness abound through Jesus Christ, who causes us to love the law.”
Thus Luther ascribes to God all the good that man can do. There is no question of repairing man’s will, of patching it up, if we may use the expression; an entirely new one must be given him. And God alone can accomplish it. This is one of the most important truths that the human mind can conceive. But while Luther proclaimed the powerlessness of man, he did not fall into the other extreme. His eighth thesis teaches that originally man’s nature was essentially good: it has turned away from the good, which is God, and inclined towards evil. Yet it can, by God’s power, recover from this state. It is the business of Christianity to restore it to him. And if man thinks ever so
little, he easily discovers that all that is told him of his present purity, power and glory is but a fiction with which to soothe his pride.
Luther in his theses protested not only against the pretended goodness of man’s will, but still more against the pretended light in his understanding of Divine things. Mediaeval theology, as some of its teachers represented it, was at bottom nothing but a kind of rationalism. In his theses, Luther censured the Church and the popular superstitions which had added indulgences, purgatory and so many other abuses to the gospel. In those we have just quoted, he assailed the teachings which had taken away from the gospel the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, revelation and grace. The Reformation attacked rationalism before it turned against superstition. It proclaimed the rights of God before it cut off the false ideas of man. It was positive before it became negative. This has not been sufficiently observed; yet if we do not notice it, we cannot justly appreciate the true nature of that religious revolution.
The truths that Luther had enunciated with so much energy were novel. It would have been easy to support these propositions at Wittenberg, for there his influence predominated. But then people might have said that he had chosen a field where he knew that no combatant would dare appear. By offering battle in another university, he would give the truth greater publicity; and the Reformation was effected by publicity. He turned his eyes to Erfurt, whose theologians had been so irritated against him. He therefore sent these propositions to John Lange, prior of Erfurt. He wrote about them: “Please inform me, as soon as possible, of your sentiments about them. Have the goodness to declare to the faculty of theology … that I am prepared to visit you, and to maintain these propositions publicly, either in the university or in the monastery.” It does not seem that Luther’s challenge was accepted. The monks of Erfurt were content to let him know that these propositions had greatly displeased them.
But he desired to send them also into another part of Germany. John Meyer was a distinguished professor, then teaching at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. He was born at Eck, a village in Swabia, and was commonly styled Doctor Eck. He was a friend of Luther, who esteemed his talents and his knowledge. He united learning with eloquence. For talent, Eck was in the south of Germany what Luther was in the north. It was through Eck that Luther thought of making his propositions on Pelagianism4 and rationalism known in the south of the Empire. He forwarded them to a common friend, Christopher Scheurl, secretary to the city of Nuremberg, begging him to transmit them to Eck.
4This system of doctrine denies original sin and credits human beings with the power to do what is truly good before God.
But the battle was not to be fought on this field. These propositions turned on doctrines of perhaps greater importance than those which two months later set the Church in flames; yet in spite of Luther’s challenges they passed unnoticed. At most, they were read within the walls of the universities; they were only theological doctrines; while the theses which followed referred to an evil that was then breaking out throughout Germany. So long as Luther was content to revive forgotten doctrines, men were silent; but when he pointed out abuses that injured all the world, everybody listened.
Yet in both cases Luther only proposed to excite one of those theological discussions so frequent in the universities. He had no idea of becoming a reformer. He was humble, and his humility bordered on distrust and anxiety. “Considering my ignorance,” he said, “I deserve only to be hidden in some corner, without being known to anyone under the sun.” But a mighty hand drew him from this corner.