15. The Disputation in Heidelberg
J H Merle d’Aubigné
Luther was not content to announce gospel truth in Wittenberg, where he resided, to the students and to the people; he wished to scatter elsewhere the seed of sound doctrine. In the spring of 1518, a general chapter of the Augustine order was to be held at Heidelberg. Luther was summoned to it as one of the most distinguished men of the order. His friends did all they could to dissuade him from undertaking this journey, for the monks had endeavoured to render Luther’s name odious in all the places through which he would have to pass. It would require but little to excite a popular tumult on his journey of which he might be the victim. “Or else”, said his friends, “they will effect by fraud and stratagem what they dare not do by violence.” But Luther never suffered himself to be hindered by the fear of danger. He therefore closed his ears to the timid observations of his friends; he pointed to Him in whom he trusted, and under whose guardianship he was ready to undertake so formidable a journey. He set out calmly on foot on April 13.
At Weissenfels, the pastor, whom he did not know, immediately recognised him as the Wittenberg doctor, and gave him a hearty welcome. At Erfurth, two other brothers of the Augustine order joined him. At Judenbach, they fell in with the Elector’s privy councillor, Degenhard Pfeffinger, who entertained them at the inn where they had found him. Luther reached Coburg, overwhelmed with fatigue. “All goes well, by God’s grace,” he wrote, “except that I acknowledge having sinned in undertaking this journey on foot. . . . I am overcome with fatigue, and all the conveyances are full.”
The Reformer of Germany, unable to find room in the public conveyances, and no one being willing to give up his place, was compelled, notwithstanding his weariness, to leave Coburg the next morning humbly on foot. At Würzburg Luther met his two friends, the vicar-general Staupitz, and Lange, the prior of Erfurth, who offered him a place in their carriage. They thus travelled together for three days, conversing with one another. On April 21 they arrived at Heidelberg and Luther lodged at the Augustine monastery.
The Elector of Saxony had given him a letter for the Duke of Bavaria. Luther went to his magnificent castle and admired the situation of Heidelberg, where the two beautiful valleys of the Rhine and the Neckar unite. The Duke received Luther with much kindness, and frequently invited him to his table, together with Lange and Staupitz. Luther said, “We were very happy, and amused one another with agreeable and pleasant conversation. But Luther had another task to perform. He must work while it is yet day. Having arrived at a university which exercised great influence over the west and south of Germany, he was there to strike a blow that should shake the churches of these countries. He began therefore to write some theses which he purposed maintaining in a public disputation. Such discussions were not unusual; but Luther felt that this one, to be useful, should lay forcible hold upon men’s minds. His disposition, besides, led him to present truth in a paradoxical form. The professors would not permit the discussion to take place in the University, and Luther had to take a hall in the Augustine convent. April 26 was the day appointed for the disputation.
At a later period, Heidelberg received the evangelical doctrine. Luther’s reputation had attracted a large audience; professors, students, courtiers, citizens, came in crowds. The following are some of his paradoxes, for so he called his theses:
“1. The law of God is a salutary doctrine of life. Nevertheless, it cannot aid man in attaining to righteousness; on the contrary, it impedes him.
“3. Man’s works, however fair and good they may be, are, however, to all appearance, nothing but deadly sins.
“7. The works of the righteous themselves would be mortal sins unless, being filled with a holy reverence for the Lord, they feared that their works might in truth be mortal sins.
“9. To say that works done out of Christ are truly dead, but not deadly, is a dangerous forgetfulness of the fear of God.
“13. Since the fall of man, free will is but an idle word; and if man does all he can, he still sins mortally.
“16. A man who imagines to arrive at grace by doing all that he is able to do, adds sin to sin and is doubly guilty.
- It is certain that man must altogether despair of himself, in order to be made capable of receiving Christ’s grace.
“21. A theologian of the world calls evil good, and good evil, but a theologian of the cross teaches aright on the matter.
“22. The wisdom which endeavours to learn the invisible perfections of God in His works puffs up, hardens and blinds a man.
“23. The law calls forth God’s anger, kills, curses, accuses, judges and condemns whatsoever is not in Christ.
“24. Yet this wisdom is not evil, and the law is not to be rejected; but the man who does not study the knowledge of God under the cross, turns whatever is good into evil.
“25. That man is not justified who performs many works, but he who, without works, has much faith in Christ.
“26. The law says, Do this, and what it commands is never done. Grace says, Believe in Him, and immediately all things are done.
Five doctors of divinity attacked these theses. They had read them with all the astonishment that novelty excites. Such theology appeared extravagant, and yet they discussed these points, according to Luther’s own testimony, with a courtesy that inspired him with much esteem for them, but at the same time with earnestness and discernment. Luther, on his side, displayed wonderful mildness in his replies, unrivalled patience in listening to the objections of his adversaries, and all the quickness of Paul in solving the difficulties opposed to him. His replies were short, but full of the Word of God, and excited the admiration of his hearers.
The disputation was drawing to an end. Luther’s adversaries had retired with honour from the field; the youngest of them, George Niger, alone continued the struggle with the powerful champion. Alarmed at the daring propositions of the monk, and not knowing what further arguments to have recourse to, he exclaimed, with an accent of fear: “If our peasants heard such things, they would stone you to death!” At these words the whole audience burst into a loud laugh.
Never had an assembly listened with so much attention to a theological discussion. The first words of the Reformer had aroused their minds. Questions, which shortly before would have been treated with indifference, were now full of interest. Three young men in particular were deeply moved. One of them, Martin Bucer, was a 27-year-old Dominican who, notwithstanding the prejudices of his order, appeared unwilling to lose one of Luther’s words. He had been born in a small town in Alsace and entered a monastery at 16. He soon displayed such ability that the most enlightened monks entertained the highest expectations of him: “He will one day be the ornament of our order”, they said. His superiors sent him to Heidelberg to study philosophy, theology, Greek and Hebrew.
Soon the earliest writings of Luther appeared. Bucer hastened to compare the Reformer’s doctrines with the Holy Scriptures. Some misgivings as to the truth of the Roman religion arose in his mind. Thus the light was diffused in those days. The Elector Palatine took particular notice of the young man. His strong voice, his eloquence, the freedom with which he attacked the vices of the day, made him a distinguished preacher. He was appointed chaplain to the court and was fulfilling his functions when Luther’s journey to Heidelberg was announced. What joy for Bucer! No one came with greater eagerness to the Augustine convent. He took with him paper, pens and ink. But while he was writing Luther’s words, the finger of God, in more indelible characters, wrote on his heart the great truths he heard. The first gleams of the doctrine of grace were then diffused through his soul. The Dominican was gained to Christ.
Not far from Bucer stood John Brentz or Brentius, then 19 years of age. He was the son of a magistrate in a city of Swabia, and at 13 had become a student at Heidelberg. No one showed greater application. He rose at midnight and began to study. This habit became so confirmed, that during his whole life he could not sleep after that hour. In later years he consecrated these tranquil moments to meditation on the Scriptures. Brentz was one of the first to perceive the new light then dawning on Germany. He welcomed it with a heart abounding in love. He eagerly perused Luther’s works. But what was his delight when he could hear the writer himself at Heidelberg! One of Luther’s propositions especially startled the youthful scholar: “Man is not justified before God who performs many works, but he who, without works, has much faith in Jesus Christ”.
A pious woman of Heilbronn, wife of a senator in that town, named Snepf, had imitated Hannah’s example, and consecrated her first-born son to the Lord, with a fervent desire to see him devote himself to the study of theology. This young man, who was born in 1495, made rapid progress in learning; but either from taste, or from ambition, or in compliance with his father’s wishes, he applied to study law. The pious mother was grieved to see her child, her Ehrhard, pursuing another career than that to which she had consecrated him. She admonished him, entreated him, prayed him continually to remember the vow she had made on the day of his birth. Overcome at last by his mother’s perseverance, Ehrhard Snepf gave way. Before long he felt such a taste for his new studies that nothing in the world could have diverted him from them.
He was very intimate with Bucer and Brentz, and they were friends until death. He was present with his two friends at the Heidelberg discussion. The Paradoxes and the courage of the Wittenberg doctor gave him a new impulse. Rejecting the vain opinion of human merits, he embraced the doctrine of the free justification of the sinner.
The next day Bucer went to Luther. “I had a . . . private conversation with him,” said Bucer, “a most exquisite repast, not of dainties, but of truths that were set before me. To whatever objection I made, the doctor had a reply and explained everything with the greatest clearness. O would to God that I had time to write more!” Luther himself was touched with Bucer’s sentiments.
“He is the only brother of his order”, he wrote to Spalatin, “who is sincere; he is a young man of great promise. He received me with simplicity and conversed with me very earnestly. He is worthy of our confidence and love.”
Brentz, Snepf and many others, excited by the new truths that began to dawn on their minds, also visited Luther; they talked with him; they begged for explanations of what they did not understand. The Reformer replied, strengthening his arguments by the Word of God. Each sentence imparted fresh light to their minds. A new world was opening before them.
After Luther’s departure, these noble-minded men began to teach at Heidelberg. They felt it their duty to continue what the man of God had begun, and not allow the flame to expire which he had lit. Brentz, although still so young, explained the Gospel of Matthew, at first in his own room and afterwards, when it became too small, in the philosophy lecture theatre. The theologians, envious at the crowd of hearers this young man drew around him, became irritated. Brentz then was ordained and transferred his lectures to the college of the Canons of the Holy Ghost. Thus the fire already kindled in Saxony now glowed in Heidelberg. The centres of light increased in number. This period has been denominated the seedtime of the Palatinate.
But it was not the Palatinate alone that reaped the fruits of the Heidelberg disputation. These courageous friends of the truth soon became shining lights in the Church. They all attained to exalted situations, and took part in many of the debates which the Reformation occasioned. Strasbourg, and England a little later, were indebted to Bucer for a purer knowledge of the truth. Snepf first declared it at Marburg, then at Stuttgart, Tubingen and Jena. Brentz, after having taught at Heidelberg, continued his labours for a long period at Tubingen, and at Halle in Swabia. We shall meet with these three men again in the course of our history.
This disputation carried Luther himself forward. He increased daily in the knowledge of the truth. “I belong to those,” he said, “who improve by writing and by teaching others, and not to those who from nothing become on a sudden great and learned doctors.” He was overjoyed at seeing how avidly the students received the dawning truth, and this consoled him when he found the old doctors so deep-rooted in their opinions. “I have the glorious hope,” he said, “that as Christ, when rejected by the Jews, turned to the Gentiles, we shall now also behold the new theology, that has been rejected by these greybeards with their empty and fantastical notions, welcomed by the rising generation.”
After the disputation ended, Luther thought of returning to Wittenberg. The Duke gave him a letter for the Elector in which he said that “Luther had shown so much skill in the disputation as greatly to contribute to the renown of the University of Wittenberg”. He was not allowed to return on foot. The Nuremberg Augustines conducted him as far as Würzburg, from whence he proceeded to Erfurth with the friars from that city.
As soon as he arrived, he went to his old teacher’s house, Jodocus. The aged professor was much grieved at the path his disciple had taken. He had written to the young doctor reproaching him, and Luther desired to reply in person. Not having been admitted, he wrote to Jodocus: “All the university, with the exception of one licentiate, think as I do. More than this, the prince, the bishop, many other prelates, and all our most enlightened citizens, declare with one voice, that up to the present time they had neither known nor understood Jesus Christ and His gospel. I am ready to receive your corrections and, although they should be severe, they will appear to me very gentle. Open your heart therefore without fear; unburden your anger. I will not and I cannot be vexed with you. God and my conscience are my witnesses!”
The old doctor was moved by these expressions of his former pupil. “I made him understand at least,” said Luther about these Roman Catholic scholars, “that all their sentences were like that beast which is said to devour itself. But talking to a deaf man is labour in vain. These doctors obstinately cling to their petty distinctions, although they confess there is nothing to confirm them but the light of natural reason, as they call it – a dark chaos truly to us who preach no other light than Jesus Christ, the true and only light.”
Luther left Erfurth in the monastery’s carriage, which took him to Eisleben. From there the Augustines of the place, proud of a doctor who had shed such glory on their order and on their city, his native place, conveyed him to Wittenberg with their own horses and at their expense. Everyone desired to bestow some mark of affection and esteem on this extraordinary man, whose fame was constant increasing.