PART V

LUTHER AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH, TO THE FIRST RELIGIOUS PEACE. 1525-1532.

I

SURVEY.

The year 1525 marks in the life of Luther and the history of the Reformation an epoch and a departure of general importance.

Luther's preaching had originally forced its way among the German people and its various classes, with an energy and strength never counted on by its opponents. It seemed impossible to calculate how far the ferment would extend, and what would be its ultimate results. It was the idea of the Elector Frederick the Wise, now dead, that by simply letting the word of the gospel unfold itself quietly and work its way without hindrance, the truth could not fail eventually to penetrate all Christendom, or at least the Christian world of Germany, and thus accomplish a peaceful victory. This hope had guided him during his lifetime in his relations with Luther, and no one appreciated and responded to it more loyally than Luther himself. But now, as we have seen, those German princes who adhered to the old Church system had begun to form a close alliance, and were meditating means of remedying, albeit in their own fashion, certain evils in the Church. Erasmus, still the representative of a powerful modern movement of the intellect, had at length broken finally with Luther, and renewed his former allegiance to the Romish Church. From the German nobility, whose sympathy and co-operation Luther had once so boldly and hopefully invoked in his contest with the Papacy, it was vain, since the fatal enterprise of Sickingen, which Luther himself had been forced to condemn, to expect any material assistance in furtherance of the Evangelical cause. True, there was the extensive rising of another class, the peasantry, who likewise appealed to the gospel. But genuine disciples of the gospel could not fail to see in this movement, with terror, how a perverse conception of the sacred text led to errors and crimes which even Luther wished to see suppressed in blood. And the Catholic nobles took advantage of this rising to persecute with the greater rigour all evangelical preaching, and to extend, without further inquiry, their denunciation of the insurgents to those of evangelical sympathies who held entirely aloof from the insurrection. Luther, in his dealings with the nobles and peasants, failed to preserve that boldness and confidence of mind and language which he had previously displayed towards his fellow-countrymen. That his cause, indeed, was the cause of God, he remained unshakenly convinced; but in a sadder spirit than he had ever shown before, he left God's will to determine what amount of visible success that cause should attain to in the present evil world, or how far the decision should depend upon His last great Judgment.

[Illustration: Fig. 33.—The Saxon Electors, FREDERICK THE WISE, JOHN, and JOHN FREDERICK. (From a Picture by Cranach.) At Nuremberg.]

[Illustration: Fig. 34.—Facsimile of FREDERICK's signature.]

Even before the Peasants' War broke out, the proceedings of the fanatics had begun to hamper and disturb his labours in the field of reformation, and had prepared for him much pain and tribulation. He had to grow distrustful of so many whom he had regarded as brothers, and of their manner of proclaiming the Word of God, Whom they pretended to serve. He already heard of men among them, who not only rejected infant baptism, and openly attacked his own, no less than the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament, but who impugned the universal belief of Christendom in the Triune God and the Divinity of the Saviour. Early in 1525 news reached him of such a man at Nuremberg, John Denk, the Rector of the school there, who was expelled on that account by the magistrates. Luther's own doctrine of the presence of Christ's Body in the Lord's Supper, which he had previously to defend against Carlstadt, his former colleague and fellow-combatant, now found a far more formidable opponent in the Zurich Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. The latter, in a letter of November 16, 1524, to Alber, a preacher at Reutlingen, had already disputed the Real Presence, by interpreting the words 'This is my body' to mean 'This signifies my body.' In March 1525 he made known this interpretation to the world by publishing his letter, together with a pamphlet 'On the True and False Religion.' He was joined at Basle by Oecolampadius, whom Luther had welcomed formerly as a fellow-labourer, and who published his own interpretation of the words of Christ. Butzer and Capito, the evangelical preachers at Strasburg, inclined to the same view, which threatened to spread rapidly over the South of Germany. The opposition now encountered by Luther was far more dangerous for his teaching than the theories and agitations of a Carlstadt, since whatever judgment may be formed about its merits, it proceeded at any rate from men of far more thoughtful minds, more solid theological acquirements, and more honest reverence for the Word of God. Herewith then began that division of opinion among the ranks of the Evangelical Reformers, which served more than anything else to retard the fresh and vigorous progress of the Reformation, and infected even Luther's spirit with the bitterness of the controversy it entailed.

At the same time, however, Luther had now won firm ground for the Evangelical cause upon a fixed and extensive territory. Within these limits it was possible to construct a new Church system, upon stable foundations and with a new constitution. John, the new Elector of Saxony, did not enjoy, it is true, the same high consideration throughout the Empire as his brother Frederick, Luther's great protector, and he was also his inferior as a statesman. But with Luther himself both he and his son John Frederick had already maintained a friendly personal intercourse, such as his predecessor had carefully avoided. Nor did his disposition lead him, like Frederick, to pay any such regard to the possible preservation of Church unity in the German Empire and Western Christendom; on the contrary, he soon showed his readiness to undertake independently, as sovereign of his country, the establishment of a new Evangelical Church. Prussia had just preceded him in a reform embracing the whole country, under the former Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, their present Duke. The Elector now found a further ally for the work in the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the most active and politically the most important of all. As a young man of only twenty years of age, in the beginning of 1525, he had rendered valuable service by his energy, resolution, and warlike ability, in the defeat of Sickingen, and again when opposed to the seditious peasants. Already before the Peasants' War commenced, he had acquired, mainly through Melancthon, whom he had met when travelling, a knowledge and love of the evangelical doctrines. His father-in-law, Duke George of Saxony, had vainly endeavoured, after their common victory over the insurgents, to alienate him from the cause of the hateful Luther, who he said was the author of so much mischief. But the menaces hurled against that cause by the Catholic States of the Empire served only to attach him more closely and loyally to John and John Frederick, and thence resulted in the following spring the League of Torgau, which was joined also by the princes of Brunswick-Luneburg, Anhalt, and Mecklenburg, and the town of Magdeburg. The co-operation of the territorial princes made it possible to procure for the Reformation and its Church system a firm position in the German Empire against the Emperor and the hostile Catholic States. And, at the same time, it offered means for establishing on the ground newly occupied by the Reformation itself, firm and generally recognised regulations of Church polity, and defending them from being disturbed by the proceedings of fanatics.

Under these new conditions and circumstances, Luther's work became limited, as was natural, to a narrower field, and bore no longer the same character of boldness and independence which had marked it in his original contest with Rome. But it required, on this account, all the more perseverance and patience, faithfulness and circumspection in minor matters, and an adequate regard to what was actually required and practicable, while clinging firmly to the lofty aims and objects with which the work of the Reformation had commenced.

To the portrait of Luther as the Reformer we have to add henceforth that of the married man and head of the household, whose single desire is to fulfil, as a man and a Christian, the duties belonging to this state of life, and to enjoy with a quiet conscience the blessings of God. In his letters to intimate friends we find happy home news alternating with the most profound and serious reflections on the conduct and duties of the Evangelical Church, and on abstruse questions of theology. His language as a Reformer deals now no longer, as in his Address to the German Nobility, in particular, with the problems and interests of political and social life; it is mainly to religious and spiritual matters, and to the kindred questions affecting the active work and constitution of the Church, that his mission is now directed. But his personal relations with his countrymen became all the more close and intimate in consequence of this change of life; and that which by many of his friends was regretted as a lowering of his reputation and influence, becomes a valuable and essential feature in the historical portrait now presented to our eyes.

In single dramatic incidents and changes, so to speak, Luther's life henceforth, as was only natural, is no longer so rich as during the earlier years of development and struggle. We shall no longer meet with crises of such a kind as mark a momentous epoch.