Such was the progress which Luther had made, and such the state of his party, when Charles arrived in Germany. No secular prince had hitherto embraced Luther's opinions; no change in the established forms of worship had been introduced, and no encroachments had been made upon the possessions or jurisdiction of the clergy; neither party had yet proceeded to action; and the controversy, though conducted with great heat and passion on both sides, was still carried on with its proper weapons, with theses, disputations, and replies. A deep impression, however, was made upon the minds of the people; their reverence for ancient institutions and doctrines was shaken; and the materials were already scattered, which kindled into the combustion that soon spread over all Germany. Students crowded from every province of the empire to Wittenberg; and under Luther himself, Melanchthon, Carlostadius, and other masters then reckoned eminent, imbibed opinions, which, on their return, they propagated among their countrymen, who listened to them with that fond attention, which truth, when accompanied with novelty, naturally commands.

During the course of these transactions, the court of Rome, though under the direction of one of its ablest pontiffs, neither formed its schemes with that profound sagacity, nor executed them with that steady perseverance, which had long-rendered it the most perfect model of political wisdom to the rest of Europe.

When Luther began to declaim against indulgences, two different methods of treating him lay before the pope; by adopting one of which, the attempt, it is probable, might have been crushed, and by the other, it might have been rendered innocent. It Luther’s first departure from the doctrines of the church had instantly drawn upon him the weight of its censures, the dread of these might have restrained the elector of Saxony from protecting him, might have deterred the people from listening to his discourses, or even might have overawed Luther himself; and his name, like that of many good men before his time, would now have been known to the world only for his honest but ill-timed effort to correct the corruptions of the Romish church. On the other hand, if the pope had early testified some displeasure with the vices and excesses of the friars who had been employed in publishing indulgences; if he had forbidden the mentioning of controverted points in discourses addressed to the people; if he had enjoined the disputants on both sides to be silent; if he had been careful not to risk the credit of the church, by defining articles which had hitherto been left undetermined; Luther would, probably, have stopped short at his first discoveries; he would not have been forced, in self-defence, to venture upon new ground, and the whole controversy might possibly have died away insensibly; or, being confined entirely to the schools, might have men carried on with as little detriment to the peace and unity of the Romish church, as that which the Franciscans maintain with the Dominicans concerning the immaculate conception, or that between the Jansenists and Jesuits concerning the operations of grace. But Leo, by fluctuating between these opposite systems, and by embracing them alternately, defeated the effect: of both. By an improper exertion of authority, Luther was exasperated, but not restrained. By a mistaken exercise of lenity, time was given for his opinions to spread, but no progress was made towards reconciling him to the church; and even the sentence of excommunication, which at another juncture might have been decisive, was delayed so long, that it became at last scarcely an object of terror.

Such a series of errors in the measures of a court seldom chargeable with mistaking its own true interest, is not more astonishing than the wisdom which appeared in Luther’s conduct. Though a perfect stranger to the maxims of wordly wisdom, and incapable, from the impetuosity of his temper, of observing them, he was led naturally, by the method in which he made his discoveries, to carry on his operations in a manner which contributed more to their success than if every step he took had been prescribed by the most artful policy.

At the time when he set himself to oppose Tetzel, he was far from intending that reformation which he afterwards effected; and would have trembled with horror at the thoughts of what at last he gloried in accomplishing. The knowledge of truth was not poured into his mind all at once, by any special revelation; he acquired it by industry and meditation, and his progress, of consequence, was gradual. The doctrines of popery are so closely connected, that the exposing of one error conducted him naturally to the detection of others; and all the parts of that artificial fabric were so united together, that the pulling down of one loosened the foundation of the rest, and rendered it more easy to overturn them.

In confuting the extravagant tenets concerning indulgences, he was obliged to inquire into the true cause of our justification and acceptance with God. The knowledge of that discovered to him by degrees the inutility of pilgrimages and penances; the vanity of relying on the intercession or saints; the impiety of worshipping them; the abuses of auricular confession; and the imaginary existence of purgatory. The detection of so many errors led him of course to consider the character of the clergy who taught them; and their exorbitant wealth, the severe injunction of celibacy, together with the intolerable rigor of monastic vows, appeared to him the great sources of their corruption. From thence, it was but one step to call in question the divine original of the papal power, which authorized and supported such a system of errors. As the unavoidable result of the whole, he disclaimed the infallibility of the pope, the decisions of schoolmen, or any other human authority, and appealed to the word of God as the only standard of theological truth. To this gradual progress Luther owed his success. His hearers were net shocked at first by any proposition too repugnant to their ancient prejudices, or too remote from established opinions. They were conducted insensibly from one doctrine to another. Their faith and conviction were able to keep pace with his discoveries. To the same cause was owing the inattention, and even indifference, with which Leo viewed Luther’s first proceedings. A direct or violent attack upon the authority of the church would at once have drawn upon Luther the whole weight of its vengeance; but as this was far from his thoughts, as he continued long to profess great respect for the pope, and made repeated offers of submission to his decisions, there seemed to be no reason for apprehending that he would prove the author of any desperate revolt; and he was suffered to proceed step by step, in undermining the constitution of the church, until the remedy applied at last came too late to produce any effect.

But whatever advantages Luther’s cause derived, either from the mistakes of his adversaries, or from his own good conduct, the sudden progress and firm establishment of his doctrines must not be ascribed to these alone. The same corruptions in the church of Rome which he condemned, had been attacked long before his time. The same opinions which he now propagated, had been published in different places, and were supported by the same arguments. Waldus in the twelfth century, Wickliff in the fourteenth, and Huss in the fifteenth, had inveighed against the errors of popery with great boldness, and confuted them with more ingenuity and learning than could have been expected in those illiterate ages in which they flourished. But all these premature attempts towards a reformation proved abortive. Such feeble lights, incapable of dispelling the darkness which then covered the church, were soon extinguished; and though the doctrines of these pious men produced some effects, and left some traces in the countries where they taught, they were neither extensive nor considerable. Many powerful causes contributed to facilitate Luther's progress, which either did not exist, or did not operate with full force in their days; and at that critical and mature juncture when he appeared, circumstances of every kind concurred in rendering each step that he took successful.

The long and scandalous schism which divided the church during the latter part of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, had a great effect in diminishing the veneration with which the world had been accustomed to view the papal dignity. Two or three contending pontiffs roaming about Europe at a time; fawning on the princes, whom they wanted to gain; extorting large sums of money from the countries which acknowledged their authority; excommunicating their rivals, and cursing those who adhered to them; discredited their pretensions to infallibility, and exposed both their persons and their office to contempt. The laity, to whom all parties appealed, came to learn that some right of private judgment belonged to them, and acquired the exercise of it so far as to choose, among these infallible guides, whom they would please to follow. The proceedings of the councils of Constance and Basil spread this disrespect for the Romish see still wider, and by their bold exertion of authority in deposing and electing popes, taught the world that there was in the church a jurisdiction superior even to the papal power, which they had long believed to be supreme.

The wound given on that occasion to the papal authority was scarcely healed up, when the pontificates of Alexander VI and Julius II, both able princes, but detestable ecclesiastics, raised new scandal in Christendom. The profligate morals of the former in private life; the fraud, the injustice, and cruelty of his public administration, place him on a level with those tyrants, whose deeds are the greatest reproach to human nature. The latter, though a stranger to the odious passions which prompted his predecessor to commit so many unnatural crimes, was under the dominion of a restless and ungovernable ambition, that scorned all considerations of gratitude, of decency, or of justice, when they obstructed the execution of his schemes. It was hardly possible to be firmly persuaded that the infallible knowledge of a religion, whose chief precepts are purity and humility, was deposited in the breasts of the profligate Alexander or the overbearing Julius. The opinion of those who exalted the authority of a council above that of the pope, spread wonderfully under their pontificates; and as the emperor and French kings, who were alternately engaged in hostilities with those active pontiffs, permitted and even encouraged their subjects to expose their vices with all the violence of invective and all the petulance of ridicule, men’s ears being accustomed to these, were not shocked with the bold or ludicrous discourses of Luther and his followers concerning the papal dignity.

Nor were such excesses confined to the head of the church alone. Many of the dignified clergy, secular as well as regular, being the younger sons of noble families, who had assumed the ecclesiastical character for no other reason but that they found in the church stations of great dignity and affluence, were accustomed totally to neglect the duties of their office, and indulged themselves without reserve in all the vices to which great wealth and idleness naturally give birth. Though the inferior clergy were prevented by their poverty from imitating the expensive luxury of their superiors, yet gross ignorance and low debauchery rendered them as contemptible as the other were odious. The severe and unnatural law of celibacy, to which both were equally subject, occasioned such irregularities, that in several parts of Europe the concubinage of priests was not only permitted, but enjoined. The employing of a remedy so contrary to the precepts of the Christian religion, is the strongest proof that the crimes it was intended to prevent were both numerous and flagrant. Long before the sixteenth century, many authors of great name and authority give such descriptions of the dissolute morals of the clergy, as seem almost incredible in the present age. The voluptuous lives of ecclesiastics occasioned great scandal, not only because their manners were inconsistent with their sacred character; but the laity being accustomed to see several of them raised from the lowest stations to the greatest affluence, did not show the same indulgence to their excesses, as to those of persons possessed of hereditary wealth or grandeur; and viewing their condition with more envy, they censured their crimes with greater severity. Nothing, therefore, could be more acceptable to Luther’s hearers, than the violence with which he exclaimed against the immoralities of churchmen, and every person in his audience could, from his own observation, confirm the truth of his invectives.

The scandal of these crimes was greatly increased by the facility with which such as committed them obtained pardon. In all the European kingdoms, the impotence of the civil magistrate, under forms of government extremely irregular and turbulent, made it necessary to relax the rigor of justice, and upon payment of a certain fine or composition prescribed by law, judges were accustomed to remit farther punishment, even of the most atrocious crimes.

The court of Rome, always attentive to the means of augmenting its revenues, imitated this practice, and, by a preposterous accommodation of it to religious concerns, granted its pardons to such transgressors as gave a sum of money in order to purchase them. As the idea of a composition for crimes was then familiar, this strange traffic was so far from shocking mankind, that it soon became general; and in order to prevent any imposition in carrying it on, the officers of the Roman chancery published a book, containing the precise sum to be exacted for the pardon of every particular sin. A deacon guilty of murder was absolved for twenty crowns. A bishop or abbot might assassinate for three hundred livres. Any ecclesiastic might violate his vows of chastity, even with the most aggravating circumstances, for the third part of that sum. Even such shocking crimes, as occur seldom in human life, and perhaps exist only in the impure imagination of a casuist, were taxed at a very moderate rate. When a more regular and perfect mode of dispensing justice came to be introduced into civil courts, the practice of paying a composition for crimes went gradually into disuse; and mankind having acquired more accurate notions concerning religion and morality, the conditions on which the court of Rome bestowed its pardons appeared impious, and were considered as one great source of ecclesiastical corruption.

This degeneracy of manners among the clergy might have been tolerated, perhaps, with greater indulgence, if their exorbitant riches and power had not enabled them at the same time, to encroach on the rights of every other order of men. It is the genius of superstition, fond of whatever is pompous or grand, to set no bounds to its liberality towards persons whom it esteems sacred, and to think its expressions of regard detective, unless it hath raised them to the height of wealth and authority. Hence flowed the extensive revenues and jurisdiction possessed by the church in every country of Europe, and which were become intolerable to the laity, from whose undiscerning bounty they were at first derived.

The burden, however, of ecclesiastical oppression had fallen with such peculiar weight on the Germans, as rendered them, though naturally exempt from levity, and tenacious of their ancient customs, more inclinable than any people in Europe to listen to those who called on them to assert their liberty. During the long contests between the popes and emperors concerning the right of investiture, and the wars which these occasioned, most of the considerable German ecclesiastics joined the papal faction; and while engaged in rebellion against the head of the empire, they seized the Imperial domains and revenues, and usurped the imperial jurisdiction within their own dioceses. Upon the re-establishment of tranquility, they still retained these usurpations, as if by the length of an unjust possession they had acquired a legal right to them. The emperors, too feeble to wrest them out of their hands, were obliged to grant the clergy fiefs of those ample territories, and they enjoyed all the immunities as well as honors which belonged to feudal barons. By means of these, many bishops and abbots in Germany were not only ecclesiastics, but princes, and their character and manners partook more of the license too frequent among the latter, than of the sanctity which became the former.

The unsettled state of government in Germany, and the frequent wars to which that country was exposed, contributed in another manner towards aggrandizing ecclesiastics. The only property, during those times of anarchy, which enjoyed security from the oppression of the great, or the ravages of war, was that which belonged to the church. This was owing, not only to the great reverence for the sacred character prevalent in those ages, but to a superstitious dread of the sentence of excommunication, which the clergy were ready to pronounce against all who invaded their possessions. Many observing this, made a surrender of their lands to ecclesiastics, and consenting to hold them in fee of the church, obtained as its vassals a degree of safety, which without this device they were unable to procure. By such an increase of the number of their vassals, the power of ecclesiastics received a real and permanent augmentation; and as lands, held in fee by the limited tenures common in those ages, often returned to the persons on whom the fief depended, considerable additions were made in this way to the property of the clergy.

The solicitude of the clergy in providing for the safety of their own persons, was still greater than that which they displayed in securing their possessions and their efforts to attain it were still more successful. As they were consecrated to the priestly office with much outward solemnity; were distinguished from the rest of mankind by a peculiar garb and manner of life; and arrogated to their order many privileges which do not belong to other Christians, they naturally became the objects of excessive veneration. As a superstitious spirit spread, they were regarded as beings of a superior species to the profane laity, whom it would be impious to try by the same laws, or to subject to the same punishments. This exemption from civil jurisdiction, granted at first to ecclesiastics as a mark of respect, they soon claimed as a point of right.

This valuable immunity of the priesthood is asserted, not only in the decrees of popes and councils, but was confirmed in the most ample form by many of the greatest emperors. As long as the clerical character remained, the person of an ecclesiastic was in some degree sacred; and unless he were degraded from his office, the unhallowed hand of the civil judge durst not touch him. But as the power of degradation was lodged in the spiritual courts, the difficulty and expense of obtaining such a sentence, too often secured absolute impunity to offenders. Many assumed the clerical character for no other reason, than that it might screen them from the punishment which their actions deserved. The German nobles complained loudly, that these anointed malefactors, as they called them, seldom suffered capitally, even for the most atrocious crimes; and their independence on the civil magistrate is often mentioned in the remonstrances of the diets, as a privilege equally pernicious to society, and to the morals of the clergy.

While the clergy asserted the privileges of their own order with so much zeal, they made continual encroachments upon those of the laity. All causes relative to matrimony, to testaments, to usury, to legitimacy of birth, as well as those which concerned ecclesiastical revenues, were thought to be so connected with religion, that they could be tried only in the spiritual courts. Not satisfied with this ample jurisdiction, which extended to one half of the subjects that give rise to litigation among men, the clergy, with wonderful industry, and by a thousand inventions, endeavored to draw all other causes into their own courts. As they had engrossed almost the whole learning known in the dark ages, the spiritual judges were commonly so far superior in knowledge and abilities to those employed in the secular courts, that the people at first favored any stretch that was made to bring their affairs under the cognizance of a judicature, on the decisions of which they could rely with more perfect confidence than on those of the civil courts. Thus the interest of the church, and the inclination of the people, concurring to elude the jurisdiction of the lay-magistrate, soon reduced it almost to nothing. By means of this, vast power accrued to ecclesiastics, and no inconsiderable addition was made to their revenue by the sums paid in those ages to the persons who administered justice.

The penalty by which the spiritual courts enforced their sentences, added great weight and terror to their jurisdiction. The censure of excommunication was instituted originally for preserving the purity of the church; that obstinate offenders, whose impious tenets or profane lives were a reproach to Christianity, might be cut off from the society of the faithful; this ecclesiastics did not scruple to convert into an engine for promoting their own power, and they inflicted it on the most frivolous occasions. Whoever despised any of their decisions, even concerning civil matters, immediately incurred this dreadful censure, which not only excluded them from all the privileges of a Christian, but deprived them of their rights as men and citizens, and the dread of this rendered even the most fierce and turbulent spirits obsequious to the authority of the church.

Nor did the clergy neglect the proper methods of preserving the wealth and power which they had acquired with such industry and address. The possessions of the church, being consecrated to God, were declared to be unalienable; so that the funds of a society, which was daily gaining, and could never lose, grew to be immense. In Germany it was computed that the ecclesiastics had got in their hands more than one half of the national property. In other countries, the proportion varied; but the share belonging to the church was everywhere prodigious. These vast possessions were not subject to the burdens imposed on the lands of the laity. The German clergy were exempted by law from all taxes, and if, on any extraordinary emergence, ecclesiastics were pleased to grant some aid towards supplying the public exigencies, this was considered as a free gift flowing from their own generosity, which the civil magistrate had no title to demand, far less to exact. In consequence of this strange solecism in government, the laity in Germany had the mortification to find themselves loaded with excessive impositions, because such as possessed the greatest property were freed from any obligation to support or to defend the state.

Grievous, however, as the exorbitant wealth and numerous privileges of the clerical order were to the other members of the Germanic body, they would have reckoned it some mitigation of the evil, if these had been possessed only by ecclesiastics residing among themselves, who would have been less apt to make an improper use of their riches, or to exercise their rights with unbecoming rigor. But the bishops of Rome having early put in a claim, the boldest that ever human ambition suggested, of being supreme and infallible heals of the Christian church, they, by their profound policy and unwearied perseverance, by their address in availing themselves of every circumstance which occurred, by taking advantage of the superstition of some princes, of the necessity of others, and of the credulity of the people, at length established their pretensions, in opposition both to the interest and common sense of mankind. Germany was the country which these ecclesiastical sovereigns governed with most absolute authority. They excommunicated and deposed some of its most illustrious emperors, and excited their subjects, their ministers, and even their children, to take arms against them. Amidst these contests, the popes continually extended their own immunities, spoiling the secular princes gradually of their most valuable prerogatives, and the German church felt all the rigor of that oppression which flows from subjection to foreign dominion, and foreign exactions.

The right of conferring benefices, which the popes usurped during that period of confusion, was an acquisition of great importance, and exalted the ecclesiastical power upon the ruins of the temporal. The emperors and other princes of Germany had long been in possession of this right, which served to increase both their authority and their revenue. But by wresting it out of their hands, the popes were enabled to fill the empire with their own creatures; they accustomed a great body of every prince's subjects to depend not upon him, but upon the Roman see; they bestowed upon strangers the richest benefices in every country; and drained their wealth to supply the luxury of a foreign court. Even the patience of the most superstitious ages could no longer bear such oppression; and so loud and frequent were the complaints and murmurs of the Germans, that the popes, afraid of irritating them too far, consented, contrary to their usual practice, to abate somewhat of their pretensions, and to rest satisfied with the right of nomination to such benefices as happened to fall vacant during six months in the year, leaving the disposal of the remainder to the princes and other legal patrons.

But the court of Rome easily found expedients for eluding an agreement which put such restraints on its power. The practice of reserving certain benefices in every country to the pope’s immediate nomination, which had been long known, and often complained of, was extended far beyond its ancient bounds. All the benefices possessed by cardinals, or any of the numerous officers in the Roman court; those held by persons who happened to die at Rome, or within forty miles of that city, on their journey to or from it; such as became vacant by translation, with many others, were included in the number of reserved benefices; Julius II and Leo X stretching the matter to the utmost, often collated to benefices where the right of reservation had not been declared, on pretence of having mentally reserved this privilege to themselves. The right of reservation, however, even with this extension, had certain limits, as it could be exercised only where the benefice was actually vacant, and therefore in order to render the exertion of papal power unbounded, expectative graces, or mandates nominating a person to succeed to a benefice upon the first vacancy that should happen, were brought into use. By means of these, Germany was filled with persons who were servilely dependent on the court of Rome, from which they had received such reversionary grants; princes were defrauded, in a great degree, of their prerogatives; the rights of lay-patrons were preoccupied, and rendered almost entirely vain.

The manner in which these extraordinary powers were exercised, rendered then, still mote odious and intolerable. The avarice and extortion of the court of Rome were become excessive almost to a proverb. The practice of selling benefices was so notorious, that no pains were taken to conceal, or to disguise it. Companies of merchants openly purchased the benefices of different districts in Germany from the pope’s ministers, and retailed them at an advanced price. Pious men beheld with deep regret these simoniacal transactions, so unworthy the ministers of a Christian church; while politicians complained of the loss sustained by the exportation of so much wealth in that irreligious traffic.

The sums, indeed, which the court of Rome drew, by its stated and legal impositions, from all the countries acknowledging its authority, were so considerable, that it is not strange that princes, as well as their subjects, murmured at the smallest addition made to them by unnecessary or illicit means. Every ecclesiastical person, upon his admission to his benefice, paid annals, or one year’s produce of his living, to the pope; and as that tax was exacted with great rigor, its amount was very great. To this must be added, the frequent demands made by the popes of free gifts from the clergy, together with the extraordinary levies of tenths upon ecclesiastical benefices, on pretence of expeditions against the Turks, seldom intended, or carried into execution; and from the whole, the vast proportion of the revenues of the church, which flowed continually to Rome, may be estimated.

Such were the dissolute manners, the exorbitant wealth, the enormous power and privileges of the clergy, before the Reformation, such the oppressive rigor of that dominion which the popes had established over the Christian world; and such the sentiments concerning them that prevailed in Germany at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Nor has this sketch been copied from the controversial writers of that age, who, in the heat of disputation, may he suspected of having exaggerated the erors, or of having misrepresented the conduct of that church which they labored to overturn: it is formed upon more authentic evidence, upon the memorials and remonstrances of the Imperial diets, coolly enumerating the grievances under which the empire groaned, in order to obtain the redress of them. Dissatisfaction must have arisen to a great height among the people, when these grave assemblies expressed themselves with that degree of acrimony which abounds in their remonstrances; and if they demanded the abolition of those enormities with so much vehemence, the people, we may be assured, uttered their sentiments and desires in bolder and more virulent language.

To men thus prepared for shaking off the yoke, Luther addressed himself with certainty of success. As they had long felt its weight, and had borne it with impatience, they listened with joy to the first refer of procuring them deliverance. Hence proceeded the fond and eager reception that his doctrines met with, and the rapidity with which they spread over all the provinces of Germany. Even the impetuosity and fierceness of Luther’s spirit, his confidence in asserting his own opinions, and the arrogance as well as contempt wherewith he treated all who differed from him, which in ages of greater moderation and refinement, have been reckoned defects in the character of that reformer, did not appear exces­sive to his contemporaries whose minds were strongly agitated by those interesting controversies which he carried on, and who had themselves endured the rigor of papal tyranny, and seen the corruptions in the church against which he exclaimed.

Nor were they offended at that gross scurrility with which his polemical writings are filled, or at the low buffoonery which he sometimes introduces into his gravest discourses. No dispute was managed in those rude times without a large portion of the former; and the latter was common, even on the most solemn occasion, and in treating the most sacred subjects. So far were either of these from doing hurt to his cause, that invective and ridicule had some effect, as well as more laudable arguments, in exposing the errors of popery, and in determining mankind to abandon them.

 

Erasmus and the inventon of Printing