Volume 1 — CHAPTER XVII

GLIMPSES OF A REFORMER’S MORALS

1. Luther’s Vocation. His Standard of Life

Reading the lives of great men really sent by God who did great things for the salvation of souls by their revelations and their labours, whether narrated in the Bible or in the history of the Christian Church, we find that, without exception, their standards were high, that they sought to convert those with whom they came in contact primarily by their own virtuous example, that their aim was to promote the spread of their principles and doctrines by honest, truthful and upright means, and that their actions bore the stamp, not of violence, but of peaceableness and charity towards all brother Christians.

Luther’s friends have always protested against his being compared with the Saints. Be their reason what it may, when it is a question of the moral appreciation of the founder of a religious movement everyone should be ready to admit, that such a founder must not present too great a contrast with those great harbingers of the faith in olden days whom he himself claims as his ideal, and in whose footsteps he pretends to tread. Luther is anxious to see St. Paul once more restored to his pinnacle; his doctrine he would fain re-establish. This being so, we may surely draw his attention to the character of St. Paul as it appears to us in his Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul brought into this dark world a new light, unknown heretofore, which had been revealed to him together with his Divine calling. His vocation he fostered by heroic virtues, and by a purity of life free from all sensuality or frivolity, preaching with all the attraction conferred by sincerity and honesty of purpose, in words and deeds full of fire, indeed, yet at the same time breathing the most patient and considerate charity.

Although we may not exact from Luther all the virtues of a St. Paul, yet he cannot complain if his private life and his practice and theory of morals be compared with the sublime mission to which he laid claim. It is true, that, when confronted with such a critical test, he was accustomed to meet it with the assertion that his Evangel was unassailable whatever his life might be. This, however, must not deter us from applying the test in question, calmly and cautiously, with every precaution against infringing the truth of history and the claims of a just and unbiassed judgment which are his right even at the hands of those whose views are not his.

The following is merely an appreciation of some of the sides of his character, not a general conspectus of his morals. Such a conspectus will only become possible at the conclusion of our work. This we mention because in what follows we shall be considering almost exclusively Luther’s less favourable traits and ethical principles. It is unavoidable that we should consider here in this connection his own testimonies, and those of other witnesses, which militate against his Divine mission. His better points, both as man and writer, will be impartially pointed out elsewhere.

Luther himself admitted that Christ’s words: “By their fruits ye shall know them,” established a real standard for the teachers of the Gospel. He was familiar with the words of St. Bonaventure: “The sign of a call to the office of preacher is the healing of the hearers from the maladies of sin.”[488] He knew that the preacher’s virtue must be imparted to others, and that the sublimity and purity of his doctrine must be reflected in the amelioration of his followers.

A mere glance at Wittenberg at the time of the religious subversion will suffice to show how little such conditions were realised. Valentine Ickelsamer was referring to well-known facts when he confronted Luther with the words of Christ quoted above. He added: “You boast of holding the true doctrine on faith and charity and you shriek that men merely condemn the imperfections of your life.” He is here referring to Luther’s evasion. The latter had complained that people under-valued him and were scandalised at his life and that of his friends. In 1538, for instance, he was obliged, with the help of Jonas, Cruciger and Melanchthon, to dissociate himself from a theologian, Master George Karg, who had been advocating at Wittenberg doctrines which differed from his own; of him he wrote: “He is an inexperienced young man and, possibly, was scandalised at us personally in the first instance, and then fell away in his doctrine; for all those who have caused dissensions among us have begun by despising us personally.”[489]

Amongst the Catholic writers who pointed out to the Wittenberg professor that his lack of a Divine call or higher mission was proved by the visible absence of any special virtue, and by his behaviour as a teacher, we may mention the Franciscan Johann Findling (Apobolymæus). In the beginning of 1521 the latter published an “admonition” addressed to Luther which relies chiefly on the reasons mentioned above.[490] In this anonymous writing the Franciscan deals so considerately with the monk, who was already then excommunicate, that recent Protestant writers have actually contrasted him with the “Popish zealots.”[491] Luther he terms his “beloved,” and is unwilling even to describe him as a “heretic,”[492] following in this the example of many other monks who showed the same scruple, probably on account of their own former vacillation. Excuses of various kinds are not wanting in Findling’s letter.

What is of interest in the present connection is the question the author sets before the originator of the schism in the following challenge: “If you are a prophet or seer sent by God to point out the truth to men, let us perceive this, that we may believe in you, approve your action and follow you. If what you preach and write is of Divine revelation, then we are ready to honour you as a messenger sent from heaven.... But it is written: ‘Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God’ (1 John iv. 1).... We are unable to believe in you because so much strife, so many intrigues, insults, bitter reproaches, vituperation and abuse proceed from you.... Quarrels, blasphemies and enmities are, as St. Ambrose says, foreign to the ministers of God.”[493] Your acrimony, your vituperation, your calumny and abuse are such that one is forced to ask: “Where is your Christian spirit, or your Lutheran spirit, for, according to some, Lutheran means the same as Christian?” Has not Christ commanded: “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you? Certainly if prayer consists in calumny, abuse, detraction, reviling and cursing, then you pray excellently and effectually enough. Not one of all those I have ever read curses and abuses others as you do.”[494]

The writer also points out how Luther’s followers imitate and even outdo him; they were likewise turning his head by their praises; they sang hymns in his honour, but hymns coming from such lips were a poor tribute. Nor was the applause of the masses beyond suspicion, for it merely showed that what he wrote was to the taste of the multitude; for instance, when he blamed the authorities and cited them before his tribunal. It was his rude handling of his ghostly superiors which had brought the nobility and the knights to his side. Had he overwhelmed them and the laity with such reproaches as he had heaped upon the spiritual authorities, then “I know not whether you would still be in the land of the living.”[495]

Apart from his want of charity and his censoriousness, other very un-apostolic qualities of Luther’s were his pride and arrogance, his utter disdain for obedience, his irascibility, his jealousy and his want of seriousness in treating of the most important questions that concerned humanity; the childish, nay, womanish, outbursts in which notoriously he was wont to indulge could only serve to humble him in his own eyes.

Luther must have felt keenly the Franciscan’s allusions to his untruthfulness and evasiveness, more particularly in his conduct towards the Pope, whereas Holy Scripture expressly declares that “God has no need of a lie” (Job xiii. 7).

He concludes by saying, that if Luther “is a good and gentle disciple of Christ,” then he will not disregard this exhortation to turn back and recant.

Thus the Franciscan. It is to be feared, however, that Luther never read the letter to its end. As he himself said, he had nothing but scorn for anything that Catholic censors might say to him. “Attacks from without only serve to render me proud and arrogant, and you may see from my books how I despise my gainsayers; I look upon them as simple fools.”[496] His state of mind even then was such as to make him incapable of calmly weighing such reproofs. In the following sentences the Franciscan above referred to has aptly described Luther’s behaviour: Whoever allows himself to be overtaken by hatred and carried away by fury, “blots out the light of reason within himself and darkens his comprehension, so that he is no longer able to understand or judge aright. He rushes blindly through the surrounding fog and darkness, and knows not whither his steps will carry him. Many people, dearest Martin, believe you to be in this state.”[497] “In this condition of mental confusion you cannot fail to go astray; you will credit yourself with what is far beyond you and quite outside your power.”[498] In such a man eloquence was like a sword in the hand of a madman, as was sufficiently apparent in the case of Luther’s followers who attempted to emulate his zeal with the pen.[499]

Erasmus was another moderate critic. In the matter of Luther’s life, as was to be expected from one who had once praised him in this particular, as a rule he is inclined to be cautious, however unable to refrain from severely censuring his unevangelical manner of proceeding. The absence of the requisite standard of life seemed to Erasmus sufficient to disprove Luther’s claim to the possession of the Spirit of God and a higher mission. “You descend to calumny, abuse and threats and yet you wish to be esteemed free from guile, pure, and led by the Spirit of God, not by human passion.”[500] “Can the Evangel then be preached in so unevangelical a manner?” “Have all the laws of propriety been abrogated by the new-born Evangel, so that each one is at liberty to make use of any method of attack either in word or writing? Is this the liberty which you restore to us?”[501] He points more particularly to Luther’s demagogism as alien to the Christian spirit: “Your object is to raise revolt, and you are perfectly aware that this has often been the result of your writings. Not thus did the Apostles act. You drag our controversial questions before the tribunal of the unlearned.”[502] “God Almighty! What a contrast to the spirit of the Gospel!” exclaims Erasmus, referring to some of Luther’s abuse. “A hundred books written against him would not have alienated me from him so much as these insults.”[503]

Amongst the admonitions addressed to Luther at an early date by men of weight, that of Zaccaria Ferreri, the Papal Legate in Poland, written in 1520 and published in 1894, is particularly noteworthy. From the self-love and arrogance which he found displayed in Luther’s character he proves to him that his could not be the work of God: “Do open your eyes and see into what an abyss of delusion you are falling. You seem to fancy that you alone are in the sunlight and that all the rest of the world is seated in the darkness of night.... You reproach Christianity with groping about in error for more than a thousand years; in your madness you wish to appear wiser and better than all other mortals put together, to all of whom you send forth your challenge. Rest assured your opponents are not so dull-witted as not to see through your artfulness and to perceive the inconsistency and frivolity of your doctrines.” Ferreri also addressed the following appeal to Luther: “If you are determined to cast yourself into the abyss of death, at least take pity on the unfortunate people whom you are daily infecting with your poison, whose souls you are destroying and dragging along with you to perdition. The Almighty will one day require of you their blood which you have drunk, and their happiness which you have destroyed.”[504]

Such voices from the past help to make us alive to the importance of the question which forms the subject of the present section. Luther’s own ethical practice when defending the divinity of his mission, more particularly his doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, against all doubts and “temptations” which occurred to him, affords us, however, the best and clearest insight into his moral standards. Here his moral attitude appears in a most singular light.

We may preface what follows with some words of the Protestant historian Gottlieb Jacob Planck (†1833): “When it is necessary to lay bare Luther’s failings, an historian should blush to fancy that any excuse is required for so doing.”[505]

“Temptations” to doubt were not uncommon in Luther’s case and in that of his friends. He accordingly instructs his disciples to combat them and to regain their lost equanimity by the same method which he himself was in the habit of employing. Foremost amongst these instructions is one addressed to his pupil Hieronymus Weller of Molsdorf, a native of Freiberg, who, whilst at Wittenberg, had, under Luther’s influence, relinquished the study of the law for that of theology. He was received into Luther’s household as a boarder in 1527, and in 1535, after having secured his Doctorate of Theology, he was still resident there. He was one of the table-companions who took notes of Luther’s “Table-Talk.” This young man was long and grievously tormented with anxiety of mind and was unable to quiet, by means of the new Evangel, the scruples of conscience which were driving him to despair.

In 1530, Luther, writing from the Castle of Coburg, gave him the following counsel; we must bear in mind that it comes from one who was himself then struggling with the most acute mental anxiety.[506] “Sometimes it is necessary to drink more freely, to play and to jest and even to commit some sin (‘peccatum aliquod faciendum’) out of hatred and contempt for the devil, so that he may get no chance of making a matter of conscience out of mere trifles; otherwise we shall be vanquished if we are too anxious about not committing sin.... Oh that I could paint sin in a fair light,[507] so as to mock at the devil and make him see that I acknowledge no sin and am not conscious of having committed any! I tell you, we must put all the Ten Commandments, with which the devil tempts and plagues us so greatly, out of sight and out of mind. If the devil upbraids us with our sins and declares us to be deserving of death and hell, then we must say: ‘I confess that I have merited death and hell,’ but what then? Are you for that reason to be damned eternally? By no means. ‘I know One Who suffered and made satisfaction for me, viz. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He is, there I also shall be.’”

Fell counsels such as these, to despise sin and to meet the temptation by sinning, Luther had certainly not learnt from the spiritual writers of the past. Such writers, more particularly those whom he professed to have read at his monastery, viz. Bernard, Bonaventure and Gerson, teach that sin must first be resisted, after which we may then seek prayerfully for the cause of the trouble; for this is not always due to the temptations of the devil, as Luther unquestioningly assumed in his own case and, consequently, also in that of Weller. If conscience was oppressed by sin, then, according to these spiritual writers, a remedy different from that suited to doubts against the faith must be applied, namely, penance, to be followed by acts of hope. If the trouble in Weller’s case was one of doubts concerning faith, anyone but Luther would have been careful to ascertain first of all whether these doubts referred to the specifically Lutheran doctrine or to the other truths of the Christian revelation. Luther, however, at the commencement of the letter, simply declares: “You must rest assured that this temptation comes from the devil, and that you are thus tortured because you believe in Christ”—i.e. in the Lutheran doctrine and in the Christ preached by that sect, as is clear from the reference immediately following to the “foes of the Evangel,” who live in security and good cheer.

The whole letter, though addressed to one standing on the brink of despair, contains not a single word about prayer for God’s help, about humbling oneself or striving after a change of heart. Beyond the above-mentioned reference to Christ, Who covers over all our sins, and to the need of contemning sin, we find merely the following natural, indeed, of the earth earthly, remedies recommended, viz.: To seek company, to indulge in jest and play, for instance, with Luther’s wife, ever to keep a good temper and, finally, “to drink more deeply.” “If the devil says, ‘Don’t drink,’ answer him at once: ‘Just because you don’t wish it, I shall drink, and deeply too.’ We must always do the opposite of what the devil bids. Why, think you, do I drink so much, converse so freely and give myself up so frequently to the pleasures of the table, if it be not in order to mock at the devil, and to plague him when he tries to torment and mock at me?”

Finally he encourages the sorely tried man by telling him how Staupitz had foretold that the temptations which he, Luther, endured in the monastery would help to make a great man of him, and that he had now, as a matter of fact, become a “great doctor.” “You, too,” he continues, “will become a great man, and rest assured that such [prophetic] words, particularly those that fall from the lips of great and learned men, are not without their value as oracles and predictions.”

It is not surprising that such counsels and the consolation of possible future greatness did not improve the pitiable condition of the unfortunate man, but that he long continued to suffer.

Of a like nature is the advice which Luther in the following year gave another of his boarders and companions, Johann Schlaginhaufen, as a remedy for the same malady, which indeed seems to have been endemic in his immediate circle. The passages in question, from Schlaginhaufen’s own notes, may be useful in further elucidating Luther’s instructions to Weller.

According to what we are told Luther spoke as follows to Schlaginhaufen on December 14, 1531, at a time when the latter had been reduced to despair owing to his sins and to his lack of the fiducial faith required by the new Evangel. “It is false that God hates sinners; if the devil reminds us of the chastisement of Sodom and other instances of God’s wrath, then let us confront him with Christ, Who became man for us. Had God hated sinners He would not have sent His own Son for us [here again not the slightest allusion to any effort after an inward change of heart, but merely what follows]: Those only does God hate who will not be justified, i.e. those who will not be sinners (‘qui non volunt esse peccatores’).”[508]

In these admonitions to Schlaginhaufen the consolatory thought of the merits of Christ, which alone can save us, occurs more frequently, though in a very Lutheran guise: “Why torment yourself so much about sin? Even had you as many sins on your conscience as Zwingli, Carlstadt, Münzer and all the ungodly, faith in Christ would overcome them all. Alas, faith is all that lacks us!” If the devil could reproach you with unbelief and such-like faults, says Luther, then it would be a different matter; but he does not worry us about the great sins of the first table, but about other sins; “he annoys us with mere trifles; if we would consent to worship the Pope, then we should be his dear children.”[509] “We must cling to the Man Who is called Christ, He will soon put right whatever we may have done amiss.”[510]

“So that at last I said,” Schlaginhaufen continues, “Then, Doctor, it would be better that I should remain a rogue and a sinner. And the Doctor replied: That Thou, O Lord, mayst be justified in Thy words, and mayst overcome when Thou art judged” (Ps. 1. 6).[511]

With this pupil, as with Weller, Luther enters into an account of his own temptations and the means he employed for ridding himself of them.

He himself, he says, in December, 1531, had often been made a target for the shafts of Satan. “About ten years ago I first experienced this despair and these temptations concerning the wrath of God. Afterwards I had some peace so that I enjoyed good days and even took a wife, but then the temptations returned again.”[512]

“I never had any temptation greater or more burdensome than that which assailed me on account of my preaching, when I thought: It is you alone who are bringing all this business about; if it is wrong, then you alone are accountable for so many souls which go down to hell. During such temptations I often went right down to hell, only that God called me back and strengthened me, because it was His Word and true doctrine. But it costs much before one can arrive at such comfort.”[513]

Here also he speaks of his remedy of a free indulgence in food and drink: “Were I to give in to my want of appetite, then I should [in this frame of mind] for three days eat not a scrap; it is a double fast to me to eat and drink without the least inclination. When the world sees this it looks upon it as drunkenness, but God shall judge whether it is drunkenness or fasting ... therefore keep stomach and head alike filled.”[514]

According to another communication of Luther’s to this pupil, he was in the habit of repelling the devil, when he troubled him too much about his sins, by cynical speeches on the subject of the evacuations. After one such statement the parish priest of Wittenberg, the apostate Bugenhagen, interrupted him, and, in perfect agreement with Luther, said, “I too would say to the devil: ‘My good devil, I have committed a great sin, for Pope and bishop anointed my hands and I have defiled them; that is also a great sin.’”[515] From such coarse speeches Schlaginhaufen passes on to relate other things which the veracious historian is not at liberty to suppress. The anxious pupil who was seeking consolation continues: “The Doctor [Luther] said: ‘Nevertheless, the devil was unable to get over my arguments. Often have I called my wife, et cetera, in order to allay the temptation and to free myself from such idle thoughts.’”[516]

What Luther, or rather Schlaginhaufen, merely hints at, we find explained in greater detail in the diary of Luther’s pupil Conrad Cordatus: “Thoughts of terror and sadness have worried me more than enemies and labours. In my attempts to drive them away I met with little success. I also tried caressing my wife in order that this distraction might free me from the suggestions of Satan; but in temptations such as these we can find no comfort, so greatly is our nature depraved. It is necessary, however, to make every kind of effort to banish these thoughts by some stronger emotion.”[517] One of the chief Latin versions of Luther’s Colloquies gives this passage in his “Table-Talk” as follows: “How often have I taken with my wife those liberties which nature permits merely in order to get rid of Satan’s temptations. Yet all to no purpose, for he refused to depart; for Satan, as the author of death, has depraved our nature to such an extent that we will not admit any consolation. Hence I advise everyone who is able to drive away these Satanic thoughts by diverting his mind, to do so, for instance, by thinking of a pretty girl, of money-making, or of drink, or, in fine, by means of some other vivid emotion. The chief means, however, is to think of Jesus Christ, for He comes to console and to make alive.”[518] The latter passage is to be found, with unimportant alterations, in Rebenstock’s edition of the Colloquies, though, perhaps out of consideration for Luther, it there commences with the words: “For Satan”;[519] in the German “Table-Talk” it is not found at all.[520]

“Let us fix our mind on other thoughts,” Luther had also said to Schlaginhaufen, “on thoughts of dancing, or of a pretty girl, that also is good. Gerson too wrote of this.”[521] As a matter of fact, Gerson certainly wrote nothing about getting rid of temptations by means of sensual images. On the contrary, in the passages in question of his spiritual writings, he teaches something quite different and insists, first and foremost, on the avoidance of sin. He proposes our doing the exact opposite of the wicked or unworthy acts suggested by the evil spirit. He, like all Catholic masters of the spiritual life, indeed instructs those tempted to distract their minds, but by pious, or at least, indifferent and harmless means.[522]

2. Some of Luther’s Practical Principles of Life

We find in Luther no dearth of strong expressions which, like his advice to Weller and Schlaginhaufen, seem to discountenance fear of sin, penance and any striving after virtue. It remains to determine from their context the precise meaning which he attached to them.

Luther on Sin

As early as 1518 Luther, in a sermon at Erfurt, had given vent to the words already quoted: “What does it matter whether we commit a fresh sin so long as we do not despair but repeat: Thou, my God, still livest, Christ, my Lord, has destroyed sin; then at once the sin is gone.... The reason why the world is so out of joint and lies in such error is that there has been no real preacher for so long.”[523]

“Hence we say,” so later on we read in his exposition of John xvii., “that those who are true Saints of Christ must be great sinners and yet remain Saints.... Of themselves, and for all their works, they are nothing but sinners and under condemnation, but by the holiness of another, viz. of the Lord Christ, bestowed on them by faith, they are made holy.”[524]

And further: “The Christian faith differs greatly from the faith and religion of the Pope and the Turks, etc., for, by it, in spite of his consciousness of sin, a man, amidst afflictions and the fear of death, continues to hope that God for Christ’s sake will not impute to him his sin.... But so great is this grace that a man is startled at it and finds it hard to believe.”[525]—He himself and many others often found it difficult, indeed terribly difficult, to believe. They were obliged to “reassure themselves” by the Word of God. A few more quotations may here be added.

“To be clean of heart not only means not to harbour any impure thoughts, but that the conscience has been enlightened and assured by the Word of God that the law does not defile; hence the Christian must understand that it does not harm him whether he keeps it [the law] or not; nay, he may even do what is otherwise forbidden, or leave undone what is usually commanded; it is no sin in him, for he is incapable of sinning because his heart is clean. On the other hand, an impure heart defiles itself and sins in everything because it is choked with law.”[526]

“God says in the law: Do this, leave that undone, this do I require of thee. But the Evangel does not preach what we are to do or to leave undone, it requires nothing of us. On the contrary. It does not say: Do this or that, but only tells us to hold out our hands and take: Behold, O man, what God has done for thee; He has caused His own Son to take flesh for thee, has allowed Him to be done to death for thy sake, and to save thee from sin, death and the devil; believe this and accept it and thou shalt be saved.”[527]

Such statements, which must not be regarded as spoken merely on the spur of the moment, rest on the idea that sin only troubles the man who looks to the law; let us look rather to the Gospel, which is nothing but grace, and simply cover over our sin by a firm faith in Christ, then it will not harm us in any way. Yet it would be quite a mistake to infer from this that Luther always regarded sin with indifference, or that he even recommended it on principle; as a rule he did not go so far as we just saw him do (p. 175 ff.) in his exhortations to persons tempted; there, moreover, his invitation to commit sin, and his other misplaced instructions, may possibly be explained by the excitement of the hand-to-hand struggle with the devil, in which he fancied himself to be engaged whenever he had to do with doubts concerning his doctrines, or with souls showing signs of halting or of despair. On the contrary, he teaches, as a rule, that sin is reprehensible; he also instructs man to fight against concupiscence which leads up to it. (Vol. i., p. 114 f.) He is fond of exhorting to amendment of life and to avoid any scandal. Still, the barriers admitted by his doctrine of Justification against this indifference with regard to sin were not strong enough.[528]

As to Luther’s teaching on the manner in which sin was forgiven, we shall merely state his ideas on this subject, without attempting to bring them into harmony; the fact is that, in Luther’s case, we must resign ourselves to a certain want of sequence.

He teaches: “Real faith is incompatible with any sin whatsoever; whoever is a believer must resist sinful lusts by the power and the impulse of the faith and Spirit.”[529] “Whoever has faith in the forgiveness of sins does not obey sinful lusts, but fights against them until he is rid of them.”[530] Where mortal sin has been committed, there, according to him, real faith was manifestly lacking; it had already been denied and was no longer active, or even present. A revival of faith, together with the necessary qualities of confidence, covers over all such sins, including the sin of unbelief. On the other hand, sins committed where faith was present, though for the moment too weak to offer resistance, were sins of frailty; there faith at once regains the upper hand and thus forgiveness or non-imputation of the sin is secured. The denial of Peter was, according to Luther, a sin of frailty, because it was merely due to “chance weakness and foolishness.” Nevertheless he declares that, like the treason of Judas, it was deserving of death.[531]

Luther teaches further, affording us incidentally an insight into the inadequacy of his doctrine from another point of view, that, in the case of the heathen or of Christians who had no faith, not only was every sin a mortal sin, but also all works, even good works, were mortal sins; indeed, they would be so even in the faithful, were it not for Christ, the Redeemer, Whom we must cling to with confidence. Moreover, as we know, man’s evil inclinations, the motions of concupiscence, the bad tendencies of the pious, were all grievous sins in Luther’s eyes; original sin with its involuntary effects he considers an enduring offence; only faith, which merits forgiveness and overcomes the terrors of conscience by the saving knowledge of Christ, can ensure man against it, and the other sins.

“Thus our salvation or rejection depends entirely on whether we believe or do not believe in Christ.... Unbelief retains all sin, so that it cannot be forgiven, just as faith cancels all sin; hence outside of such faith everything is and remains sinful and worthy of damnation, even the best of lives, and the best of works.... In faith a Christian’s life and works are pleasing to God, outside of Christ everything is lost and doomed to perdition; in Christ all is good and blessed, so that even the sin which flesh and blood inherits from Adam is neither a cause of harm nor of condemnation.” “This, however, is not to be understood as a permit to sin and to commit evil; for since faith brings forgiveness of sin ... it is impossible that he who lives openly unrepentant and secure in his sins and lusts should be a Christian and a believer.”[532] In conclusion he explains to what category of hearers he is speaking: “To them [the faithful] this is said, in order that sin may not harm nor condemn them; to the others, who are without faith and reprobate, we do not preach.”[533] Amongst the numerous other questions which here force themselves upon us, one is, why Luther did not address his Evangel to those “without faith,” and to the “reprobate,” according to the example of Christ.[534]

The fanatics, particularly Carlstadt, were not slow in attacking Luther on account of his doctrine of faith alone. Carlstadt described this “faith” of Luther’s as a “paper faith” and a “heartless faith.” He perceived the “dangers to the interior life which might arise from the stress laid on faith alone, viz. the enfeebling of the moral powers and the growth of formalism.”[535] The modern Protestant biographer of Carlstadt, from whom these words are taken, points out that “moral laxity too often went hand-in-hand with Luther’s doctrine of the forgiveness of sins.”[536] “Owing to an assiduous depreciation of the moral code no criterion existed according to which the direction of the impulses of the will could be determined, according to Luther’s doctrine of Justification.”[537] The Lutheran teaching was “admirably adapted to suit the life of the individual,” but the moral laxity which followed in its train “could not be considered as merely an exceptional phenomenon.”[538] There is no doubt that “much dross came to the surface when ‘faith only’ was applied to the forgiveness of sins.”[539]

A Protestant theologian, A. Hegler, one of those who demur to Luther’s doctrines, mentioned above, owing to their moral consequences, remarks: “It remains that the idea of justification without works was, at the time of the Reformation, often found side by side with moral laxity, and that, sometimes, the latter was actually the effect of the former.” Seeking the reason why so talented a man as Sebastian Franck should have seceded, after having been a Lutheran preacher till 1528, he remarks: “There is much to lead us to suppose that the sight of the moral indifference and coarseness of the evangelicals was the determining factor.”[540]

After having considered Luther’s principles with regard to the theory of sin, we now proceed to give some of his utterances on penance.

Luther’s Views on Penance

Although he speaks of repentance as the first step towards salvation in the case of the sinner, yet the idea of repentance, remorse or contrition was ever rather foreign to him. He will not admit as valid any repentance aroused by the demands and menaces of the law;[541] in the case of man, devoid of free will, it must be a result of Divine charity and grace; repentance without a love of justice is, he says, at secret enmity with God and only makes the sin greater.[542] Yet he also declares, not indeed as advocating penance as such, that it merely acts through faith “previous to and independently of all works,” of which, as we know, he was always suspicious; all that was needed was to believe “in God’s Mercy,” and repentance was already there.[543]

He is nevertheless in favour of the preachers exhorting Christians to repentance by diligent reference to the commandments, and to the chastisements threatened by God, so as to instil into them a salutary fear. The law, he goes on to say, in contradiction to the above, must do its work, and by means of its terrors drive men to repentance even though love should have no part in it. Here he is perfectly conscious of the objection which might be raised, viz. that he had made “repentance to proceed from, and to be the result of, justifying faith.” To this he replies, that repentance itself forms part of the “common faith,” because it is first necessary to believe that there is a God Who commands and makes afraid; this circumstance justifies the retention of penance, “for the sake of the common, unlearned folk.”[544]

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, formulates her doctrine of penance and regeneration, for the most cultured as well as for the “common and unlearned,” in terms simple and comprehensible, and in perfect accord with both Scripture and theology: Adults “are prepared for justification, when, moved and assisted by Divine grace ... they, of their free will, turn to God, believing that those things are true which have been Divinely revealed and promised; above all, that the ungodly is justified by God’s grace and by the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; recognising with a wholesome fear of the Divine Justice their sinfulness, they turn to God’s mercy, and, being thus established in hope, gain the confidence that God, for Christ’s sake, will be gracious to them. Thus they begin to love God as the source of all justice and to conceive a certain hatred (‘odium aliquod’) and detestation for sin, i.e. to perform that penance which must take place previous to baptism. Finally, they must have the intention of receiving baptism, of commencing a new life and of observing the commandments of God.”[545] “Those who, after having received the grace of justification, fall into sin [’without loss of faith’],[546] with God’s help may again be justified, regaining through the Sacrament of Penance and Christ’s merits the grace they had lost.... Christ Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance when He said: ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins ye shall retain, they are retained.’ Hence we must teach that the repentance of a sinner after falling into sin is very different from that which accompanies baptism, and involves not merely a turning away from, and a detestation for, sin, or a contrite and humble heart, but also a Sacramental confession of the sin, or at least a purpose of making such a confession in due season, and receiving the priestly absolution; finally, it involves satisfaction by fasting, almsdeeds, prayer and other pious exercises.”[547]

Such, according to the Catholic doctrine, is the process approved of by Holy Scripture, the various phases of which rest alike on religion and psychology, on the positive ordinances of God and on human nature. Luther, however, thrust all this aside; his quest was for a simpler and easier method, through faith alone, by which sin may be vanquished or covered over.

His moral character, so far as it reveals itself in his teaching, is here displayed in an unfavourable light, for he is never weary of emphasising the ease with which sin can be covered over—and that in language which must necessarily have had a bad effect on discipline—when we might have expected to hear some earnest words on penance. A few of his sayings will help to make yet clearer his earlier statements.

“You see how rich the Christian is,” he says, “since, even should he desire it, he is unable to forfeit his salvation, no matter how many sins he may commit, unless indeed he refuses to believe (‘nisi nolit credere’). No sin but unbelief can bring him to damnation; everything else is at once swept away by this faith, so soon as he returns to it, or recollects the Divine promise made to the baptised.”[548]

“Christ’s Evangel is indeed a mighty thing.... God’s Word brings everything to pass speedily, bestows forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life; and the cost of this is merely that you should hear the Word, and after hearing it believe. If you believe, then you possess it without any trouble, expense, delay or difficulty.”[549]

“No other sin exists in the world save unbelief. All others are mere trifles, as when my little Hans or Lena misbehave themselves in the corner, for we all take that as a big joke. In the same way faith covers the stench of our filth before God.... All sins shall be forgiven us if only we believe in the Son.”[550]

“As I have often said, the Kingdom of Christ is nothing else but forgiveness and perpetual blotting out of sin, which is extinguished, covered over, swept away and made clean while we are living here.” “Christ makes things so easy for us who stand before God in fear and trembling.”[551]

“Summa summarum: Our life is one long ‘remissio peccatorum,’ and forgiveness of sin, otherwise it could not endure.”[552]

Here, indeed, we have one of the main props of Luther’s practical theology. To this the originator of the doctrine sought to remain faithful to the very end of his life, whereas certain other points of his teaching he was not unwilling to revise. His ideas on sin and repentance had sprung originally from his desire to relieve his own conscience,[553] and, of this, they ever retained the mark. The words and doctrine of a teacher are the best witnesses we have to his moral character, and here the doctrine is one which affords but little stimulus to virtue and Christian perfection, but rather the reverse.

In what follows we shall consider more closely the relation between this doctrine and the effort after virtue, while at the same time taking into account that passivity, nay, entire unfreedom of the will for doing what is good, proclaimed by Luther.

Luther on Efforts after Higher Virtue.

The effort to attain perfection and to become like to Christ, which is the highest aim of the Christian, is scarcely promoted by making the whole Gospel to consist merely in the happy enjoyment of forgiveness. The hard work required for the building up of a truly virtuous life on the rude soil of the world, necessarily involving sacrifice, self-denial, humiliation and cheerful endurance of suffering, was more likely to be looked at askance and carefully avoided by those who clung to such a view.

On the pretext of opposing the “false humility of the holy-by-works,” Luther attacks many practices which have always been dear to pious souls striving after God. At the same time he unjustly implies that the Catholics made holiness to consist merely in extraordinary works, performed, moreover, by human strength alone, without the assistance of grace. “This all comes from the same old craze,” he declares;[554] “as soon as we hear of holiness we immediately think of great and excellent works and stand gaping at the Saints in heaven as though they had got there by their own merits. What we say is that the Saints must be good, downright sinners.” (See above, p. 180.) “The most holy state is that of those who believe that Christ alone is our holiness, and that by virtue of His holiness, as already stated, everything about us, our life and actions, are holy, just as the person too is holy.”[555]

After this, who can contend that Luther sets before the world the sublime and arduous ideal of a life of virtue such as has ever been cherished by souls inflamed with the love of Christ? To rest content with a standard so low is indeed to clip the wings of virtue. This is in no way compensated for by Luther’s fervent exhortations to the Christian, “to confess the Word, more particularly in temptation and persecution,” because true and exalted virtue was present wherever there was conflict on behalf of the Word [as preached by him], or by his asseveration, that “where the Word is and brings forth fruit so that men are willing to suffer what must be suffered for it, there indeed we have living Saints.” Living Saints? Surely canonisation is here granted all too easily. Nor does Luther make good the deficiencies of his teaching, by depriving good works of any merit for heaven, or by requiring that they should be performed purely out of love of God, without the least thought of reward. He thereby robs the practice of good works of a powerful stimulus, as much in conformity with the Will of God as with human nature. He is too ready here to assume that the faithful are angels, raised above all incentive arising from the hope of reward, though, elsewhere, he looks upon men only too much as of the earth earthly.

At any rate he teaches that good works spring spontaneously from the faith by which man is justified, and that the outcome is a life of grace in which the faithful has every incentive to the performance of his duty and to works of charity towards his neighbour. He also knows how to depict such spontaneous, practical efforts on the part of the righteous in attractive colours and with great feeling. Passages of striking beauty have already been quoted above from his writings. Too often, as he himself complains, such good works are conspicuous by their absence among the followers of the evangelical faith; he is disappointed to see that the new teaching on faith serves only to engender lazy hearts. Yet this was but natural; nature cannot be overcome even in the man who is justified without an effort on his part; without exertion, self-sacrifice, self-conquest and prayer no one can make any progress and become better pleasing to God; not holiness-by-works, but the sanctifying of our works, is the point to be aimed at, and, for this purpose, Holy Scripture recommends no mere presumptuous, fiducial faith as the starting-point, but rather a pious fear of God, combined with a holy life; no mere reliance on a misapprehension of the freedom of the children of God, but rather severe self-discipline, watchfulness and mortification of the whole man, who, freely and of his own accord, must make himself the image of his crucified Saviour. Those of Luther’s followers who, to their honour, succeeded in so doing, did so, and were cheered and comforted, not by following their leader’s teaching, but by the grace of God which assists every man.

We must, however, refer to another point of importance already once discussed. Why speak at all of good works and virtue, when Luther’s doctrine of the passivity and unfreedom of the will denies the existence of all liberty as regards either virtue or sin? (See vol. ii., p. 223 ff.)

Luther’s doctrine of Justifying Faith is closely bound up with his theories on the absence of free will, man’s inability to what do is good, and the total depravity of human nature resulting from original sin. In his “De servo arbitrio” against Erasmus, Luther deliberately makes the absence of free will the basis of his view of life.

Deprived of any power of choice or self-determination, man is at the mercy of external agents, diabolical or Divine, to such an extent that he is unable to will except what they will. Whoever has and keeps the Spirit of God and the faith cannot do otherwise than fulfil the Will of God; but whoever is under the domination of the devil is his spiritual captive. To sum up what was said previously: man retains at most the right to dispose of things inferior to him, not, however, any actual, moral freedom of choice, still less any liberty for doing what is good such as would exclude all interior compulsion. He is created for eternal death or for everlasting life; his destiny he cannot escape; his lot is already pre-ordained. Luther’s doctrine brings him into line, even as regards the “harshest consequences of the predestinarian dogma, with Zwingli, Calvin, and Melanchthon in his earliest evangelical Theology.”[556] According to one of the most esteemed of Lutheran theologians, “what finds full and comprehensive expression in the work ‘De servo arbitrio’ is simply the conviction which had inspired Luther throughout his struggle for his pet doctrine of salvation, viz. the doctrine of the pure grace of God as against the prevailing doctrine of free will and man’s own works.”[557] According to this theory, in spite of the lack of free will, God requires of man that he should keep the moral law, and, to encourage him, sets up a system of rewards and punishments. Man is constrained to this as it were in mockery, that, as Luther says, God may make him to realise his utter powerlessness.[558] God indeed deplores the spiritual ruin of His people—this much the author is willing to allow to his opponent Erasmus—but, the God Who does so is the God of revelation, not the Hidden God. “The God Who conceals Himself beneath His Majesty grieves not at man’s undoing, He takes no step to remedy it, but works all things, both life and death.” God, “by that unsearchable knowledge of His, wills the death of the sinner.”[559]

“Even though Judas acted of his own will and without compulsion, still his willing was the work of God, Who moved him by His Omnipotence as He moves all things.”[560] In the same way, according to Luther, the hardening of Pharao’s heart was in the fullest sense God’s work.[561] Adam’s sin likewise is to be traced back to the Will of God.[562] We must not ask, however, how all this can be reconciled with the goodness and justice of God. We must not expect God to act according to human law.[563]

It was necessary to recall the above in order to show how such a doctrine robs the moral law of every inward relation to its last end, and degrades it till it becomes a mere outward, arbitrary barrier. Luther may well thank his want of logic that this system failed to be carried to its extremest consequences; the ways of the world are not those of the logician.

Who but God can be held responsible in the last instance for the world being, as Luther complains, the “dwelling-place” of the devil, and his very kingdom? According to him the devil is its “Prince and God”;[564] every place is packed with devils.[565] Indeed, “the whole world is Satanic and to a certain extent identified with Satan.”[566] “In such a kingdom all the children of Adam are subject to their lord and king, i.e. the devil.”[567] Such descriptions given by Luther are often so vivid that one might fancy the devil was making war upon God almost like some independent power. Luther, however, admits that the devil has “only a semblance of the Godhead, and that God has reserved to Himself the true Godhead.”[568] Ethically the consequence of such a view of the world is a pessimism calculated to lame both the powers and the desires of anyone striving after higher aims.

Luther’s pessimism goes so far, that too often he is ready to believe that, unlike the devil, Christ loves “to show Himself weak” in man. He writes, for instance, that Satan desired to drag him in his toils down into the abyss, but that the “weak Christ” was ever victorious, or at least “fighting bravely.”[569] That it was possible for Christ to be overcome he would not have allowed, yet, surely, an excuse might have been sought for man’s failings in Christ’s own “weakness,” particularly if man is really devoid of free will for doing what is good.

Luther was always fond of imputing weaknesses and sins to the Saints. Their works he regarded as detracting from the Redemption and the Grace of Christ, which can be appropriated only by faith. Certain virtues manifested by the Saints and their heroic sacrifices Luther denounced as illusions, as morally impossible and as mere idolatry.

“The Apostles themselves were sinners, yea, regular scoundrels.... I believe that the prophets also frequently sinned grievously, for they were men like us.”[570] He quotes examples from the history of the Apostles previous to the descent of the Holy Ghost. Elsewhere he alludes to the failings they betrayed even in later life. “To hear” that the Apostles, even after they had received the Holy Ghost, were “sometimes weak in the faith,” is, he says, “very consoling to me and to all Christians.” Peter “not only erred” in his treatment of the Gentile Christians (Gal. ii. 11 ff.), “but sinned grossly and grievously.” The separation of Paul and Barnabas (Acts xv. 39) was very blameworthy. “Such instances,” he says, “are placed before us for our comfort; for it is very consoling to hear that such great Saints have also sinned.” “Samson, David and many other fine and mighty characters, filled as they were with the Holy Ghost, fell into great sins,” which is a “splendid consolation to faint-hearted and troubled consciences.” Paul himself did not believe as firmly as he spoke; he was, in point of fact, better able to speak and write than to believe. “It would scarcely be right for us to do all that God has commanded, for then what need would there be for the forgiveness of sins?”[571]

“Unless God had told us how foolishly the Saints themselves acted, we should not have been able to arrive at the knowledge of His Kingdom, which is nothing else but the forgiveness of sins.”[572] Here He is referring to the stumbling and falls of the Patriarchs; he adds: “What wonder that we stumble? And yet this is no cloak or excuse for committing sin.” Nevertheless, he speaks of Abraham, whom he credits with having fallen into idolatry and sin, as though holiness of life were of no great importance: “Believe as he did and you are just as holy as he.”[573] “We must interpret all these stories and examples as told of men like ourselves; it is a delusion to make such a fuss about the Saints. We ought to say: If they were holy, why, so are we; if we are sinners, why, so were they; for we are all born of the same flesh and blood and God created us as much as He did them; one man is as good as another, and the only difference between us is faith. If you have faith and the Word of God, you are just as great; you need not trouble yourself about being of less importance than he, unless your faith is less strong.”[574]

By his “articulus remissionis,” the constantly reiterated Evangel of the forgiveness of sins by faith, Luther certainly succeeded in putting down the mighty from their seats, but whether he inspired the lowly to qualify for their possession is quite another question.

On the unsafe ground of the assurance of salvation by faith alone even the fanatics were unwilling to stand; their preference was for a certain interior satisfaction to be secured by means of works. Hence they and their teaching—to tell the truth a very unsatisfactory one—became a target for Luther’s sarcasm. By a pretence of strict morals they would fain give the lie to the words of the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses”; “but we are determined not to make the Our Father untrue, nor to reject this article (the ‘remissio peccatorum’), but to retain it as our most precious treasure, in which lies our safety and salvation.”[575] An over-zealous pursuit of sanctity and the works of the Spirit might end by detracting from a trusting reliance upon Christ. In Catholic times, for instance, the two things, works and faith, had, so he complains, been “hopelessly mixed.” “This, from the beginning until this very day, has been a stumbling-block and hindrance to the new doctrine of faith. If we preach works, then an end is made of faith; hence, if we teach faith, works must go to the wall.”[576]

We must repeat, that, by this, Luther did not mean to exclude works; on the contrary, he frequently counsels their performance. He left behind him many instructions concerning the practice of a devout life, of which we shall have to speak more fully later. On the other hand, however, we can understand how, on one occasion, he refused to draw up a Christian Rule of Life, though requested to do so by his friend Bugenhagen, arguing that such a thing was superfluous. We can well understand his difficulty, for how could he compile a rule for the promotion of practical virtue when he was at the same time indefatigable in condemning the monkish practices of prayer and meditation, pious observances and penitential exercises, as mere formalities and outgrowths of the theory of holiness-by-works? It was quite in keeping with his leading idea, and his hatred of works, that he should stigmatise the whole outward structure of the Christian life known hitherto as a mere “service of imposture.”

“Christ has become to all of us a cloak for our shame.”[577]

“Our life and all our doings must not have the honour and glory of making us children of God and obtaining for us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. What is necessary is that you should hear Christ saying to you: ‘Good morning, dear brother, in Me behold your sin and death vanquished.’ The law has already been fulfilled, viz. by Christ, so that it is not necessary to fulfil it, but only to hang it by faith around Him who fulfils it, and to become like Him.”[578]

“This is the Evangel that brings help and salvation to the conscience in despair.... The law with its demands had disheartened, nay, almost slain it, but now comes this sweet and joyful message.”[579]

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.”[580]

Luther’s “Pecca fortiter.”

In what has gone before, that we might the better see how Luther’s standard of life compared with his claim to a higher calling, we have reviewed in succession his advice and conduct with regard to one of the principal moral questions of the Christian life, viz. how one is to behave when tempted to despondency and to despair of one’s salvation; further, his attitude—theoretical and practical—towards sin, penance and the higher tasks and exercises of Christian virtue. On each several point the ethical defects of his system came to light, in spite of all his efforts to conceal them by appealing to the true freedom of the Christian, to the difference between the law and the Gospel, or to the power of faith in the merits of Christ.

On glancing back at what has been said, we can readily understand why those Catholic contemporaries, who took up the pen against Luther and his followers, directed their attacks by preference on these points of practical morality.

Johann Fabri (i.e. Schmidt) of Heilbronn, who filled the office of preacher at Augsburg Cathedral until he was forced to vacate the pulpit owing to the prohibition issued by the Magistrates against Catholic preaching in 1534, wrote at a later date, in 1553, in his work “The Right Way,” of Luther and those preachers who shared his point of view: “The sweet, sugary preachers who encourage the people in their wickedness say: The Lord has suffered for us, good works are unclean and sinful, a good, pious and honest life with fasting, etc., is mere Popery and hypocrisy, the Lord has merited heaven for us and our goodness is all worthless. These and such-like are the sweet, sugary words they preach, crying: Peace, Peace! Heaven has been thrown open, only believe and you are already justified and heirs of heaven. Thus wickedness gets the upper hand, and those things which draw down upon us the wrath of God and rob us of eternal life are regarded as no sin at all. But the end shall prove whether the doctrine is of God, as the fruit shows whether the tree is good. What terror and distress has been caused in Germany by those who boast of the new Gospel it is easier to bewail than to describe. Ungodliness, horrible sins and vices hold the field; greater and more terrible evil, fear and distress have never before been heard of, let alone seen in Germany.”[581]

Matthias Sittardus, from the little town of Sittard in the Duchy of Jülich, a zealous and energetic worker at Aachen, wrote as follows of Luther’s exhortations quoted above: “The result is that men say, What does sin matter? Christ took it away on the cross; the evil that I do—for I must sin and cannot avoid it—He is ready to bear; He will answer for it and refrain from imputing it to me; I have only to believe and off it goes like a flash. Good works have actually become a reproach and are exposed to contempt and abuse.”[582]—Elsewhere he laments, that “there is much glorying in and boasting of faith,” but of “good works and actions little” is seen.[583]

Alluding to man’s unfreedom for doing what is good, as advocated by Luther, Johann Mensing, a scholarly and busy popular writer, says: “They [the preachers] call God a sinner and maintain that God does all our sins in us. And when they have sinned most grievously they argue that such was God’s Will, and that they could do nothing but by God’s Will. They look upon the treachery of Judas, the adultery of David and Peter’s denial as being simply the work of God, just as much as the best of good deeds.”[584]

The words quoted above: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” are Luther’s own.

The saying, which must not be taken apart from the context, was employed by Luther in a letter to Melanchthon, on August 1, 1521.[585] The writer, who was then at the Wartburg, was engaged in a “heated struggle”[586] on the question of the Church, and on religious vows, for the setting aside of which he was seeking a ground. At the Wartburg he was, on his own confession, a prey to “temptations and sins,”[587] though in this he only saw the proof that his Evangel would triumph over the devil. The letter is the product of a state of mind, restless, gloomy and exalted, and culminates in a prophetic utterance concerning God’s approaching visitation of Germany on account of its persecution of the Evangel.

The passage which at present interests us, taken together with the context, runs thus:

“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a real, not a fictitious grace; if your grace is real, then let your sin also be real and not fictitious. God does not save those who merely fancy themselves sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still (‘esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide’); and rejoice in Christ, Who is the conqueror of sin, death and the world; we must sin as long as we are what we are. This life is not the abode of justice, but we look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, as Peter says. It suffices that by the riches of the glory of God we have come to know the Lamb, Who taketh away the sin of the world; sin shall not drag us away from Him, even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day. Do you think that the price and the ransom paid for our sins by this sublime Lamb is so insignificant? Pray boldly, for you are in truth a very bold sinner.”

This is language of the most extravagant paradox. What it really means is very objectionable. Melanchthon is to pray very fervently with the hope of obtaining the Divine assistance against sin, but at the same time he is to sin boldly. This language of the Wartburg is not unlike that in which Luther wrote, from the Castle of Coburg, to his pupil, Hieronymus Weller, when the latter was tempted to despair, to encourage him against the fear of sin (above, p. 175 f.); that letter too was written in anguish of spirit and in a state of excitement similar to what he had experienced in the Wartburg. We might, it is true, admit that, in these words Luther gave the rein to his well-known inclination to put things in the strongest light, a tendency to be noticed in some of his other statements quoted above. On the other hand, however, the close connection between the compromising words and his whole system of sin and grace, can scarcely be denied; we have here something more than a figure of rhetoric. Luther’s endeavour was to reassure, once and for all, Melanchthon, who was so prone to anxiety. The latter shrank from many of the consequences of Luther’s doctrines, and at that time was possibly also a prey to apprehension concerning the forgiveness of his own sins. Hence the writer of the letter seeks to convince him that the strength of the fiducial faith preached by himself, Luther, was so great, that no sense of sin need trouble a man. To have “real, not fictitious, sin” to him, means as much as: Be bold enough to look upon yourself as a great sinner; “Be a sinner,” means: Do not be afraid of appearing to be a sinner in your own sight; Melanchthon is to be a bold sinner in his own eyes in order that he may be the more ready to ascribe all that is good to the grace which works all. Thus far there is nothing which goes beyond Luther’s teaching elsewhere.

The passage is, however, more than a mere paradoxical way of expressing the doctrine dear to him.

Luther, here and throughout the letter, does not say what he ought necessarily to have said to one weighed down by the consciousness of sin; of remorse and compunction we hear nothing whatever, nor does he give due weight and importance to the consciousness of guilt; he misrepresents grace, making it appear as a mere outward, magical charm, by which—according to an expression which cannot but offend every religious mind—a man is justified even though he be a murderer and a libertine a thousand times over. Luther’s own words here are perhaps the best refutation of the Lutheran doctrine of Justification, for he speaks of sin, even of the worst, in a way that well lays bare the weaknesses of the system of fiducial faith.

It is unfortunate that Luther should have impressed such a stigma upon his principal doctrine, both in his earliest statements of it, for instance, in his letter to George Spenlein in 1516, and, again, in one of his last epistles to a friend, also tormented by scruples of conscience, viz. George Spalatin.[588]

In the above-mentioned letter to Melanchthon, in which Luther expresses his contempt for sin by the words “Pecca fortiter,” he is not only encouraging his friend with regard to possible sins of the past, but is also thinking of temptations in the future. His advice is: Sin boldly and fearlessly—whereas what one would have expected would have been: Should you fall, don’t despair. The underlying idea is: No sin is so detestable as to affright the believer, which is further explained by the wanton phrase: “even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day.”

However much stress we may be disposed to lay on Luther’s warnings against sin, and whatever allowance we may make for his rhetoric, still the “Pecca fortiter” stands out as the result of his revolt against the traditional view of sin and grace, with which his own doctrine of Justification refused to be reconciled. These inauspicious words are the culmination of Luther’s practical ideas on religion, borne witness to by so many of his statements, which, at the cost of morality, give the reins to human freedom and to disorder. Such was the state of mind induced in him by the spirits of the Wartburg, such the enthusiasm which followed his “spiritual baptism” on his “Patmos,” that isle of sublime revelations.

Such is the defiance involved in the famous saying that an impartial critic, Johann Adam Möhler, in his “Symbolism” says: “Although too much stress must not be laid on the passage, seeing how overwrought and excited the author was, yet it is characteristic enough and important from the point of view of the history of dogma.”[589] G. Barge, in his Life of Carlstadt, says, that Luther in his letter to Melanchthon had reduced “his doctrine of Justification by faith alone to the baldest possible formula.”[590] “If Catholic research continues to make this [the ‘Pecca fortiter’] its point of attack, we must honestly admit that there is reason in its choice.”

The last words are from Walter Köhler, now at the University of Zürich, a Protestant theologian and historian, who has severely criticised all Luther’s opinions on sin and grace.[591]

One of the weak points of Luther’s theology lies, according to Köhler,[592] in the “clumsiness of his doctrine of sin and salvation.” “How, in view of the total corruption of man” (through original sin, absence of free will and loss of all power), can redemption be possible at all unless by some mechanical and supernatural means? Luther says: “By faith alone.” But his “faith is something miraculous, in which psychology has no part whatever; the corruption is mechanical and so is the act of grace which removes it.” In Luther’s doctrine of sin, as Köhler remarks, the will, the instrument by which the process of redemption should be effected, becomes a steed “ridden either by God or by the devil. If the Almighty is the horseman, He throws Satan out of the saddle, and vice versa; the steed, however, remains entirely helpless and unable to rid himself of his rider. In such a system Christ, the Redeemer, must appear as a sort of ‘deus ex machina,’ who at one blow sets everything right.” It would not be so bad, were at least “the Almighty to overthrow Satan. But He remains ever seated in heaven, i.e. Luther never forgets to impress on man again and again that he cannot get out of sin: ‘The Saints remain always sinners at heart.’”

Although, proceeds Köhler, better thoughts, yea, even inspiring ones, are to be found in Luther’s writings, yet the peculiar doctrines just spoken of were certainly his own, at utter variance though they be with our way of looking at the process of individual salvation, viz. from the psychological point of view, and of emphasising the personal will to be saved. “In spite of Luther’s plain and truly evangelical intention of attributing to God alone all the honour of the work of salvation,” he was never able “clearly to comprehend the personal, ethico-religious value of faith”; “on the contrary, he makes man to be shifted hither and thither, by the hand of God, like a mere pawn, and in a fashion entirely fatalistic”; “when Christ enters, then, according to him, all is well; I am no longer a sinner, I am set free” (“iam ego peccatum non habeo et sum liber”)[593];—“but where does the ethical impulse come in?” Seeing that sin is merely covered over, and, as a matter of fact, still remains, man must, according to Luther, “set to work to conquer it without, however, ever being entirely successful in this task, or rather he must strengthen his assurance of salvation, viz. his faith. Such is Luther’s ethics.” The critic rightly points out, that this “system of ethics is essentially negative,” viz. merely directs man how “not to fall” from the “pedestal” on which he is set up together with Christ. Man, by faith, is raised so high, that, as Luther says, “nothing can prejudice his salvation”;[594] “Christian freedom means ... that we stand in no need of any works in order to attain to piety and salvation.”[595]

3. Luther’s Admissions Concerning His own Practice of Virtue

St. Paul, the far-seeing Apostle of the Gentiles, says of the ethical effects of the Gospel and of faith: “Those who are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the lusts thereof. If we live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit.” He instances as the fruits of the Spirit: “Patience, longanimity, goodness, benignity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity” (Gal. v. 22 ff.). Amongst the qualities which must adorn a teacher and guide of the faithful he instances to Timothy the following: “It behoveth him to be blameless, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, no striker, not quarrelsome; he must have a good testimony of them that are without, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience” (1 Tim. iii. 2 ff.). Finally he sums up all in the exhortation: “Be thou an example to the faithful in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in chastity” (ibid., iv. 12).

It seems not unjust to expect of Luther that his standard of life should be all the higher, since, in opposition to all the teachers of his day and of bygone ages, and whilst professing to preach nought but the doctrine of Christ, he had set up a new system, not merely of faith, but also of morals. At the very least the power of his Evangel should have manifested itself in his own person in an exceptional manner.

How far was this the case? What was the opinion of his contemporaries and what was his own?

Catholics were naturally ever disposed to judge Luther’s conduct from a standpoint different from that of Luther’s own followers. A Catholic, devoted to his Church, regarded as his greatest blemish the conceit of the heresiarch and devastator of the fold; to him it seemed intolerable that a disobedient and rebellious son of the Church should display such pride as to set himself above her and the belief of antiquity and should attack her so hatefully. As for his morality, his sacrilegious marriage with a virgin dedicated to God, his incessant attacks upon celibacy and religious vows, and his seducing of countless souls to break their most sacred promises, were naturally sufficient to debase him in the eyes of most Catholics.

There were, however, certain questions which both Catholics and Lutherans could ask and answer impartially: Did Luther possess in any eminent degree the fiducial faith which he represented as so essential? Did this faith produce in him those fruits he extols as its spontaneous result, above all a glad heart at peace with God and man? Further: How far did he himself come up even to that comparatively low standard to which, theoretically, he reduced Christian perfection?

If we seek from Luther’s own lips an estimate of his virtues, we shall hear from him many frank statements on the subject.

The first place belongs to what he says of his faith and personal assurance of salvation.

Of faith, he wrote to Melanchthon, who was tormented with doubts and uncertainty: “To you and to us all may God give an increase of faith.... If we have no faith in us, why not at least comfort ourselves with the faith that is in others? For there must needs be others who believe instead of us, otherwise there would be no Church left in the world, and Christ would have ceased to be with us till the end of time. If He is not with us, where then is He in the world?”[596]

He complains so frequently of the weakness of his own faith that we are vividly reminded how greatly he himself stood in need of the “consolation” of dwelling on the faith that was in others. He never, it is true, attributes to himself actual unbelief, or a wilful abandon of trust in the promises of Christ, yet he does speak in strangely forcible terms—and with no mere assumed humility or modesty—of the weakness of this faith and of the inconstancy of his trust.

Of the devil, who unsettles him, he says: “Often I am shaken, but not always.”[597] To the devil it was given to play the part of torturer. “I prefer the tormentor of the body to the torturer of the soul.”[598]—“Alas, the Apostles believed, of this there can be no doubt; I can’t believe, and yet I preach faith to others. I know that it is true, yet believe it I cannot.”[599] “I know Jonas, and if he [like Christ] were to ascend to heaven and disappear out of our sight, what should I then think? And when Peter said: ‘In the name of Jesus, arise’ [Acts iii. 6], what a marvel that was! I don’t understand it and I can’t believe it; and yet all the Apostles believed.”[600]

“I have been preaching for these twenty years, and read and written, so that I ought to see my way ... and yet I cannot grasp the fact, that I must rely on grace alone; and still, otherwise it cannot be, for the mercy-seat alone must count and remain since God has established it; short of this no man can reach God. Hence it is no wonder that others find it so hard to accept faith in its purity, more particularly when these devil-preachers [the Papists] add to the difficulty by such texts as: ‘Do this and thou shalt live,’ item ‘Wilt thou enter into life, keep the commandments’ (Luke x. 28; Matthew xix. 17).”[601]

He is unable to find within him that faith which, according to his system, ought to exist, and, in many passages, he even insists on its difficulty in a very curious manner. “Ah, dear child, if only one could believe firmly,” he said to his little daughter, who “was speaking of Christ with joyful confidence”; and, in answer to the question, “whether then he did not believe,” he replied by praising the innocence and strong faith of children, whose example Christ bids us follow.[602]

In the notes among which these words are preserved there follows a collection of similar statements belonging to various periods: “This argument, ‘The just shall live in his faith’ (Hab. ii. 4), the devil is unable to explain away. But the point is, who is able to lay hold on it?”[603]—“I, alas, cannot believe as firmly as I can preach, speak and write, and as others fancy I am able to believe.”[604]—When the Apostle of the Gentiles speaks of dying daily (1 Cor. xv. 31), this means, so Luther thinks, that he had doubts about his own teaching. In the same way Christ withdraws Himself from him, Luther, “so that at times I say: Truly I know not where I stand, or whether I am preaching aright or not.”[605] “I used to believe all that the Pope and the monks said, but now I am unable to believe what Christ says, Who cannot lie. This is an annoying business, but we shall keep it for that [the Last] Day.”[606]

“Conscience’s greatest consolation,” he also says, according to the same notes, “is simply the Lord Christ,” and he proceeds to describe in detail this consolation in language of much power, agreeably with his doctrine of Justification. He, however, concludes: “But I cannot grasp this consoling doctrine, I can neither learn it nor bear it in mind.”[607]

“I am very wretched owing to the weakness of my faith; hardly can I find any comfort in the death and resurrection of Christ, or in the article of the forgiveness of sins.... I cannot succeed in laying hold on the essential treasure, viz. the free forgiveness of sins.”[608]

“It is a difficult matter to spring straight from my sins to the righteousness of Christ, and to be as certain that Christ’s righteousness is mine as I am that my own body is mine.... I am astonished that I cannot learn this doctrine.”[609]

In a passage already quoted Luther rightly described the task he assigned to grace and faith as something “which affrights a man,” for which reason it is “hard for him to believe”; he himself had often, so to speak, to fight his way out of hell, “but it costs much before one obtains consolation.”

Such statements we can well understand if we put ourselves in his place. The effects he ascribed to fiducial faith were so difficult of attainment and so opposed to man’s natural disposition, that never-ending uncertainty was the result, both in his own case and in that of many others. Moreover, he, or rather his peculiar interpretation of Holy Scripture, was the only guarantee of his doctrine, whereas the Catholic Church took her stand upon the broad and firm basis of a settled, traditional interpretation, and traced back her teaching to an authority instituted by God and equipped with infallibility. In his “temptations of faith,” Luther clung to the most varied arguments, dwelling at one time on the fact of his election, at another on the depravity of his opponents, now on the malice of the devil sent to oppose him, now on the supposed advantages of his doctrine, as for instance, that it gave all the honour to God alone and made an end of everything human, even of free will: “Should Satan take advantage of this and ally himself with the flesh and with reason, then conscience becomes affrighted and despairs, unless you resolutely enter into yourself and say: Even should Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, St. Peter, Paul, John, nay, an angel from heaven, teach otherwise, yet I know for a certainty that what I teach is not human but divine, i.e. that I ascribe all to God and nothing to man.”[610]

“I do not understand it, I am unable to believe ... I cannot believe and yet I teach others. I know that it is right and yet believe it I cannot. Sometimes I think: You teach the truth, for you have the office and vocation, you are of assistance to many and glorify Christ; for we do not preach Aristotle or Cæsar, but Jesus Christ. But when I consider my weakness, how I eat and drink and am considered a merry fellow, then I begin to doubt. Alas, if one could only believe!”[611]

“Heretics believe themselves to be holy. I find not a scrap of holiness in myself, but only great weakness. As soon as I am assailed by temptation I understand the Spirit, but nevertheless the flesh resists. [That is] idolatry against the first table [of the law]. Gladly would I be formally just, but I am not conscious of being so.”

And Pomeranus replied: “Neither am I conscious of it, Herr Doctor.”[612]

Before passing on to some of Luther’s statements concerning the consonance of his life with faith, we may remark that there is no lack of creditable passages in his writings on the conforming of ethics to faith. Although here our task is not to depict in its entirety the morality of Luther and his doctrine, but merely to furnish an historical answer to the question whether there existed in him elements which rendered his claim to a higher mission incredible, still we must not forget his many praiseworthy exhortations to virtue, intended, moreover, not merely for others, but also for himself.

That the devil must be resisted and that his tricks and temptations lead to what is evil, has been insisted upon by few preachers so frequently as by Luther, who in almost every address, every chapter of his works, and every letter treats of the sinister power of the devil. Another favourite, more positive theme of his discourses, whether to the members of his household or to the larger circle of the public, was the domestic virtues and the cheerful carrying out of the duties of one’s calling. He was also fond, in the sermons he was so indefatigable in preaching, of bringing home to those oppressed with the burden of life’s troubles the consolation of certain evangelical truths, and of breaking the bread of the Word to the little ones and the unlearned. With the utmost earnestness he sought to awaken trust in God, resignation to His Providence, hope in His Mercy and Bounty and the confession of our own weakness. One idea on which he was particularly fond of lingering, was, that we must pray because we depend entirely upon God, and that we must put aside all confidence in ourselves in order that we may be filled with His Grace.

Unfortunately such thoughts too often brought him back to his own pet views of man’s passivity and absence of free will and the all-effecting power of God. “The game is always won,” he cries, “and if it is won there is no longer any pain or trouble more; there is no need to struggle and fight, for all has already been accomplished.”[613] “Christ, the Conqueror, has done all, so that there is nothing left for us to do, to root out sin, to slay the devil or to overcome death; they all have been trampled to the ground.... The doing was not, however, our work.”[614]—“The Christian’s work is to sleep and do nothing”; thus does he sum up in one of his sermons the exhortations he had previously given to rest altogether on the merits of Christ; even should a man “fall into sin and be up to the neck in it, let him remember that Christ is no taker, but a most gracious giver”; this is “a very sweet and cheering doctrine; others, it is true, teach that you must do so much for sin, must live in this or that way, since God must be paid to the last farthing before you can appear before Him. Such people make of God a torturer and taskmaster.”[615] After having recommended prayer he inveighs against what he calls its abuse: “They say: I will pray until God gives me His Grace; but nothing comes of it, because God says to them: You cannot and never will be able to do anything; but I shall do everything.” “Everything through Christ: through works, nothing whatever.”[616]

Luther has some remarkable admissions to make, particularly in his private utterances, concerning the manner in which he himself and his chosen circle lived their faith.

“I cannot express in words what great pains I took in the Papacy to be righteous. Now, however, I have ceased entirely to be careful, because I have come to the insight and belief that another has become righteous before God in my stead.”[617]

“My doctrine stands whatever [my] life may be.”[618]

“Let us stick to the true Word that the seat of Moses may be ours. Even should our manner of life not be altogether polished and perfect, yet God is merciful; the laity, however, hate us.”[619]

“Neither would it be a good thing were we to do all that God commands, for in that case He would be cheated of His Godhead, and the Our Father, faith, the article of the forgiveness of sins, etc., would all go to ruin. God would be made a liar. He would no longer be the one and only truth, and every man would not be a liar [as Scripture says]. Should any man say: ‘If this is so, God will be but little served on earth’ [I reply]: He is accustomed to that; He wills to be, and is, a God of great mercy.”[620]

“I want to hand over a downright sinner to the Judgment Seat of our Lord God; for though I myself may not have actually been guilty of adultery, still that has not been for lack of good-will.”[621]—The latter phrase was a saying of the populace, and does not in the least mean that he ever really had the intention of committing the sin.

“I confess of myself,” he says in a sermon in 1532, “and doubtless others must admit the same [of themselves], that I lack the diligence and earnestness of which really I ought to have much more than formerly; that I am much more careless than I was under the Papacy; and that now, under the Evangel, there is nowhere the same zeal to be found as before.” This he declares to be due to the devil and to people’s carelessness, but not to his teaching.[622]

On other occasions he admits of his party as a whole, more particularly of its leaders, viz. the theologians and Princes, that they fell more or less short of what was required for a Christian life; among them he expressly includes himself: “It is certain with regard to ourselves and our Princes that we are not clean and holy, and the Princes have vices of their own. But Christ loves a frank and downright confession.”[623]

Among such “confessions” made by Luther we find some concerning prayer.

Comparing the present with the past he says: “People are now so cold and pray so seldom”; this he seeks to explain by urging that formerly people were more “tormented by the devil.”[624] A better explanation is that which he gave in his Commentary on Galatians: “For the more confident we are of the freedom Christ has won for us, the colder and lazier we are in teaching the Word, praying, doing good and enduring contradictions.”[625]

We possess some very remarkable and even spirited exhortations to prayer from Luther’s pen; on occasion he would also raise his own voice in prayer to implore God’s assistance with feeling, fervour and the greatest confidence, particularly when in anxiety and trouble about his undertaking. (See vol. iv., xxv. 3.) He refers frequently to his daily prayer, though he admits that the heretics, i.e. the Anabaptists, also were in the habit of praying—in their own way. His excessive labours and the turmoil of his life’s struggle left him, however, little time and quiet for prayer, particularly for interior prayer. Besides, he considered the canonical hours of the Catholics mere “bawling,” and the liturgical devices for raising the heart mere imposture. During the latter years he spent in the cloister outside cares left him no leisure for the prayers which he was, as a religious, bound to recite. Finally, towards the end of his life, he often enough admits that his prayers were cold.[626] Frequently he was obliged to stimulate his ardour for prayer as well as work by “anger and zeal”;[627] “for no man can say,” as he puts it, “how hard a thing it is to pray from the heart.”[628]

Even in the early part of his career he had deliberately and on principle excluded one important sort of prayer, viz. prayer for help in such interior trials as temptations against the celibacy enjoined by the religious state, which he came to persuade himself was an impossibility and contrary to the Will of God. Then, if ever, did he stand in need of the weapon of prayer, but we read nowhere in his letters, written in that gloomy period, of his imploring God humbly for light and strength. On the contrary, he writes, in 1521: “What if this prayer is not according to God’s Will, or if He does not choose to grant it when it is addressed to Him?”[629] He ironically attacks those who rightly said that “we must implore in all things the grace of God, that He denies it to none,” and, that, with God’s grace, it was possible to keep the vows. He replies to “these simple people and those who care nothing for souls”: “Excellent! Why did you not advise St. Peter to ask God that he might not be bound by Herod?” “That,” he says, “is to make a mockery of serious matters” (“est modus ludendi”)[630]—a censure which might very well have been flung back at such a teacher of prayer.

Seventeen years later he gave the following advice on prayer: “We must not curse, that is true, but pray we must that God’s name be hallowed and honoured, and the Pope’s execrated and cursed together with his god, the devil; that God’s Kingdom come, and that End-Christ’s kingdom perish. Such a ‘paternosteral’ curse may well be breathed, and so should every Christian pray.”[631] That the Pope be “cursed, damned, dishonoured and destroyed, etc.,” such was his “daily, never-ending, heartfelt prayer, as it was of all those who believe in Christ,” so he assures us, “and I feel that my prayer is heard.”[632] His opinion is that it is impossible to pray for anything without “cursing,” i.e. excluding the opposite. “Someone asked Dr. Martin Luther whether he who prayed thus must curse. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘for when I pray “Hallowed be Thy Name,” I curse Erasmus and all heretics who dishonour and blaspheme God.’”[633] His anger against the devil often broke out in his prayers. “Though I cannot read or write,” he writes to Melanchthon from the Coburg, “I can still think, and pray, and rage (‘debacchari’) against the devil.”[634]

He ought to “offer incense to God,” he complains on one occasion in 1538 in his “Table-Talk,” but, instead, he brings Him “stinking pitch and devil’s ordure by his murmuring and impatience.” “It is thus that I frequently worship my God.... Had we not the article of the forgiveness of sins, which God has firmly promised, our case would indeed be bad.”[635] Again and again does he cast his anchor on this article when threatened by the storms.

His private, non-polemical religious exercises seem to have been exceedingly brief: “I have to do violence to myself daily in order to pray, and I am satisfied to repeat, when I go to bed, the Ten Commandments, the Our Father and then a verse or two; while thinking these over I fall asleep.”[636] Unusual, and at the same time peculiar, were the prayers which we hear of his offering with the intention of doing some wholesome ill to his neighbour, or even of bringing about the latter’s death in the interests of the Evangel. In a sermon on July 23, 1531, after reprimanding certain Wittenberg brewers, who, in the hope of adding to their profits, were accustomed to adulterate their beer, he says: “Unless you mend your ways, we shall pray that your malt may turn to muck and sewage. Don’t forget that.”[637]

The Christian’s life of faith ought not merely to be penetrated with the spirit of prayer but, in spite of all crosses and the temptations from earthy things, to move along the safe path of peace and joy of heart. Luther must have found much concerning “peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” in his favourite Epistle to the Romans. He himself says: “A Christian must be a joyful man.... Christ says, ‘Peace be with you; let not your heart be troubled: have confidence, I have overcome the world.’ It is the will of God that you be joyful.”

Of himself, however, he is forced to add: “I preach and write this, but I have not yet acquired the art when tempted the other way. This is in order that we may be instructed,” so he reassures himself. “Were we always at peace, the devil would get the better of us.... The fact is we are not equal to the holy Fathers in the matter of faith. The further we fall short of them [this is another of his consolations], the greater is the victory Christ will win; for in the struggle with the devil we are the meanest, most stupid of foes, and he has a great advantage over us.... Our Lord has determined to bring about the end [the impending end of all] amidst universal foolishness.”[638] Thus, according to him, the victory of Christ would be exalted all the more by the absence of peace and joy amongst His followers.