Chapter XXXIV · (continued 2)

He himself bears witness to his laborious literary labours and their results in the preface to his Church-Postils of 1543.[1861] Conscious of what he had achieved he there quotes the passage where St. Paul says that the faithful were “enriched in all things, in all knowledge and understanding,” etc. (1 Cor. i. 5). “In the same way we may say to our Germans that God has richly given us His Word in the German tongue.... For what more can we have or desire?” He points to the catechism which he has preached “clearly and with power,” to his exposition of the Commandments, of the Our Father and the Creed; in his writings they would find explained “Holy Baptism, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, the keys, the ban, and absolution. We have been instructed definitely how each one is to understand his own state and calling and behave himself; whether he be a cleric or a layman, or of high or low estate. We know what conjugal life is, what widowhood and maidenhood, and how we are to live and act therein in a Christian manner.”—Although the people were already sufficiently instructed on these points, and though Luther’s teaching in so far as it was something new cannot meet with our approval, yet it must be admitted that in his writings for the people Luther treated of these things, according to his light, in language both popular and forcible.

Herewith, so he says in the same preface, you receive from my friend Cruciger the Church-Postils amended and enlarged, with its “lucid and amusing” explanations of the Gospel-lessons. Just as a mother pulps the food for her baby, so the Epistles and Gospels of the year have been pulped for you. As now they had already in print a corrected edition of the lives of the Saints, a German version of the Psalter and, in particular, the whole Bible in “good German,” the preachers should be better able to teach the people how to be saved. “We have done our part faithfully and in full measure; let us therefore be for ever thankful to God, the Father of all mercies.” Luther’s allusion to his Postils as being “lucid and amusing,” and to the “good German” of his translation of the Bible, are perfectly justified.

Luther, in 1527, spoke of his Church-Postils as the “best book I ever wrote ... which, indeed, pleases even the Papists.”[1862] It is obvious that he bestowed this praise upon it in view of its positive contents. It is true that, some eight or nine years later, he declared with his customary exaggeration, he wished the “whole of this book could be blotted out”; this was, however, at a time when he was already planning a new edition to be undertaken by Cruciger, “which might be useful to the whole Church.”[1863] The work, however, even in its first dress, undoubtedly contained much that was good.

Good Points and Shortcomings of Luther’s Popular Works

Not only is the number of popular writings Luther composed surprising, but they are distinguished by the energy and originality of their style, and, in many passages where no fault is to be found with what he says, his instructions and exhortations are admittedly seasoned with much that is truly thoughtful and edifying. In spite of all the admixture of falsehood to the ancient treasure of doctrine a certain current of believing Christianity flows through these popular writings and contrasts agreeably with both the more or less infidel literature of recent times and the shallow religious productions of an earlier date.

The mediæval language, feelings and world of thought, all so instinct with faith and piety, find a splendid exponent in Luther as soon as, putting controversy aside, he seeks to seize the hearts of the people; such passages even make the reader ask whether the author can really be one and the same with the writer who elsewhere fulminates with such revolting malice against the Church of the past. Then, again, the plentiful quotations from the Bible in which he was so much at home, impart a devout tone to what he says without, however, in the least rendering it insipid or unnatural. From the latter fault he was preserved by a certain soberness of outlook, by his native realistic coarseness and his general tendency to be rude rather than sentimental.

Nor would it by any means be right were Luther’s opponents to attribute the above favourable traits in his writings exclusively to the influence of the Catholic past. It is true that it is the latter which is mainly responsible for the elements of truth found in his writings, and also, not seldom, for the attractive and sympathetic way in which he presents his matter to the reader; but to deny that the author’s peculiar talent for speaking to the people and his rare gift of adapting himself to his German readers had also its share, would be to go too far. Luther, who hailed from among the lower class and had ever been in touch with it, knew the German character as well as any man (see vol. iii., p. 93 ff.). In his style he embodied to some extent the nation’s mode of thought and speech. Hence his success with the Germans, whom he drew by the strongest ties, viz. those of nationalism, into circles where the motherly warnings of the Church were no longer heard.

We are, however, unable to discern in his writings the mystical qualities which some of his admirers find everywhere. Echoes of the sayings of the olden mystics, such as we have had occasion to quote from his earlier works, obviously do not suffice to prove his own mystic gifts. Moreover, these echoes tend to become feebler as time goes on, and the nearer his literary labours draw to their close the less can they be considered to bear the character of true mystical productions. Certain leanings met with in Luther at the beginning, and even later, we have already had to characterise as the outcome of an untheological pseudo-mysticism.[1864]

In his Exposition of the Magnificat (1521), for instance, we meet with trains of thought expressed in words which by their beauty recall those of the mystics of old. One cannot read without being edified what he says at the commencement of this little work, of the love of God which makes “the heart overflow with joy,”[1865] or of the glories of Mary; of her, nothing greater can be said than that she was the Mother of God, “even had one as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, blades of grass in the field, stars in heaven, or grains of sand on the sea-shore.”[1866]—Akin to this is the touching conclusion of his little writing on the Our Father, where he pictures the soul as pouring forth its desires to God the Father.[1867] Such jewels are, however, not offered to his readers as frequently as his talent in this respect would have rendered desirable.

To what good account he put this gift in his earlier years is well seen even in his controversial “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen” (1520), where he is at pains to expound the sum of the Christian life, though “only for the plain man.” Our present subject invites us to return once more to this side of the writing.[1868]

Of works of charity Luther there speaks as follows: “The inward man is at one with God, is joyful and merry by reason of Christ Who has done so much for him, and all his joy is in wishing to serve God in return freely and out of pure love. In his flesh, however, he finds a will which is quite other and which wishes to serve the world and to seek what it pleases. But this, faith cannot bear, and it sets vigorously to work to check and restrain it. As St. Paul says, Rom. vii.[23]: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and ensnaring me in the law of sin.”[1869]

Later, coming to the works imposed upon man by self-restraint, he says: “So much of works in general, such as it suits a Christian to practise against his own flesh. Now we have to speak of works which he does for other men. For on this earth man does not live by himself but among other folk. Hence he cannot live without performing works for them, for he has to speak and have dealings with them.... Look how plainly Paul makes the Christian life to consist in works done for the good of our neighbour.... He instances Christ as our example and says [Phil. ii. 6-7]: ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal to God, and yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,’ and doing and suffering all things for our sakes alone. In the same way the Christian man, though he is free, ought willingly to become a slave in his neighbour’s service, and treat him as God through Christ has treated us, and all this, too, without reward; to seek nothing thereby but to be well-pleasing to God, and to think thus: See, God in and through Christ has bestowed on me, unworthy and guilty wretch that I am, without any merit, and solely out of pure mercy, an abundance of riches, piety and salvation.... Hence, in my turn, I will readily, gladly and without reward do what is well-pleasing to such a Father Who has heaped upon me His unspeakable riches, and be a Christ to my neighbour as Christ was to me; only what I see him to need and what is useful and profitable to him, will I do, now that, by my faith, I myself have all things abundantly in Christ. See, how joy and love of God spring from faith, and, how, from love comes a ready, willing, cheerful life of service towards our neighbour.”[1870]—“It is thus that God’s gifts must flow from the one to the other and become common to all, so that each one cares as much for his neighbour as he does for himself. They flow to us from Christ, Who, in His life, took us on Him as though He had been what we are. From us they should flow to those who need them.”[1871]

Though, intermingled with such excellent matter, we find ever-recurring allusions to his peculiar doctrine of justification by faith alone, and though he fails to see the true organic connection between good works and the life of faith and thus condemns to inanity all works not performed out of perfect charity, yet it cannot be gainsaid that certain aspects of neighbourly love are here admirably portrayed.

Later on we often miss this sympathetic tone, for it was blighted by his polemics. As for his aptitude for instructing the people he retained it, however, to the end.

In the Exposition of the Our Father, of which the dialogue of the soul with God forms a part, he lays down at the outset in striking, popular guise the need of prayer, the value of the simple Paternoster, the profit to be derived from weighing well its contents, and also the beauty of the virtue of humility.[1872] His explanation of the Hail Mary, for all its brevity, contains practical and valuable hints as to how God is to be honoured in all.[1873]

In a very useful booklet entitled “Einfeltige Weise zu beten”[1874] (1534), Luther assumes the garb of an instructor on prayer and attempts to show how the forms in common use, the Our Father, Ten Commandments and Creed, provide matter for prayer even for busy laymen, and how the latter, by meditating on each separate word or clause, may rise to perfect prayer. “When good thoughts press in upon us,” he says, for instance, explaining the latter practice, “then the other prayers may be neglected and all our attention given to such thoughts which should be listened to in silence and on no account be thwarted, for then the Holy Ghost Himself is preaching to us; one word of His sermon is far better than a thousand prayers of ours. And I, too,” he adds, “have often learnt more in one such prayer than I could from much reading and composing.”[1875]

In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,”[1876] exhorting all to pray for the public needs, he speaks alluringly and with great religious fervour. Urging his readers to pray for the divine assistance, he takes one by one, as was indeed his wont, the thoughts suggested by the Our Father.[1877] “Our comfort and defiance, our pride, our daring and our arrogance, our insistence, our victory and our life, our joy, our honour and our glory are seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. There, devil, just you touch a hair of His!” The power of his words is heightened by his references to the nearness of the Last Day, the advent of which was foreshadowed in the downfall of both Papal and Turkish power. He even declares that the certainty of being heard depended on the spiritual struggle being waged in defence of the Evangel against the popish “blasphemers, persecutors and God-forsaken children of the devil”; where these had their way and were fighting, there nothing was to be looked for save ruin; there God’s “angry hand was raised in vengeance against all the devils and Turks, against Mahmed, Pope, Meinz, Heinz and all the miscreants.”[1878] Hence, even in a tract intended as an exhortation to prayer and to promote a great work of Christian charity, quite other sentiments gain for the time the upper hand.

This brings us back to the remark we have frequently had to make when describing other writings of Luther’s meant for the common people.

All too often his exhortations are disfigured by unmeasured vituperation or uncalled-for controversy of the most bitter kind. In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,” referred to above, Luther is seen at his worst in the excursion he makes therein against the abuses—then indeed very bad—of the usurers, particularly because they had ventured to say that “Luther does not even know what usury is.”[1879] He, altogether forgetful of meekness, also attacks the ungrateful Evangelicals in a highly unseemly manner, because they refused to submit to the stern reproofs of their preachers: “Let them fare to the devil and die like pigs and dogs, without grace or sacrament, and be buried on the carrion-heap.... Those men who wish to go unreproved thereby admit that they are downright rogues.... They deserve to hear Mahmed, the Turk, the Pope and the devil and his mother rather than God. Amen, Amen, if they will have it so.”[1880] Of the Catholics he says in the same “Vermanunge,” that the foes of the Evangel among the Catholic princes, “traitors, murderers and incendiaries that they are,” knew full well that his was the “true Word of God,” yet, instead of accepting it, they would “much prefer to behave towards us like Turks, or were it possible, like very devils, not to speak of their being ready to serve, aid, counsel and abet the Turks”; they said, “If God in heaven won’t help us, then let us call in all the devils from hell.... This I know to be true.”[1881]

It was no mere passing fit of temper that induced him in his old age so to disfigure his exhortations. In another pious writing, the “Circular Letter to the Pastors,” sent around two years previous, and also dealing with the war against the Turks, he says: “The Papists do not pray and are so bloodthirsty that they cannot pray”; hence let us pray, he says; “but, when they start with their bloodthirsty designs against the Evangel, then all must fall upon them as upon a pack of mad dogs.”[1882] Such words scattered broadcast over Germany could not possibly serve to promote union or to strengthen the resistance to be offered to the danger looming from the East. They merely throw a lurid light on the chasm Luther cleft in the heart of the nation, and on the internal dissensions which were weakening the Empire and making it an object of ridicule to the Turkish unbelievers.

In the preface to his Church-Postils (1543), Luther exhorts the pastors to leave those, who “wish to be left unpunished,” to “die like dogs”; the rooks and ravens, jackdaws and wolves would sing the best vigils and dirges for the souls of such proud wiselings.[1883] He not only wishes them to fulminate against such men but also desires, that, in the sermons, “certain instances of the Papal tyranny under which we once groaned in misery be introduced.”[1884]

Such was his anger with his foes that Luther even goes so far as to say in his exposition of the Hail Mary, that the Papists “cursed” instead of blessed, the fruit of Mary’s womb.[1885]—In the tract “How to pray” “Peter Balbier” is warned to bear in mind the “idolatry of the Turk, the Pope and all false teachers”;[1886] nor is ridicule of the praying priestlings wanting;[1887] he then exhorts Peter in the most pious of language to imitate his example, viz. “to suck at the Paternoster like a baby, and to eat and drink it like a man,” “never wearying of it”; he was also “very fond of the Psalter,” turning “the whole as far as possible into a prayer,”[1888] and, when he had “grown cold and disgusted with saying prayers,” would take his “little Psalter and escape into his own room,” etc.[1889]—But even his homely exposition of the Our Father is not free from a polemical bias.[1890]

With the beautiful and useful thoughts contained in his preface to the Larger Catechism, to the annoyance of the thoughtful reader, he mingles abuse of the “lazy bellies and presumptuous saints” of his own party,[1891] to say nothing of the inevitable outbursts against Catholic practices. Here, too, the thought of the devil, by which he is ever obsessed, makes him represent Satan’s wiles as the best and most powerful incentive to the study of the Catechism.

Even his earlier Exposition of the Magnificat is spoilt by a controversial colouring,[1892] and, moreover, is overclouded by the circumstance that he wrote it at the very time when the menace of the Diet of Worms was at its worse. Looking out for a powerful protector, he dedicated his writing to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony, the future Elector, who had wished him luck in his crusade against the Papal Ban. Luther extols the Duke’s piety at the beginning of the work. But was he not anxious to make a good impression himself by his Exposition of the Magnificat? To impress his readers that he was a man enlightened by God and living in union with Him? We may notice how pathetically he depicts the righteous man (and we naturally think of him) submitting to be persecuted for the Word of God, and awaiting with heavenly resignation succour from on high, without in the least striving to protect himself. He who is persecuted, he writes, “must humble himself before God as unworthy that such great things should be done through him and commend everything to His mercy with prayer and supplication.”[1893]

Another motive which inspired the publication of his works of edification was, as he himself admits, to wrest the Catholic prayer-books from the people’s hands. It is true, he says, his intention is “simply and honestly” to supply the people with spiritual food. But he also alludes to the “manifold wretchedness arising out of confession and sin,” and the “unchristian stupidity found in the little prayers offered to God and His Saints,” which he is obliged to assail. Even where his peculiar doctrine makes no appearance in his instructions he is not oblivious of its interest, even though he assures us, seemingly with the utmost sincerity, that he was going to see whether, by his writings, “he could not do his very foes a service. For my object is ever to be helpful to all and harmful to none.”[1894] He saw well of what help the mere existence of pious books would prove to his party; the more pious and innocent they were, the more they would promote his cause and smooth the way for him. The simplicity of the dove thus openly flaunted, nevertheless contrasts unpleasantly with the wisdom of the serpent which is only too apparent.

As to what is lacking in Luther’s religious writings: Any reader familiar with the manuals of instruction and piety in use towards the close of the Middle Ages will at once perceive a great difference between the importance they attach to self-denial, self-conquest and the struggle against the evil inclinations of nature and that attached to them by Luther.

In the “Imitation of Christ,” for instance, the great stress laid on self-denial gives an effective spur to every inward virtue. In Luther, with his twin ideas of faith alone and the irresistible power of grace, this main feature of the religious warfare falls decidedly into the background. Is it a mere coincidence that in the Larger Catechism self-denial and penance are not mentioned among the means for preserving chastity?[1895] Chastity itself is there dealt with in a curiously grudging fashion. The so-called Evangelical Counsels, which fell from our Lord’s own lips and had been eagerly pursued in the past by those seeking to lead a life of perfection, are naturally altogether ignored by Luther. With him, too, the wholesome incentive to good provided by the hope of supernatural merit for heaven had also, owing to his theory, to be set aside. The appeals to the motive of holy fear which he makes are too rare and too powerless to be of much avail. He had clipped with a rude hand the two wings of the spiritual life, viz. fear and the hope of reward, which bear it upwards and without which man cannot rise above the things of sense.

In Luther’s works of edification, as pointed out above, we miss the school of virtue, the advance from one step of virtue and perfection to another, such as had grown up into a wise and recognised system, thanks to the experience of antiquity and the Middle Ages.[1896] With him everything begins with a rash breach with the past. Even the use made of the example of the Saints is painfully defective. An easy-going tendency hides the poverty of the aims and a shallow mediocrity lames the upward flight. Here, again, the fact that the author turns his back so rudely on the traditions of the earliest ages and the holy practices of his fathers, brings its own punishment. For a multitude of inspiring and perfectly legitimate acts of prayer and virtue in which the Christian heart had found strength and gladness are passed over by him in dead silence, or else scoffed at as mere “holiness-by-works.” While this is true of his practice, his theory, too, was wanting in that clear and solid justification and development which the theology of the older divines had enabled them to introduce into their teaching.

Lovers of Luther can, however, claim that in him two qualities were united which are rarely to be found combined, and possibly belong to no other popular religious writer of the age, viz. first, a wealth of ideas suggested by reminiscences, now of the Bible, now from the pages of human life; secondly, the writer’s wonderful imagination, which enables him to clothe all things in the best dress in order the more easily to win his way into the hearts of his readers.

In consequence of this his writings will always find approving friends, not only in Lutheran circles but also among those who for literary or historical reasons are interested in a form of literature bearing so individual a stamp, and know how to overlook their imperfections. The reasons, however, are sufficiently obvious why the Church by a general prohibition (though it does admit of exceptions) has set up a barrier against the study of any of Luther’s works by her children, and why she bids her faithful to seek spiritual food only in those books of instruction and edification which she sanctions.

The Catechism

The ignorance of the people in religious things, of which Luther was made aware during the Visitation in the Saxon Electorate in 1527, led him to compose a sort of Catechism, “which should be a short abstract and recapitulation of Holy Scripture.”[1897] He was desirous of providing in this way a manual for the “instruction of the children and the simple,” and more particularly of supplying fathers of families with an easy means “of questioning and catechising their children and dependents at least once a week (as was their duty), and seeing what they knew or had learnt of it.”[1898]

Thus, at the commencement of 1529, or possibly as early as 1528, he was at work, first, on the (Shorter) Catechism “for the rude country-folk,” as he writes to a friend,[1899] and also preparing mural tablets (“tabulæ”) which set out the matter “in the shortest and baldest way.”[1900] Of these tablets his pupil Rörer says, on Jan. 20, that some of them hung on his walls while the Catechism (“prædicatus pro rudibus et simplicibus”) was still in process of making.[1901] It was in this form that the “Shorter Catechism” first appeared, but, in the same year (1528) these tablets were collected into a booklet entitled the “Enchiridion.”[1902]

Luther was at the same time at work on a fuller German Catechism which was intended to supply the heads of families, and more particularly the preachers, with further matter for their instructions. This work, under the title of “Deudsch Catechismus,” was finished and printed in April, 1529,[1903] and in May appeared a Latin translation of the same. This was what was eventually termed the Larger Catechism.

In the preface to the Shorter Catechism Luther puts on the shoulders of the Catholic bishops the blame for the fact, that, the “common folk, particularly in the villages, knew nothing whatever of Christian doctrine.” He also admits, however, that, among the Evangelicals, there were “unfortunately many pastors who are quite unskilled and incapable of teaching.” Hence it came about that the people “knew neither the Our Father, the Creed nor the Ten Commandments,” and “lived like so many brute beasts and senseless swine.” “And how can it be otherwise,” he asks the pastor and preacher, “seeing that you snooze and hold your tongue?” He accordingly requires of the ministers, first, that, in their teaching, they should keep to one form of the “Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father and Sacrament,” etc., and not “alter a syllable”; and “further, that, when they had taught the text thoroughly, they should see that the meaning of it is also understood”; finally, the pastor was to take the Larger Catechism and study it and then “explain things still more fully to his flock” according to their needs and their power of comprehension.

In spite of all this he has no wish that the particular method and form of his Catechism should be made obligatory; here again, according to his principle, everything must be spontaneous and voluntary. “Choose whatever form you please and then stick to it for ever.”

Nevertheless whoever refuses to “learn by heart” the text selected is to be treated as a denier of Christ, “shall be allowed not a shred of Christian freedom, but simply be handed over to the Pope and his officers, nay, to the devil himself. Parents and masters are also to refuse them food and drink and to warn them that the sovereigns will drive such rude clowns out of the land,” etc. This agrees with a letter Luther wrote to Joseph Levin Metzsch on August 26, 1529, in which he says that those who despise the Catechism and the Evangel are to be driven to church by force, that they may at least learn the outward work of the Law from the preaching of the Ten Commandments.[1904]

Filled with anxiety for the future of his Church he warmly exhorts the pastors to provide for a constant supply of preachers and worthy officials. They were to tell the authorities and the parents, “of what a gruesome crime they were guilty, when they neglected to help to educate children as pastors, preachers, and writers, etc.... The sin now being committed in this respect by both parents and authorities is quite beyond words; this is one way the devil has of displaying his cruelty.” We see from this that Luther’s solicitude for the teaching of the Catechism had a practical motive beyond that lying on the surface. He wished to erect not only a bulwark but also a nursery for the Church to come; for this same reason, in his efforts about this time on behalf of the schools (see vol. vi., xxxv., 3), what he had in view was, that, with the help of the Bible and the Catechism, they should become seminaria ecclesiarum.

In the preface to the Larger Catechism of 1530 Luther lashes those among his preachers who turned up their noses at the Catechism.

Many, he says, despise “their office and this teaching, some because they are so very learned, others out of laziness and belly-love”; they will not buy or read such books; “they are, in fact, shameful gluttons and belly-servers, better fitted to look after the pigs and the hounds than to be pastors having the cure of souls.” To them he holds up his own example. He too was “a Doctor and preacher, nay, as learned and experienced as any of them,” and yet he read and recited every morning, and whenever he had time, “like a child, the Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father, Psalms, etc.”; he never ceased being a student of the Catechism. “Therefore I beg these lazy bellies or presumptuous saints, that, for God’s sake, they let themselves be persuaded, and open their eyes to see that they are not in reality so learned and such great Doctors as they imagine.”

The exhortations in this preface, to all the clergy to make use of and teach the Catechism diligently, contain much that is useful and to the point.

In other passages he nevertheless sees fit to emphasise what he says by false and odious reflections on the Papacy. “Our office is now quite other from what it was under the Pope; now it is serious and wholesome, and thus much more arduous and laborious and full of danger and temptation.”[1905] Before him “no Doctor on earth had known the whole of the Catechism, that is the Our Father, Ten Commandments and Creed, much less understood them and taught them as now, God be praised, they are taught and learnt even by little children. In support of this I appeal to all their books, those of the theologians as well as those of the lawyers. If even one article of the Catechism can be learnt aright from them, then I am willing to let myself be broken on the wheel or bled to death.”[1906]

In the plan of both the Larger and Smaller Catechism Luther keeps to the traditional threefold division, viz. the Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed and Our Father. To these he appends a fourth part on baptism and a fifth on the Supper, the only two sacraments he recognises. He also slipped in a short supplementary instruction on the new form of Confession before the chapter on the Supper.[1907] The Smaller Catechism was provided from the very first with morning and evening prayers, grace for meals and an eminently practical “Household Table of Texts,” consisting of appropriate verses for pastors, for their subordinates and pupils in general, for temporal authorities, for subjects, married people, parents, masters, children and also for the “young in general, for widows and for the parishes.”

The language, more particularly of the Shorter Catechism, is throughout a model of simplicity and clearness.

We may find an example of his brevity and concision at the end of the “Creed”; the passage will also serve to show how greatly his teaching differed from that of the Church. After the words: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting, Amen,” there follows in the Catechism the usual question: “What means this?” and the answer, with regard to the Church, is that the Holy Ghost “calls, gathers together, enlightens, hallows and holds the whole body of Christians on earth in Jesus Christ in one true faith; in which body of Christendom He free-handedly forgives me and all the faithful all our sins daily,” etc. The paragraph ends, as do all the articles on the Creed, in the usual form: “This is true.”

In spite of all peculiarity of doctrine in the Shorter Catechism all polemical attacks on the olden Church are carefully eschewed. In the Larger Catechism, on the contrary, they abound. Even under the First Commandment, speaking of the worship of God, the author alludes to what “hitherto we have in our blindness been in the habit of practising in Popery”; “the worst idolatry” had held sway, seeing that we sought “help, consolation and salvation in our own works.” In the explanation of the article on the “Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints” it is set forth at the outset, that, “in Popery,” “faith had been stuck under the bench,” “no one having acknowledged Christ as Lord.” “Formerly, before we came to hear [God’s Word] we were the devil’s own, knowing nothing of God or of Christ.”[1908]

On the other hand, several of Luther’s doctrines find no place whatever in either of the Catechisms. For instance, those, which, according to the testimony of Protestant scholars quoted above, necessarily lead to a “Christianity void of dogma” (above, p. 432 ff.). The people and the pastors learn nothing here of their right of private judgment with regard to the text of the Bible and the articles of faith. Nor is anything said of that view of original sin which constituted the very basis of the new system, viz. that it is destructive of every predisposition to what is good; nor of the enslaved will, which is ridden now by God, now by the devil; nor of the fact that man’s actions have only the value imputed to them by God; nor, finally, do we find anything of predestination to hell, of the “Hidden God” Who quashes the Will of the “Revealed God” that all men be saved, and Who, to manifest His “Justice,” gloats over the endless torment of the countless multitudes whom He infallibly predestined to suffer eternally.[1909] The reason for the suppression of these doctrines in catechisms intended for the general reader is patent. The dogmas they embody, in so far as they vary from the traditional, are too contradictory to form a solid theological structure. To what dangers would not the new doctrine have been exposed, and what would have been the bad impression on the reader, had mention been made in the Catechisms of such theories, even though, in reality, they formed the very backbone of the new theology?

Luther’s Catechisms were well received and were frequently reprinted.[1910] Many enactments of the secular rulers, particularly in the Saxon lands, insisted that his Shorter Catechism should be learnt by heart and his Larger Catechism be made the basis of the sermons.[1911]

Mathesius wrote: “If Dr. Luther during his career had done nothing more than introduce the two Catechisms into the homes, the schools and the pulpits, reviving prayers before and after meals and on rising and going to bed, even then the whole world could not sufficiently thank or repay him.”[1912]—“Luther’s booklet,” declares O. Albrecht, “became a practical guide to pious patriarchal discipline in the home, and the very foundation of the education of the people in those German lands which had come under the influence of his Reformation.... Even in the Latin schools his Parvus catechismus became, in the 16th century, one of the most widely disseminated handbooks.”[1913]

In the heyday of their triumph the Catechisms were incorporated in the Book of Concord, first in German in 1580 and then in Latin in 1584, and were thus bodily incorporated in the Creed of the Lutheran Evangelical Church. They were accepted “as the layman’s Bible in which all is comprised that is dealt with in Holy Scripture and which it is necessary for a Christian man to know.”[1914] Highly as Luther valued his Catechism,[1915] still he certainly had never intended it to be enforced as a rule of faith, for we have heard him express his readiness to sanction the use of any other short and concise form of instruction. (See above, p. 484.)

Luther had nevertheless taken great pains over his work.

He had been thinking of it long before he actually set to work on it. As early as 1526 he had spoken in his “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts” of the need of a “rude, homely, simple and good work on the Catechism” for the congregation of true Christians which he was planning; indeed, he had already dealt with certain portions of the Catechism in his “Kurcz Form der czehen Gepott” (1520), and in his “Betbüchlin” (1522). It was probably owing to his influence that Jonas and Agricola were entrusted with the drafting of a catechism for boys. While engaged on this work, in 1528, he, as a final preparation for it, preached three courses of sermons on the Catechism. These sermons were first published in 1894 by G. Buchwald in “Die Entstehung der Katechismen Luthers,” being taken from the notes by Rörer; Buchwald draws attention to the close connection existing between the sermons and the text of the Catechism.[1916]

So well did Luther promote the teaching of the elementary truths of religion, that, in a notice given from the pulpit on Nov. 29, 1528, he was able to speak of a rule according to which it was the custom at Wittenberg four times in the year to preach four sermons on the Catechism spread over a fortnight.[1917]

This custom lasted long and spread to other places.[1918] Bugenhagen, so it is said on reliable authority, always carried Luther’s Catechism with him.[1919] He declared, in 1542, that he had already preached about fifty times on the Catechism,[1920] and he seems to have organised and kept up the practice of the “catechism weeks” when pastor of Wittenberg; at any rate the rules he drew up subsequent to 1528 insist repeatedly on such sermons being preached on the Catechism.[1921]

Luther’s Catechism and Ecclesiastical Antiquity

In the passage of his “Deudsche Messe” where he speaks of his idea on the teaching of the Catechism, Luther says, that he knew no better way to give such instruction than “that in which it had been given from the earliest days of Christianity and until now, viz. under the three heads: The Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Our Father”; these three things contained all that was called for.[1922] Hence he himself was far from sharing the opinion of certain later Protestants, viz. that, in the selection and methodical treatment of these three points he had struck out an entirely new line. He simply adapted the existing form of instruction to his new doctrines, which he cast into a shape suitable for popular consumption.

The Decalogue, together with Confession with which it naturally goes hand in hand, had assumed, ever since the 13th century, an ever-growing importance in the instructions intended for the people. In esteeming, as he did, the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, Luther was simply following in the footsteps of the 14th and 15th century. Johann Wolff, the Frankfurt preacher, who is described on his tombstone as “Doctor decem præceptorum,” as his Handbook for Confession of 1478 shows, was quite indefatigable in his propaganda on behalf of the use of the Decalogue in confession and in popular instructions.[1923]

We must here call attention, above all, to the instruction habitually given in the home by parents and god-parents before Luther’s day; this “consisted chiefly in teaching the Creed and the Our Father, two points belonging to the oldest catechetical formularies of the ancient Church.”[1924] Luther himself had learnt these in the Latin school with the rest contained in the hornbooks, and on them in turn he based his own Catechism.[1925]

Melanchthon speaks, in 1528, of the “Children’s manual containing the Alphabet, the Our Father, the Creed and other prayers,”[1926] as the first school primer which had come down from the past.

Even Mathesius admits that, “parents and schoolmasters taught their children the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Our Father, as I in my childhood learnt them at school and often repeated them with the other children, as was the custom in the olden schools”; he adds, however, that the “tiresome devil” had smuggled additions into the Catholic “A.B.C. book” and corrupted it with Popish doctrine, whereby servitors are “turned” towards the Mass; the devil “had also introduced into the school primer the idolatrous ‘Salve Regina’ which detracted from the honour due to Jesus Christ, our one Mediator and Intercessor.”[1927]

In the 15th and 16th century priests were often urged to recite from the pulpit every Sunday the Creed and Our Father, sometimes also the Hail Mary, and the Decalogue was not unfrequently added.[1928] A work by the Basle parish-priest, Johann Surgant, which appeared in 1502 and was many times republished, deals exclusively with the expounding of the above points to the people, supplies each with explanatory notes, and requires, in accordance with the existing rules, that the priests should carefully instruct the people in them (“diligenter informent”). It was an old custom to preach on the Catechism during Lent as Luther also had done in his younger days, taking for his subject the Ten Commandments and the Our Father; this custom, too, had probably been handed down from the time, when, during the weeks preceding the great day for baptism, viz. Holy Saturday, the catechumens were instructed in the Creed and the Our Father (“traditio symboli et orationis dominicæ”).

The courses of sermons preached four times a year at Wittenberg also had their analogy in the Church’s past. As early as 1281, a synod meeting in London under Archbishop Peckham of Canterbury had required, in the 10th Canon, that the parish-priest should rehearse every three months the principal doctrines of the Christian faith and morals simply and concisely.

Even in his Confession or examination before Communion of 1523[1929] Luther had merely revived, under another form, an institution of the Mediæval Church, for, in the Confession before Communion, it had been customary to recite the principal articles of Christian faith.[1930]

As to what Luther says, viz. that the instruction given to the people had formerly borne only on the three points named above, and that of the two sacraments treated of in his Catechism “sad to say nothing had hitherto been taught,”[1931] it is only necessary to say that numerous prayer-books and manuals on confession dating from the close of the Middle Ages contain abundant matter both on the sacraments and on other things touching doctrine.[1932]

Before Luther’s day the term Catechism had not been taken to mean the book itself, but the subject-matter which was taught by word of mouth and was confined to the points indicated above. It was in this sense that he said, for instance in the Table-Talk: “The Catechism must remain and be supreme in the Christian Church.”[1933] It was he and Melanchthon[1934] who initiated the custom of applying the term not only to the contents of the volume but also to the volume itself.[1935] Hence, it is verbally true, that, before Luther’s day, there existed no “Catechism”; the religious writings dealing with the subject bore other and different titles. Nor was the arrangement of question and answer regarded as essential to the body of instructions which went under the term of Catechism, a circumstance which also seemed to favour the assertion, that, before Luther’s day, no such thing was known. But if question and answer be essential, then, even his own Larger Catechism could not rightly have borne the title, seeing that it has not this form. Nevertheless the system of question and answer had always been highly prized and had sometimes been made use of on the model of the questions put at baptism.

Amongst the older writings that most nearly approach the ideal of the Catholic Catechism, deserve to be mentioned two books then widely known which are constantly making their appearance in the thirty years before Luther’s day, viz. the “Fundamentum æternæ felicitatis” and the “Discipulus de eruditione Christi—fidelium compendiosus,” the second of which also contains questions and objections. Both go beyond the three main points given above and include a popular summary, intended for the use of the clergy, of the seven sacraments, the nine sins, the works of mercy and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.[1936] It was also the usual thing for books on the Decalogue to include other points of importance, and thus to deal with almost the whole of the matter treated of in the Catechism. In fact, as Zezschwitz says, there was rather an “over-abundance of material in the domain of catechetics” than any dearth.

Finally, the use of the so-called tables, i.e. sheets printed only on one side and each giving a different point of the Catechism, which, as we saw, was the form under which Luther’s Shorter Catechism first appeared (above, p. 483), was nothing new either. “Luther followed in this respect a custom then widespread,”[1937] as is shown by the studies of Geffcken, Cohrs and Falk (1908); Falk, in particular, carefully sought out the Catholic tablets of the kind still in existence. So far only one example of Luther’s printed tablets, and that in Low German, has been brought to light.[1938]

Hence the statement that Luther’s Catechism was his own “creation” calls for considerable revision.

The directness and concision of his style must, however, always commend themselves to the reader, even to those who regret that in this work he tampered with the doctrines of the olden Church. But, as regards the division, the work rests on a foundation hallowed by centuries of ecclesiastical usage. This even Protestants have now begun to see.

According to F. Cohrs, even in Luther’s “Kurcz Form,” we see “Evangelical catechetics springing up on the soil of the popular religious literature of the Middle Ages.”[1939]

Otto Albrecht, like others, admits, that, in his appreciation of the three chief points of instruction, and more particularly of the Decalogue, Luther “is in agreement with the similar efforts made in the 14th and 15th century.” It was according to him “only natural” that Luther, in his “Kurcz Form” of 1520 and again in his “Deudsche Messe” of 1526, should protest, that, “in these three points, he was safeguarding the heirloom of the Church.” In this instance his critical attitude towards the past comes out only in his exclusion of the Hail Mary, in his rearrangement of the three parts, and, of course, above all, in the new meaning he gives to them. Moreover, according to Albrecht, Luther’s gradual enlargement of his “Betbüchlin” shows that the latter was but an “Evangelical version of the mediæval prayer and confession handbooks, which themselves, in turn, had led up to the Catechisms of the 16th century.”[1940]

Such a view also fits in with Luther’s own words far better than did the exaggerations formerly current. He says, for instance, in 1532, in his “Brieff an die zu Franckfort am Meyn”: “This we have received even from the first beginnings of Christianity. For there we see that the Creed, the Our Father and the Ten Commandments were summarised as a short form of doctrine for the young and the simple, and were, even from the very first, termed the Catechism.”[1941] Even in the original preface to the Larger Catechism he had declared that, “for the sake of the common people he was keeping to the three points which have ever been the rule in Christendom in ages past.”[1942]

3. The German Bible

Already at the Wartburg Luther had begun the great work of substituting for the existing vernacular translations of Holy Scripture one written in good German and based on the original languages of the books of the Bible.

The idea seems to have dawned on him during his enforced rest at the Wartburg, when, as he tells a friend, he passed his time reading the Bible in Greek and Hebrew and in studying these two languages.[1943] Just then he was entirely under the sway of those new views of his which prompted him to set up the Bible in the stead of all ecclesiastical authority. Melanchthon, too, so it would appear, had also some share in his resolution.

The Work of Translation and its Conclusion

In his solitude Luther first broached the New Testament, first because its contents more nearly touched the controversy in which he was engaged, and, secondly, because the New Testament could be translated more easily without learned assistance. When first announcing his plan, on Dec. 18, 1521, he mentions, that, “our people are asking for it.”[1944] “I shall put the Bible into German,” so he tells his Wittenberg colleague, Canon Nicholas Amsdorf, on Jan. 13, 1522, “though in so doing I am taking upon myself a burden beyond my strength. Now I see what translating means, and, why, so far, no one who undertook it ever put his name to it. As for the Old Testament I cannot touch it unless you are here and give me your help. Could I find a hiding-place with one of you, I would come at once so as to start the work of translation from the outset with your assistance. The result ought to be a translation worthy of being read by all Christians. I hope we shall give our German folk a better one than that which the Latins have. It is a great and glorious work at which we all should toil, for it is a public matter and is meant to serve the common weal. Tell me what hopes you have of it.”[1945]

In barely three months, with the aid of the few helpers he was able to secure in his Patmos, he had finished the first rough draft of the New Testament, which he took with him on leaving the Wartburg for revision among his friends at Wittenberg. “Philip and I,” so he wrote from Wittenberg, on March 30, 1522, to Spalatin, who was then Court preacher, “have now begun to furbish the translation of the New Testament; it will, please God, turn out a fine work. We shall need your help too, here and there, for the choice of words; hence get ready. But send us simple words, not the language of the men-at-arms or of the Court; the translation must, above all, be a homely one. May I ask you to send me straightaway the [German] names and the colours of the precious stones mentioned in Apocalypse xxi., or better still the stones themselves, if you can get hold of them at Court or elsewhere.”[1946] Luther finally received specimens of the stones through the good offices of Cranach. In order the better to understand certain texts, he also wrote to Spalatin, Mutian and Dr. George Sturz on the subject of ancient coinage.[1947] He also incidentally consulted the Court preacher as to the exact German translation of the names of various wild animals with which the latter would probably be acquainted owing to the hunts indulged in by the Court in that neighbourhood.[1948]

The printing of the New Testament was begun at Wittenberg by Melchior Lotther in the first days of May. Proofsheets were sent to Spalatin and Duke Johann of Saxony. From the beginning of July three printing presses are said to have run off daily 10,000 “chartæ,” i.e. 5000 folio sheets, so as to produce an edition of 3000 copies. On Sep. 21, 1522, the New Testament appeared with a frontispiece and a number of woodcuts by Lucas Cranach; the title-page bore the words: “Das Newe Testament Deutzsch. Vuittemberg.” Neither year nor printer’s name were given, nor even the name of the translator, probably in order not to prejudice the sale of the book in those regions where Luther stood in bad odour. Luther received no fee for the work any more than for his other writings. As the first edition was at once sold out a new and amended one was published in Dec.; the two editions afterwards became known as the September and December Bibles. Editions still further amended were published at Wittenberg in 1526 and 1530. Altogether some sixteen editions of the New Testament were printed in this town before 1557, while at the same time more than fifty reprints saw the light in Germany, for instance, fourteen at Augsburg, thirteen at Strasburg and twelve at Basle.

While still busy on the New Testament Luther set to work on the Old, this time with the regular and expert assistance of Melanchthon and Matthæus Aurogallus, the Wittenberg Professor of Hebrew. Owing to the difficulty of the work and the constant hindrances encountered by the author, the work did not appear all at once, but only piecemeal. As early as 1523 the Books of the Pentateuch were published at Augsburg and Basle in two successive editions, four times reprinted in the same year. The historical books from Josue to Esther followed in 1524. The remainder, comprehensively described as the “Prophets,” followed in separate parts, Job, the Psalms and the “Books of Solomon” in 1524, and the Prophets, properly so-called, only at longer intervals.[1949]

The difficulties of the work and the unwearied pains taken by the compiler are frequently apparent in Luther’s letters to his friends.

He writes, for instance, to Spalatin: “Job gives us much trouble owing to the exceptional grandeur of his style; he seems as reluctant to submit to our translation as to the consolations of his friends; he refuses to march and wants to remain for ever seated on his dunghill; it almost seems as though the writer of the book had wished to make a translation impossible. For this reason the printing of the third part of the Bible [i.e. of the Old Testament] proceeds but slowly.”[1950]—Later, in the preface to the Book of Job, he said: “In our work on ‘Hiob,’ we, Master Philip, Aurogallus and I, were sometimes barely able to get through three lines in four days. But now, my friend, that it is translated into German everyone can read it and master it and run his eyes over three or four pages without meeting a single obstacle, nor does he perceive what hindrances and stumbling-blocks lay in the path he now glides along as easily as down a greasy pole; to us, however, it cost much toil and sweat to remove all the hindrances and stumbling-blocks.”[1951]

He writes to his friend Wenceslaus Link of his difficulties with the prophet Isaias on which, with Melanchthon,[1952] he was hard at work in June, 1528: “We are now sweating at the translation of the prophets. Good God, what a great and arduous task it is to cram the Hebrew writers into a German mould! They absolutely refuse to submit to the barbarism of the German tongue. It is as though a nightingale were being forced to exchange its sweet melodies for the call of the cuckoo.”[1953]

With particular care did Luther devote himself to polishing up each new edition of the Psalms; it is easy to see his efforts, not merely to render the words accurately, but also to breathe into his translation some of the fervour and poetic feeling of the sacred text.

As to the prophets; with the exception of Isaias, he set to work on them only in 1530, beginning with Ezechiel during his stay at the Coburg. In Feb., 1532, he had finished the prophets, which appeared in a volume apart. He was now at last able to set to work on what he called the “Apocrypha”; regarding them as popular tales his translation of them was very free. Among these he included Judith, the Book of Wisdom, Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the first and second Book of the Machabees, portions of Esther, etc. They found a place at the end of his Old Testament.

At the commencement of 1534 his Bible, which was now finished, was published for the first time as a complete work under the title: “Biblia, das ist die gantze Heilige Schrift Deudsch,” with his name and that of the printer, Hans Luft (Lufft). The Old, like the New Testament, was illustrated by Lucas Cranach, the subjects having been selected and distributed by Luther himself. The Old Testament was also furnished by Luther with marginal glosses in the form of short notes explanatory of the text, or giving his own commentary on it. Prefaces were prefixed to each division. A new edition of the Old Testament was ready as early as 1535.

New reprints of the whole Bible or of portions of it were constantly making their appearance, those appearing at Wittenberg always embodying the author’s latest emendations. From 1530-40 the latest bibliographer of Luther’s Bible enumerates thirty-four Wittenberg editions and seventy-two reprints in other parts of Germany; from 1541-46 there were eighteen Wittenberg editions and twenty-six similar reprints.[1954] According to a fairly reliable authority no less than 100,000 complete Bibles left Lotther’s press at Wittenberg between 1534 and 1584.[1955] The same bibliographer describes in the Weimar edition eighty-four original editions and 253 reprints as having appeared during Luther’s lifetime. Since each edition may be reckoned to have comprised from one to five thousand copies, one is almost justified in saying that Germany was flooded with the new work or portions of it. Half the South-German printers found a living in printing Bibles. In this respect the history of Luther’s works supplies the best data for the history of the printing and bookselling trade in that age.

It is true, no doubt, that many bought Bibles, because, among Protestants, it was considered the right thing for every man of means to have his Family-Bible. In the case of many alienated from the practices of the Church, the possession and the reading of the Bible constituted, as a Protestant recently put it, a sort of “opus operatum,” yet, according to the same writer, “the contradiction between the Bible and the moral behaviour” of some of its most zealous readers “cannot in many instances be questioned.”[1956] Others, however, no doubt provided themselves with the new Bible from really religious motives and interests, and refreshed and fortified themselves with its sublime and edifying eloquence. We may assume this to have been the effect of Luther’s Bible in the case of the simple folk who had been led unconsciously into Lutheranism, or had grown up in it, and who owed their acquaintance with the work to its use in public worship, though they themselves may have been unable to read, or, maybe, not rich enough to purchase a Bible of their own.[1957]

His success encouraged Luther, diligently to revise his work. So far, not a single edition had appeared without some alterations, and, as we see from certain recently discovered data, he again went through the Psalter in 1531, “with great pains and labour,” and also set about revising the whole of his Bible subsequent to Jan. 24, 1534—being assisted in both these undertakings by Melanchthon and Cruciger. Nevertheless another revision of the Bible on a large scale was begun in 1539, as we have fully learnt only in our own day from two witnesses and from the notes in Luther’s own private copy.

One of the witnesses is George Rörer, the Wittenberg deacon who corrected the Bible proofs, and who declares: “In 1539 they went through the Bible once more, from the beginning even to the Apocrypha [i.e. the Old Testament], and gave a clearer German rendering to certain words and phrases, as may be seen from the book with the sermons [i.e. the notes] delivered by this same man in 1541-2.”[1958]

The other witness is Mathesius, who had been a guest at Luther’s table in the spring of 1540 and whose detailed account was already generally known, though, owing to the fresh data discovered, it now appears in a stronger light. “When first the whole German Bible had appeared and temptations had improved it day by day, the Doctor once more gathered the Holy Books, and, with great earnestness, diligence and prayer, went through them again; and ... D. Luther formed a sort of Sanhedrin of his own, composed of the best men then to be had, who met for several hours once a week before supper in the Doctor’s monastery, namely, D. Johann Bugenhagen, D. Justus Jonas, D. Cruciger, Master Philip, Matthæus Aurogallus and also M. George Rörer, the proof-reader. Doctors and learned men from outside frequently took part in this sublime work, for instance, Dr. Bernard Ziegler [Professor of Hebrew at Leipzig], D. Forstemius [Professor at Tübingen, who in 1540 became Provost of Nuremberg].... The Doctor, having first gone through the Bible already published, ... came into the consistory with his old Latin and new German Bibles, always bringing also the Hebrew text along with him. Mr. Philip brought with him the Greek text, and Dr. Cruciger both the Chaldean and the Hebrew Bible. The professors had also their Rabbinic books with them. D. Pommer had also a Latin copy before him with which he was very well acquainted. Each one had prepared beforehand the text to be discussed and had consulted the commentators, Greek, Latin and Jewish. Then the President propounded a text and listened to what each one in turn had to say on the peculiarity of the language or on the commentaries of the ancient doctors. Beautiful and instructive things are said to have been said during this work, some of which M. George [Rörer] noted down, which were afterwards printed as short glosses and notes in the margin of the text.”[1959]

At the meetings the minutes were taken by Rörer, a capable amanuensis. What has been preserved of them gives us a glimpse into the workshop, where, from 1539 to 1541, the revision of the Bible undertaken by Luther was carried out. Of Rörer’s minutes those are still extant which record the conferences on the revision of the translation of the Psalms, and also a considerable portion of those on the work of 1539 on the Old Testament of which Mathesius speaks.[1960]

The account, as is so often the case with the Table-Talk, is written in a mixture of Latin and German; it is also distinguished by the same spontaneity and absence of constraint. It records discussions on all the books of the Old Testament saving Chronicles, Esdras and the “Apocrypha.” We have, in all, notes of meetings held on thirty-two various dates. Very often the sessions were broken owing to the members being otherwise engaged, or absent on journeys. The speakers mentioned by name, Luther in particular, often give their views on the sense of the original or on its German rendering. As a rule Luther first submits his proposals or difficulties and then listens to the views of the rest. At times interesting side-lights are thrown on contemporary history, and we also meet some noteworthy obiter dicta.

On Genesis xii. 11 ff. Melanchthon, alluding to Abraham’s lie in Egypt when he declared his wife to be his sister, says: “I think he did this rather out of greatness than out of weakness of faith.” Luther, who elsewhere does not blame Abraham for this[1961] and also sees its reason in the greatness of his faith,[1962] here nevertheless disagrees with Melanchthon and says, “I prefer to regard it as weakness, for, we are all of us in the same hospital.”

Regarding the building of Solomon’s Temple (3 Kings vi.), he says: “We shall have much trouble over this horrid building. I should like to know where the seventy or eighty thousand carpenters with their axes came from. Did the whole land ever hold so many inhabitants? It is a queer business. Maybe the Jews corrupted the text. They cannot have had any carts but must have carried everything. I wish I had done with the book. I am a very unwilling builder at Solomon’s Temple.... It was finished about Pentecost. It must have been very lofty, some hundred cubits in height; our tower here is not much over sixty cubits.”

Now and then Luther brings the words of the Bible into relation with his own experiences. This he does especially in the minutes of the meetings held for the revision of the Psalter, which, of course, lends itself more easily to such application. In one passage (Ps. xviii. [xvii.] 15) he says, referring to his “combats”: “At the Coburg I saw my devils flying over the forest.” When discussing Ps. lxxiv. (lxxiii.) he lets fall the words: “I will send this as a farewell to my Papists and hope they will howl Amen to it, if God so will. Amen.” Of Ps. ciii. (cii.) he remarks: “I recite this Psalm daily when I am merry; it is a fine, cheerful Psalm for a poor soul.” Of Isaias xi. he says, extolling the prophet: “No prophet speaks so grandly as ‘Jesaia,’” and, on 1 Kings iii., again having a fling at the Papists: “Things went on pretty much the same as they do in Popery; nobody studied and the Bible was thrust aside.”

Only excerpts of the records of these meetings have so far appeared in print. They are, however, to be published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.[1963]

Besides the minutes, a small copy of both Testaments with notes which Luther made use of in his revision has been discovered at Jena. It is an edition printed in 1538-9, or possibly in 1540, then the most recent edition. The notes show a great many alterations in the text, chiefly such as had been agreed upon at the meetings, in Genesis, for instance, no less than two hundred. The entries, so far as they represent the result of the conferences, constitute the link between Rörer’s minutes and the new edition subsequently published. The alterations in the latter seem to be taken, sometimes from the minutes, sometimes from Luther’s copy. “The Jena Old Testament,” says O. Reichert, is “a document that exemplifies Luther’s way of working; it proves that he felt he had never done enough for his best work, that he was always busy at it and was indefatigable in his efforts to produce a German Bible from the original text.”[1964]

The outcome of the work of revision was a great improvement in the Wittenberg Bible of 1540 and 1541 printed by Hans Lufft. Another edition, dating from 1542, embodied in the main most of the new emendations. The edition most highly prized is, however, the last that appeared during Luther’s lifetime, viz. that of 1545, which also contains new corrections. It has been called the “editio typica” of Luther’s Bible, though, possibly, that of 1546, with new alterations by Rörer, to which Luther is supposed to have given his approval, should be regarded as such.

The detailed account of this revision is not the only witness we have to the care and pains Luther bestowed on the work, for we have also the recently discovered manuscript copy of his translation, which Luther sent to the printers. The latter consists of portions of the Old Testament written with his own hand: Part of the Book of Judges, then Ruth, Kings, Paralipomena, Esdras, Nehemias and Esther, also Job, the Psalter, Proverbs, the Preacher and the Canticle of Canticles. They were published by the Magdeburg pastor, E. Thiele, in the Weimar edition from two MSS. at Zerbst and Berlin.[1965] Here we see how assiduously Luther corrects and deletes, how frequently he wrestles, so to speak, after the correct expression and cannot at times satisfy himself.[1966] Luther’s manuscript copy of the New Testament has not so far been discovered.

In consequence of the above publications the examination into the origin of the text of Luther’s Bible and into the principles which determined its compilation enters upon a new phase. In the same way the significance of the text for the history of the German language stands out more clearly because such discoveries bear the strongest testimony to Luther’s untiring endeavours to adapt himself to the true German mode of expression, to his dexterity in finding synonyms and to his skill in construing.

On the Language and the Learning Displayed in Luther’s Bible

The excellence of Luther’s translation of the Bible from the point of view of its German is unquestionable.

For, what the author above all aimed at, viz. a popular rendering of the text which should harmonise with the peculiarities of the German language, that he certainly achieved. Through his Bible, too, owing to its general use throughout so large a portion of the nation, he exerted a greater influence on the upbuilding of the German tongue than by all his other vernacular works.

In his other writings, in which he was ever striving to improve his mode of speech, we may often find real models of good German, which, consciously or not, had a widespread influence on the language. In the case of his Bible, however, this was far more noticeable, for not only was his language there more polished, but the fact of the text being so frequently committed to memory, quoted from the pulpit and surrounded by that halo which befits the Word of God, helped to extend its sway.

Not only did he take infinite pains to translate aright such phrases as ring unfamiliar to Western ears, but he was also assisted by his happy gift of observation and his knack of catching the true idiom. His habit of noting the words that fell from the lips of the populace, or, as he says, of “looking into the jaw of the man in the street,”[1967] was of the utmost service to him in his choice and use of terms. “No German talks like that,” “that is not put ‘germanice,’” “the German tongue won’t stand that,” and similar utterances, frequently recur in the minutes of the conferences when he is finding fault with the renderings proposed by others or even with his own earlier ones.

It was fortunate for him, that, as his medium of intercourse, he chose to use a kind of German, not indeed unknown before, but, which, with his rare gifts, he exploited with greater independence and vigour. Wittenberg was favourably situated from the geographical point of view, and the students who flocked thither from every part of Germany were ever bringing Luther fresh elements, thus enabling him to select among the various dialects what was common to all. The short journeys he made and his correspondence with so many people in every part of Germany were also of assistance to him.

“I have,” Luther says himself, “no particular, special German language of my own, but I use the common German language so that both the Upper and the Lower Lands may understand me. I write according to the speech of the Saxon Chancery which is used by all the princes and kings of Germany. All the Imperial Cities and Royal Courts in writing make use of the language of the Saxon Chancery and of our sovereign; hence this is the kind of German most widely spoken. The Emperor Maximilian, the Elector Frederick and the Duke of Saxony, etc., have fused all the different modes of German speech in the whole Roman Empire into a uniform language.”[1968] Hence, on his own admission, the language was not new. “The language of Upper Germany,” he says, “is not the real German; it is broad and uncouth and sounds harsh. But the Saxon tongue flows quietly and easily.”[1969]

When we try to determine in detail the language of which Luther made use, and how much he actually did to further its development, we are met by great difficulties. German philologists have not yet been able thoroughly to explore this domain, because so little is known of the German prints of the 15th century, of the manuscripts and the various groups of writers.[1970] Protestant theologians have often contented themselves with a few quotations from certain German philologists and historians, which exaggerate the case in Luther’s favour.[1971] Of such exaggerations Protestant scholars had been guilty even in the 16th century;[1972] for instance, the German preacher and grammarian, Johann Clajus, says, in 1578: “As the Holy Ghost spoke pure Hebrew through Moses and Greek through the Apostles, so He spoke pure German through His chosen instrument Martin Luther. It would not otherwise have been possible for a man to speak so accurately.”[1973]

In answer to the question, “What is the task imposed upon learned research by Luther’s Bible?” Risch, an authority on this subject, remarks: “The historical connection of the language used by Luther in his Bible with the German language of yore has still to be brought to light”; the studies undertaken so far have dealt too exclusively with one particular side of the question, viz. with the vowel sounds used by Luther and by his predecessors; too much stress has also been laid on the Middle-High German diphthongs (î, û, ìu[ü], becoming ei, au, eu).[1974] Luther’s relations with the past in the matter of the construction of sentences and arrangement of words, and more particularly in his vocabulary and the meaning he gives to his words, have not been set forth scientifically enough, though abundant material for so doing is to be found in Grimm’s German dictionary, in Hermann Paul’s and elsewhere.

Then again, as Paul Pietsch points out in the introduction to the 1st volume of Luther’s Bible in the Weimar series, we have not been sure hitherto even of the exact text of Luther’s translation. Owing to the divergencies in the text it was “not possible, with the help of the various editions scattered throughout the world, to arrive at any final opinion concerning the language employed in the Bible or the alterations it underwent.” Hence, only on the completion of the Weimar series shall we be able to form “an adequate idea of the position Luther’s translation holds in the history of New High German.”[1975]

Finally, there is still some doubt as to what Luther actually meant by his statement concerning the German of the Chanceries of Saxony, the Empire and the Imperial Cities being the model on which his own language was based, and as to how far he was speaking the truth. We must in all probability go much further back than the time of the Emperor Maximilian of whom Luther speaks, viz. to the Chancery of the Luxemburg kings of Bohemia, for it was the latter who established, about the middle of the 14th century, a sort of New High German which later on spread to Silesia, to Upper and Lower Lusatia, and, then, thanks to the Emperor Frederick III, to the Chancery of the Hapsburgs and to those of the Saxon Electorate, Hesse and Mayence. In those early days the new language was a mixture of the dialects of Upper and Central Germany, of those of Austria and of Meissen.[1976]

Chancery German, however, restricted as it was by its very nature within certain well-defined limits and hampered by the stiffness of the Court, was not likely to prove of much service to Luther, who sought a language which should be understood by the people and be full of strength and variety. Hence we are driven to surmise that it was rather in the homes of the people that he sought his language, turning to good account his gift for coining what he needed from the various German dialects.

As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E. Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the conclusions he has reached and which he hopes to set forth at greater length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains, however, to be seen.

The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,” but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial, Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate under Frederick the Wise.[1977] From this language, “into which he infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.”[1978] Nevertheless we must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our nation could lay claim to a common language of its own—our Modern High German as written—a long time had still to elapse.[1979]

The language used by Luther in his Bible was made still more widely known owing to the work being at once reprinted even where other dialects prevailed, though as a rule some alterations were made to bring it into line with the idiom in use; at times the printers did no more than append a short vocabulary explaining such Saxon phrases as might be strange to the reader. In this way the new Bible, the language of which was so admirably suited to become a common one, penetrated everywhere, even into out of the way districts where the most divergent dialects obtained.[1980]

Its influence was all the more important now that small principalities were springing up at the expense of the unity of Germany and threatened the language with further disintegration. The Lutherans were the first to perceive and work against this danger, though the Catholics were by no means unmindful of it too. Catholics, too, sought to take advantage of the translation, and, in some cases, even went too far in this. Luther once declares in his usual vein: “Our opponents read it more than do our own people”;[1981] he also mentions that Duke George had said: “Let the monk finish translating the Bible into German and then get himself gone.”[1982]

What in the case of Protestants favoured the influence Luther’s Bible exerted on the language, was, on the one hand the profound interest aroused in the reader by his inspiring pen, and, on the other, its appearance at a time when, though the art of printing had been invented, the whole world, and more particularly Germany, judged from a literary, theological standpoint, was still lying to a large extent fallow and was thus more readily dominated by such a work as his, and that not merely as regards the matter but also as regards the style. Men of learning, owing to humanistic influences, wrote almost exclusively in Latin. The use of the German language for theological and religious subjects, save in sermons and popular writings, was something unusual; in fact, such a thing was rather discountenanced owing largely to the publication of German works which had made a wrong use of Scripture.

In Lutheranism the New High German of the Bible found its way not only into educated, ecclesiastical circles but also to the common folk, into whose ears the preachers assiduously dinned countless favourite texts in their new form; it also became familiar to the teachers and children in the schools. No more powerful lever for the furtherance of New High German could have been found. A century after, New High German had become the language of the churches and schools in the regions subject to Luther’s influence, whilst the South German and Low German dialects had largely lost their hold.

When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which, on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an influence on the written and spoken language.”[1983]

Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings. We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German tongue.”[1984]

“Protestants,” says Pastor Risch, “have hitherto been disposed to undervalue the literary use made of the German language before Luther’s day, particularly in the religious domain, and to exaggerate Luther’s importance in the history of the tongue. Only in so far as he succeeded in seizing upon and bringing out all the forces and possibilities latent in the language, was it possible for his work to be truly creative and epoch-making. To catch the idiom of the people, not to force a new language upon it with his German Bible, was, on his own admission, Luther’s aim. The German language prepared the way for Luther to a greater extent than at first sight appears.”[1985]

Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.

First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that the German language suffered.

We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on his work attention had been called to the original text; indeed, as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther, however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new philological paths with a German version.

In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of others.

The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.

Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work. He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to deceive.”[1986]

“No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible—not that I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself—is so good that it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able to read without difficulty.”[1987] Reducing this eulogy to its proper proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist, but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or difficult.

Yet such a system of translation can only within certain limits be regarded as the right one. As to whether Luther always kept within these limits, and as to how we are to regard the use he made of this freedom in particular instances, is a point on which even the greatest admirers of the German Bible disagree. Pastor Risch, the expert repeatedly referred to above, remarks pessimistically: “Scarcely any of those who have written on Luther’s method of translating have gone beyond mere generalities. They are satisfied with dishing up again more or less skilfully Luther’s principles as set forth in his ‘Von Dolmetzscheñ.’ Not even my own work on the German Bible (1907) do I exempt from this criticism. Research must bring us by inductive reasoning to the recognition of the root principle which alone can explain the many thousand variant readings we meet with to-day in the [Weimar] German Bible (vols. i. and ii.), and in Bindseil’s critical edition,”[1988]—It is, however, to be feared that in very many instances the “root principle” supposed to underlie Luther’s work will fail in practice. His hasty, precipitate work in the Wartburg (the completion of the New Testament in three months) puts any real scholarly method out of the question. The fact that barely a week was allotted to each Gospel precludes the use of any well-considered principles in the work of translation.

Again, Luther often deviates far too much from the original text and takes too many liberties in his efforts to be plain. To this must be added the fact, that, owing to his insufficient linguistic attainments, he fails in many instances to reach the real sense of the original sacred text, to say nothing, of course, of the numerous critical emendations made at a later date in the texts. Hence Protestants have sometimes judged the scholarship of Luther’s Bible rather harshly. Josias Bunsen, for instance, called Luther’s translation “one of the most inaccurate, though showing signs of great genius,” and declared that, in it, there are “three thousand passages which call for revision.”[1989] E. Nestle, the Protestant philologist and Bible expert, referring to the revision which had taken place in Germany, says of the defects of Luther’s Bible: “A comparison with the English or Swiss work of revision shows how much further we might and ought to have gone.”[1990]

The most outspoken critic is, however, Paul de Lagarde, the Protestant theologian and Orientalist of Göttingen. In an article likewise dealing with the so-called “Revised Bible” of 1883,[1991] he devotes more than five pages to a list of passages from Isaias, the Book of Proverbs and the Psalms, which Franz Delitzsch had been compelled to retranslate even earlier.[1992] To this list he appends another long one of passages, which he holds to be manifestly mistranslations of the original.

Thus, to quote only one important instance, the Messianic prophecy of Jacob in Genesis xlix. 10, should be rendered: “The sceptre shaשll not be taken away from Juda ... till he come that is to be sent,” or “that is prayed for” (ילתש), whereas Luther translates תלש֗ incorrectly by “hero” and thus robs the wonderful text of some of its force. De Lagarde notes, that elsewhere Luther himself renders Malachias iii. 1: “The Lord Whom you seek shall speedily come to His temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire.” Beside such mistakes Luther’s allusion to the hedgehog that builds nests and lays eggs (Isaias xxxiv. 15) can only be regarded as a curiosity and a slip on his part. This hedgehog was among the victims sacrificed in the revised Bible of 1883.

The same critic also complains, that, Rom. iii. 23, even in the revised Bible, has: “For they are sinners,” whereas the Aorist demands the translation: “They all have sinned.” He shows how, as early as 1839, Tholuck had drawn attention to the vast dogmatic importance of Luther’s suppression of this Aorist.[1993]

With still greater show of reason De Lagarde finds fault with other wilful deviations from the text; he refers to those pointed out by Döllinger in “Die Reformation” and again insisted on by Janssen, and then by Paulsen in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts.” These false renderings have, however, out of a wrong regard for Luther, been retained in the Lutheran Bible even to the present day.

Luther’s scant concern for the text where it runs counter to his ideas calls for further discussion.

Luther’s German Bible Considered Theologically

Bearing in mind Luther’s character we can well understand how sorely he was tempted during his work to make the text square with his own doctrine, the more so since the translation was intended as a popular explanation of the Bible. When, moreover, one remembers his arbitrary way of proving his doctrine, and the entire freedom with which he was wont to handle other religious matters connected with antiquity, which, though not in the Word of God, were nevertheless historical facts easy of verification, it will not greatly surprise even those readers who are prejudiced in his favour to find, that, in his treatment of the original text of Holy Scripture—which most people are not able to verify—he did not scruple here and there to introduce ideas of his own. “What does it matter,” so he said later in his blind conviction of being in the right, in reply to those who accused him of having altered the text, “so long as at bottom the thing is clear,” so long as “it evidently is so,” and “is demanded by the state of the case?” “Not only is it right but even highly necessary that it should be set forth in the clearest and fullest manner,” etc.[1994]

It is chiefly in the question of justification by faith alone that he twists his text so much that his version ceases in reality to be a translation. He indeed speaks of his additions as “commentaries,” but no one could thus have “commented” on the passages who was not, like Luther, entirely taken up with the new dogma of grace, justification and faith.

In his efforts to provide his doctrine with a firm foundation in the eyes of his readers, he added the word “only” in Rom. iv. 15 and Rom. iii. 20, thus making these Pauline texts into a condemnation of the Law: “The law worketh only wrath,” “by the law only is the knowledge of sin.”

Again, in Rom. iii. 25 f., the Apostle speaks of Christ “whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to the showing of his justice for the remission of former sins through the forbearance of God for the showing of his justice in this time, that he himself may be just and the justification of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ.” Luther, however, in the interests of his new doctrine, makes him say that God had “set up Christ as a mercy seat through faith in his Blood, in order that he may present the righteousness which is acceptable to him, forgiving the sins which had remained till then under divine forbearance, that he might in his season offer the righteousness which is acceptable to him that he might himself alone be just and the justifier of him that is of the faith of Jesus.” The offering of the righteousness that is acceptable to God—an expression twice repeated—is not found in the original text, but of course is highly favourable to Luther’s doctrine of a merely imputed righteousness.[1995] In the same way he here speaks of God as “alone” being just, an interpolation of which the origin must also be sought in the translator’s theology.[1996]

Another passage falsely rendered is Rom. viii. 3: “He condemned sin in the flesh by sin,” instead of “on account of sin” (the Son of God was sent) as the Greek text (περὶ ἁμαρτίας) plainly states.

The frequent substitution of the word “pious” for “just” would seem innocent enough, but this too was done purposely. Here a pet term of Luther’s theology is made to replace the right word in order the better to represent holiness as something merely imputed. “To be pious,” according to Luther, is to have faith, and, through faith, imputed justice.[1997] Thus Noe becomes a “pious man without reproach” (Gen. vi. 9) instead of a “just and perfect man.” Zachary and Elizabeth are described as “pious,” but not as “just” before God (Luke i. 6), and similarly with Simeon (ib., ii. 25), and Joseph, the husband of Mary (Mt. i. 19). Job, too, is not asked, as in the Sacred text: “What doth it profit God if thou be just?” but “What pleasure is it to the Almighty if thou makest thyself pious?” (Job xxii. 3). The exhortation in Apoc. xxii. 11: “He that is just let him be justified still,” appears in the weakened form: “He that is pious let him be pious still.”[1998]

From his constant use of the word “congregation” instead of “Church” the latter conception unquestionably suffers. In Luther’s translation the word church is used only of the heathen temples and illegal sanctuaries of the Israelites. He also terms the heathen priests and soothsayers “parsons,” and unmistakably likens them and their practices to those of Catholicism. Baruch vi. 30, for instance, which describes the heathen priests is rendered as follows: “And the priests sit in their temples in their voluminous copes [!]; with shaven faces and wearing tonsures they sit there bareheaded and howl and cry aloud before their idols.” “It is perfectly obvious at whom this is aimed,” remarks a Protestant critic.[1999]

The licence of the translator here is, however, of less importance than in his treatment of the passages on faith and justice, of which we shall give two further instances. These also show how Luther, even where he does not essentially alter the text, nevertheless succeeds in construing the words of Holy Scripture in such a way as to favour his own doctrine. When Paul’s statements were obscure they should have been left in their obscurity, or, at any rate, they should not have been translated in such a way as to contradict the doctrine elsewhere taught by the Apostle.

And yet this is just what Luther does in Rom. x. 4. The passage according to the Greek runs: “For the aim of the law is Christ unto the justice of everyone that believeth,” whereas Luther’s version is: “For Christ is the end of the law, and whoever believeth in Him is just.”