Chapter XXXVIII · END OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. THE CHURCH-UNSEEN AND THE VISIBLE CHURCH-BY-LAW (continued 2)

“This man,” he says of Agricola, “is presumption itself. Neither with the flute nor with tears is he to be won.… I see it is my goodness that puffs him up. He says he is a guiltless Abel. He is, forsooth, being made a martyr at my hands.…” But, so Luther continues, he will be such a martyr as was Arius and Satan.[1018]

In 1542, when the conversation at table turned on the teachers of the New Faith whose opinions differed from Luther’s, a good many names were mentioned, “Those at Zürich” (Zwingli’s pupils), Carlstadt, Bucer and Capito, “Grickel and Jeckel”—some of them living and some of them already dead—all of whom were insufferably presumptuous. It was then that Bugenhagen, who was present, could not refrain from quoting the passage in the Old Testament where Moses had commanded in God’s name “That prophet shall be slain because he spoke to draw you away from the Lord your God.… If thy brother would persuade thee (to serve other gods), thou shalt presently put him to death. Let thy hand be the first upon him and afterwards the hands of all the people. With stones shall he be stoned to death: because he would have withdrawn thee from the Lord thy God. If in one of the cities thou hear that some have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, inquire carefully and diligently the truth of the thing by looking well into it, and if thou find that which is said to be certain and that this abomination hath been committed, thou shalt forthwith kill the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, and shalt destroy it and all things that are in it, even to the cattle.”[1019]

Hence it was perhaps rather lucky that the Wittenberg tribunal was presided over by the sovereign of the land, and that the sentences pronounced at Luther’s table or in the learned circles of the Theological Faculty required subsequent ratification by the authorities.

Luther’s complaints elsewhere about the pride of the heretics throw still further light on the jealousy which was at work in him (above, p. 260).

“How is it that all the insurgents say ‘I am the man?’ They want all the glory for themselves and hate and are grim with all others, just like the Pope who also wants to stand alone.”[1020] Zwingli appears to be one of the foremost among those desirous of robbing him of his due glory. “He was ambitious through and through.”[1021] On hearing that Zwingli had said that, in three years, he would have France, Spain and England “on his side and for his share,” Luther became very bitter and several times complained of Zwingli’s intention to seize upon his harvest; such words seemed to him the “boasting of a braggart.”[1022] “Œcolampadius, too, fancied himself the doctor of doctors and far above me, even before he had ever heard me.” And in the same way Carlstadt said: “As for you, Sir Doctor, I don’t care a snap! Münzer, too, preached against two Popes, the old one and the new,[1023] said I must be a Saul, and that though I had made a good beginning, the Spirit of God had left me.… Hence let all the theologians and preachers look to it and diligently beware lest they seek their glory in Holy Scripture and in God’s Word; otherwise they will have a fall.”[1024]—“Mr. Eisleben [Johann Agricola] labours under great pride and presumption; he wants to be the only one, and, with his pride and his puffed-up spirit, to surpass all others.”[1025] “They are scamps,” so he abuses them in another passage, “fain would they get at us and surpass us, as though forsooth we were blind and could not see through their tricks.”[1026]

Elsewhere in the Table-Talk we read: “My best friends,” said Dr. Martin, with a deep sigh, “seek to stamp me under foot and to trouble and besmirch the Evangel; hence I am going to hold a disputation.” “Alas, that, in my own lifetime, I should see them strutting about and seeking to rule.” It was with him as with St. Paul to whom God wished to show how much he must suffer for His Name’s sake (Acts ix. 16). Some indeed were trying to persuade him that these foes in his own household were not really against Luther, but only against Cruciger, Rörer, etc. But this was false. “For the Catechism, the Exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Confession of Augsburg are mine, not Cruciger’s or Rörer’s.”[1027]

Of those near him “Mr. Eisleben” (Agricola) seemed to him his chief rival; those abroad troubled him less; for a while Luther was obsessed by the idea that Agricola, “with his cool head, was set on securing the reins and was seeking to become a great lord.”[1028]

Of Carlstadt Luther once said, referring to the rivalry between the pair: “He persuaded himself that there was no more learned man on earth than he; what I write that he imitates and seeks to copy me.” After a profession of personal humility, Luther concludes: “And yet, by God’s Grace, I am more learned than all the Sophists and theologians of the Schools.”[1029]

Though Luther never grows weary of insisting against the heretics at home on the “public, common doctrine,” and of instancing the fell consequences of pride and obstinacy, even going so far as to predict that they will in all likelihood never be converted because founders of sects rarely retrace their steps and recant,[1030] yet he never seems to have perceived that the point of all this might equally well have been turned against himself.

The blindness of such heretics he describes in a tract of 1526 dedicated to Queen Mary of Hungary:

“Here we may all of us well be afraid, and particularly all heretics and false teachers.… Such a temper [obstinacy in sticking to one’s own opinion] penetrates like water into the inmost recesses and like oil into the very bone, and becomes our daily clothing. Then it comes about that one party curses the other, and the doctrine of one is rank poison and malediction to the other, and his own doctrine nothing but blessing and salvation; this we now see among our fanatics and Papists. Then everything is lost. The masses are not converted; a few, whom God has chosen, come right again, but the others remain under the curse and even regard it as a precious thing.… Nor have I ever read of heresiarchs being converted; they remain obdurate in their own conceit, the oil has gone into the bone … and has become part of their nature. They allow none to find fault with them and brook no opposition. This is the sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”[1031]

In the same writing he describes the heretics’ way of speaking: “The heretics give themselves up to idle talk so that one hears of nothing but their dreams.… They overflow with words; all evildoers tend to become garrulous. As a boiling pot foams and bubbles over, so they too overflow with the talk of which their heart is full.… They stand stiff upon their doctrine about which there is no lack of ranting.”[1032]

The description (which seats so well on Luther himself) proceeds: “Those are heretics and apostates who follow their own ideas rather than the common tradition of Christendom, who transgress the teaching of their fathers and separate themselves from the common ways and usages of the whole of Christendom, who, out of pure wantonness, invent new ways and methods without cause, and contrary to Holy Writ.”[1033]—“They misread the Word of God according to their whim and make it mean what they please. In short they undertake something out of the common and invent a belief of their own, regardless of God’s Word.… God must put up with their doctrine and life as being alone holy and Godly.”[1034]

Again and again he brands pride as the cause of all heresy: “This is the reason; they think much of themselves, which, indeed, is the cause and well-spring of all heresies, for, as Augustine also says, ‘Ambition is the mother of all heresies.’ Thus Zwingli and Bucer now put forward a new doctrine.… So dangerous a thing is pride in the clergy.”[1035]—“We cannot sufficiently be on our guard against this deadly vice. Vices of the body are gross, and we feel them to be such, but this vice can always deck itself out with the glory of God, as though it had God’s Word on its side. But beneath the outward veil there is nothing but vain glory.”[1036]—“Lo, here you have in brief the cause and ground of all idolatry, heresy, hypocrisy and error, what the prophets inveigh against, and what was the cause of their being put to death, and against which the whole of Scripture witnesses. It all comes from obstinacy and conceit and the ideas of natural reason which puffs itself up … and fancies it knows enough, and can find its way for itself, etc.”[1037]

Such statements of Luther’s are of supreme importance for judging of his Divine Mission. In his frame of mind it became at last an impossibility for him to realise that his hostility and intolerance towards “heretics” within his fold could redound on himself, or that he was contradicting himself in continuing to proclaim freedom, or at least in continuing to make the fullest use of it himself. In reality he was living in a world of his own, and his mental state cannot be judged of by the usual standards.

“Heretics” who cannot be sure of their Cause

Apart from the “pride of the heretics,” another idea of Luther’s deserves attention, viz. that those teachers who differed from him, in their heart of hearts, knew him to be in the right, or at least neither were nor could be quite certain of their own doctrines. Of any call in their case there could be no question; his call, however, was above doubt, seeing his certainty. Hence, in his dealings with the “sectarians” we once again find the same strange attitude, as he had exhibited towards the “Papists,” who, according to him, likewise were withstanding their own conscience and lacked any real call.

To a man so full of such fiery enthusiasm for his cause and so dominated by his imagination as Luther, it seems to have been an easy task to persuade himself ever more and more firmly, that all his opponents’ doings were against their own conscience.

The “teachers of faith,” he says, speaking of the sectarians, ought first of all “to be certain about their mission. Otherwise all is up with them. It was this [argument] that killed Œcolampadius. He could not endure the self-accusation: How if you have taught what is false?”[1038] Concerning Œcolampadius Luther professed to know that, even in his prayers, he had been doubtful of his own doctrine. But, so he argues, if a man goes so far as to pray for the spread of his doctrine he must surely first be “quite certain and not doubt thus of the Word and of his doctrine, for doubts and uncertainty have no place in theology, but a man must be certain of his case in the face of God.” Before the world, indeed, he continues, with a strange limitation of his previous assertion, “it behoves one to be humble, to proceed gently and to say: If anyone knows better, let him say so; to God’s Word I will gladly yield when I am better instructed.”[1039] Yet, in the same works, where seemingly he professes such willingness to listen to others, he himself proclaims most emphatically his great mission and its exclusive character.[1040]

All heretics, he once remarked, were disarmed by this one question: “My friend, is it the command of our Lord God [that you should teach thus]? At this, one and all are struck dumb.”[1041] Only by dint of lying are they able to boast of their inward assurance of their cause. Here we have Campanus for instance: “He boasts that he is as sure as sure can be of his cause and that it is impossible for him to be mistaken.” “But he is an accursed lump of filth whom we ought to despise and not bother our heads about writing against, for this only makes him more bold, proud and brave.… Whereupon Master Philip [Melanchthon] said: his suggestion would be that he should be strung up on the gallows, and this he had written to his lord [the Elector].”[1042]

With his own “certainty” Luther triumphantly confronts his opponents who at heart were uncertain: “Every man who speaks the Word of Christ is free to boast that his mouth is the mouth of Christ”; such a one, confiding in his certainty, may help to “tear Antichrist out of men’s hearts, so that his cause may no longer avail.”[1043]—“But, now, the articles of pure doctrine are proved [by me] from Scripture in the clearest way, and yet it carries no weight with them; never has an article of the faith been preached which has not more than once been attacked and contradicted by heretics, who, nevertheless, read the same Scriptures as we.”[1044]—“In short, ‘heretics must needs arise’ (1 Cor. xi. 19), and that cannot be stopped, for it was so even in the Apostles’ time. We are no better off than our fathers; Christ Himself was persecuted.”[1045] “No heretic allows himself to be convinced. They neither see nor hear anything, like Master Stiffel [Michael Stiefel]; he saw me not nor heard me.… It is forbidden to curse, swear, etc., far more to cause heresy.”[1046]—Then one becomes hardened against God the Holy Ghost; these fanatics “do not even doubt”—which is astonishing—“they stand firm.” He had warned the Anabaptist Marcus (Stübner), so he relates, “to beware lest he err,” to which he answered that “God Himself shall not dissuade me from this.”[1047]

In short, since Luther’s own cause is so clear and certain, those who disagree, particularly the sectarians, must simply have discarded the faith. For instance, “of Master Jeckel [Jacob Schenk] I hold that he believes nothing.”[1048] He, Luther, has “at all times taught God’s Word in all simplicity; to this I adhere, and will surrender myself a prisoner to it or else—become a Pope who believes neither in the again-rising of the dead nor in life everlasting.”[1049] Thus he sees no middle course between the most frivolous unbelief and the Word of God as he believes and interprets it. Hence, with heretics, whether among the Pope’s men or in his own flock, “he will have nothing to do outside of Scripture—unless indeed they start working miracles.”

Where are your Miracles?

The stress Luther lays on miracles as a proof of doctrine is another trait to add to the picture of his psychology. Again and again he repeated anew what he had already, in 1524, said of Münzer and some of the preachers: They must be told to corroborate their mission by signs and wonders, or else be forbidden to preach; for whenever God wills to change the order of things He always works miracles.[1050] There is something almost tragic in the courage with which he appealed to miracles in this connection, when we bear in mind his own difficulties, in accounting for their absence in his own case.[1051] Here it is enough to recall Hier. Weller’s words: “I still remember right well,” Weller writes, “how he once said that he had never thought of asking God for the gift of raising the dead, or of performing other miracles, though he did not doubt he might have obtained such of God had he wished; he had, however, preferred to be content with the rich gift of Scripture-interpretation; he further said that he had raised two persons from the dead, one of them being Philip Melanchthon and the other a God-fearing man.”[1052]

As against the sects and fanatics, Luther urges that he himself laid no claim to any extraordinary mission; as they, however, did make such a claim, they must vindicate it by miracles. “I have never preached or sought to preach unless I was asked and called for by men, for I cannot boast as they do that God has sent me from heaven without means; they run of their own accord, though no one sends them, as Jeremias writes [xxiii. 21]; for this reason they work no good.”[1053] Neither here nor elsewhere does he explicitly state by whom it is necessary to be “asked” or “called.” His account of the source whence he derives his mission also varies, being now the Wittenberg magistrates, now his Doctor’s degree, now the sovereign, now the enthusiastic hearers and readers of his word.[1054]

Such was his confidence that Luther forgot that it was by no means difficult for the “false brethren” within his camp to pick out the weak spots in his doctrine. He refused to recognise that much of their criticism was valid; on the negative side it even took the place of miracles. It was not every Catholic polemic who succeeded in demonstrating so clearly and convincingly the anomalies in Luther’s views, for instance, on the Law and Gospel, as the Antinomian, Johann Agricola.

On the other hand, Luther could well note with satisfaction the inability of the heretics to bring forward anything positive of importance. They were dwarfs compared with him. With his knowledge of the Bible it was child’s play to him to overthrow the fanatics’ often ludicrous applications of Scripture. Of Zwingli, too, it was easy for him to get the better by dint of sticking to the literal sense of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.” Luther was not slow in pointing out the blemishes of the “fanatics,” their vanity and blind obedience to ambition and self-will, and the impracticability of their fantastic, and often revolutionary, theories. The very truth of his strictures, for all his lack of miracles, raised him in his own eyes, far above these clumsy teachers; this perhaps enables us to understand better the utter contempt he expresses for them.

His Anger with Lemnius and Others

One had but to praise those whom he condemned to call forth Luther’s implacable anger.

This was the experience in 1538 of the humanist, Simon Lemnius (Lemchen) of Wittenberg, a man otherwise kindly disposed to the new teaching. A humanist above all, he had won Melanchthon’s favour on account of his talent.

Lemnius had thoughtlessly dared to publish two books of epigrams in which he not only attacked with biting sarcasm certain Wittenberg personages, but actually ventured to praise Archbishop Albert of Mayence, Luther’s powerful opponent. The poet, no doubt, was anxious to curry favour with the Archbishop so as to find in him a Mæcenas; he even went so far as to extol him as the man who “had kept alive the olden faith.” The censorship for which Melanchthon as Rector of the University was then responsible, was caught napping. Lemnius was indeed arrested by the University, but he escaped and fled from Wittenberg. On Trinity Sunday, June 16th, Luther read out from the pulpit a Mandate in which he abused Archbishop Albert in disgraceful terms, and scourged as a criminal act the praise bestowed in the “shameful, shocking book of lies” on Bishop Albert, “a devil out of whom it made a saint.” In it he also declared that, “by every code of law, and no matter whither the fugitive knave had fled, his head was forfeit.”[1055] Thus Lemnius was as good as outlawed—though no Court of Justice had yet sentenced him. On July 4th Melanchthon formally expelled him from the University on account of “faithlessness, perjury and slander.”[1056] The “perjury” consisted in his having fled, in defiance of the obedience he owed to the University, so as to evade the harsh penalties he had reason to apprehend. The whole edition of the Epigrams was destroyed.

“It is the devil who hatches out such knaves,” remarked Luther, “particularly among the Papists, through whom he attacks and thwarts us.… Because we preach Christ alone he persecutes us in every way he can.” The bishops deserve to be called “lost and godless knaves and foes of God,” hence “those must not be tolerated here who praise them in verse and prose.”[1057]

When Lemnius had a second edition of the Epigrams printed at Wittenberg this also was suppressed. He had added a third book, devoted to abuse of Luther and containing the famous “Merd-Song” on Luther, who was then ailing from diarrhœa. Luther retorted with a “Merd-Song” of his own on Lemnius. His verses he read aloud to his friends and they became public property through being incorporated in Lauterbach’s notes of the Table-Talk.[1058]

Lemnius, whose career had been wrecked by Luther’s anger and revenge, then wrote an “Apologia against the unjust and lying decree” which the Wittenberg University had published against him at the instigation (“imperio et tyrannide”) of Martin Luther and Justus Jonas. He still retained his loose humanistic style after his return in 1538 to his native Switzerland, where he obtained a position as schoolmaster at Coire.

The above Apologia was printed at Cologne, it would seem in 1539, but very few copies survive owing to the energy shown in their suppression. It is only of recent years that the complete text has become generally known;[1059] till then Protestants like Schelhorn and Hausen had only ventured to give fragments of the work. In it the writer complains bitterly that Luther “has published a pamphlet against him [the mandate read aloud in the church] in which, playing both the judge and the sovereign, Luther had condemned and abused him.” “Such authority in civil matters” does this soul-herd arrogate to himself. He robs the bishops of their secular power, but he himself is a tyrant. The charges against Luther’s private life made in this work are glaring, and they come, moreover, from a man who knew his Wittenberg, but it must not be forgotten that he was now a bitter foe of Luther.[1060] He goes so far as to declare that Luther’s shameless attacks on the sovereigns, for instance on the Elector of Mayence, gave grounds for apprehending contempt of all authority and the outbreak of a war that would spell the ruin of Germany.

Meanwhile “Luther sits like a dictator at Wittenberg and rules; what he says must be taken as law.”[1061] He calls his opponent the “Wittenberg Pope” (“Papa Albiacus”), who had been faithless to his Vows.

In order rightly to appreciate, from their psychological side, Luther’s angry outbursts against the heretics in his party we must above all remember his fears of a coming collapse of theology among his following; that he foresaw something of the sort has already been shown above.[1062]

He was also keenly alive to the harm these dissensions were doing to his reputation. Nor must we forget the threatening and highly insulting behaviour of many of these heretics. Taking all things together, it is easy to understand how a temper such as his was lashed to fury when denouncing the “presumption and foolhardiness” of his foes.[1063]

“A muddled and obstinate head” sits on the neck of the fanatics’ ringleader; “his horns must be blunted.”[1064]—“Carlstadt and Zwingli behave with insolence and defiance”; “We must needs decry the fanatics as damned”; “they actually dare to pick holes in our doctrine; ah, the scoundrelly rabble do a great injury to our Evangel even in the outland and enable our foes to scoff at us.”[1065]—“Their pride and audacity will bring about their downfall.”[1066]

In truth, he says, “Carlstadt blasphemed himself to death.”[1067]—Œcolampadius saw the “curse” of God fulfilled in himself, “and withered away with fear the night after Zwingli had been struck down” (at Cappel).[1068] Zwingli himself, like the rest, was urged on merely by “his boundless ambition.”[1069]—Egranus (Johann Wildenauer) was a “proud donkey.”[1070]—Bucer is a “gossip,”[1071] “a miscreant through and through, in every case, inflection and rule of grammar; I trust him not at all, for Paul says [Titus iii. 10] ‘A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.’”[1072]—Sebastian Franck is a “wicked, venomous knave and it is a wonder to me that those at Ulm care to keep him.”[1073] “He only loved to do harm, is inconstant and boasts of the spirit; but his wife has plenty of spirit and it is she who inspirits him with her spirit.”[1074]—Schwenckfeld deserves as little as Franck to be written against. “Agricola is only puffed up with hatred and ambition.”[1075]

He “is and should be called a godless man who denies God, which is what the Sacramentarians do.”[1076]—“Of false brethren we must above all things beware.”[1077]—With such a one “there is no hope of repentance; he is bold, impudent.”[1078]—“He remains obdurate,” he says of one of these heretics, “a cunning, evil-minded scoffer”; he betrays us as “Judas betrayed Christ.”[1079]

The depth of the yawning abyss between the heretics and Luther and also the hatred they bore him on account of his treatment of them is plain from the words of Münzer and Ickelsamer already quoted.[1080]

3. The Church-Unseen, its Origin and Early History

His doctrine of the Church may in many respects be regarded as the key-stone and centre of the rest of Luther’s theology.

It is practically important in that it affords a clue to anyone desirous of ascertaining to which of the competing religious bodies he should belong. It was usually to this article on the Church that those who afterwards returned to Catholicism appealed in vindication of their step. It was also the practice of Catholic writers, in their controversies with Luther, to appeal to the doctrine of the one Church which has never erred in dogma in order to convict him more speedily of the guilt of his separation. All of them started from the old definition, according to which the Church is the visible commonwealth of the faithful, founded by Christ on Peter, the Rock, which confesses the same Christian belief and unites in the same Sacraments under the guidance of its lawful pastors, in particular of the successors of St. Peter.

Luther himself was fully aware of the supreme importance of this doctrine; he frequently enough brings his opponents on the scene “crying Church, Church!”[1081] Among the Papists, he says, they do nothing but shriek Church, Church, Church, and this is the chief obstacle to reunion.[1082] “Hence there is indeed need that we should see what the Holy Christian Church is. If it is the clergy and their mob, then the devil has won and we two, God and His Word, are the losers.”[1083] “The Pope quotes this text [John xiv. 17: ‘The spirit of truth shall remain with you’] strongly and impressively.… They have become so certain of their cause that they take their stand on it as on a wall of iron.… This we ourselves must believe and say, viz. that the Holy Ghost is with the Church which is certainly on earth and will remain.”[1084] But was Luther’s Church a visible or an invisible one?

Invisibility of Luther’s Church

Bearing in mind the religious compulsion practised by Luther, the question would seem already answered. His practice involved the existence of an outward ecclesiastical authority with outward rules, a congregation to which it was impossible to belong without submitting to the doctrine of a visible head or corporation. Of the visible nature of this Church there can be no question. It is with this tangible authority that he confronts the Anabaptists, for instance when he says: “The presumption of these fanatics is unbearable, for they altogether repudiate the authority of the Church and will have it all their own way.”[1085] The best-grounded maxims of the best teachers are despised by them, so he complains, and they only esteem the opinions they themselves have rummaged for in Scripture! “Yet great heed should be paid to the Church.”[1086]

Nevertheless, according to Luther’s own views which had not changed much since 1519, the Church is in reality invisible.

The Church is not an outward, tangible institution, with a divinely appointed spiritual government and direction, such as it had been to Catholics through all the ages; rather it is the ghostly congregation of true believers known to Christ alone, Who alone is their head, guide and teacher. Men holding “office” in the Church there must indeed be, but only in order to preach and to dispense the sacraments; any spiritual authority with full powers for legislating and guiding the faithful is non-existent.[1087] It is the “true” faith and the possession of the “right” sacraments that constitute the Church. It is accordingly clear to him that the Holy Church in which we are to believe, must be a “ghostly, not a bodily one,” “for what we believe,” so he proceeds, “is not bodily but ghostly. The outward Roman Church we can all of us see, hence she cannot be the true Church in which we believe which is a congregation or assembly of the saints in faith; but no one can see who is a saint or who has the faith.” This he said in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome” (1520).[1088]

“The Church is altogether in the spirit,” so he again says in the following year, “she is altogether a spiritual thing.”[1089] “Christ,” so he says later, “works in the spirit so that it is hardly possible to smell His Church and bishops from afar, and the Holy Ghost behaves as though He were not there”; but that Church which is so close at hand “that it is possible to lay hold on her,” as is the case with the Popish Church, is only the Church of the devil.[1090] “Who will show us the Church,” he asks, “seeing that she is hidden in the spirit and is only believed in, just as we say: ‘I believe in one Holy Church.’”[1091] “The Church is believed in but she is not seen, and for the most part she is oppressed and hidden, under weakness, crosses and scandals.”[1092] In short, as a Lutheran theologian puts it, “he is speaking merely of a Holy Church or congregation whose real complement of Saints is not apparent, and which is therefore termed invisible.”[1093] Nor could he speak otherwise, for the absence of a divinely appointed hierarchy, and likewise his principle of the free examination of Scripture, could not but lead him to assume an invisible Church which lives only in the hearts of those who share the faith and the possession of the Holy Ghost.

Although, as the theologian in question points out, in Luther’s idea of the Church visible elements are not lacking, e.g. preaching and the sacraments, yet the actual congregation of Saints is visible to God alone; indeed the Church would still be there even should her only members consist of “babes in the cradle.”[1094] For instance, according to him, the Church before his day comprised very few people, and those unknown, who kept the Gospel undefiled and thus preserved the Church; some “elect souls must needs have come back, at least on their death-beds, to the true path.”[1095]—“Such persons [inspired by the Holy Ghost] there must always be on earth, even though there should only be two or three, or just the children. Of the old there are, alas, but few. Such as do not belong to this class have no right to look upon themselves as Christians; nor are they to be consoled as though they were Christians by much talk of the forgiveness of sins and the Grace of Christ.”[1096]

Thus, in so far as the visible elements were recognised by Luther, Protestants are justified in teaching that Luther’s Church-Unseen was “not a mere idea or empty phantom”; if, however, they go on to say that, according to Luther, the Church is “the living sum total of all who are united in the Spirit,” one sees at a glance that, though, mentally, we can make a class of all who come under the category of “believers,” this implies no actual relation between such, and consequently no “Church” or real though invisible society.[1097]

The Marks of the Church. Gradual Disappearance of the Old Conception of the Church

It is a matter of common knowledge that the marks or “notæ” of the Church had been the subject of many disquisitions before Luther’s day. We may now inquire whether Luther himself also admitted the existence of these “marks,” by which the true Church of Christ might be known.

Though the admission of such marks seems incompatible with his theory of the Church-Unseen, Luther repeatedly seeks to prove the truth of his own Church and the falsehood of Catholicism by this means. Especially is this the case in his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539).

Thus he asks: How can “a poor, blundering man know where to find this holy Christian folkdom [the Church]? For we are told that it is [to be found] in this life and on this earth … where it will also remain till the end of time.”[1098] This leads him to speak of the marks of the true Church.

“First of all the holy Christian people can be told by its having the Holy Word of God.” Luther forgets to say how the latter is to be recognised, though on this all depends; for he was far from being the only one who laid claim to possessing the pure Word of God. Hence many were not slow in pointing out how useless it was on his part to say: “Where you hear or see this Word preached, believed, confessed and acted upon, have no doubt that there, assuredly, must be the true ‘ecclesia sancta catholica,’ and the Holy Christian people, even though in number they be but few.”[1099] Nor did his theological opponents think any more highly of the other marks of the true Church which he sets up in the same work. They urged that the distinguishing marks should surely be clearer than what was to be distinguished, and patent and evident even to the unlearned. Concerning the marks set up by Luther, however, there was doubt even among those who had cut themselves adrift from Catholicism.

For instance, the second mark was “the Sacrament of Baptism where it is rightly taught and believed, and administered according to Christ’s ordinance.”[1100] But, among the Zwinglians and Anabaptists, baptism, so at least they claimed, was also rightly administered according to the ordinance of Christ; and, as for the Popish Church, Luther himself admits that she had always preserved baptism in its purity. Hence, here again, we have no clear, distinctive mark.

The other marks, according to Luther’s “Von den Conciliis,” were, thirdly, “the Sacrament of the Altar where it is rightly given, believed and received according to the institution of Christ”; and, fourthly, “the keys [forgiveness through faith] of which they make public use.” “Fifthly, the Church is known outwardly by her consecrating or calling of ministers of the Church, to the offices which it is her duty to fill.” Sixthly, “by her public prayer, praise, and thanks to God.” “Seventhly, the Christian people is recognised outwardly by the sacred emblem of the holy Cross since it has to suffer misfortune and persecution, all kinds of temptation and trouble—as we learn from the Our Father—from the devil, the world and the flesh; must be inwardly in pain, foolish and affrighted, and outwardly poor, despised, weak and sick.”[1101]

Bellarmine, the sharp-witted controversialist, and other polemics even earlier, dealt with these marks and showed their inadequacy. As regards the last mark Bellarmine, not unnaturally, expressed his wonder that Luther should have spoken of it, seeing that inward suffering, sadness and apprehension are of their very nature hidden things. Luther, however, hit upon this mark because he was accustomed to regard his “temptations” as a witness to the truth of his doctrine, and was convinced that the devil was causing them solely out of hatred for the truth.[1102] He thus carried his fancied experiences[1103] into his teaching on the Church, a fresh proof that his theology was the outcome rather of his inner life than of revealed doctrine. The idea that the Church was ever to be sick, weak, foolish and despised appealed to him all the more because his Evangel had not brought forth the good moral fruits he desiderated, and because he had vainly to struggle against the dissensions within his congregations and their abuse of the freedom of the Gospel.

It was this experience of his which led him to the fantastic plan already described of forming an “assembly of earnest Christians,” i.e. a Church-apart enrolled from the true believers who would then realise the idea of a Church even to the extent of having the power of excommunicating.

The seven marks of the Church were reduced to two in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, viz. pure doctrine, and true sacraments, and it is thus that they appear in the “Symbolic Books” of Lutheranism. On the other hand, Luther makes no appeal to the marks of the Church as given in the olden so-called Nicene Creed, “though all the olden Councils had insisted that it was these marks, particularly the attribute of ‘Apostolicity,’ which distinguished the Church from the sects.”[1104]

As a matter of fact the marks on which Catholic theologians laid stress, viz. the Church’s “oneness, holiness, Catholicity” and apostolicity furnished a striking answer to the question: Where is the Church? She is Apostolic because her connection with the Apostles has never been broken; Catholic because of her universal existence throughout the world; holy in her aims and means and in the practice of Christian virtue by the generality of her followers, and also on account of the special gifts of grace which have ever brightened her path through the ages; lastly, she is one, outwardly in being alone, and also inwardly, in the unity of her faith and belief, liturgy and sacraments, and in her character as a society in which a divinely appointed spiritual authority rules which the rest obey. In the latter respect the Church, to the Catholic mind, is even a “societas perfecta,” visible, moreover, to the whole world like the “city set on a hill” (Matt. v. 12) in which the Fathers of the Church indeed always saw an image of the Church;[1105] she is as a building built upon a rock, as a flock gathered round the shepherd, both of them comparisons which we owe to the Church’s Divine Founder.

It was not without reason that Luther was averse to any appeal to the four marks of the Church just referred to. What unity had he wherewith to confront that of Catholicism under its Pope? Apostolicity, as an historical union with Christ’s Apostles was so evidently wanting in his case that he declared that the doctrine he had come to preach had died out shortly after Apostolic times. Any claim to Catholicity in the usual sense of the word was not to be thought of for a moment. The only olden marks which he does not throw over is that of holiness. He here relies on the existence of holiness in the case of a few as being sufficient for his purpose.

Nevertheless, due justice must be done to the stress he is ever disposed to lay on the holiness of the Church. He practically makes all the other marks to centre in this, for he speaks of the seven marks mentioned above as the sevenfold “sanctuary whereby the Holy Ghost sanctifies Christ’s holy nation.”[1106]

“Even though it was impossible for him,” remarks Johann Adam Möhler, “to teach that the Church was to be regarded as a living institution in which men become holy, yet he sticks fast to the idea that she ought by rights to be composed of saints.… The inner Church [called by theologians the “soul” to distinguish it from the outward “body” of the Church] is everywhere in evidence, and the fact that no one is a true citizen of the heavenly kingdom if he belongs only outwardly to the Church and has not entered into the spirit of Christ and felt within himself its vivifying power, is pointed out [by Luther] in a way which merits all praise.”[1107]

Such true believers, according to Luther’s teaching, are so much the sole representatives of the visible Church that the wicked, the unbelieving, the hypocritical Christians who only expose her to the scorn and derision of her foes, do not really belong to the Church at all.[1108] They are members of the Church merely in name, but, in reality, are not Christians at all.[1109]

It was not, however, easy for him to shake off the true feeling he had inherited from youthful days, viz. that whoever wished to be pious and pleasing to God, must become so through the true Church. “Let us therefore pray in the Church,” so we hear him say, “let us pray with the Church and for her.”[1110] According to him the Church was the ghostly Eve taken from the side of Christ, a pure virgin and one body with Christ, great and splendid in God’s sight, the chief of His works, dear to Him, precious and highly esteemed in His sight, etc.[1111] Hence we find him re-echoing the beautiful words in which Catholic mystics had been wont to extol the Church and her “soul.”

Yet there is no doubt, that, in spite of all this, Luther had explained away the Church’s very essence.

It was indeed his tendency to spiritualise, and his favourite idea that true believers must be enlightened by God directly concerning His outward “Word” that helped him thus to explain away the Church. As for any outward doctrinal establishment or institutional Church having an authority of her own, no such thing existed. Thus the Church which Luther extols as so holy turns out to be something quite intangible—water that for want of a holder runs away and is lost. Even Köstlin admits this, though in guarded words: “Certain main problems which the Reformed view of the Church must necessarily face” “were only very insufficiently grasped and discussed” by Luther and his friends. Among such questions Köstlin includes some that touch the Church’s very essence: How far is purity of doctrine necessary in order to belong to the Church; how far are the old Creeds still professed by Protestantism obligatory or binding upon preachers; where, finally, does the freedom preached by Luther precisely end?[1112] But, in spite of all the lacunæ in his doctrine of the Church, Luther bitterly insists, that, outside the Church there can be no salvation.[1113] Nor did he even admit the usual Catholic limitation, viz. that those, who through no fault of their own are ignorant of the Church, may possibly be saved if their life has been otherwise good. Luther indeed, as already shown (p. 292), is of opinion that some olden Catholics may have been saved, if, in the end, they laid hold on Christ as Luther taught;[1114] he also opines that salvation had been brought to all “worthy men of every nation” who had died before the coming of Christ, through His preaching during His visit to Limbo;[1115] yet he does not believe that it was the Will of God that all men, whether within or outside the Church, should be saved.[1116]

After having in the above examined Luther’s conception of the Church, irrespective of its mode of growth, we may now turn our attention to the genesis and historical development of this conception.

Origin and Early Outbuilding of the New Idea of the Church

A curious psychological process accompanies the growth of Luther’s idea of the Church. We know that, even long after he had fallen a victim to his theory of justification by faith alone, he had still no thought of breaking away from the Church’s communion or of questioning the conception then in vogue of the Church. It was only when the olden Church refused to come over to his new doctrine and prepared to condemn it, that he decided, after great struggles within, to cut himself adrift, and it was in order to justify this step to himself and to vindicate it to the world that he gradually formed his new views on the Church. (Cp. above, vol. i., p. 321 ff.)

Characteristically enough we find a first trace of what was to come, in his sermon on the power of the Papal Ban, which he published in Latin in 1518 and in German in the following year. Here, of course, he had to deal with the question of the effects of the threatened excommunication; in so doing he reached the false proposition, censured amongst his 41 errors in the Bull Exsurge Domine of May 16, 1520: “Excommunications are merely outward penalties and do not rob a man of the Church’s common spiritual prayers.”[1117] Not long after, according to his wont, he went a step further. Among the condemned Theses we find the paradoxical one: “Christians must be taught to love excommunication rather than to fear it.”[1118]

At Dresden on July 25, 1518, when he was found fault with on account of his Wittenberg Sermon on Excommunication (which was then probably not yet known in its entirety), he seems to have shown scant respect for the supreme authority in the Church. Emser, his then opponent, writes expressly that Luther had declared he cared nothing for the Pope’s Ban.[1119]

Some weeks later, on Sep. 1, Luther himself wrote to Staupitz, his superior, that his conscience told him he was in the right and with the truth on his side; “Christ liveth and reigneth yesterday, to-day and for ever”; he also tells him, that, in his “Resolutions,” and in his replies to Prierias he had spoken freely, and in a language that would wound the Romanists, and that he was ready, nay anxious, to give the brassy Romans an even ruder German answer in the service of Christ, the Shepherd of the people. “Have no fear; I shall continue untrammelled my study of the Word of God without any fear of the citation [to Augsburg].”[1120]

During the negotiations in the presence of Cajetan at Augsburg we can see even more clearly how Luther stood under the spell of his idea, that the only Church was a spiritual one, and that, even should he break away from ecclesiastical authority by rising against the Ban, he would still remain in this Church.

It was after his return from Augsburg, during the stormy days when he appealed “from the Pope to a General Christian Council,” i.e. in the winter of 1518, that he discovered the true “Antichrist” who reigned at Rome.[1121] This discovery deprived him of the last vestige of respect for the authority of the Church and for her head.[1122] His own inward state when he made this discovery was one of curious turmoil. In his letter to Link, of Dec. 11, 1518, we hear him speaking of his commotion of mind, of new projects just on the point of birth which would show that, so far, he had hardly made a serious beginning with the struggle; he had a “premonition” then that Antichrist described by St. Paul (2 Thes. ii. 3 ff.) was seated in Rome where he behaved even worse than the Turk.[1123] At the beginning of 1519 with bated breath he announced to his friends the impending war on all the Papal ordinances.[1124]

Thus, even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, he must have busied himself with his new idea of the Church.

It was, however, only during the Disputation that, pressed hard by Eck, he was induced to deny openly the Primacy and to proclaim his belief in an invisible Church controlled by no authority.[1125] In the Disputation on July 4 and the following days, he attacked the divine institution of the Pope’s authority, asserted that even Œcumenical Councils could err, and, on July 6, declared that the Council of Constance had actually done so in rejecting the doctrine of Hus that there is “a Holy Catholic Church which is the whole body of the elect.”

In thus cutting the idea of the Church to his own measure, Luther had reached the Husite theory of the predestined as the sole members of the Church. “Luther found in this his own view of the Church, for, according to him, on the one hand there was no need of submission to Rome, and, on the other, only the real Christians and the elect were actual members of the Church.”[1126] In the “Resolutions,” which he published at the end of August immediately after the Disputation, he adheres to the statement that even Œcumenical Councils had erred and that, even on the most important questions of the faith. Still, strange to say, he does not think there is any reason for fearing that the Church had been forsaken by the Spirit of Christ, for by the Church was to be understood neither the Pope nor a Council.[1127] Here we have the basis of his new idea of the Church.… It is combined with another idea towards which he had long been drifting, viz. of seeing in Holy Scripture the sole source of faith.[1128] In the “Resolutions” he says: “Faith does not spring from any external authority but is aroused in the heart by the Holy Ghost, though man is moved thereto by the Word and by example.”[1129] Wherever Luther’s doctrine is believed, there is the Church.[1130]

The Papal Bull of 1520 condemned among the other selected theses of Luther’s, his attack on the Primacy and the Councils, though saying nothing of his doctrine of the Church, then still in process of growth. “The Roman Pope, the successor of Peter,” so the 25th of these condemned Theses runs, “is not the Vicar of Christ set over all the Churches throughout the whole world and appointed by Christ Himself in the person of St. Peter.” And the 29th declares: “It is open to us to set aside the Councils, freely to question their actions and judge their decrees and to profess with all confidence whatever appears to be the truth whether it has been approved or reproved of any Council.”[1131]

The originator of principles so subversive to all ecclesiastical order had perforce to reassure himself by claiming freedom in the interpretation of Scripture.

Hence, for himself and all who chose to follow him, he set up in the clearest and most decided terms the personal reading of the written Word of God, above all tradition and all the pronouncements of the teaching office of the Church; in this he went much further than he had done hitherto in the questions he had raised concerning justification, grace, indulgences, etc. It is easy to understand why it was so necessary for him to claim for himself a direct enlightenment by the Spirit of God in his reading of the Bible;[1132] in no other way could he vindicate his daring in thus setting himself in opposition to a Church with a history of 1500 years. At the same time he saw that this same gift of illumination would have to be allowed to others, hence he declared that all faithful and devout readers of the Bible enjoyed a certain kind of inspiration, all according to him being directly guided by the Spirit into the truth without any outward interference of Church doctrine, though the first fruits of revelation belonged to him alone.[1133]

By thus exalting the personal element into a principle, he dealt a mortal blow at the idea of a Church to whom was committed the true interpretation of doctrine.

Before pointing out, how, in spite of the boundless liberty proclaimed by Luther, he nevertheless was anxious to retain some sort of Church in the stead of the ancient one, we may here put on record certain statements of his on the illumination of the individual by God that have not as yet been quoted; albeit difficult to understand this is of the very essence of Lutheranism and quite indispensable to the new doctrine of an invisible Church.[1134]

According to the “Resolutions” he published after the Leipzig Disputation, every man is born into the faith through the Evangel owing to the bestowal of certainty from on high without the intervention of the Church’s authority or of any doctrine outwardly binding upon him. Satan and all the heretics, so he declares, could not have forged a more dangerous opinion than that in vogue among Catholics concerning the relations between the Church’s authority and the Bible Word; needless to say Luther makes out that, in their opinion, the Pope was put above the Written Word and even above God Himself.[1135] The genuine Catholic doctrine, viz. that the Church is the guardian of the true sense of Holy Scripture and at the same time a witness to the faithful of the authenticity and inspiration of the Holy Books, is indeed poles asunder from the teaching foisted on her. Moreover, it is in these very Resolutions to the Leipzig Disputation that Luther disparages the Epistle of James, arguing that its style falls far short of the apostolic dignity and could in no way compare with that of Paul. Here the “freedom” which he exalts into a principle already begins to undermine his new foundation, viz. the Bible itself.

Not long after this, in 1520, he lays claim in his “Von dem Bapstum” and “De captivitate Babylonica,” to having been instructed solely by the Holy Ghost and out of the Bible regarding the sense of Holy Scripture.

In the “De captivitate Babylonica” he teaches: the faithful who surrender themselves to the Spirit of God and allow Him to work upon them through the “Word” (he calls them the Church), received from the same Spirit an infallible sense and an inspiration by which to judge of doctrine, a sense which is indeed not susceptible of proof yet which creates absolute certainty. The same thing held good here as in the case of the truth, of which Augustine had said, that the soul was so laid hold of and carried away by it as to be enabled by its means to judge of all things, though unable to prove the truth itself which nevertheless it was forced to acknowledge with an infallible certainty.[1136] Luther also appeals as a comparison to the evidence of certain fundamental truths of mathematics or philosophy. This would at first sight make it appear as though he excluded arbitrary freedom in the interpretation of the Bible, since the mind must necessarily bow to such logical and unquestionable truths as he instances; this is, however, not the case, and we may recall what a wide field he opened up for delusion in this matter of inspiration.[1137]

When he teaches that the perception of the truth of religion penetrates into every Christian soul as the direct result of a certainty operated by God Himself we must, in order to understand him, keep in view the other points of his teaching, above all his opinion of man’s utter incapacity to do what is good, the depravity of man’s mental powers, his lack of free-will and absolute passivity under the hand of God. Above all he needed some such theory in order to justify his attack on the olden conception of the Church and to defend his own alleged certainty.

The universal priesthood also serves him as a prop for his idea of the Church. This priesthood, with the right to judge of doctrine, such as he pictures in his “To the German Nobility” and “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” was a logical outcome of the above doctrine of inspiration and of his own inclination to break away from the olden Church. It gave to all complete independence in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters.[1138]

The above writings were followed in 1521 by his “Ad librum Ambrosii Catharini Responsio.” Here he treats in detail of the Church, and of Christ the spiritual and invisible rock on which alone she is built (without Peter and his successors); the Church’s nature is therefore spiritual and invisible; he emphasises anew the right of all the faithful individually to disregard all teaching authority and to give ear to the voice of the Holy Ghost Who speaks inwardly through the Evangel, and thus brings forth, nourishes, educates, strengthens and preserves the true Church. In this work Luther is, however, already at greater pains to bring down the Church to the region of the visible; he points out that at least she possesses visible elements, Baptism, the Supper and the Gospel. Nevertheless, direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost still looms large in the “Responsio” as we may gather from the elucubrations embellished with Bible texts in which he declares that the Papal Antichrist had been foretold in the Word of God and his appearance and workings even described in detail.[1139]

In “Von Menschen leren tzu meyden” (1522), which is still saturated with the spirit of the Wartburg he had just left, he insists that: “Each one must simply believe that it is God’s Word because he feels in his heart that it is the truth, even should an angel from heaven or all the world preach the contrary.”—His writing of 1523, “Das eyn Christliche Versamlung odder Gemeyne Recht und Macht habe alle Lere zu urteylen,” etc., was intended to promote unfettered freedom of spirit, but, of course, only in the interests of the removal of the Popish-minded clergy, for, naturally, there could be no question of such freedom being used against Luther, or of anyone setting himself up as judge of Luther’s new doctrine. Here, and even more strongly in the “De instituendis ministris Ecclesiæ,” which he published in the same year, he starts again from the standpoint of the universal priesthood; this was inconsistent with the clerical order of the Popish Church; by it every man was qualified to decide independently on doctrine in accordance with Scripture; but whoever preached openly in the Church of God only did so as representing the others and at their request; hence no preacher was to be at the head of any congregation unless the latter wanted him, and, taught by the unction of the Holy Spirit, found his doctrine right. A Christian might also, so he continues, whether amongst other Christians or amongst those who had formerly been unbelievers, instruct his fellow-men in the Gospel merely by virtue of his Christian calling; anyone, if he detected the ordinary teacher in error, might stand up and teach without any call, as the Apostle says (1 Cor. xiv. 30) “if anything be revealed to another, let the first hold his peace.”[1140]

But how is a man to be so certain in his heart as to be able to come forward in this way? “You can then be certain of the matter if you are able to decide freely and surely and to say this is the pure and simple truth, for it I will live or die, and whoever teaches otherwise, whatsoever be his title and standing, is accursed.”[1141]

It would be a waste of words to point out that this was to deal a death-blow at the olden conception of the Church.

Startling, nay, utterly stupefying, is the sharp contrast all this presents to Luther’s later attitude already described above (pp. 241, 251, 262). There we have a rigid, coercive Church held fast in the ban of the Wittenberg doctrine, whereas here, in the days of the early development of Lutheranism, we find an exuberant wealth of individual freedom which scoffs even at the possibility of any ecclesiastical order.

Only a dreamer and hot-head like Luther could have seen in such an individualism, where each one is teacher and priest, anything else than chaos.

Luther’s expectations in those early days were strange indeed and quite incapable of realisation; not only were all delusions to be excluded but everything, as he says of the enduring of opposition, was to be done “decently and piously”! If he is really speaking in earnest, then he shows himself a hermit utterly ignorant of human nature. And yet even in the seclusion of the convent walls, the greatest enthusiast should have seen that this was not the way to form a congregation on earth of believers, or anything resembling a Church.

We can, nevertheless, easily understand, to cite Möhler in confirmation of what has been said, “how the doctrine in question could, nay, had to, arise in Luther’s mind: Since the authority of the existing Church was against him he had perforce to seek for support in the authority of God working directly in him.… He saw no other way than to appeal to an intangible, inward authorisation.”[1142]—This he then proceeded to work out into a system for the other believers. “In the fashion of the true demagogue he flatters every Christian and invests him with such perfection as any unprejudiced mind must repudiate on the most cursory glance into his own heart.”[1143]

The truth is, the doctrine put forward by Luther against the Church, i.e. that Holy Scripture is the sole judge, has no meaning except on the assumption of a certainty through direct divine illumination.

Luther was quite right in declaring Holy Scripture to be the source of the doctrine of salvation; but it was a very different thing to assert that Holy Writ is the judge which determines what is the doctrine of salvation contained therein. He only reached the latter assertion by taking for granted the direct action of God in man for imparting a knowledge of the true sense of Scripture. Hence in his statements on Holy Scripture we frequently find one thing strangely confused with the other, the outward Book with the inward knowledge of the same, so that, as Möhler puts it, “the direct transmission of its contents to the reader is assumed in a quite childish fashion.”[1144] Even Köstlin has to admit this confusion, though he does so with reserve: “In Luther,” he says, “we see in many passages an intermingling of the pure Word and pure doctrine.”[1145]

Luther’s Later Attitude Towards the Idea of the Church. Objections

Henceforward there remained deeply rooted in Luther’s mind the conviction that the individual was taught by God and that this Divine enlightenment was always leading to the adoption of his own chief articles of faith and to the promotion of the Lutheran Church.[1146]

There is no call to follow up this idea through all his various writings. We may, however, call to mind a remarkable and warlike statement with which, towards the end of his life, he sought to justify his attacks on the Pope and the ancient Church, and that, too, at a time when he must long since have been disappointed at the results of the freedom of judging which he had once allowed but had now already in many ways curtailed.

In his “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” he quotes the words of Christ which refer to prayer in common: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This leads him to conclude, strange to say, “that even two or three gathered together in Christ’s name hold all the power of St. Peter and all the Apostles.” And, at once, he proceeds in his old vein to declare that two or three, nay, even a single one, who has been enlightened by Christ, is as good a teacher as the whole Church, and, indeed, in certain cases, even takes precedence of her. “Hence it comes,” he says, “that, often, a man who believes in Christ has withstood a whole crowd … as the prophets withstood the Kings of Israel, the priests and the whole nation [to say nothing of Luther himself who had withstood the whole Church]. In short, God will not be bound as to numbers, greatness, height, power, or anything personal to man, but will only be with those who love and keep His Word even though they be no more than stable boys. What does He care for high, great and mighty lords? He alone is the greatest, highest and mightiest.”[1147] Thus he practically claims a Divine dignity for an undertaking such as his, and paints his career afresh as that of a prophet who had a right to exalt himself even over the topmost hierarchy; only that he invests all the faithful, and even the “stable boy,” with the like high calling.

But, in such a system, what place was there left for anything more than a phantom Church? Obviously the Church had to withdraw into the region of the invisible. For her again to become visible and assume the shape to be considered below, seems almost a paradox.

In view of the elasticity and vagueness of Luther’s teaching on the Church it is not surprising that his followers, to this very day, are divided as to whether, in point of fact, Luther wanted a “Church” or not.

A well-known Lutheran theologian admits in plain language that Luther left the problem of the Church unsolved; only after the Reformer’s time did certain “important problems” arise in respect of Luther’s tentative definition of the Church.[1148] Another theologian, writing in a Protestant periodical, says that Luther left behind him no “Evangelical Church.” “The Reformation,” he says, “spelt Christendom’s deliverance from the Church.… His great anticlerical bias was never repudiated by Luther.… He committed the care of the pure Evangel to the hands of the civil authorities. It ought no longer to be disputed that Luther and the Reformers were not the founders of the Evangelical Church—and that their ideal Protestantism was one minus a Church. It is only necessary to take the idea of the Church in its strict sense—not as the congregation, or the people of God, nor yet as a body of men holding the same opinions, nor as the kingdom of Christ—but as an independent complexus of regulations ordering the religious life, as a special institution to provide for the particular needs of the religious commonwealth within traditional limits.” Hence “the fact that, in our homeland, three hundred years after Luther’s time, we find the Evangelical preacherdom firmly consolidated in a body not unlike the State, and professing to be the official representative of Protestantism is one of the most astounding paradoxes in all the history of the Church.”[1149]

There is no need to go so far, nor is it really necessary to put the words evangelical “Church” or “Churches” in inverted commas, as Protestants sometimes do in order to mark the quite unusual meaning of the word Church according to Luther’s view. It is obvious that logic had no place in Luther’s ideas and aims in respect of the Church, and his subjectivism imposed on him in this matter the utmost vagueness.

Frequently we find in Catholic works on dogma extracts from Luther’s writings dating from 1519 and 1520, which, it is alleged, show his positive conviction at that time that a Church—i.e. one in the olden Catholic sense—was to be recognised. But this is a mistake. The documents containing such utterances were of a diplomatic character, and we have no right to build upon them. They do not in any way invalidate what has been said above.

One of these is Luther’s “Unterricht auff etlich Artikell,” dating from the end of Feb., 1519, i.e. from a time when he had already discovered the Roman Antichrist;[1150] the other, his “Oblatio sive Protestatio,” dating from the summer of 1520, is a tract unmistakably intended to forestall the publication of the Roman Bull.[1151] In the first work, composed at the instance of Miltitz, it is true he says in praise of the Roman Church that, in her, “St. Peter and St. Paul, 46 Popes and many hundred thousand martyrs had shed their blood,” that she was honoured by God above all others, and that, for the sake of Christian charity and unity, it was not lawful to separate from her for all her present blemishes; he will not, however, express himself regarding the “authority and supremacy of the Roman Church,” “seeing that this does not concern the salvation of souls”; Christ, on the contrary, had founded His Church on charity, meekness and oneness, and, for the sake of this oneness, the Papal commands ought to be obeyed. By this he fancies that he has proved that he “does not wish to detract from the Roman Church.”[1152]

What he says in the other writing referred to above is even less acceptable, though here too he wishes to appear “as a submissive and obedient son of the Holy Christian Churches.”[1153] The circumstance that many shortsighted persons doubtless took him at his word at this critical time of his excommunication must have served powerfully to promote the apostasy.

As to the changes to which Luther’s mode of thought was liable, we may perhaps be permitted to make a general observation before passing from the consideration of the invisible Church to that of the Church visible.

The charge brought against him of having formerly taught differently on many points from what he did at a later date, Luther lightly swept aside with the assurance that he had gone on gradually advancing in the knowledge of the truth. His defenders seek to escape the difficulty in a like way. His changeableness and inconstancy must undoubtedly weigh heavily in the balance. We must not, however, be unfair to him or argue that the fact of his having at first defended elements of Catholic doctrine which he afterwards abandoned constituted a grave self-contradiction.

Luther openly admits that it was only gradually that he came to attack the Church so bitterly.

When King Henry VIII reproached him with the contradictions apparent between his earlier and later teaching on the Papacy and the Church, Luther boldly appealed in 1522 in his “Contra Henricum regem Angliæ” to his having only gradually learnt the whole truth: “I did not yet know that the Papacy was contrary to Scripture.… God had then given me a cheerful spirit that suffered itself to be despised [by his opponents].… By dint of so doing they forced me on, so that the further I went the more lies I discovered … until it became plain from Scripture, thanks to God’s Grace, that the Papacy, episcopacy, foundations, cloisters, universities, together with all the monkery, nunnery, Masses, services were nothing but damnable sects of the devil.… Hence it came about that I had to write other books in condemnation and retractation of my earlier ones.”[1154] He will also, so he adds ironically, retract what he had previously said in his “De captivitate Babylonica,” viz. that the Papacy was the prey of a strong Nimrod, as this had scandalised the lying King of England, who was himself the robber of his country. This, in his own style, he now proposes to amend as follows: “I should have said: The Papacy is the arch-devil’s most poisonous abomination hitherto seen on earth.”[1155]

If it was a difficult matter to give an account of Luther’s invisible Church, owing to the changes which took place in his own views, even more difficult is the task of tracing the further growth of his teaching. His invisible Church becomes more and more clearly a visible Church; yet all the while it protests, that, in its nature, it is invisible.

4. The Church becomes visible. Its organisation

What was Luther’s view of the Church’s character when the time came to set up new congregations within the circle of the “Evangel”?

Theologically the question is answered in the authentic publicly accepted explanations he gave of his doctrine on the Church. Of these the oldest is comprised in the Schwabach Articles of 1529,[1156] where we read in Article XII:

There is “no doubt that there is and ever will be on earth a holy Christian Church until the end of the world, as Christ says in Matt, xxviii. 20.… This Church is nothing else than the believers in Christ, who hold, believe and teach the above-mentioned articles and provisions [of the Schwabach Confession], and who, on this account, are persecuted and tormented in the world. For where the Gospel is preached and the sacraments rightly used, there is the holy Christian Church, bound by no laws and outward pomp to place or time, persons or ceremonies.”—“Thus did the Evangelical idea of the Church,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau, “find expression once and for all in the fundamental confessions of Protestantism, faith in Christ being identified with faith in the said ‘articles and provisions.’”[1157]

In the “Augsburg Confession” of 1530—“which Confession,” according to Luther, “was to last till the end of the world and the Last Judgment”[1158]—we read: “The Church is the mateship of the saints (‘congregatio sanctorum’) in which the Evangel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly dispensed.”[1159] The “Apologia” to this Confession contains the following: “The Church is not merely a commonwealth of outward things and rites like other institutions, but it is rather a society of hearts in faith and the Holy Ghost. She has, however, outward signs by which she may be known, viz. the pure doctrine of the Gospel and a dispensing of the sacraments in accordance with Christ’s Gospel.”[1160] Of “Church government” the Confession of Augsburg states: “Concerning the government of the Church we hold that no one may teach publicly or dispense the sacraments without being duly called”; this is further explained in the “Apologia”: “The Church has the command of God to appoint preachers.”[1161]

Regarding the same matter the Schmalkalden Articles of 1537-1538, which also form a part of the “Symbolic Books,” have the following: “The Churches must have power to call, choose and ordain the ministers of the Church, and such power is in fact bestowed on the Church by God … just as, in case of necessity, even a layman can absolve another and become his pastor.… The words of Peter: ‘You are a kingly priesthood’ refer only to the true Church, which, since she alone has the priesthood, must also have the power to choose and ordain ministers. To this the general usage of the Churches also bears witness.”[1162]

When the above was penned, indeed, even when Melanchthon wrote the “Confessio Augustana,” the new Church, though theoretically invisible, had long since received an established outward form. Yet its invisibility is emphasised in the Schwabach Articles which reject such outward laws as are inconsistent with the Church’s character; the Confession and Apologia also refer to the (ghostly) union of hearts in the faith, and to the assembly of the (unknown) saints.

Nevertheless the visibility, so strongly insisted on in the Schmalkalden Articles, was practically indispensable, and was also a logical result of the whole work undertaken by Luther.

First of all it was called for by the very nature of this “ministry” of those who were to preach and to dispense the sacraments in the name of the congregation; according to Luther’s teaching, the dispensing of the sacraments went hand in hand with preaching, the sacraments being efficacious only through the faith of the recipient, and the dispenser’s duty being confined to making the recipient more worthy of the inpouring of grace through the word of faith which accompanies the visible sign of the sacrament. The ministerial “office” was not conferred by a sacrament as was the case in the priestly ordination of the olden Church, but, as Luther teaches, “ordination, if understood aright, is no more than being called or ‘ordered’ to the office of parson or preacher.” Among the Papists “Baptism and Christ had been weakened and darkened” by the ordinations. “We are born priests and as such we want to be known.” “By Holy Baptism we have become the true priests of Christendom as St. Peter says: ‘You are a royal priesthood.’”[1163] Ministers (i.e. servants) of the Word was the proper title for those who performed all their functions in the name of the common priesthood of the whole people.

As soon, however, as it became a question of appointing preachers a visible Church at once appeared on the scene, though one without either Pope or hierarchy.

It may be recalled that Luther’s plan was originally to leave it to each congregation to appoint a preacher either from its own body or an outsider, who was then to act in their name and with their authority. There seemed no better way of securing control over the preacher’s doctrine. As for the ecclesiastical penalties, Luther, even in his “Deudsche Messe,” left their use to the congregation as a whole.[1164] At a later date he still clung to the idea of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the congregation. Even to absolve from sin belonged, in his opinion,—and to this he adhered to the end,—to all believers, and such absolution was as valid as had it been pronounced by God Himself (always assuming that faith had already been awakened in the penitent).[1165] On the authority of the congregation was to rest, not only the lower ministry, but also the quasi-episcopate. The scheme he sketched in 1523 in the Latin work he addressed to the Bohemians, “De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ,” has already been described.[1166]

The many abuses which arose, and indeed were bound to arise, from the independence of the congregations soon compelled him to cast about for a more reliable framework. The phantom of a community of believers united in spirit, of a “brotherhood” minus any social or constitutional cohesion and devoid of any vigorous direction, proved incapable of realisation.

Help was to be looked for only from the State.

By clinging to its solid structure the religious innovations would have a chance of avoiding the conventicle system and the danger of its congregations falling asunder. The tendency to drift towards the State was also promoted by the opposition of the fanatical Anabaptists, for this sect was a menace to order in the congregations owing to its excesses and also to the pertinacity with which, following out Luther’s own teaching, it insisted on individualism and repudiated the “office” of the ministry. Not only did Luther, after the rise of the Anabaptists, emphasise the outward rather than the inward Word, but, for the same reason, he also laid much greater stress than formerly on the “office” and on the external representation of the Church’s members—invisibly united by the faith—by duly called officials.

Thus, the Church, whose invisibility and spirituality Luther had been so fond of emphasising, became, in course of time, more and more a visible and concrete body, though remaining closely bound up with the State. Yet, even in Luther’s earlier views on the Church, certain indications pointed to the visible Church yet to come; indeed the ideas he retained from Catholic days were to prove stronger than he then anticipated.

Of a statement contained in “De servo arbitrio” (1525), a book written after the rise of the Anabaptist subjectivism, Möhler justly remarks: “This passage views the clergy as the representatives of the Church which is thus quite visible; professing the faith of the invisible Church and expressing its mind, this Church has a definite doctrinal standpoint which she advocates through her clergy, and, which, as the dictum of the Saints, she regards as true and infallible. Hence the visible Church appears as the expression and facsimile of the invisible Church.”[1167]

Already in his books against Alveld and Catharinus Luther was at pains to insist that the Church which he taught was a real community living on earth in the flesh, though not tied down to any definite place or persons.[1168] Wavering and confusion, here as elsewhere, characterise Luther’s teaching.

We can understand how his Catholic opponents, for instance Staphylus, make much of the change from the visible to the invisible Church. Staphylus dubs those who persisted in advocating her invisibility, the “Invisibiles,” such being the followers of Flacius, Schwenckfeld and Osiander, and also the Anabaptists.[1169]

It is a fact that Melanchthon, particularly in his later years, insists on the Church as an institution and on her visible nature more than Luther does. The centuriators defined the Church as “cœtus visibilis” and, after Chemnitz’s day (†1586), the Church of the Lutheran theologians is something quite visible, and is spoken of as an institution for the preservation and promotion of pure doctrine and of the means of grace which work by faith.[1170]

Nor can the Wittenberg view of the Church be taken otherwise when we see how the theologians of that town in Luther’s own time proceeded in appointing ministers and controlling and supervising their office. The preachers and pastors, after their doctrine had been found consonant with that of Wittenberg,[1171] were “entrusted with the ministry” though it is not apparent whether the authorisation came from the congregations who applied for them, or from the theological examiners, or from the sovereign and his mixed consistory. The formulas used are by no means clear, save on one point, viz. that they expressly claim for the Wittenbergers the character of a true “Catholic Church,” or at least their harmony with such a Church.

In the ordination-certificate of Heinrich Bock (above, p. 265), who received a call as pastor and Superintendent to Reval, the quondam city of the Teutonic Order in Esthland, and who had been “ordained” on April 25, 1540, by Bugenhagen, the pastor of Wittenberg, we find it stated: “His doctrine tallies with the consensus of the Catholic Church which our Church also holds, and he is free from every kind of fanaticism condemned by the Catholic Church of Christ.”[1172] Hence they claimed to be one with the universal Church throughout the world and not to form an isolated community apart; this, as we know, was Melanchthon’s favourite view. The olden hierarchy was, however, replaced by that of Wittenberg, as we read in the same certificate: “We”—the signatories, Luther, Bugenhagen, Jonas and Melanchthon—“have entrusted him with the ministry of the Church, that he may teach the Gospel and dispense the sacraments instituted by Christ,” “iuxta vocationem,” i.e. in accordance with the call of the authorities at Reval who had summoned the ordinand to govern their Church (“ad gubernationem ecclesiæ suæ”). The testimonial was the work of Melanchthon.

Other testimonials of this kind are similarly worded.

The certificate of Johann Fischer who went from Wittenberg to Rudolstadt in 1540 (above, p. 265) sets forth that “he had been called to the ministry of the Gospel by the people there, who had also borne witness to his good moral character”; they had asked that “his call might be reinforced by public ordination”; this had been conferred on him when it had been shown that he held “the pure, Catholic doctrine of the Gospel which our Church also teaches and professes,” and that he rejected all the fanatical opinions which the Catholic Church of Christ rejects.[1173] The statement embodied in the testimonial, giving the grounds on which the signatories, the pastor of Wittenberg and other “ministers of the Gospel,” undertook such an ordination is noteworthy: “We may not refuse to do our duty to the neighbouring Churches for the Nicene Council made the godly rule that ordination should be requested of the neighbouring Churches.” Of the objections that theology and Canon Law might have raised those who drafted the document seem to have no inkling.

In this case the Wittenbergers claim to be no more than a “neighbouring Church”; elsewhere they are more ambitious.

The fact is, Wittenberg was anxious to stand at the head of the visible Church.

It was at Wittenberg that Luther, as the leader of the young Church, had first preached the truth of the Gospel urged thereto “by Divine command”; on the strength of such a command he was compelled to defend himself against the Elector’s lawyers who wanted to play havoc with “his Church.”[1174]

“By divine authority we have begun to ameliorate the world.”[1175]

Foes at home twitted him with setting up an “office of the Word” by which an end was made of all freedom; they urged, that, at Wittenberg, people were trying to “breathe new life into despotism, to seat themselves in the chair and to exercise compulsion just as the Pope had done heretofore.”[1176] Luther proclaims loudly: “We, who preach the Evangel, have full powers to ordain; the Pope and the bishops can ordain no one.”[1177]—“You are a bishop,” said Luther once jokingly to a Superintendent, “just as I am Pope.”[1178] Beneath the jest there lay bitter earnest, for the authority of the “Wittenberg school” in Luther’s estimation stood high indeed; whoever “despises it, so long as the Church and school remain as they are, is a heretic and a bad man,” seeing that, in this school, God has “revealed His Word.”[1179]—Nevertheless, the Wittenberg theologians complained that this authority was not recognised, that the Church was a “spectacle of woe,” without “oneness either in doctrine or in worship”; “our princes and cities” ought to bring about unity. Moreover things are bound to grow worse, seeing that “each one wants to be his own Rabbi.”[1180] Outside Wittenberg, and even within the city walls, and that even in Luther’s time, the prediction of Duke George about the 72 sects of the Protestant Babel seemed about to be fulfilled.[1181]

Yet Luther, in setting up the Wittenberg Primacy, retained his former principles which were altogether at variance with unity and subordination. “Who holds the public office of preacher,” so he declared in 1531, is not “forbidden to judge of doctrine” (before this, as the reader may remember, every “miller’s maid” had been free to do this); but whoever has no such office may not do so, because he would be acting “of his own doctrine and spirit.”[1182]

Where is your office? Such was his question in 1525 to his opponent Carlstadt. The latter appealed to the call he had received from the congregation of Orlamünde. But of this Luther even then refuses to hear. He required from Carlstadt, in addition, the ratification of the sovereign, viz. of the Saxon Elector.

Even in those days he was most anxious to see Church discipline established and excommunication resorted to, even though this involved making the Church something visible; the disruption and confusion everywhere rampant cried aloud for regulations, laws and penalties.[1183] “Such punishment and discipline through the Ban,” so he says, “is utterly odious to the world and causes the faithful ministers much work and danger; for vice has already grown into a habit; it is no longer a sin; the ungodly have power, riches and position on their side. The greater the rascal the better his luck.”[1184] Yet, according to him it was impossible for the Church to make laws, otherwise we would again be putting up “snares for consciences” as in Popery.[1185] Laws must be made only by the sovereigns—whatever discipline was enforced against the unruly was enforced by the secular authorities. “The most the parsons did for discipline was in following out the Electoral instructions to the Visitors and denouncing offenders to the secular officials and judges.”[1186] Of the “blasphemers,” viz. those who were obstinate or opposed the New Evangel, Luther wrote in 1529 to Thomas Löscher, parson of Milau: “They must be forced to attend the preaching,” needless to say by temporal penalties; in this way they will be taught the obedience they owe as citizens and also their duty to the State, “whether they believe in the Evangel or not.… If they wish to live among the people, then they must learn the laws of the people, even though unwillingly.”[1187] Hence here and in other instructions it is no longer a question of the Church but only of the sovereigns; these, so he urged, were to be backed by the preachers. He praised the Bohemian Brethren and the Swiss for having better discipline in their Churches, he also admitted that the action of the authorities would not of itself alone be sufficient to correct grave moral disorders.[1188]

“Unless the Court gives its support to our regulations,” Melanchthon once said, the result will be mere “platonic laws.”[1189]

References such as these to the State, which was now seen to be necessary for the support of the Church when once it had become a visible body,[1190] are to be met with repeatedly by anyone who follows the history of Lutheranism in its beginnings, more particularly in the years 1525-1528. It was during this period that the union of the new Church with the State, which has been described above, was accomplished. The sovereign arrogated to himself those powers which gradually made him the supreme head of the Church and permanent “emergency-bishop.”[1191] The visibility of the Church, or rather Churches—as all claim to catholicity was abandoned save in the credal formularies—rested on the enactments of the rulers, who, not without Luther’s connivance, soon introduced the compulsory element into religion. To make use of the invisible power of the Gospel and to give advice to consciences as to moral conduct, was indeed left to the ministers of the Word. But it was the State that had to establish “the right form of worship and the right ecclesiastical organisation.”[1192]

All heretical communities from the commencement of the Church had looked to the State for help. But no heresiarch ever put himself so completely in the hands of the State in all outward matters as Luther and his fellows did where princes of their own party were concerned. “The common Christian Church” was, according to him, to retain for herself only the true faith and the sacraments which worked by faith.

When, in the State Church thus called into being, the authorities proceeded too vigorously against the preachers and treated Luther without due consideration, the latter had himself a taste of the state of servitude into which he had brought the Church. Döllinger says truly that this restriction must have been “doubly irksome to a man who had known the old episcopal, ecclesiastical rule and who now had to admit to himself that it was he who had brought about the destruction of a system which, in spite of all its defects, had dealt with Church matters in an ecclesiastical spirit, and that it was he who had paved the way for the new and quite unecclesiastical order of things.”[1193]

Not seldom do we hear Luther reproaching himself bitterly for the changes.

Among the thoughts that chiefly disturbed his conscience was, as he himself repeatedly admits, that of having rent asunder the great Church. How can you justify your revolt against the one great Church of antiquity, the heir to the promises, so the inner voices said to him as he himself relates: “The words ‘sancta ecclesia’ affright a man. They rise up and say: ‘Preach and act as you like and can, the ‘ecclesia christiana’ is still here. Here is the bark of Peter, it may be tossed about on the waves, but perish it will not!…’ What was I to do? And how was I to comfort myself?… And yet I had to do it [i.e. preach against this Church] as here [John viii. 28] the Lord Christ also does and preaches against those who in name are God’s Kingdom and God’s priesthood.”[1194]

Elsewhere he admits: “What am I doing in preaching against such [representatives of the olden Church], like a pupil against his masters? Thoughts such as these storm in upon me: Now I see that I am in the wrong; oh, that I had never begun, never preached a single word! For who is allowed to set himself up against the Church?… It is hard to persist and to preach against such a Ban.”[1195]—And yet, in his defiant spirit, he does persist: “This hits one smartly in the face, as has often happened to me … yet the One Man, my Beloved Lord and Healer Jesus Christ, is more to me than all the holiest people on earth.” Since he thinks it is His Evangel he is defending, he is able, though only at great costs, “to rise above the cry of ‘Church, Church,’” though he has to admit that, “this troubles me greatly,” and “it is truly a hard thing … to leave the Church herself and not to believe or trust her doctrine any more.”[1196]

It was no real parallel when Luther, in order to justify the State Church, appealed to the conditions in the Middle Ages where the rulers had a share in Church matters,[1197] for if then the princes had intervened in Church matters their action, at least in principle, was always subordinate to the ecclesiastical authority which kept the power in its own hands, and concerned moreover only those outward things in which the Church was thankful for their assistance: The two co-ordinate powers, the secular and the spiritual, helped one another mutually—such at least was the ideal of world-government in those days,—acting in Christian agreement in the service of God and for the general welfare of mankind. Now, however, that the olden spiritual authority had been either completely paralysed or reduced to the shadow of its former self, Luther undertook to replace it by the State, and thus the Church ceased to be any longer a co-ordinate power.

Though the Wittenberg theologians insisted that to them belonged the care of souls and this alone, still the limits between this domain and that of the State became everywhere confused when once the new system had begun to work. Owing to the friction this caused, Luther, in the course of time, came to emphasise merely the duty of the authorities to arrange by law for the establishment of “schools and pulpits,” and to “allow us divergency in preaching or morals.”[1198] Otherwise he left those in power, the high-handed nobles and officials, to do as they pleased, or, else, he lashed them ineffectually with violent and abusive language. In 1586 he declared, speaking of the marriage questions: “The peasants and the rude people who seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers who are always bent on thwarting our decisions, have wearied me so greatly that I have thrown aside the marriage cases and written to some that they may do as they please in the name of all the devils; let the dead bury their dead.”[1199] It was chiefly in the matter of these matrimonial cases that he came into conflict with the Court lawyers, e.g. as to the validity of the secret marriage contracts. It was in this connection that he declared that, “in his Church,” which was God’s own institution, he would retain in his own hands the decision on such matters by virtue of his ecclesiastical office. In other strong remonstrances wrung from him by the arbitrary interference of the State officials and the nobles in Church matters, he sometimes spoke so strongly of the inalienable rights of the Church that one might well think that he regarded the Church as essentially an independent institution with an organisation and spiritual authority of its own.[1200] More usually, however, he simply sighs. When the Court of Dresden interfered with his plans for the improvement of Church discipline he wrote resignedly: “Satan is still Satan. Under the Pope he pushed the Church into the world’s sphere and now, in our day, he seeks to bring the State system into the Church.”[1201]

Without reverting to the subject of the State and Established Church already dealt with (vol. v., 568 ff.) we may refer to the close connection between Luther’s theology on the Church and the development which was its outcome. His theology, from the outset, had aimed at undermining the authority of the Church, while at the same time enlarging the sphere of the secular power.

As early as 1520 in his work addressed to the German nobility he had praised the secular lords as “priests like us, equal in all things”; “they were to give free scope to the office and work which they have from God, wherever it is needed or useful.” Of the clergy, without considering their authority in ecclesiastical matters, he writes: “The priests, bishops or popes must deal with the Word of God and the sacraments, this is their work and office.”[1202]