Life of Luther. Julius Köstlin
of the Pope over Council, Church, and Scripture. As to any argument, however, about the theses to be retracted, Caietan refused from the first to engage in it, and undoubtedly he went further in that direction than he originally desired or intended. His sole wish was, as he said, to give fatherly correction, and with fatherly friendliness to arrange the matter. But in reality, says Luther, it was a blunt, naked, unyielding display of power. Luther could only beg from him further time for consideration.
Luther's friends at Augsburg, and Staupitz, who had just arrived there, now attempted to divert the course of these proceedings, to collect other decisions of importance bearing on the subject, and to give him the opportunity of a public vindication. Accompanied therefore by several jurists friendly to his cause, and by a notary and Staupitz, he laid before the legate next day a short and formal statement of defence. He could not retract unless convicted of error, and to all that he had said he must hold as being Catholic truth. Nevertheless he was only human, and therefore fallible, and he was willing to submit to a legitimate decision of the Church. He offered, at the same time, publicly to justify his theses, and he was ready to hear the judgment of the learned doctors of Basle, Freiburg, Louvain, and even Paris upon them. Caietan with a smile dismissed Luther and his proposals, but consented to receive a more detailed reply in writing to the principal points discussed on the previous day.
On the morrow, October 14, Luther brought his reply to the legate. But in this document also he insisted clearly and resolutely from the commencement on those very principles which his opponents regarded as destructive of all ecclesiastical authority and of the foundations of Christian belief. He spoke with crucial emphasis of the trouble he had taken to interpret the words of Pope Clement in a Scriptural sense. The Papal decrees might err, and be at variance with Holy Writ. Even the Apostle Peter himself had once to be reproved (Galat. ii. 11 sqq.) for 'walking not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel;' surely then his successor was not infallible. Every faithful believer in Christ was superior to the Pope, if he could show better proofs and grounds of his belief. Still he entreated Caietan to intercede with Leo X., that the latter might not harshly thrust out into darkness his soul, which was seeking for the light. But he repeated that he could do nothing against his conscience: one must obey God rather than man, and he had the fullest confidence that he had Scripture on his side. Caietan, to whom he delivered this reply in person, once more tried to persuade him. They fell into a lively and vehement argument; but Caietan cut it short with the exclamation 'Revoke.' In the event of Luther not revoking or submitting to judgment at Rome, he threatened him and all his friends with excommunication, and whatever place he might go to with an interdict; he had a mandate from the Pope to that effect already in his hands. He then dismissed him with the words, 'Revoke, or do not come again into my presence.'
Nevertheless he spoke in quite a friendly manner after this to Staupitz, urging him to try his best to convert Luther, whom he wished well. Luther, however, wrote the same day to his friend Spalatin, who was with the Elector, and to his friends at Wittenberg, telling them that he had refused to yield. The legate, he said, had behaved with all friendliness of manner to Staupitz in his affair, but neither Staupitz nor himself trusted the Italian when out of sight. If Caietan should use force against him, he would publish the written reply he gave him. Caietan might call himself a Thomist, but he was a muddle-headed, ignorant theologian and Christian, and as clumsy in giving judgment in the matter as a donkey with a harp. Luther added further that an appeal would be drawn up for him in the form best fitted to the occasion. He further hinted to his Wittenberg friends at the possibility of his having to go elsewhere in exile; indeed, his friends already thought of taking him to Paris, where the university still rejected the doctrine of Papal absolutism. He concluded this letter by saying that he refused to become a heretic by denying that which had made him a Christian; sooner than do that, he would be burned, exiled, or cursed.
The appeal of which Luther here spoke, was 'from the Pope ill-informed to the same when better informed.' On October 16 he submitted it, formally prepared, to a public notary. While Staupitz and Link, warned to consult their personal safety, and despairing of any good result, left Augsburg, Luther still remained there. He even addressed on October 17 a letter to Caietan, conceding to him the utmost he thought possible. Moved, as he said, by the persuasions of his dear father Staupitz and his brother Link, he offered to let the whole question of indulgences rest, if only that which drove him to this tragedy were put a stop to; he confessed also to having been too violent and disrespectful in dispute. In after years he said to his friends, when referring to this concession, that God had never allowed him to sink deeper than when he had yielded so much. The next day, however, he gave notice of his appeal to the legate, and told him he did not wish longer to waste his time in Augsburg. To this letter he received no answer.
Luther waited, however, till the 20th. He and his Augsburg patrons began to suspect whether measures had not already been taken to detain him. They therefore had a small gate in the city wall opened in the night, and sent with him an escort well acquainted with the road. Thus he hastened away, as he himself described it, on a hard-trotting hack, in a simple monk's frock, with only knee-breeches, without boots or spurs, and unarmed. On the first day he rode eight miles, as far as the little town of Monheim. As he entered in the evening an inn and dismounted in the stable, he was unable to stand from fatigue, and fell down instantly among the straw. He travelled thus on horseback to Wittenberg, where he arrived well and joyful, on the anniversary of his ninety-five theses. He had heard on the way of the Pope's brief to Caietan, but he refused to think it could be genuine. His appeal, meanwhile, was delivered to the Cardinal at Augsburg, who had it posted by his notary on the doors of the cathedral.
From Augsburg Luther was followed by a letter from Caietan to the Elector, full of bitter complaints against him. He had formed, he said, the highest hopes of his spiritual recovery, and had been grievously disappointed in him; the Elector, for his own honour and conscience' sake, must now either send him to Rome or, at least, expel him from his territory, since measures of fatherly kindness had failed to make him acknowledge his error. Frederick, after waiting four weeks, returned a quiet answer, showing how the conduct of Luther quite agreed with his own view of the matter. He would have expected that no recantation would have been required of Luther till the matter in dispute had been satisfactorily examined and explained. There were a number of learned men, also, at foreign universities, from whom he could not yet have learned with certainty that Luther's doctrine was unchristian; while, to say the least, it was chiefly those whose personal and financial interests were affected by it that had become his opponents. He would propose therefore that the judgment of several universities should be obtained, and have the matter disputed at a safe place. Luther, however, to whom the Elector showed this letter, at once declared himself ready to go into exile, but would not be deterred from publishing new declarations or taking further steps.
He had a report of his conference with Caietan printed, with a justification of himself to the readers. And in this he advanced propositions against the Papacy which entirely shook its whole foundation. Already, in the solutions to his theses, he had incidentally, and without attracting further notice by the remark, spoken of a time when the Papacy had not yet acquired supremacy over the Universal Church, thereby contradicting what the Romish Church maintained and had made into a dogma, namely, that the Papal see possessed this primacy by original institution through Christ, and by means of immutable Divine right. He now expressed this opinion as a positive proposition. The Papal monarchy, he declared, was only a Divine institution in the sense in which every temporal power, advanced by the progress of historical development, might be called so also. 'The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.'
Without waiting for an answer direct from Rome, Luther now abandoned all thoughts of success with Leo X. On November 28 he formally and solemnly appealed from the Pope to a General Christian Council. By so doing he anticipated the sentence of excommunication which he was daily expecting. With Rome he had broken for ever, unless she were to surrender her claims and acquisitions of more than a thousand years.
After once the first restraints of awe were removed with which Luther had regarded the Papacy, behind and beyond the matter of the indulgences, and he had learned to know the Papal representative at Augsburg, and made a stand against his demands and menaces, and escaped from his dangerous clutches, he enjoyed for the first time the fearless consciousness of freedom. He took a wider survey around him, and saw plainly the deep