LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
To do this is his duty, for religion can only exist in a body, i.e. in a Church.”[177] … “Revolution is the term by which the Reformation should be described … Luther’s work was no Reformation, no ‘reforming’ of the existing Church by means of her own institutions, but the destruction of the old shape, in fact, the fundamental negation of any Church at all. He refused to admit any earthly authority in matters of faith, and regarding morals his position was practically the same; he left the matter entirely to the individual conscience. … Never has the possibility of the existence of any ecclesiastical authority whatsoever been more rudely denied.”[178]
“It is true that this is not the whole Luther,” he continues. “The same Luther who here advocates ecclesiastical ‘anarchy’ at a later date was to oppose those whose conscience placed another interpretation on God’s Word than that discovered in it by the inhabitants of Wittenberg.” Paulsen quotes certain sentences in which Luther, shortly afterwards, denounced all deviations from his teaching: “My cause is God’s cause,” and “my judgment is God’s judgment,” and proceeds: “Nothing was left for the Reformers, if there was to be a Church at all, but to set up their own authority in place of the authority of the Popes and the Councils. Only on one tiresome point are they at a disadvantage, anyone being free to appeal from the later Luther to the Luther of Worms.” “Just as people are inclined to reject external authority, so they are ready to set up their own. This is one of the roots from which spring the desire for freedom and the thirst for power. It was not at all Luther’s way to consider the convictions of others as of equal importance with his own.” This he clearly demonstrated in the autocratic position which he claimed for the Wittenberg theology as soon as the “revolutionary era of the Reformation had passed.”
“The argument which Luther had employed in 1521 against the Papists, i.e. that it was impossible to confute him from Scripture, he found used against himself in his struggle with the ‘fanatics’ who also urged that no one could prove them wrong by Scripture. … For the confuting of heretics a Rule of faith is necessary, a living one which can decide questions as they arise. … One who pins his faith to what Luther did in 1521 might well say: If heretics cannot be confuted from Scripture, this would seem to prove that God does not attach much importance to the confutation of heretics; otherwise He would have given us His Revelation in catechisms and duly balanced propositions instead of in Gospels and Epistles, in Prophets and Psalms. … On the one hand there can be no authority on earth in matters of faith, and on the other there must be such an authority, such is the antinomy which lies at the foundation of the Protestant Church. … A contradiction exists in the very essence of Protestantism. On the one hand the very idea of a Church postulates oneness of faith manifested by submission; on the other the conviction that if faith in the Protestant sense is to exist at all, then each person must answer for himself; … it is my faith alone which helps me, and if my faith does not agree with the faith and doctrine of others, I cannot for that reason abandon it. … The fact is, there has never been a revolution conducted on entirely logical lines.”[179]
That “authority in matters of faith” which Luther began to claim for himself, did not prevent him in the ensuing years from insisting on the right of private judgment, though all the while he was interpreting biblical Revelation in accordance with his own views. As time went on he became, however, much more severe towards the heretics who diverged from his own standpoint. But this was only when the “revolutionary era of the Reformation,” as Paulsen calls it, was over and gone. So long as it lasted he would not and could not openly refuse to others what he claimed for himself. Even in 1525 we find him declaring that “the authorities must not interfere with what each one wishes to teach and to believe, whether it be the Gospel or a lie.” He is here speaking of the authorities, but his own conduct in the matter of tolerating heretics was even then highly inconsistent, to say nothing of toleration of Catholics.
From the above it is easy to see that the freedom which Luther advocated at Worms cannot serve as the type of our modern freedom of thought, research and conscience.
To return to the historical consideration of the event at Worms, the words already mentioned, “God help me, Amen!” call for remark.
The celebrated exclamation put into Luther’s mouth: “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me, Amen!” usually quoted as the briefest and most characteristic expression of his “exalted, knightly act” at Worms, is a legend which has not even the credit of being incorporated in Luther’s Latin account of his speech.
He himself gives the conclusion as simply: “God help me, Amen,” a formula which has nothing emphatic about it, was customary at the end of a discourse and is to be found elsewhere in Luther’s own writings. Its embellishment by the historic addition was produced at Wittenberg, where it was found desirable to render “the words rather more forcible and high-sounding.” “There is not the faintest proof that the amplification came from anyone who actually heard the words.”[180] The most that can be said is that it may have grown up elsewhere.[181] The enlarged form is first found in the two editions of the discourse printed by Grüneberg at Wittenberg in 1521, one in Latin and the other in German, which are based as to the remaining portion on notes on the subject emanating from Luther. Karl Müller, the last thoroughly to examine the question, opines that Luther’s concluding phrase may very easily have been amplified without the co-operation of Luther or of any actual witness. The proposal made in 1897 in Volume vii. of the Weimar edition of Luther’s works to accept as reliable Grüneberg’s edition which contains the altered form of the phrase, must, according to Karl Müller, be regarded as “a total failure,” nor does he think much better of the Weimar edition in its account of the Worms Acts generally.
How little the exclamation can pretend to any special importance is clear from a note of Conrad Peutinger’s, who was present during the address and committed his impression to writing the following day. When Luther had finished his explanation, so it runs, the “official” again exhorted him to retract, seeing he had already been condemned by higher councils. Thereupon Luther retorted that the Councils “had also erred and over and over again contradicted themselves and come into opposition with the Divine Law. This the ‘official’ denied. Luther insisted that it was so and offered to prove it. This brought the discussion suddenly to an end, and there was a great outcry as Luther left the place. In the midst of it he recommended himself submissively to His Imperial Mt. [Majesty]. Before concluding he uttered the words: May God come to my help.” According to this account the words were interjected as Luther was about to leave the assembly, in the midst of the tumult and “great outcry” which followed his recommending himself to the Imperial protection.
In view of the circumstances just described, P. Kalkoff, years ago, admitted that Luther’s words as quoted above had “no claim to credibility,”[182] while, quite recently, H. Böhmer declared that “it would be well not to quote any more these most celebrated of Luther’s words as though they were his. Many will be sorry, yet the absence of these words need not affect our opinion of Luther’s behaviour at Worms.”[183] W. Friedensburg is also of opinion that “we must, at any rate, give up the emphatic conclusion of the speech—‘Here I stand,’ etc.—as unhistorical; the searching examinations made in connection with the Reichstagsakten have rendered it certain that Luther’s conclusion was simply: ‘God help me, Amen.’ ” Of this Karl Müller adduced conclusive proofs.[184]
The immense success of the legend of the manly, decisive, closing words so solemnly uttered in the assembly is quite explicable when we come to consider the circumstances. The Diet, an event which stands out in such strong relief in Luther’s history, where his friends seemed to see his star rising on the horizon only to set again suddenly behind the mountain fortress, was itself of a nature to invite them to embellish it with fiction.
Apart from the legends in circulation among Luther’s friends, there were others which went the rounds among his opponents and later polemics. Such is the statement to the effect that Luther played the coward at Worms, and that his assumed boldness and audacity was merely due to the promises of material assistance, or, as Thomas Münzer asserts, to actual coercion on the part of his own followers.
According to all we have seen, Luther’s chief