LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
viz. the setting aside of the vow of celibacy. He was suffering, he admits, “grievous pain through being unable to find the right answer to the question.”[204]
Such efforts were naturally crowned with success in the end.
Five weeks later he was able to inform Melanchthon: “It seems to me that now I can say with confidence how our task is to be accomplished. The argument is briefly this: Whoever has taken a vow in a spirit opposed to evangelical freedom must be set free and his vow be anathema. Such, however, are all those who have taken the vow in the search for salvation, or justification. Since the greater number of those taking vows make them for this reason, it is clear that their vow is godless, sacrilegious, contrary to the Gospel and hence to be dissolved and laid under a curse.”[205]
Thus it was the indefinite and elastic idea of “evangelical freedom” which was finally to settle the question. Concerning his own frame of mind while working out this idea in his tract, he says to Spalatin, on November 11, in a letter of complaint about other matters: “I am going to make war against religious vows. … I am suffering from temptations, and out of temper, so don’t be offended. There is more than one Satan contending with me; I am alone, and yet at times not alone.”[206]
The book was finished in November and sent out under the title, “On Monastic Vows.”[207] The same strange argument, based on evangelical freedom, recurs therein again and again under all sorts of rhetorical forms; the tract is also noteworthy for its distortion of the Church’s teaching,[208] though we cannot here enter in detail into its theology and misstatements. The very origin of the book does not inspire confidence. Many great and monumental historical works and events have originated in conditions far from blameless, but few of Luther’s writings have sprung from so base a source as this one; yet its results were far-reaching, and it was a means of seducing countless wavering and careless religious, depicting the monasteries and furthering immensely the new evangelical teaching. While writing the book Luther had naturally in his mind the multitude he was so desirous of setting free, and chose his language accordingly.
But what were his thoughts concerning himself at that period, when the idea of matrimony had not yet dawned upon him?
In the letter to Melanchthon just referred to, he says of himself: “If I had had the above argument [concerning evangelical freedom] before my eyes when I made my vow, I should never have taken it. I too am, therefore, uncertain as to the frame of mind in which I did take it; I was rather carried away than drawn, such was God’s will; I fear that I too made a godless and sacrilegious vow. … Later, when the vows were made, my earthly father, who was angry about it all, said to me when he had calmed down: ‘If only it was not a snare of Satan!’ His words made such an impression on me that I remember them better than anything else he ever said, and I believe that through his mouth God spoke to me, at a late hour indeed, and as from afar, to rebuke and warn me.”[209]
Very closely connected with his own development is the fact that at that time, on several occasions, he described most glaringly and untruthfully the moral corruption in which the Papists were sunk, owing to the vow of chastity and the state of celibacy. It seems to have been his way of quieting his conscience. So greatly does he generalise concerning the evil which he attributes with much exaggeration to his fellows in the religious state, representing it as an inevitable result of monastic life, that, strange to say, he forgets to except himself. Only at a much later date did he casually inform his hearers that, through God’s dispensation, he had preserved his chastity.[210]
As to whether he himself had any intention then of dissolving his vow by marriage, we may put on record what he had said at an earlier date in a written sermon intended for the general public: “I hope I have got so far that, with God’s grace, I may remain as I am,” but he adds: “though I am not yet out of the wood and dare not compare myself to the chaste hearts, still I should be sorry and pray God graciously to preserve me from it.”[211] The “chaste hearts” are the “false saints” whom he is assailing in that particular section of his sermon. To the “false saints” he opposes the true ones, much as in his earliest sermons at Wittenberg he had attacked the stricter monks and their observance, describing them opprobriously as little saints and proud self-righteous by works. The connecting link between the two, i.e. his erroneous opposition to all good works and renunciation of sensuality, here, and again and again elsewhere, is clearly Luther’s starting-point.
He fancies he hears those who were desirous of faithfully keeping the vow they had made to God reproaching him with his sensuality, “how they open their jaws,” and say, “alas, poor monk, how he must feel the weight of his cowl, how pleased he would be to have a wife! But let them blaspheme,” such is his answer, one typical of his language on the subject, “let them blaspheme, these chaste hearts and great saints, let them be of iron and stone as they feign to be; but as for you, beware of forgetting that you are a man of flesh and blood; leave it to God to judge between the angelical and mighty heroes and the despised and feeble sinners. If you only knew who they are who make a show of such great chastity and discipline, and what that is of which St. Paul speaks, Ephesians v. 12: ‘For of the things that are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak,’ you would not esteem their boasted chastity fit even for a prostitute to wipe her boots on. Here we have the perversion that the chaste are the unchaste and deceive all that come in contact with them.”[212]
Yet the pious religious who were true to their vows would certainly have been the last to deny that they were mere flesh and blood; they did not pretend to be made of “iron,” nor did they vaunt their “boasted chastity,” but prayed to God, did humble penance, and so acquired the grace necessary for keeping what they had cheerfully vowed in the fear of the Lord and in the consoling hope of an eternal reward. On the other hand, we hear but little of Luther’s praying in the Wartburg, and still less of his having performed penance. And yet those walls were full of the memory of that great Saint, Elizabeth of Hungary, whose life was a touching example of zealous prayer and penance.
Luther, during his stay in the Castle, accused himself in very strong terms, which, however, he did not intend to be taken literally, of gluttony and luxurious living, and also of idleness. “I sit here all day in idleness and fill my belly,” he says in hyperbolical language on May 14, 1521, in a letter to Spalatin,[213] soon after his arrival at the Wartburg. Already before this, at Wittenberg, in a letter to Staupitz, he had reproached himself with drunkenness.[214]
If, however, the “luxury” with which he reproached himself was no graver than his “idleness,” then Luther is not really in such a bad case, for his “idleness” was so little meant to be taken literally, that, in the same letter, he immediately goes on to speak of his literary projects: “I am about to write a German sermon on the freedom of auricular confession [this duly appeared and was dedicated to Sickingen]; I also intend to continue the Commentary on the Psalms [a plan never realised]; also my postils as soon as I have received what I require from Wittenberg [the German postil alone was published]; I am also awaiting the unfinished MS. of the Magnificat [this also was published later].”
It was not in his nature to be really idle.
His chief German work, which was to render him so popular, viz. his translation of the Bible, was commenced in the Wartburg, where he started with the translation of the New Testament from the Greek. We shall speak elsewhere of the merits and defects of this translation. The general excellence of its style and language cannot hide the theological bias which frequently guides the writer’s pen, nor can its value as a popular work allow us to overlook the fact that he was often carried away by the precipitation incidental to his temperament.[215]
Another work which he finished within those quiet walls treated of the Sacrifice of the Mass. His thoughts early turned with aversion from this centre of Catholic worship; indeed, he seemed bent on robbing the Church of the very pearl of her worship. He appears to have said Mass for the last time on his way to Augsburg to meet Cardinal Cajetan. In the Wartburg he refused to have anything to do with the “Mass priest” living there. On August 1, 1521, he wrote to Melanchthon, that the renewal of Christ’s institution of the celebration of the Supper, proposed by his friends at Wittenberg, agreed entirely with the plans he had in view when he should return, and that from that time forward