LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
Mass.” He dedicated it in the Preface “to the Augustinians of Wittenberg,” his dear brethren, because he had heard in his solitude, so he says, “that they had been the first to commence setting aside the abuse of Masses in their assembly [congregation].”[217] He is desirous of fortifying their “consciences” against the Mass, because he is anxious lest “all should not have the same constancy, and good conscience, in the undertaking of so great and notable a work.” In the same way as he in his struggle had attained to assurance of conscience, so they, too, must act “with a like conscience, faith and trust, and look on the opinion of the whole world as nothing but chaff and straw, knowing that we are sent to a death-struggle against the devil and all his might, yea, against the judgment of God, and, like Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 28), can only overcome by our strength of faith.”
To despise the protests of the world was not so difficult, but to pay “no heed to the devil and the solemn judgment of God” was a harder task.
It would seem that some of the Augustinians were not capable of this, and had become uneasy concerning the innovations. He is thereupon at pains to assure them that he is an expert in the matter; he declares that he has learnt from experience how “our conscience makes us out to be sinners in God’s sight and deserving of eternal reprobation, unless it is well preserved and protected at every point by the holy, strong and veracious Word of God.”[218] This “stronghold” he would fain open to them by demonstrating from the Word of God the horrors of the Sacrifice of the Mass.
Hence he begins by overthrowing, with incredible determination, everything that might be advanced against him and in favour of the Mass in general by the “doctrine and discipline of the Church, the teaching of the Fathers, immemorial custom and usage,” commandments of men and theological faculties, Saints, Fathers, or, in fine, the “Pope and his Gomorrhas.” The utter unrestraint of his language here and there is only matched by the extravagance of his ideas and interpretation of the Bible.
All men are priests, he declares; as to Mass priests there should be none. “I defy the idols and pomps of this world, the Pope and his parsons. You fine priestlings, can you point out to us in all the gospels and epistles a single bit of proof that you are or were intended to act as priests for other Christians?”[219] Whoever dares to adduce the well-known passages in the Bible to the contrary he looks on as a “rude, unlettered donkey.” Why? Because he would not otherwise defend the “smeared and shorn priesthood.” “O worthy patron of the shaven, oily little gods,” he says to him with mocking commiseration.[220] We are the persecuted party, we, who, whilst acknowledging Christ’s presence in the Sacrament, will have nothing to do with the sacrificial character of the Supper. For whoever holds fast simply to Christ’s institution is scolded as a heretic by the Pope. “There they sit, the unlettered, godless hippopotami, on costly, royal thrones, Pope, Cardinal, bishop, monk and parson with their schools of Paris and Louvain, and their dear sisters Sodom and Gomorrah.” As soon as they see the poor, small, despised crew [the opponents of the Mass] they wax wroth, “frown, turn up their noses, hold up their hands in horror, and cry: ‘The heretics do not observe the usage and form of the Roman Church’ ”; but they themselves are “unlearned dunces and donkeys.”[221]
The author, whose very pen seems steeped in ire, goes off at a tangent to speak of the Pope and of celibacy.
He is never tired of explaining “that the abominable and horrid priesthood of the Papists came into the world from the devil”; “the Pope is a true apostle of his master the hellish fiend, according to whose will he lives and reigns”; he has dropped into the holy kingdom of the priesthood common to all like the “devil’s hog he is, and with his snout” has befouled, yea, destroyed it; with his celibacy he has raised up a priesthood which is “a brew of all abominations.”[222] The devil himself does not suffice to make Luther’s language strong enough for his liking, and he is driven to his imagination for other ugly pictures.
“I believe, that, even had the Pope made fornication obligatory, he would not have given rise to and furthered such great unchastity [as by celibacy].” “Who can sufficiently deplore the fury of the devil with his godless, cursed law?” The “Roman knave” wishes to rule everywhere, and the “universities, those shameless brothels, sit still and say nothing. … They, like obedient children of the Church, carry out the commands of the whoremaster. Every Christian ought to resist him at the risk of his life, even though he had a thousand heads, because we see how the poor, simple, common folk who stand in terror of his childish, shameful Bulls, do, and submit to, whatever the damned Roman rogue invents with the help of the devil.”[223]
Many of his contemporaries may well be excused for having felt that such language was the result of the Pope’s Bull; the curse of the Church had overtaken Luther, in the solitude of the Wartburg it had done its work, and now the spirit of evil and darkness had gained complete mastery.[224]
“So great,” he cries, “is God’s anger over this vale of Tafet and Hinnan that those who are most learned, and live most chastely, do more harm than those who learn nothing and live in fornication.” “O unhappy wretches that we are, who live in these latter days among so many Baalites, Bethelites and Molochites, who all appear so spiritual and Christian, and yet have swallowed up the whole world and themselves desire to be the only Church; they live and laugh in their security and freedom, instead of weeping tears of blood over the cruel murder of the children of our people.”[225]
In conclusion, he gives his open approval to the Wittenbergers, that “Mass is no longer said, that there is no more organ-playing,” and that “bleating and bellowing” has ceased in the Church, so that the Papists say: “They are all heretics and have gone crazy.”[226] It seems to him that Saxony is the happiest of lands, “because there the living truth of the Gospel has arisen”; surely the Elector Frederick must be the Prince, foretold by prophecy, who was to deliver the Holy Sepulchre; himself he compares to the “Angel at the Sepulchre,” or to Magdalene who announced the Resurrection.[227]
His self-confidence and arrogance had not been shaken by the many weary hours of lonely introspection in the Wartburg, but, on the contrary, had been nourished and inflamed. That was the period of his “spiritual baptism”; he felt volcanic forces surging up within him. He believed that a power from above had commanded him to teach as he was doing. Hence he called the Wartburg his Patmos; as the Apostle John had received his revelation on Patmos, so, as he thought, he also had been favoured in his seclusion with mysterious communications from above.
The idea of a divine commission now began to penetrate all his being with overwhelming force.
When the ecclesiastical troubles at Wittenberg necessitated his permanent return thither, he declared to the Elector, who had hitherto never heard such language from his lips, “Your Electoral Grace is already aware, or, if unaware, is hereby apprised of the fact, that I have not received the Gospel from man, but from heaven only, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I might already have accounted myself and signed myself a servant and evangelist, and for the future shall do so.”[228] We must also refer to the days of his Saxon Patmos—which exercised so deep an influence on his interior life—the remarkable mystical utterance to which his pupils afterwards declared he had given vent at a later date, viz. that he had been “commanded,” nay, “enjoined under pain of eternal reprobation (‘interminaretur’) not to doubt in any way of these things [of the doctrines he was to teach].”[229]
Every road that led back to his duty to the Church and his Order was barred by the gloomy enthusiasm Luther kindled within himself, subsequently to his spiritual baptism in the Wartburg.
The time spent in the Wartburg brought him his final conviction in his calling as a prophet and his divine commission, but if we are to understand Luther aright we must not forget that this conviction was a matter of gradual growth (cp. vol. iii., xvi. 1).
We cannot doubt that even in the first years of his public career, certainly in 1519 and 1520, the belief in his own divine mission had begun to take firm root in his mind.
In order to explain the rise of this idea we must turn first of all to his confidential letters dating from this period; his public writings in this respect are of less importance. With their help it is possible