Luther. Grisar Hartmann
the commencement of any movement directed against the authority of the Church, it appeared likely to render all efforts for the composing of differences illusory. It was rightly felt that whoever came in conflict with the Church would make every effort to reserve the decision of his cause to some future Council, more especially when he is able meanwhile to devote himself freely to the furtherance of his ideas, and when the speedy summoning of a Council is very doubtful. The claim that an Œcumenical Council should be called to pronounce upon every new opinion was so extravagant that the prohibition found general approval.
At the time of Luther’s advent on the scene the prospect of a General Council, owing to the dissensions among the Christian Powers, had retreated into the far distance, and even though it had been possible for the bishops throughout the whole world to assemble, the meeting, according to ancient custom and the regulations of canon law, would have taken place under the Pope’s presidency. Even in this event Luther can, accordingly, have cherished but small hope of winning the day.
His deep distrust of Rome we find expressed in the letter, written almost simultaneously, to his trusted friend Wencelaus Link, the Nuremberg Augustinian, to whom he was forwarding his account of what had taken place at Augsburg (Acta Augustana): “My pen is giving birth to much greater things than these Acta. I know not whence these thoughts come to me; the cause [i.e. the conflict], to my thinking, has not yet commenced in earnest and much less can these gentlemen from Rome look to see the end. I shall send my little works to you so that you may see if I am right in surmising that the real Anti-Christ whom Paul describes (2 Thess. ii. 3 ff.) rules at the Roman Court. I think I can prove that to-day he is worse than the Turks.”[924] Whoever could speak in this way had already cut himself adrift or was on the point of so doing.
The powerful forces within the fiery and vivacious Monk seethed like the crater of a volcano. The Lecture-hall at Wittenberg again resounded with his eloquent and vehement outbursts. The number of students at the University increased to an unexpected extent. “They surround my desk like busy ants,” Luther declares in a letter.[925]
He does not know whence the ideas he pours forth come to him, but he sees daily more clearly that they are from Christ. “I see,” so he wrote to Staupitz, his Superior, “they are determined [at Rome] to condemn me; but Christ on His part is resolved not to yield in me. May His holy and blessed will be done, yea, may it be done. Pray for me.”[926] In the same way, though in stronger terms, he informs his friend Johann Lang soon afterwards: “Our Eck is again preparing to assail me; it will come to this, that, with the help of Christ, I shall carry out what I have long since planned, namely, to strike a deadly blow at the Roman vipers by means of a powerful book. Hitherto I have merely played and jested with Rome, albeit she has smarted as keenly under it as though it had been meant in deadly earnest.”[927] “So God carries me away,” we shall soon after hear him say. “God draws me. I cannot control myself.” “God must see to it, what He is working through me.... Why has He not instructed me otherwise?” He fancies he feels “the mighty breathing of the Spirit,” and little by little he is carried away by the conviction that he is God’s messenger and the leader of a cause which “is not of man’s invention.”[928]
During the exciting years of 1517 and 1518 Luther, in addition to his polemical works, published several popular, practical handbooks on religion. They consisted chiefly of collections and enlargements of the sermons which he still continued to preach from time to time. Their publication strengthened in many the impression, that the man whom some denounced as a theological rebel was, on the contrary, simply zealous for the salvation of souls and only seeking the spiritual profit of his neighbour.
In the spring of 1517 he published, for instance, the German exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms, already referred to, a book which, as he wrote to Christopher Scheurl, was intended for the rough Saxon “to whom the Christian teaching cannot be presented too fully.”[929] If the work pleases no one, he says, then it will please him all the more.[930] In this work he speaks in heartfelt tones, especially when enlarging upon the “Word of Grace” and describing the riches of Christ.[931] Another book, his: “Exposition of the Our Father for the simple laity,”[932] first appeared in 1517 through Agricola, then again in 1518 after having been amended by the author. In the preface he says amicably: “I should like, if it were possible, to render a service even to my adversaries; for my desire is to be profitable to all men and harmful to none.” The object of such assurances is, however, too evident, and they are, moreover, flatly contradicted by his actual behaviour towards his opponents.
To pass over other pious instructions which his amazing power for work created, he also published in 1518 the detailed Latin notes of the sermons on the Ten Commandments, which he had delivered in 1516-17.[933] Many portions of this book are really useful and hardly to be distinguished from what a true spiritual guide of souls would write, but they also contain other matter which necessarily challenged dispute. In most of his explanations he gives a very clever, popular and perfectly correct presentment of the contents of the commandments and the motives for keeping them; he goes, however, too far, for instance, in his ruthless, and occasionally even contemptuous opposition to the abuses connected with the veneration of the saints. The tone which he here adopts in his strictures could not have favourable results, and he would have done better had he devoted himself to the criticism of the superstitious practices to which he had alluded shortly before in connection with the errors of the Middle Ages.[934] Oldecop, who was not unkindly disposed, complains that “in the matter of the veneration of the saints, Luther was not in agreement with the Catholic Church.”[935]
In the book in question, where he treats of the Sixth Commandment, he is very severe and exact, indeed, rather too exact and detailed in his enumeration and denunciation of the various kinds of sins of the flesh. He speaks with rhetorical emphasis and, it must be admitted, with a wealth of earnest thought, against the habit of filthy talking which was gaining ground at that time.[936] Here, for example, after the most solemn warnings against giving scandal to the little ones, he lets fall these golden words with regard to reform: “If the Church is to blossom again, the beginning must be made by a careful training of the young.”[937] Among other things, Luther treats of the temptations which the devout man abhors and must abhor, although he can never escape them, and gives vent to the paradox: “True chastity is therefore to be found in sensuality, and the more filthy the sensuality, the more beautiful the chastity,”[938] surely a delightful instance of our author’s propensity to unusual language. Somewhat obscurely, indeed, he also speaks against the freedom of the will to do what is good; Paul invokes the mercy of God against the temptation “in the body of this death” (Rom. vii. 24 f.), and he, Luther, would lament over the “poison of death within him.” “Where then are those who vaunt their free will? Why do they not set themselves free from concupiscence as soon as they please? Why will they not, yea, why are they unable even to will?... Because their will is already elsewhere, dragged away as a captive.”[939]
4. The Disputation of Leipzig (1519). Miltitz. Questionable Reports