^-N i .. /y.-y f/X ,//X^i^ %^^ ^^^//// "^/y. y /. TS^^-^I^ '.om T; , /J . 7////? THE LIFE MARTIN LUTHER. LnxnoN' : IINIKI) KY nonsdX, LF.VKV, AND FIIANKI.Y.V, (Jrcttt New Street ami Fettev Lane ■^: r THE LIFE <;5'7t<'/^n Pcf^ri^ rc Po --t^^>LA<» ff. aCJ)E1 A SKETCH OF THE UISE AND PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. LONDON : NATHANIEL COOKE, MILFORD HOUSE, STRAND. 1853. PHEFACE. The great Reformer who is the hero of the following pages was distinguished, in addition to his many other high claims to admiration, by a true love for the arts. Luther's passion for music has become proverbial. As he loved the arts, he made friends of artists ; and was materially assisted in the great task of his life by Lucas Kranach, the greatest German painter of his age. The personal friend and disciple of Luther, he brought all the energy of an impassioned nature, all the resources of his art, to help the great work of the Reformation. It is particularly appropriate, therefore, that a book destined to honour the great Reformer of Germany, and spread abroad his name and fame, should derive its principal claim to public favour from its beautiful illustra- tions. Such is the case with the work now translated from the German and placed before the British public. The ele- gant drawings from which the artistic engravings of the original Avork were made, created a great sensation at Munich a few years ago ; they found so many and such ardent admi- rers, that it was resolved to publish them, together with a biography of Luther. M. Gelzer undertook the latter portion b PREFACE. ol" the work. Ills object was, he says, to present to his coun- trvmon a book whieli should renew in fresh outlines the ima"*c of their o-reat intellectual hero, — a book which a father niii^ht read to his domestic circle,— which might accompany the young student to his high school,— and which might fur- nish a subject for reflection to the clergyman, whether in the quiet of his native land or in a new home in distant colonies on the oth;u' side of the ocean, reminding him, in the latter case, of the land of his fathers, the historical home of his spiritual lifi' and of his faith. M. Gelzer has endeavoured to portray Luther such as he was; not concealing imperfections inseparable from human nature, but which, in the case of Luther, were outweighed a thousand times by his virtues. At the same time, he seeks to give the reader a correct idea of the immense amount of patience, perseverance, and lal)our by which the great He- former gained for himself and for liis country the praise of having stood foremost in the struggle for the mental advance- ment of mankind. M. Gelzer, living in a country where Roman Catholicism remains the religion of a large portion of the people, is neces- sarily tolerant, like the rest of his countrymen ; and he has endeavoured, he says, carefully to avoid all bitterness of spirit towards the members of tliat creed which waged war and persecution against Luther. He aptly quotes the observation of Prederick Schlegel, who, after having become a Catholic himself, recommends all his co-religionists to look upon every earnest Protestant as a future Catholic ; and adds, that it TREFACE. vii would be wise were Protestants to look upon every sincere Catholic and love him as a future Protestant. Such a man- ner of judging is a fitting preparation for the free spiritual union of all Christians, such as neither earlier nor later attempts have yet succeeded in achieving. We trust that this Life of Luther, the Germcui liefonncr, in an English form, may ])rove as interesting to English readers as it has, to the honour of the Germans, been popular in Germany. CONTENTS. Pkeface I" AGE V ©tscriptiou of tfje plates, NO. I. Luther's Birth. Eleven p.m., Nov. 11, 1483 . . . .13 II. Luther at School . . . . . . . . .14 III. Luther sings as a Chorister at the door oe Mistress Ursula Cotta AT Eisenach . . . . . . . . . .14 IV. Luther discovers the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, 1501 15 V. Luther's Friend Alexis is killed at his side by Lightning while they are on a Journey . . . . . . . .16 VI. Luther enters the Monastery of the Augustines, 1505 . . .16 VII. Luther is solemnly ordained a Priest . . . . . .17 VIII. Luther's bodily and mental Self-torments . . . . .16 IX. Luther lies in his cell fainting, the Bible in his hand; Friends revive him by means of IMusic . . . . . . .18 X. Luther, mentally and corporeally exhausted, is strengthknkd i;v the consoling Exhortations of an old Monk . . . . I'J XI. Luther, as Bachelor of Arts, lectures on Philosophy and Di- vinity . . . . . . • • • • .1:0 XII. Luther preaches in the Monastery before Staupitz and the other Brethren, preparatory to Pheaching in the Palace and Town Churches. . . . . . . . • .21 XIII. Luther's Jouisney to Rome, 1510 ....... '22 CONTENTS. XIV. LUTIlElt IS WITH GREAT SO^^EMNITIES CREATED AND CONSECRATED DOC- TOR OF DiVlNlTV AND TeACHER OF THE HOLY SCRIPTUBES . . 22 XV. Luther occupied with the Duties of Vicar-General of the AUGUSTINES, WHICH HAD BEEN INTRUSTED TO HIM BY StaUPITZ . 23 XVI. Below, Luther in the Confessional refuses Absolution to those Penitents who rely on Indulgences. To the left, Tetzel selling his ware, and burning Luther's Propositions (Theses). In the centre, Luther affixes his Ninety-five Propositions to the Church-door. To the right, the Students of Witten- berg BURN Tetzel's Reply . . . . . . .24 XVII. Luther before Cajetan ........ 25 XVIII. Luther's Disputation WITH Dr. Ecic AT Leipzig, 1519 . . . 26 XIX. Luther burns the Papal Bull ....... 27 XX. Luther's Reception at Worms . . . . . . .27 XXL Above, Luther preparing himself by prayer for his Appearance before the Emperor and Empire. The principal scene shows Luther and Frondsberg at the entrance of the Impeiual Hall 2S XXIL Luther before the Emperor and the Empire, 1521 . . .29 XXIII. Luther carried off by his Friends on his Return, 1521 . . oO XXIV. Luther begins his Translation of the ]3ible at the Wartburg . 30 XXV. Below, Luther's Departure on horseback from the Wartburg. To THE LEFT, ABOVE, LuTHER AND THE SwiSS STUDENTS IN THE Inn CALLED THE Black Bear, at Jena. To the right, Luther IN THE circle OF HIS WlTTENBERG FrIENDS RECOGNISED ON THEUt ENTRANCE BY THE SwiSS STUDENTS 31 XXVI. Luther checks the Destruction of the Images of Saints, 1522 . 32 XXVII. Luther continues his Translation of the Bible with the assist- ance OF Melanchthon, 1523-4 33 XXVllI. Luther preaches at Seeburg against the Peasants' War, 1525 . 33 XXIX. Luther's Marriage 34 XXX. The Controversy between Luther and Zwingle on the Sacra- ment 36 XXXI. Above, Luther pj^aying. Pi;incipal scene, the Present.viton of THE Augsburg Confession, 153U 37 XXXII. The Translation of the Bible ... ... 38 CONTENTS. NO. PAGE XXXIII. The Improvement of Schools : Introduction of the Catechism. 40 XXXIV. The Sermon 41 XXXV. The Sacrament of the holy Communion in both kinds . . 42 XXXVI. Luther reads the Bible to the Elector John the Constant . 42 XXXVII. Luther on a Sick-bed, 1537, is visited and comforted by the Elector John-Frederick ....... 43 XXXVIir. Luther sits for his Portrait to Lucas Kuanach . . ,44 XXXIX. Luther Praying at the Sick-bed of Melanchthon . . .44 XL. Luther's Singing at HoiiE. Introduction of the German Church Hymns and Chants 46 XLI. Luther's Joys of Summer in the boso.m of his Family, and his ordinary Dinner-guests ...... 47 XLII. Luther's Winter Pleasures 48 XLIII. Luther beside the Coffin of his Daughter Magdalen . , 48 XLIV. Luther and Hans Kohlhase 49 XLV. Luther visiting Plague Patients .50 XLVI. Luther takes leave of his Family; experiences great Danger DURING HIS Journey ; his Reception at the Frontiers by the Counts of Mansfeld ....•••• i>2 XL VII. Luther's Death ^^ XLVIIL Luther's Obsequies ^^ A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. Introductory Remarks .....•• . . o7 /irst 3hctfl). 65 The Reformation before Luther ^^ Preparations for Wj The Reformation in Luther 88 CONTENTS. Sffonli 3kttcl). STRUGGLE WITH ROME. PAGE The Struggle 108 The Ruptukk 124 tl)irb SKctcl). REFORMATION AND REVOLUTION. Resistance to the Religious Revolution 137 Resistance to the Political and Social Revolution .... 150 /ourti) 3ktlcl). THE REFORMER AND HIS WORK. Luthek Founder ok a New Church . . . . . . . .167 Luther's Domestic Like and Friendships . . . . . . ..192 Retrospect and Conclusion ......... 201 \>ltA\W^- p. 13. THE LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHEE. description of tfje l^latcs. No. I. LUTHER'S BIRTH. Eleven r.ir., Nov. 11, 1483. The artist carries us back to Luther's very entrance into life, at Eis- leben. The child is born ; and the father devotes him in prayer to the service of his Lord and Maker. Conrad Schliisselburg relates, that Luther's father had often prayed aloud and fervently, at the bedside of his child, that God would grant the boy grace, that he might — remembering his name, Luther, «.t\ lauter (pure) — forward the propagation of the pure doctrine. Supposing that this account, which was most likely present to the mind of the artist when he conceived this picture, were unfounded or unauthenticated, — still, all that is known of the great Reformer's father assures us that the first emotion at the birth of his son was no other than the one here depicted. To the right, on the wall, we sec the portrait of St. Martin, whose name was given to the infant born on that saint's day ; " which bap- tismal name," says Johann Mathesius, "he has maintained through life with Christian honour, as a valiant warrior and knight of Christ." 15 14 MARTIN LUTHER, No. II. LUTHER AT SCHOOL. Here is the school at Mansfeld to which Hans Luther took his son, — the second step in that son's life. " Hans Luther brought up his bap- tised little son creditably in the fear of God by the gains of his mining labours; and when he came to years of discretion, sent him, with heart- felt prayer, to the Latin school, where the boy learnt quickly and indus- triously the ten commandments, the child's creed, the Lord's prayer, also Donatus, the child's grammar, Ccsio Janus, and psalm-singing." (Mathesius.) Tlie rod in the master's hand, and the weeping boy behind his chair, are peculiarly significant. " Li one morning," Luther himself narrates, " I was well whipt fifteen times." In his later years he still complains, " how in former times schools were mere prisons or hells, and school- masters tyrants and flagellators ; how the poor children were whipt indiscriminately and unceasingly ; how they were made to learn with great labour and immoderate toil, but to little purpose. To such teachers and masters we were every where obliged to submit : they knew nothing themselves, and could teach us nothing good or useful." No. III. i LUTHER Sixes AS A CHORISTER (CURRENDSCHuIeR*) AT THE DOOR OF MISTRESS URSULA COTTA AT EISENACH. We stand before the house of Mistress Cotta, where Luther sings as a poor scholar for his daily bread. " It is stated," he says, " and it is true, that the Pope himself has been a poor scholar ; therefore despise not those ])oor lads who cry at your door, JPavem. propfer Dei/m/ and * Tlio word cHirend is derived from the Latin currere, to run, and, with the addition of Schiller (sehohir), is liere applied to a company of boys found in those days in ahnost all considerable German towns, who walked (or run) through the streets singing hymns. The practice seems to have originated with the begging friars, who wandered about get- ting their living by alms. They were imitated by the Bacchantes, who sang at people's doors and received alms. After the Reformation they were formed into regidar chorus- ^ ^T r^^c ^// M I M M I ' \ ^ \ . V\v\^\xv\.» p. 14. .,,iNiim»1WW$m , \>; \ ■ \\v , ^, ^ . \\m\xmAv' \^vv. p. 15. THE GERMAN KEEOKMER. 15 sing their song for their daily bread. I myself was once such a scream- ing boy, and have sought my bread at people's doors, particularly in my beloved city of Eisenach." Repulsed from several doors, and much depressed, he arrives at length with his choir before the hospitable dwelling of his future foster- mother, the good Mistress Cotta, " a devout matron, who gave him a place at her table, because she had conceived a warm affection for the boy, on account of his singing and his ardent prayer," In the house of this his fostering friend and comforter he became intimate with a higher comforter, music, that noble relief to his war-worn spirit. Here he learnt to play on several musical instruments. No. lY. LUTHER DISCOVERS THE LATIN BIBLE IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AT ERFURT, 1501. But a yet higher study was opening before him than that of music, the holy Scriptures, the revelation of God ! In the library at Erfurt he found the book which was to become the foundation-stone of his future labours. Mathesius relates : "As he searches among the boohs in the university library, to make himself acquainted with the good ones, he hits upon the Latin Bible, wdiich he has never seen before. He observes with astonishment that this book contains many more texts, epistles, and gospels, than are usually explained in the homilies, or from the pulpits in churches. As he is turning over the Old Testament he meets with the history of Samuel and his mother Anna, which he reads hastily through with great joy and delight; he begins to wish from his whole heart that our good God would give him some day such a book to be his own." This was the first casual sight Luther ever had into that land which singers, who, like their prototypes, sang at the doors of the wealthier citizens, and were maintained from some charitable or church fund. The Translator remembers such a band very well in her native city, traversing the streets on Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings, stopping at the doors of the clergymen and of some members of the magistracy, singing hymns appropriate to the^days, on Sundays before the beginning of divine service. They were then admitted to the chapel royal, and joined in tlie choir. They wore curious old-fashioned hats and cloth cloaks, which were regularly pro^ ided for them. IG MARTIN LUTHER, Av;is to become his home. He says liimself, " As a young man I saw a ]Jible in the university library at Erfurt, imd read a portion of the first book of Samuel; but I had to attend a lecture just then: willingly would I have read through the whole book, but had no opportunity." Tlie artist brings before our eyes the inquiring youth absorbed in his great discovery, having cast aside the schoolmen, and their mis- understood chief, Aristotle. No. V. LUTHER'S FRIEND ALEXIS IS KILLED AT HIS SIDE BY LIGHTNING WHILE THEY ARE ON A JOURNEY. Presentiments of death in frightful forms arise before the thoughtful mind of young Luther : a university friend (Alexis is said to have been his name) is suddenly killed ; a thunderstorm surprises and terrifies him during a solitary ramble. The two events mature in him the resolution to withdraw from the world, and devote himself entirely to God. When his good friend is killed, and a violent storm and fearful clap of thunder alarm him greatly, and he is filled with dread of the wa-ath of God and the last judgment, he resolves and makes a vow that he will enter a monastery, there to serve God and be reconciled unto him by the reading of masses ; also to attain his eternal salvation by monastic sanctity. " Help, Saint Anna !" he cried, when the lightning struck close beside him, " and 1 will forthwith become a monk !" The artist has designedly adopted the above legendary version of this event in Luther's life, according to which his friend was killed beside him ; and we see his two mighty monitors of death — the corpse of his friend and the lightning — united to create one impression. No. VI. LUTHER ENTERS THE MONASTERY OF THE AUGUSTINES, 1505. The vow is accomplished ; Luther enters the monastery of the Au- gustine friars at Erfurt, on St. Alexius's day, July 17th, 1505. Having obtained his first degree at the university, he becomes a monk. 1 1'- te»iHEfflII^giiM|i^^ p. 17 THE GERMAN REFOKMER. 17 " I became a monk," he wrote some time afterwards to his father " not willingly, still less to fatten my body, but because, wlien I was encompassed by the terror and fear of quick-coming death, I vowed a forced and hasty vow." Only two Latin poets, Virgil and Plautus, now his sole property, accompanied him into the cell of the cloister ; he crossed its threshold while yet engaged in anxious internal strife. Like a prophecy of future liberation did the statue of St. Augustine, the tutelary saint of his order, whose words wei*e destined at a later period to become for him a guide to the living waters, look down upon him. " I entered the monastery and left the world," he says, " despairing of myself. I thought God would not take my part ; and if I meant to go to heaven, and be saved, it must be by my own efforts. For this reason I became a monk, and laboured hard." No. YII. LUTHER IS SOLEMNLY ORDAINED A PRIEST. The master of arts has become a monk, the monk now becomes a priest. The vow of the monk and the ordination of the priest are raised like two walls between Luther and the profane world, between him and the original Gospel. On Sunday, Cantate, May 2d, 1507, he read mass for the first time. " It is a fine thing," he said later, " to be a new priest and to celebrate mass for the first time ! Blessed was the woman who had borne a priest. A consecrated parson, as compared with a connnon baptised Christian, was like the morning star compared to a flickering, wick." " As the glorious God, holy in all his works," he writes to Brown a few days before his ordination, " has deemed me, an unworthy sinner, fit to be raised thus highly, and in his exceeding mercy has called me to his most solemn service, I am in every way bound to undertake the task which has been intrusted to me, that I may be as grateful for his diviiie goodness as it is possible for such dust as L" MARTIN LUTHER, No. VIII. LUTHER'S BODILY AND OMENTAL SELF-TORMENTS. Neither monkish vow nor ordination, however, could bring peace to this troubled heart yearning after God. " I have indeed" — these are his own words — " kept the rules of my order with great perseverance and zeal ; I have often been sick and almost dead with fasting. A disgraceful persecutor and murderer of my own body I was ; for I fasted, prayed, watched, wearied, and exhavisted myself beyond my strength. We had been brought up under these human ordinances, which had obscured Christ, and made him of no avail to us ; I thought that my monkery would be rdl-sufficient ; for I did not believe in Christ, but took him to be only a dreadful judge, as he was painted sitting on a rainbow. " The more 1 strove to pacify my conscience by means of fasting, watching, and praying, the less quiet and peace I felt ; for the true light was hidden from mine eyes. The more I sought the Lord, and thought to approach him, the further 1 departed from him. " There is no greater affliction and misery in this life, than the pain and trouble of a heart that is lost, and knows no counsel or consolation. There is no heavier suffering than sorrow of the heart ; for that is death and hell itself. Then let who can unlock and lock again this hell, in order that such a weak and troubled heart may not altogether expire when it is conscious of sin, and suffers such martyrdom thereat." Nothing external, not the martyr's cross which he embraced, not the castigations Avith which he tormented himself, could satisfy the longing of his soul. No. IX. LUTHER LIES IN HIS CELL PAINTING, THE BIBLE IN lii^ HAND; FRIENDS REVIVE HIM BY MEANS OE MUSIC. The artist takes us into Luther's monastic cell at Erfurt ; we see the youth weakened by mental struggles and penances, as, absorbed in the Scriptures, he has fainted, so that the monks can awaken him only by the power of music. p. 18. p lb. THE GERMAN REFORMER. 19 According to Seckendorfs account, this event occurred at Witten- berg, where Luther's friend, Edenbergcr, roused him with a sacred song, which he and the boys of the choir sang at his door; but the artist adopts the more generally believed version, that this event occurred in the monastery at Erfurt. It is more than probable tliat such instances of abstraction and the arousing from it occurred more than once. " For music," thus Luther spoke in praise of the art, " is tlie best cordial for a sorrowful man, which maketh the heart contented, refreshed, and vigorous." " I made myself," he states, referring to that period, " so well acquainted with the Bible, that I knew the page and place of every text. No other study than that of the Scriptures interested me ; I read them zealously, and imprinted them on my memory. Many a time one single significant text dwelt in my thoughts for a whole day." ■ No. X. LUTHER, MENTALLY AND CORPOREALLY EXHAUSTED, IS STRENGTH- ENED BY THE CONSOLING EXHORTATIONS OF AN OLD MONK. Still more powerfully than by music was Luther strengthened by the living w^ord of God from the mouth of a believer. " God sent him," relates Mathesius, " an old brother of the monastery as a confessor, who consoled him affectionately, and pointed out to him the merciful forgive- ness of sins as announced in the apostolic confession of faith; and who taught him, from the sermons of St. Bernard, that he ought to have this faith also with regard to himself, that our merciful God and Father had granted him forgiveness of all his sins through the sole sacrifice and blood of his Son, and had announced the same, through the Holy Ghost, in the apostolic church, by the word ' absolution.' This proved a living and powerful consolation to our Doctor's lieart, in that he hatli often made honourable mention of his confessor, and heartily tlianked hnn." Seckendorf, in his account of Luther having been comforted on his sick- bed by an old monk, apparently confounds this event with an earlier one, when Luther, before his entrance into the monastery, was, during a serious illness, consoled by an old monk in these words : " Be comforted, my young bachelor of arts, thou slialt not die of this attack ; our God 20 MAKTIN LUTHER, will \r[ iiiakf of thee a great man, wlio is to comfort many people. For whom God lovetli, and whom he wills to ])repare for salvation, on him he early lays the cross ; in which school of the cross patient people may learn much.'' The artist has, notwithstanding this, a good right to represent Luther to us in the monastery also as a sick man ; for he himself says of these attacks : " In the great temptations which I suffered, and which con- sumed my body so that I had no breath, no man covdd comfort me." The living power which dwelleth in the communion of faith Luther experienced for the first time at the words of that grey-headed man. It was his first conception of the tyie imperishable church. No. XI. LUTHER, AS BACHELOR OP ARTS, LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY AND DIVINITY. Luther, in his twenty-fifth year, steps from the monk's cell, as teacher, into the lecture-room ; the worst period of his mental troubles is past; the feeling of inw'ard freedom strives for a first imperfect utterance. Having been called in 1508 to the new university at Wittenberg, he there delivered his first course of lectures on philosophy (on that of Aristotle), and afterwards another on divinity (on the Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans). " Here Brother Martin begins to- study the Scriptures, and begins, at the High School, to contend against that sophistry which prevailed every where at that time." Among his hearers in the first row we see the first rector of the new university, Dr. Pollich of Melrichstpdt, physician to the Elector Frederick, and afterwards also doctor of divinity. Of him Mathesius says : " Dr. Pollich, who was at that time a Ii/x orivndi (light of the world), that is to say, a doctor of laws, of medicine, and of monastic sophistry, would not forget even at table the arguments and conclusions of the monk. ' That monk,' he often said, as I have heard from the mouth of his bro- ther Walter, ' will confound all the learned doctors, propound a new doctrine, and reform the whole Roman church ; for he studies the writings of the prophets and the evangelists ; he relies on the word of Jesus Christ — no one can subvert that, either with philosophy or 1) 20. p. 21. THE GERi^IAN EEFOR^MER. 21 sophistry.' " According to Pollich, Luther himself said, " Let the doctors be the doctors ; we must not hearken to what holy church says, but to what .Scripture says." At the right hand of Pollich sits Johann Staupitz, vicar-general of the order of Augustine, and as such, Luther's superior ; indeed it was he who had called the latter to Wittenberg. Many years afterwards, in \i)2H, Luther expresses himself as follows, writing to Staupitz : " Through thee the light of the Gospel was lit up for the first time in the darkness of my soul." No. XII. LUTHER PREACHES IN THE MONASTERY BEFORE STAUPITZ AND THE OTHER BRETHREN PHEBARATORY TO PREACHING IN THE PALACE AND TOWN CHURCHES. Luther the teacher is also to have a cure of souls ; the man of the school is to become the man of the church. Unwillingly and fearfully did he comply with the wish of his paternal friend Staupitz, that he should preach. " Oh, how I dread the pulpit ! It is no trifling thing to speak to the people in the name of God, and to preach to them !" His first sermons, until the town church was open to him, he delivered in the small ruinous chapel of his monastery, only thirty feet long and twenty broad. Myronius says, " This chapel might be com- pared to the stable in which Christ was born. Li this miserable build- ing it was the will of God that his Gospel was to be preached, and his beloved Son Jesus Christ as it were to be born again ; not one among the cathedrals or other grand churches did he choose for these excellent sermons." *' When I was a young preacher," says Luther himself, " I was fully in earnest, and would willingly have made all the world pious." — " God has led me to it as he did Moses. Had I known all before- hand, he would have had greater trouble ere he had led me thus far. Well, as I have begun, I will go through with this work." hi front the grey-headed Staupitz sits among the hearers, listening attentively to the address of his spiritual foster-son. He lived to sec the plant flourish which he had helped to rear. 22 MARTIN LUTHER, No. XIIT. LUTHER'S JOURNEY TO ROME, 1510. A VOW liad led young Luther into a monastery ; another vow (added to a commission from his monastery) took him to Rome. In the mon- astery, as on his pilgrimage thither, experience awaited him : in each case to be grievously undeceived. " In the year 1510," writes Mathesius, " his monastery sent him to Rome. There he saw the holy father the Pope, and his pompous reli- gion and impious courtiers. This greatly strengthened him afterwards." When he came with his companions in sight of Rome, he raised his hands and cried, " I greet thee, thou holy Rome ! yes, truly holy through the blood of the martyrs which was here shed." Of the out- ward show of the prince of the church, he says, " Rome has now its pomps ; the Pope goes about in triumph, fine, richly adorned horses before him, and he beareth the host on a white horse." Luther left the holy city with a sharp thorn in his side. " I would wish that every one who is to become a preacher had been first at Rome, and seen how matters are carried on there." Mathesius says that he frequently expressed himself to the effect, " he would not take a thousand florins not to. have been at Rome." " I have myself heard it said at Rome, ' It is impossible that matters can remain in that state ; things must change or break down.' " Again, " Pope Julius said, ' If we do not choose to be pious ourselves, let us at least not prevent others.' I have heard say at Rome, 'If there be a hell, Rome has been built on the top of it.' Rome has been the most holy city ; but now it has become the most unrighteous and disgraceful. Whoever has been at Rome knows well that things are worse there than can be expressed in words, or believed." No. XIV. LUTHER IS WITH GREAT SOLEMNITIES CREATED AND CONSECRATED DOCTOR OF DIVINITY AND TEACHER OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. On the 18th and 19th of October, 1512, Luther was solemnly sanctified to his great work, as teacher of his people and his church. 1 ' \^. rJ. p. 22 THE GERMAN EEFORMER. 23 Mathesius says, " Brother Martin was appointed on St. Luke's day doctor of the holy Scriptures, and took the oath, and promised to study and proclaim them all his life ; also to defend the holy Christian faith in writing and preaching- against all heretics, so help him God !" Luther says: " But I, Doctor Martinus, have been called upon, compelled to become a teacher, without any wish of my own, from pure obedience. I had to take upon myself the degree of doctor, and vow and promise to my beloved holy Scriptures that I would teach and preach them faithfully in their purity. Teaching accordingly, pope- dom has come in my way, and wanted to stop me ; the consequences whereof may be seen by all who have eyes." Staupitz had had as much trouble to persuade Luther to accept the dignity of doctor, as previously to persuade him to preach. To his many objections Staupitz replied, " It seems that our God will soon have much work to be done for him in heaven and upon earth, and therefore he will need many young vigorous doctors to fight his battles. Whether you live or die, God has need of you in his councils." Karlstadt presided at the solemnity as theological dean {decan). No. XV. LUTHER OCCUPIED WITH THE DUTIES OF VICAR-GENERAL OF THE AUGUSTINES, WHICH HAD BEEN INTRUSTED TO IIIM BY STx\.UPITZ. To the mental preparation which Luther had already undergone, a greater experience of life and a more extended intercourse with his fellow-men was now to be added. As locum tenens for his friend Stau- pitz, he had an opportunity of acquiring the habits of active life. " About this time Staupitz was dispatched to the Netherlands to bring relics from a monastery. In the mean time Luther received the office of vicar, which included the supervision of the monasteries of the Auffustines, and the order to institute a visitation of them. For this purpose he travelled from one to the oUier, assisted the schools, and admonished the brethren to study the Bible, and to live holily, peace- ably, and chastely." l\\ a letter of the ^6th of October, 15 16, he thus describes to his friend Lange, at Erfurt, the extent of his daily occupations : " I might 04 MARTIN LUTHER, fiiul work for two clerks almost, for I am occupied all day in writing letters. I am preacher to the brotherhood, reader at meals {ecclesiast), have to preacli daily before the connuunity, am also inspector of studies. 1 am vicar ; and that means as much as ten priors {id est undecies ■prior). I lecture on St. Paul and on the Psalms; and am, beside all this, over- burdened with household matters." Jiy the weight of all these labours for the eternal as well as the tem- poral welfare of those intrusted to his care, was the future head of the new church to be prepared for the arduous duties of the spiritual go- vernment of the church. " The word of a brother repeated and made known from the Scrip- tures, and spoken in times of trouble and danger, is weighty and im- portant." " If thou believe as firmly as thou ought," he writes in 151G, " then bear patiently with thy disorderly and erring brethren ; look upon their sins as thine own, and whatever of good there be in thee, let it be theirs. If thou be a rose and lily of Christ, know that thy path must lie among thorns, and see that thyself becoine not a thorn through im- patience, haughtiness, or secret pride." On this journey of visitation already he became conscious in his in- most soul of his future calling ; for when he learnt, in the monastery at Grimma, how Tetzel, the trafficker in indulgences, was carrying on his trade at the neighbouring town of Wurzen, he exclaimed angrily, " i will make a hole in this drum, so God will !" It was the first distant lightning- flash, the premonitor of the coming storm. The Reformer was prepared for his great work. No. XVI. IN FOUK COMPART31ENTS. BELOW, LUTHER IN THE CONFESSIONAL REFUSES ABSOLUTION TO THOSE PENITENTS WHO RELY ON INDULGENCES. TO THE LEFT, TETZEL SELLING lUS WAKE AND BURNING LUTIIEU's PKOPOSITIONS (tHESEs). IN THE CENTHE, LUTHER AKELXES HIS NINETY-FIVE PUOl'OSITIONS TO THE CHUItOH- DOOR. TO THE RIGHT, THE STUDENTS OF WITTENBERG BURN TM^l's REPLY. Unpretendingly began the greatest work of modern tiiTOs by a Ger- man monk's affixing his ninety-iive Theses to the church-door at Wit- t h p. 25. f Till'] GERMAN REFORMER. 25 tenberg. But this unpretending beginning became soon the awakening cry to all Christianity. " By Tetzel's, the seller of indulgences, audacious talk and abuse, he caused our Luther to buckle on his spiritual armour, and seize David's sling and the sword of the Lord, which meaneth ardent prayer and the pure word of God ; and relying for protection on his doctor's degree and his oath, he, in the name of God, assailed Tetzel and his Roman indul- gences, teaching boldly that they were dangerous delusions." The artist represents in his sketch the church-doors at Wittenberg as symbolical of the great gate of the universal Christian church, at which Luther knocks warningly and admonishingly with his Propositions. Above his head we see the swan rising from the flames of the stake on which Huss suffered. The groups on each side, the flames lighted by Tetzel and by the Wittenberg students, indicate the warfare, the hidden beginning of which is shewn in the confessional of Luther below. N.O. XVII. LUTHER BEFORE CAJETAN. Luther appears before the Pope's legate. Cardinal Cajetan, at Augs- burg, to defend his doctrine. Although kneeling reverently, according to custom, he courageously refuses to recant, as he is ordered. Angered by the obstinacy of the German, the Italian flings the written defence at his feet, saying wrathfuUy : "Appear not again be- fore mine eyes, unless thou recant." " Because he sat there representing the Pope," are Luther's own words, "he insisted that I should submit and agree to all he said ; while, on the contrary, all that I said against it was contemned and laughed at, although I quoted the Scriptures; in short, his fatherly love went no further than that I must suifer violence or recant, for he declared he would not dispute with me." The artist has sought to depict the moment in which Luther picks up the paper which Cajetan lias thrown down, while his friend Staupitz, evidently frightened at the wrath of the church dignitary, tries to pacify both. Li the lower portion of the picture we see Luther, according to the advice of his friends, and assisted by Staupitz and Councillor Langc- 2() MARTIN LUTHER, nuintel, leaving Augsburg- at iiiglit, through a small portal : " Staupitz had procured me a liorse, and sent an old horsi^man with me who was acquainted with the road. I hastened away, without breeches, boots, spurs, or sword, and reached Wittenberg." No. XVIII. LUTHER'S DISPUTATION WITH DR. ECK AT LEITZIC, 1519. In Augsburg Luther had contended with the proud prince of the church of Rome ; at Leipzic he was to defend his doctrine against the men of the schools in learned debate. On this occasion he spoke the decisive word to Dr. Eck: " 1 do not recognise any man as the head of the church militant but Jesus Christ only, on the ground of holy Scriptures." " For Luther, like the true Samson, pulled down the pillar on which the Romans rested the power of the Pope, and said, ' that the text on which Dr. Eck relied — Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church— did not refer to St. Peter, still less to any of his successors, but to the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the true rock on which Christianity might stand against all the attacks of hell.' " (Mathesius.) The two principal warriors, Luther and Eck, stand opposite each other in the hall of the Pleisenburg, the first advancing boldly to the attack, the other dexterously turning aside each blow, but cunningly enticing his opponent to further advances. At Luther's side sits the youthful Melanchthon, in silent, anxious* thought, while the more lively Karlstadt seeks to assist his own weak memory by referring to books. Li the centre of the hall Duke George of Saxony is listening attentively to the disputants, until at the words of Luther, " that even some of the propositioris of Huss and of the Bohemians were perfectly Christian and evangelical," he angrily cries out, " Plague take it !" At his feet sits his one-eyed fool wildly staring at Dr. Eck. Artists and poets are fond of introducing into matters of solenm import, agreeable equally to legend as to history, !;ome amusing trait of lunnan folly, as in this case, into the midst of the princes and warriors of the church, the court-fool of an earthly prince. p. 26. p. 27. ««1 ■\i;j^^^^^4 ^^>-£ p. 27. THE GERMAN REFORMER. No. XIX. LUTHER BURNS THE RAPAL BULL, Neither cardinals nor doctors, neither negotiations nor disputations, coukl adjust the quarrel. A rupture ensued; Home condemned the Wit- tenberg doctor ; the doctor solemnly declared the Roman judgment to he naught ; he burnt the Pope's bull containing his condemnation. " But when the people from Louvain and other universities, the monasteries, and the bishops, attacked Luther's work with glowing fire, such fire having been stirred up and blown into a flame by the Pope at Rome, the spirit of God came upon this second Samson. On the 10th of December he once more caused a great fire to be made at Wittenberg before the Elster gate, and into it he himself threw the decrees of the Pope, also the bull of Leo X., saying, ' Because thou, godless book, hast aggrieved or defamed the saint of the Lord, let eternal fire afforrieve and consume thee.' " (Mathesius.) No. XX. LUTHER'S RECEPTION AT WORMS. Luther is led from the quiet cell of the cloister, from the lecture- rooms of the university, from the midst of his powerfully-roused com- munity, upon a yet greater scene : all Germany looks upon him as upon no otlier ! The monk, the preacher, and the teacher of Wittenberg has become the man of the German 7iatiov. Therefore does the artist represent him, in this picture, in the midst of his people, who joyfully greet the man upon whom they found their hopes ; old and young, men and women, high and low, clergymen and laymen, all unite in one group. Beside Luther in the carriage sit his friends, Amsdorf, Petrus von Suaven, and the monk Pezenstein ; Justus Jonas and many Saxon noble- men, who had gone to meet him, follow on horseback. Thousands of people from all ranks accompany him to his abode in the " Deutschen Hof." 28 MARTIN LUTHER, t No. XXT. ABOVE, LUTHER PREPARING HIMSELF BY PRAYER FOR HIS APPEAR- ANCE BEFORE THE EMPEROR AND EMPIRE. TIIIC I'lUNCIPAL SCENE SHEWS LUTHER AND FUOXDSBEUG AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE IMPEWAL HALI-. But this waving flood of the people, which on that clciy bore him upwai'ds so mightily, is not the principal nor the strongest shield of his heart. This beating, warring heart appeals to a higher protection, — to the eternal rock amidst the flood of time and of nations. Streets and hostelries have become quiet, the masses which to-day shouted his welcome are silent ; but he seeks to compose his mind with music, and by gazing upwards into the sacred stillness of the starry sky ; — he prays : " Almighty, eternal God, how poor a thing is this world ! how little a matter will cause the people to stand open-movithed ! how little and mean is the confidence of man in God ! Do thou, O Lord, assist me against all worldly wisdom and understanding ; do this, thou nnist do it, thou alone! It is not indeed my cause, but thine own; I my- self have nothing to do here and with the great princes of this world. But it is thy cause, which is just and eternal; I rely upon no man. C(mie, oh, come ! I am ready to give up even my life patiently, like a lamb; for the cause is just; it is thine, and I will not depart from thee eternally. This I resolve in thy name : the world cannot force my conscience. And should my body be destroyed therein, my soul is thine, and remaineth with thee for ever." The evening afterwards, when he was about to appear before the emperor, he met at the very threshold of the hall the knight George of Frondsberg ; who, laying his hand upon Luther's shoulder, said kindly, " Monk, monk (' Monchlein' being a caressing diminutive), thou enterest upon a path, and art about to take up a position, such as I and many other commanders have never braved even in our most serious battle- array. If thou have right on thy side, and be sure of thy cause, then go on, in the name of God, and be comforted ; God will not forsake thee !" Thus spoke, if we are to believe in tradition, the knight of this world to the spiritual knight, — the military hero to the hero of m' F' ,u.-fl'U\«A"tL^ p. -29. THE GERMAN REFORMER. 29 the faith ; he spoke with noble modesty, as the inferior to the higher warrior. The two protecting figures above, to the right and left of Luther, represent two other German knights : Hutten, with his harp and sword, and the laurel-wreath of the poet on his brow; and his friend, the valour- ous Sickingen, with the general's baton in his hand. They were ready to protect their " holy friend, the unconquerable theologian and evan- gelist, at Worms, by their word and their sword," if necessary. No. XXII. LUTHER BEFORE THE EMPEROR AND THE EMPIRE, 1521. The decisive moment has come ! Before the Emperor and the empire Luther is to prove whether the power of conscience is stronger in him than any other consideration. x'Vnd it was stronger. " My con- science and the word of God," he says, " hold me prisoner ; therefore I may not nor will recant ! Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise ; God help me. Amen !" " This is one of the glorious days," exclaims Mathesius, " before the end of the world, on which the word of God has been professed and confessed publicly with Christian rejoicings before the Roman emperor and the whole^empire of Germany !" Next to the young Emperor Charles sits his brother Ferdinand ; at their sides the three spiritual and the three temjioral electors — the wise Frederick of Saxony sits in front ; opj)osite, on the bench for the princes, we see Philip of Hesse looking attentively at Luther. Dr. Hieronymus Schorf stands behind him as his legal adviser ; opposite to him, at the table covered with Luther's works, we see the imperial orator and official of the Archbishop of Treves, Dr. John Eck ; nearer to the emperor, the Cardinal Alexander holds in his hand the bull con- taining the condemnation of Luther. In the background are seen the Spanish sentinels who mocked the German monk as he retired from the presence. ..}(, ISIAKTIN LL'TIIEK, No. XXIII. LUTHER CAKKIED OFF BY HIS FRIENDS ON HIS RETURN, 1521. Neither Spaniard nor Roman was to lay liancl on tlie teacher of the Gennan nation, so strong in the faith; German fidelity and noble princely care had prepared for him a secret asylum. "But because lAither had been outlawed by the Emperor, and ex- communicated by the Pope, God inspired the wise Elector of Saxony to give orders, through confidential and trustworthy persons, to take pri- soner for a time the outlawed and excommunicated Luther, as the pious servant of God, Ohadiah, the teacher of King Ahab, kept one hundred priests for a time concealed in a cavern, and fed them, while the Queen Jezabel sought their life. Our Doctor consented to this step at the anxious desire of good people." (Mathesius.) Captain Berlepsch and Burkard Hund, Lord of Altenstein, with their servants, stopped Luther's carriage in a hollow way near the Castle of Altenstein, in the direction of Waltershausen, and carried him off. His companion, Amsdorf, had to proceed alone, Luther's younger bro- ther having fled, alarmed at sight of the approaching horsemen. No. XXIV. LUTHER BEGINS HIS TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE AT THE AVARTBURG. The heroic monk has suddenly vanished from the busy market-places of the world ; we find him in the quiet chamber of a Thuringian castle disguised as Master George, absorbed in the study of that volume which, since the dark days of Erfurt, had become the shining star of his life. This book was now to speak in the German tongue to German hearts ; such was Luther's resolution, and his labour in his Patmos. " While our Doctor was kept quite secretly at the Wartburg, he was not idle, but pursued daily his studies and his prayers, and devoted him- self to the Greek and Hebrew Bibles, and wrote many kind consolatory letters to his friends." (Mathesius.) " Jn the mean time," he writes, " I intend to translate the New Tes- tament into our mother tongue, as our people wish. Oh, that every citv p 30 #' « p. 31. THE GERMAN KEFORMER. 31 had its own translator ; so that this book might be in the hands and hearts of every one !....! have taken upon myself a burden which surpasses my strength. Now only I perceive what a translation means, and why hitherto no one has ventured to put his name to one. It is to be hoped that we may give to our Germany a better translation than the Latins possess. It is a great work, well worthy that we should all labour thereat." No. XXV. THREE COMPARTMENTS. BELOW, LUTHER'S DEPARTURE OX HORSEBACK FROM THE WARTBURG TO THE LEFT, ABOVE, LUTHER AND THE SWISS STUDENTS IN THE INN CALLED THE BLACK BEAR, AT JENA. TO THE RIGHT, LUTHER IN THE CIRCLE OF HIS WITTENBERG FRIENDS RECOGNISED ON THEIR ENTRANCE BY THE SWISS STUDENTS. The spiritual knight left his Patmos armed with his best weapon, — his Bible. The news of the disturbances and confusion at Witten- berg bereft him of all peace in his solitude. " I come," he wrote to his prince, " to Wittenberg under a much higher protection than that of the Elector. In this business the sword neither can nor ought to assist. God alone must here work without human care or interference : therefore he who hath most faith will in this matter protect most." In this confidence he had begun his journey; and thoughts like these occupied his mind most likely when, at Jena, in the inn called the Black Bear, he opened his heart so cheerfully and afiectionately to the two Swiss students (Johannes Kessler and Riitiner, from St. Gall). One of them, Kessler, has described this meeting: "In the sitting- room we found a man sitting alone at a table, a little book lying before him ; he greeted us kindly, and called us forward to sit beside him at the table ; he offered us drink, which we could not refuse ; but we did not imagine he was other than a horseman, who sat there dressed according to the custom of the country in a red cap, simple breeches and jacket, a sword at his side, holding with his right hand the pommel of the sword, with the other his book. And we asked him — 'Master, can you tell us whether Martin Luther be at this time at Wittenberg, or at which place he may be found ?' He replied, ' I am well informed that Luther 32 jrARTIN LUTHER, is not at this time at Wittenberg ; but he is soon to be there. Philip Melanchthon is there, however ; he teaches Greek, and Hebrew also, both wliich languages I would truly recommend you to study, for they are necessary for understanding the Scriptures.' Jn such conversation he became quite familiar with us; so that my companion at last took up and opened the little book which lay before him : it was a Hebrew Psalter." A few days later these Swiss men meet the same horseman at Wit- tenberg, at the house of their countryman Dr. H. Schurf, by the side of Melanchthon. " When we were called into the room," relates Kessler, " behold, we find Martin, as w^e had seen him at Jena, witli Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, Nicolaus Arnsdorf, and Dr. Schurf, all telling him what has happened at Wittenberg during his absence. He greets us smilingly, points with his finger, and says, * This is the Philip Melanchthon of whom I spoke unto you.' " No. XXVI. LUTHER CHECKS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE IMAGES OF SAINTS, 1522. A new epoch, a yet more severe struggle, was now to begin for Luther. He had to prove to the world whether he could maintain the idea which animated him, even against the false deductions which others had drawn from it ; whether he could meet and check the divisions among those who had hitherto been his adherents. From the seed of his doctrine " of the liberty of the Christian," there threatened to shoot up a harvest of the wildest fanaticism, if he should not root it out at the right moment. Already had Karlstadt and the enthusiasts of Zwickau begun to distract, by their iconoclastic mischief, the young community at Wittenberg. But Luther interfered, and preserved the liberty of the Gospel " Do not change liberty into compulsion {Machet i,ur nicJit aus dem Frei sein ein Muss sein),'' he exclaimed, " tliat ye may not have to render an account of those whom you have led asti'ay by your liberty without love." " As I cannot pour faith into the heart, I neither can nor ought to force or compel any one to believe ; for God only can do this, who alone can communicate life to the hearts of men. We are to preach the word; but the result must be as God pleases. Nothing can p 32. p. 33. \)>1^s» _^a?T([ll /^t^Siil^KSv THE GERMAN REFORMER. 33 come offeree and command, but pretence, outward show, and the apin"- of religion. Let us first of all seek to move the heart ; wherever the heart and the mind of all are not moved, there leave it to God; ye cannot do any good. But if ye will carry out such base precepts, I will recant all I have written and preached ; I will not stand by you. The Word Jmfh created heaven and earth and all things; that Word must do it, and not poor sintiers like ourselves.'' The artist makes the soothing power of Luther's preaching evident, by representing him in the midst of the iconoclasts, arresting their wild proceedings. No. XXVII. LUTHER CONTINUES HIS TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE AVITH THE ASSISTANCE OF MELANCHTHON, 1523-4. From the confused crowd of the iconoclasts, and their fanatical ex- cesses, we enter once more Luther's silent cell, to witness the quiet and cheerful progress of his translation of the Bible. At his side stands the younger friend and assistant of the reformer, Philip Melanchthon, the distinguished teacher of the Greek language at the young University. According to Luther's description, he was " a mere youth in age, figure, and appearance ; but a man when one considered the extent of his knowledge." *' This was the beautiful period of their friendship, when each laboured in the same spirit at their common task, full of admiration of the higher gifts of the other. " See how beautiful and lovely it is when brethren dwell together in unity ! " Luther says in \522, "No commentator has come nearer to the spirit of the Apostle Paul than my Philippus." No. XXVIII. LUTHER PREACHES AT SEEBURG AGAINST THE PEASANTS' WAR, 1525. The reformation in the church is in danger of being swallowed up by a political revolution ; the internal freedom of the Christian is to 34 MAK'l'IX LirniKR, justify rebellion against the state. Tiiis stormy flood Luther opposes with liis whole being ; sliudderingly he seems to look into a bottomless abyss that opens before his people. In May 1525 he wrote to his brother-in-law from Seeburg, where lie had warned the people against rebellious proceedings: "Though there were many more thousand peasants, they are all of them robbers and murderers, who take to the sword for the sake of their own grati- fication, and who want to make a new rule in the world, for which they have from God neither law, nor right, nor command; they likewise bring disgrace and dishonour upon the word of God and upon the Gospel : yet 1 still hope that this will not continue nor last. Well, when 1 get home, I will prepare myself for death with God's help, and await my new masters, the robbers and murderers. But sooner than approve of and pronounce right their doings, I would lose an hundred necks, so God in his mercy help me !" "In this my conscience is secure, although I may lose my life. It endureth but a short time, until the right Judge cometh, who will find both them and us. . . . Their doings and their victories cannot last long." He had already warned the peasants, some time previously, in his " Admonition to Peace," and said : " Be ye in the right as much as ye may, yet it becometh no Christians to quarrel and to fight, but to sufller wrong and bear evil. Put away the name of Christians, I say, and make it not the cover for your impatient, quarrelsome, and unchi'istian inten- tions. That name 1 will grudge you, nor leave it you, but tear it away from you by writing and preaching, as long as a vein beats in my body." No. XXIX. LUTHER'S MARRIAGE. From the agitation caused by his opposition to the iconoclasts Luther had returned to his Bible ; from the annihilating struggles of a political revolution he turned to the symbolical erection of a Christian household, to the foundatioii of a family in the true German and evan- gelical spirit. Even during the storm of insurrection he wrote in the spring of 1525, " And if I can fit it, I mean to take my Kate to wife ere I die. I'' ^ 'f^ XXIX ym-^___^ ■iifiiii - «n -rraiHrkK irir, n - I ii.f r[j^>¥i rrrr . | .^^^^^^^ .^s^ THE GERMAN HEFORMER. 35 in despite of the devil, althougli I hear that my enemies will continue. 1 hope they may not take from me my courage and my joy." A few weeks later, on June loth, he was united to Katharina for life in the house of the town-clerk {Stadtschreiber) of Wittenberg: his friend Bugen- hagen blessed the sacred union, in the presence of the lawyer Apel and of Ijukas Kranach. " Beloved heavenly Father," so did he pray, " as thou hast given me the honour of thy name and of thine office, and wiliest also that I should be called and be honoured as a father, grant me grace, and bless me, that I may govern and nourish my dear wife, child, and servants in a divine and Christian manner I have not known how to refuse to my beloved Lord and Father this last act of obedience to his will which he claimed of me, in the good hope that God may grant me children. Also that I may confirm my doctrine by this my act and deed ; seeing that I find still so many faint hearts, not- withstanding the shining light of the Gospel I have reaped such great discredit and contempt from this my marriage, that 1 hope the angels will rejoice and the devils weep. The world and her wise- acres know not nor understand this word, that it is divine and holy. . . If matrimony be the work of God, what wonder that the w orld should be offended thereat? Is it not also ofiended that its own God and maker has taken upon himself our flesh and blood and given it for its salva- tion, as a redemption and as foodi* Matrimony drives, hunts, and foixes man into the very innermost and highest moral condition ; that is to say, into faith — since there is no higher internal condition than faith, which dependeth solely upon the word of God Let the wife think thus : My husband is an image of the true high head of Christ, In the same manner the husband shall love his wafe with his whole heart, for the sake of the perfect love which he seetli in Christ, who gave himself for us. Such will be a Christian and divine marriage, of which the heathens know nothing It is the highest mercy of God when a married coujjle love each other with their whole hearts through their whole lives." And this n;ercy he enjoyed. " My Kate is obedient and amenable to me in all things, more &o than I had dared to hope. So that I deem myself richer than Cra-sus." 36 MARTIN LUTHER, No. XXX. THE CONTKOVEIISY BETWEEN LUTHER AND Z^yINGLI ON THE SACRAMENT. Ten years earlier Luther had stood at Leipzic opposed to the prin- cipal and dexterous theological champion of the court of Rome ; here, at Marburg, we find him opposing the spiritual head of the Swiss Refor- mation. "Wittenberg and Zurich, Saxony and Switzerland, represented by their most distinguished professors, debited in the castle at Marburg, from the 1st to the 4th of October 1529, upon the theological interpre- tation of the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and upon the words em- ployed in instituting it. The profound mystery of the sacrament of the Lord's supper, in its depth and power entirely beyond the range, and indeed opposed to the scholastic controversy, became nevertheless the w^atchword of party. Zwingli dreaded a physical interpretation ; Luther, on the contrary, dreaded the evaporation of the spiritual element of the sacrament of the communion. One considered that he defended the corner-stone of evan- gelical Protestantism ; the other, the foundation of the Christian church. On one side the cry was, " the spirit quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing !" the other side maintained the blessed presence and full enjoy- ment of the entire Christ, the undivided Saviour. Profound and insurmountable antitheses of religious thought and practice, defying the discriminating power of the human understanding! Li vain the Swiss sought to establish a cordial union, notwithstanding these differences, or rather rising above them. " There are no people on earth with whom I would more willingly be united than those of Wittenberg!" cried Zwingli in tears. " Ye have a different spirit from ours!" was Luther's implacable reply. "Conscience is a shy thing; therefore we must not act lightly in such great matters, nor introduce any thing new, unless we have the distinct word of God for it. We deem, truly, that our op2)onents mean well ; but it will be seen that their arguments do not satisfy conscience, as opposed to the meaning of the words, This is my bod//.'" Even a Christian and brotherly union was rejected. " To-day," says Luther, " the Landgrave proposed that we should, although maintaining p 30 THE GERMAN REFORMER. 37 different opinions, still keep together as brethren and members in Christ. But we want not such brethren or members : let us, however, have peace and goodwill !" To the left of the picture, Melanchthon and CEcolampad are con- versing; behind them, Philip of Hesse and Ulrich of Wurtemberg follow the conversation between Luther and Zwingli with extreme attention ; to the right, several other theologians belonging to the two contending parties sit under the portrait of the peaceable Frederick the Wise. No. XXXI. ABOVE, LUTHER PRAYING. PRINCIPAL SCENE, THE PRESENTATION OP THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION, ir,30. That which had been heard thirteen years before at Wittenberg, on the »31st of October 1517, like the voice of a watchman at midnight, was in full daylight, on the ^5th of June 1580, proclaimed at the court of the Bishop of Augsburg, before the Emperor and the country, as the stedfast conviction of many thousand German hearts. ** Great is my joy," says Luther, " to have lived till this hotir, when Christ is proclaimed by such confessors, before such an assem- bly, through so glorious a confession ! Now the word is fulfilled : * I will speak of thy testimony also before kings.' The other also will be fulfilled : ' Thou hast not let me be put to shame ;' for ' whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father who is in heaven.' " In this spirit he comforted his friends with the most joyful con- fidence : " Ye have confessed Christ Jesus ; ye have oifered peace, ren- dered obedience to the Emperor, borne evil, have been covered with contumely, and have not returned evil for evil. To sum up all, ye have worthily carried on the sacred work as it becometh his saints. Look up, and lift up your heads, for 3'our deliverance is nigh !" Being in the castle at Coburg — which, from a Sinai, he intended to make his Sion — Luther could only in the spirit and in jjrayer be present with his friends during the decisive hours at Aug.sburg. '* With sighs and prayer," he writes to Melanchthon, " I am in truth faithfully by your side. The cause concerns me also, indeed more than E 38 MARTIN LUTHER, any of you; and it has not been begun lightly or wickedly, or for the sake of honours or worldly good ; in tliis the Holy Ghost is my witness, and the cause itself has shown it until now. If we fall, Christ falls with us, he, the ruler of the world ; and though he should fall, I would rather fall with Christ than stand with the Emperor. Christ is the conqueror of the world ; that is not false, I know ! Why then should we fear the conquered world, as if it were the conqvieror ?" A witness, Veit Dietrich, says that he jirayed with such reverence, that it could be seen he spoke to God ; and yet at the same time with such faith and hope, that it seemed as if he addressed a father and friend. " I know," he prayed, " that thou art our God and father ; I am there- fore sure that thou wilt bring to shame the persecutors of thy children. If thou do not, the danger is as well thine as ours. The whole cause is thine own. We have been forced to put our hands to the work ; mayest thou protect it now !" The artist has grouped the Reformers to the left, and the Catholics to the right of the spectator. There stands Melanchthon, with his care- worn, thoughtful countenance, full of grief over the impending separa- tion of the churches; beside him, with hands folded in prayer, the elector, John the Constant ; behind him, the margrave, George of Brandenburg ; and, leaning on his sword, Philip of Hesse. Before the Emperor stands the chancellor, Christian Baier, reading with a loud voice the evangelical confession. On the stairs in the background, the j)eople are seen pushing in, and listening with attention. Above, in the gothic arch, Luther is seen in prayer. In the lower compartment appear Luther's and Melanchthon's coats-of-arms, connected by a band, on which we read Luther's motto of those days, taken from his favourite Psalm : Non moriar, sed vivam, " I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord." Such was the presentiment of his soul regarding himself and his mission. No. XXXII. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. The members of the evangelical church had published their general confession at Augsburg. It is true the source of this confession could THE GERMAN REFORMER. 39 only be found in the Bible ; and the Bible became their property only through Luther's translation. " This is one of the greatest miracles," says Mathesius, " which our Lord has caused to be performed, by Dr. Martin Luther, before the end of the world, that he giveth us Germans a very beautiful version of the Bible, and explaineth to us his eternal divine nature, and his mer- cifid will, in good intelligible German words. " When the whole German Bible had been published, Dr. Luther began anew to revise it with great zeal, industry, and prayer. And as the Son of God had promised, that ' where two or three were gathered together in his name, he would be in the midst of them,' he caused a sanhedrim, as it were, of the best people then about him to assemble weekly, for a few hours before supper, at his house; namely, Dr. Bugen- hagen, Dr. Justus Jonas, Dr. Kreuziger, Melanchthon, Mattheus Auro- gallus, and also George Borer the corrector. These were frequently joined by strange doctors and other learned men. Dr. Bernhard Ziegler, Dr. Forstenius, and others. " After our doctor had looked through the published Bible, and consulted Jew^s and foreign philologists, and had also inquired among old German persons for fitting German words, he joined the above assembly with his Latin and new German Bible ; he had also the Hebrew text always with him. Melanchthon brought the Greek text ; Dr. Kreuziger, both the Hebrew and the Chaldee Bibles. The pro- fessors had several tables beside them ; and Doctor Pomacer had also a Latin text before him. Every one had previously prepared himself by studying the text. Then Luther, as president, proposed a passage, and collected the votes, and heard what each one had to say on it, ac- cording to the peculiarity of the language, and the interpretation of the old doctors." Li the picture, Luther stands between Melanchthon and Bugenhagen; to the left, looking up at Luther, Jonas; beside him, Dr. Forstenius; and to the right. Dr. Kreuziger, conversing with the rabbis. The artist has given an appearance of peculiar peutccost-like so- lemnity to the scene ; and properly so, for it was one of the most important and dignified synods in the history of the Christian church. 40 MARTIN LUTHER, No. XXXIII. THE IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOLS: INTRODUCTION OF THE CATECHISM. Among tlie most beautiful fruits of the reform movement was the reh'gious instruction of youth in the schools of the people ; and nothing lay more at Luther's heart. " I hold that the magistrates ought to force parents to send their children to school. Can they not force their subjects to bear pikes and muskets in war-time? why not much more then to send their cliildren to school? for in this instance a worse war impendeth against the detest- able devil, who seeketh to drain all cities and countries dry of all worthy people, until he have extracted the kernel, so that only the empty use- less shell of worthless people be left standing, whom he may play with and deceive as he listeth ! Therefore let all those work who can ! "Well, my beloved Germans, I have told you enough, ye have heard your Prophet ! " In this spirit he presented to the youth of his nation that master- piece of popular instruction in the elementary truths of Christianity, his Little Catechism. " The wretched miserable want which I witnessed formerly when I was still a visitor, has urged and driven me to give to this Catechism, or Christian teaching, such a small simple form. God help me, what wretchedness have I seen ! how ignorant are the common people, parti- cularly in the villages, of all Christian knowledge ! and how many of the parochial priests are unskilful and unfit, alas, to teach them ! O ye Bishops ! how will ye answer it unto Christ that ye have deserted the. peojile thus disgracefully ?" It v/as his greatest joy and greatest restorative to sae the fruits of his labour ripen among the new generation. ''Tender youths and maidens grow up so well instructed in the Catechism and the Scriptures, that it soothes my lieart to see how, at present, young boys and maidens pray and believe more, and can tell more of God and of Christ, than formerly, and even now, all foundation-convents and schools can. Young people like them are truly a paradise, such as the w^orld cannot show. And all this the Lord buildeth ; as though he would say : ' Well, my much- beloved Duke Hanns, I confide to thee my noblest treasure, my cheerful paradise ; thou shalt be father over it, as my gardener and fosterer.' As XXXIII. 1) 40. p 41. THE GERMAN REFORMER. 41 if God himself were your daily guest and ward, because his word, and his children who keep his word, are your daily guests and wards, and eat your bread." The picture represents the great Reformer in the midst of a number of children; to whom, according to the text, "Let little children come unto me," he expounds his Catechism, whilst Jonas is distributing the book among them ; and in the background are seen a circle of attentive schoolmasters, who are preparing themselves by listening to his teaching for the duties of their calling. No. XXXIY. THE SERMON. As Luther had translated the Word of God for his people into their mother tongue ; as he had interpreted it in his elementary work for the understanding of children ; so did he wish to announce it to the assem- bled community in sermons, as an explanation, development, and appli- cation of the Word of God, of the revelation of God in Christ. Preach- ing became the principal instrument for the foundation and guidance of the evangelical church. The divine became from this time forward pre-eminently a preacher. " Therefore mark this, thou parochial priest and preacher ! Our office has now become another thing than it was under tlie Pope ; it is now real and beneficial. Therefore has it much more trouble and labour, danger and temptations, and with all that less reward and thanks in this workl ; but Christ himself will be our reward, so we labour faithfully." In the picture all the elements of evangelical worship are indicated ; the sacraments, by the baptismal font and the altar; music, by the organ and the hymn-books ; the duty of benevolence, by the poor-box. We are at the same time reminded of the fact, that Luther and the reno- vated church were entirely free from the heartless fanatical endeavour to exclude the arts from public worship. " I am not of opinion that all the arts are to be rooted out by the Gospel, as some ultra-divines pretend ; but would wish to see all the arts employed, and music particularly, in the service of Him who has given and created them." 42 MARTIN LUTHER, No. XXXY. THE SACKAINIENT OF THE HOLY COMMUNION IN BOTH KINDS. '' The ivord and the sacramcmf,'' was for Luther the motto and symbol of the true Christian church. As a pendant to the preaching, the artist has chosen, therefore, the most sacred rite of the evangelical community — the celebration of the Lord's supper in its original mode and form. Luther presents the cup to his elector, John Frederick, while Dr. Bugen- hagen breaks the bread. By retaining and insisting upon the " real pre- sence" in the sacrament, Luther strove to save the reformed church from the double danger of being either split into a number of sects uncon- nected with the great Christian church, or driven from its object by the arbitrary opinions of the schools. " Whoever doth not require and long for the sacrament, of him it may be feared that he despises it, and is no Christian ; even as he is no Christian who doth not hear and believe in the Gospel. But who doth not reverence the sacrament, that is a sign that he has no sin, no world, no death, no danger, no hell ; that is to say, he believeth in none, although he be sunk in them over head and ears. Contrariwise, he needeth not either grace, eternal life, the king- dom of heaven, Christ, or God." No. XXXVI. LUTHER READS THE BIBLE TO THE ELECTOR, JOHN THE CONSTANT, The artist, introducing us to the private life of Luther, gives us in the first instance a proof of the intimate relation that existed between the Reformer and his prince ; we see him in confidential conversation with the Elector John, to whom he is reading and explaining the Scriptures. As an individual instance, this meeting may not perhaps be capable of historical proof; still the picture shows in perfection the beautiful and unshaken unity of mind and of opinion which so closely connected the teacher with the prince, and of which history affords ample proof. It was this prince, indeed, to whom Luther addressed, in 1530, from Coburg to Augsburg, those incomparable w^ords, in which the ■r-- |i6 1. 42 p. IL' 1). 4a. THE GERMAN REFORMER. 43 mutual relation between the two men is so clearly reflected: " The all- merciful God approves himself still more merciful by making his word so powerful and effective in your highness's {Euar kurfurstUchen Gnadeii) lands. For in your dominions, it is true, there are more excellent preachers and clergymen, and a greater number of them, who teach purely and faithfully, and assist in keeping the blessed peace, than in any other country in the world. God our Lord, who has appointed your highness father and helper over this country, feedeth all through your office and service. Let your highness be comforted. Christ is come, and will confess you before liis Father, as you have confessed him before this wicked race. I am grieved that Satan should afflict and trouble your heart ; he is a sorry bitter spirit, and cannot bear that the heart of man should rejoice or be at peace, particularly in the Lord; how much less can he bear that your highness should be of good courage, since he well knoweth of how much importance your heart is to us all ; and not only to us, but to all the world; nay, I might almost say to Heaven itself. Therefore we are all bound to assist your highness with prayer, consolations, with love, and in whatever way we can. Oh ! the young people will do this, who cry and call, with their innocent tongues, so affectiiigly to Heaven, and faithfully recommend your highness to the all-merciful God." No. XXXVII. LUTHER ON A SICK-BED, 1537, IS VISITED AND COMFORTED BY THE ELECTOR JOHN FREDERICK. Li the last picture Luther appeared as the clerical servant of his prince ; here the son of that prince visits him kindly in his bodily afflic- tion. He had fallen dangerously ill at Schmalkalden, when, on the Sun- day Invocavit (February 1537), the Elector John Frederick visited and comforted him. " The good God our Lord," said that prince, much affected, " will be merciful unto us, and prolong your life." When Luther, in the fear of death, recommended the Gospel to his future protection, he replied : " I fear, dear Doctor, that if the Lord were to remove you, he would take away his precious word also ;" which ob- servation Luther properly contradicted. At parting, John Frederick 44 IMARTIN LUTHER, sought to comfort liini Avith these words: " Your wife shall be as my wife, and your children my children." " I'he ])ious prince," writes Luther to his wife, *' sent messengers on foot and on horseback to fetch, at any and every expense, whatever might be beneficial to me ; but it was not to be." In our picture Melanchthon sits in the foreground full of anxiety and deep sorrow ; indeed he frequently could not restrain his tears at sio-ht of his suffering friend: behind him, at the right hand of the sick man, stands Frederick Mykonius ; George Spalatin bends, in anxious thought, over the pillow of the sufferer ; the physician holds the medi- cine in his hand ; Hans von Dolzig stands behind the Elector. No. XXXVIII. LUTHER SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT TO LUCAS KRANACH. As we owe it almost wholly to the industrious and artistic hand of Lucas Kranach that Luther's portrait, with its bold, strongly marked features, has been preserved to us, it is but a just proof of gratitude that our biographer-artist refers in this picture to the indefatigable activity of Kranach. Master Lucas is here seen sketching the portrait of his friend — which he afterwards copied many times. Melanchthon examines the features to judge of the resemblance; few had looked so often and so deeply into the innermost soul of the hero as he, nor ob- served him in such varied conditions of mind ; he was therefore sent for expressly to give an opinion on the portrait of his friend. Another friend, Spalatin, seeks to amuse Luther during the sitting, by reading to him. No. XXXIX. LUTHER PRAYING AT THE SICK-BED OF iMELANCIlTHON. We have seen Luther on a sick-bed. and his friends grieving beside him ; here we find him by the side of the suffering Melanchthon, raising the almost broken spirit of the sick man with the powerful words of p. 41 \ I THE GERMAN REFORMER. 51 though Martin Luther fall. I mean to disperse the brethren in all directions ; but I have been posted here, and here I must remain. I do not say this because 1 do not fear death — for lam not the Apostle Paul, but only his commentator — but 1 trust God will protect me from all my fears." Eleven years later, when the greater number of the inhabi- tants had left, and the university had been removed to Jena, he cried : " We are not alone ; Christ and your prayers, and those of all the saints, are with us ; also the holy angels, invisible, but powerful ! If it be the will of God that we should remain and die, our care will avail us no- thing. Let every one dispose his mind this way : if he be bound to remain and to assist his fellow-men in their death-struggles, let him resign himself to God, and say, ' Lord, 1 am in thy hand ; thou hast fixed me here ; thy will be done.' " On All-saints day, ten years after the indulgences had been trodden under foot (1527), he complained to Amsdorf : " My house is becoming an hospital ; Hanna, Dr. Augustin's wife, has carried the plague about with her, but she is now recovered ; Margaretta Mochina frightened us with one boil and other symptoms, but she is well again ; for my Kate I fear much, for she is near her lying in ; my little son also has been ill for the last three days. Thus there is struggle abroad and fear within — and both violent enough. Christ visits us sorely; the only consola- tion which we can oppose to the wrath of Satan is, that we have God's word for the salvation of our souls, even though lie destroy our bodies. Therefore do thou and our brethren include us in your prayers, that we may firmly bear the hand of God." On the 10th of December he writes: " I am like a dying man ; and behold, I live !" At the end of the year he exclaimed thankfully: " God hath shown himself wondrously merciful unto us." In the picture we see the horrors of a plague-scene. Luther adminis- ters the last consolations of religion to a dying woman ; she has already overcome the afflictions of this world, even the painful sight of her dead child, in the anticipation of a future life. Around her are depicted the different degrees of the fear of death, which stalks along in the back- crround as a never-endin"' funeral train. 52 MARTIN LUTHER, No. XLVI. LUTHER TAKES LEAVE OF HIS FAMILY; EXPERIENCES GREAT DANGER DURING HIS JOURNEY; HIS RECEPTION AT THE FRONTIERS BY THE COUNTS OF MANSFELD. The man of battles begins a journey of peace : as peacemaker he proceeds to his home; it was, as he had felt it to be, his last journey, which led him to eternal peace, and to his real home. " The world is tired of me, and I am tiled of it; we shall part easily, as a guest leaves his hostelry not unwilling." He had twice attempted in the preceding year to adjust the quarrel between the Counts of Mansfeld ; and now, accompanied by his three sons, he started a third time (January 23d, 1546). His Katherina saw him depart with a sorrowful heart, as if she had a presentiment that she should never see him again, at least not otherwise than in his coffin. In vain he sought to cheer her in his letters by gay and grave remarks : " Read St. John and the Little Catechism, my beloved Kate, for thou seemest to fear for thy God as if he were not almighty, and could not create ten Dr. Martins, if the one old one were drowned in the Saale." " Do not trouble me with thine anxieties ; I have a better protector than thee and all the angels. He lieth in the manger, or clings to the breast of the Virgin, but sitteth also at the right hand of God our Father Almighty. Therefore rest in peace. Amen." He had escaped death in crossing the Saale during a flood (January 28th), that he might depart this life a few weeks later at the very place where he had entered it, at Eisleben. At the frontiers of Mansfeld he was received by the counts with a great retinue : he went there to recon- cile the brothers and other relations who were at issue among them- selves about their worldly possessions. This task was a most painful one for him. " In this school," he says, ** one may learn why the Lord in his Gospel calls riches thorns." p. 48. p. 6X THE GERMAN REFORMER. 53 No. XLVII. LUTHER'S DEATH. An eventful great life, of which the results are incalculable, ap- proaches its end ; the heart stands still, that has beaten so warmly and faithfully for his people, for Christianity, and for the Gospel. Shortly before his end he said, sighing, "Good God! I feel so anxious and troubled; I am going; I shall assuredly remain at Eisleben!" and then he prayed : " I thank thee, O God, that thou hast revealed thy beloved Son Jesus Christ unto me, in whom I have believed, and whom I have confessed and preached, and whom the sorry Pope and all godless people persecute O heavenly Father, although I must resign my body and be torn away from this life, I know that I shall be with thee for ever, and that no one can tear me from thy hands God has so loved this world," &c. The words which he repeated fre(][uently during his last hours were, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth!" When Jonas and Coelius asked him, " Reverend father, shall you die faithful to Christ and to the doctrine you have preached ?" he answered distinctly, " Yes." This word was his last on earth, spoken in the first hour of February the iSth, 1546. In the picture his two sons kneel beside their dying parent ; his faith- ful friend and companion. Dr. Justus Jonas, addresses his last words to him ; Michael Coelius prays for the preservation of the beloved life ; the physician, Simon Wild, holds the now useless medicine-bottle in his hand ; to the right stand Count Albrecht and his wife, for whose sake the weary warrior had undertaken this troublesome winter journey. Below, Master Lukas Fortenagel, from Halle, is kneeling at the coffin of the departed, whose portrait he is about to take. Above, the swan prophesied by Huss rises anew from the flames. No. XLYIII. LUTHER'S OBSEQUIES. Once more we stand at Wittenberg before Luther; but the elo- quent lips are silent, the eye is closed which once lie raised with holy G 54 MARTIN LUTHER. confidence to the emperor and the country, to the pope and the car- dinals ; he is silent for ever in the church to which he had affixed thirty years before a word that was to shake the world. His body had been carried, as ordered by the Elector, in solemn procession from Kisleben to Wittenberg, that a place of rest might be prepared for it in the electoral chapel. Next to the coffin stands his friend Melanch- thon, who had during twenty-eight years fought indefatigably by his side. On the morning of the 19th of February he had, deeply affected by the news of the death, pronounced in his lecture-room, with few but emphatic words, the testimony of history and of the Protestant world upon the departed : " The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of faith in the Son of God has not been discovered by any human under- standing, but has been revealed unto us by God through this man, whom He had raised up." On the day of the funeral also, after Dr. Bugen- hagen had preached, he once more bore witness to the value of the labours of the departed: " His doctrine does not consist in rebellious opinions made known with violence ; it is rather an interpretation of the divine will and of the true worship of God, an explanation of the Scriptures, a sermon of the word of God, namely, the Gospel of Christ. .... Now he is united with the prophets, of whom he loved 1o talk ; now they greet him as their fellow-labourer, and with him thank the Lord who collects and maintains his church." Three times has the centenary festival of his death been celebrated in Wittenberg, but still Germany and the German evangelical church await a second Luther. To many has been given the power to develop in an equal or a higher degree some one single feature of his sublime being; but where find a second time that inexhaustible depth of faith, with the same irresistible command of the popular language, united to the same strength of will and readiness for action ? where this blessed absorbing in God, with the power of ruling mankind ? where find once more that union of qualities, the non-existence of which as thus united has constituted for centuries the hereditary want of Germany ? E^ en to-day we still ask this at the grave of the German reformer. SKETCH OP THE RISE AND PEOGEESS REFORMATION IN GERMANY A SKETCH EEFOHMATION IN GERMANY The most important distinction between ancient and modern times is the idea of God and the workl ; for the most essential part, the very soul of an individual, of a nation, and of humanity, reveals itself in the highest object of their aspirations, of their will and their love ; — to be brief, it reveals itself in the inquiry after the highest good, after the living God. We perceive as the universal feature of the ages before Christ, that men sought God in the world exclusively, that the world was their God : now as creative nature, the all-encompassing power, the eternally renewing life of the universe ; now as perfect form, as corporeal beauty and symmetry; or as the enjoyment of intellectual beauty; or as reason, the clear thought complete in itself; or finally, as a community of law and of power in the state. Between ancient and modern nations we find a people which recog- nises God not only in the world, but above it, and thus becomes the precursor of a new epoch. In another respect this people belongs still to ancient times ; for the wishes of the majority are deeply rooted in the visible and perishable world, so that its God appears rather like an ex- ternal ordinance, and not yet as the abstract idea of love. The highest spiritual representatives, the prophets and poets, and the whole liistory of this people in the closest connexion, point all the more urgently to a Being divinely great and new in the coming time. When that olden time reached its full development, when all its latent instincts entered into reality, now symbolically, now actively in 58 A SKETCH OF THE KISE AND PROGRESS deeds, then only could the great imperishable meaning of all these indications, as also their tendency, which was unsatisfactory and seduc- tive to the last degree, be placed in the clear light of history. It must become evident that all the power and fulness of corporeal existence, all perishable beauty and reason, all political activity and moral law, do not in themselves alone bear the indestructible germ of life, that they can give no answer to the last decisive questions. The era which divides the old from the new epoch began when man recognised the Divinity no longer in the world, but found the world in God and through Him ; when the Divinity appeared to him no longer merely as nature, reason, or law, but as the original source and revela- tion of the most holy love, as " without controversy, the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh." This revelation began with the announcement, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand :" a new life was to open before the human race ; it was to be led by new paths towards its highest goal ; these paths, as well as this end, had become a man, had become a person, a history, a divine word and divine act, the Saviour of the world. When divine Love descended as Saviour into the world in human form, it raised man again, through the greatest and freest sacrifice, to his first divine destination. If we look upon the origin of Christianity as the word and deed of divine love, as the salvation and renovation of humanity, embracing all future times, we shall see in the essence of all modern history only the one grand struggle which the Clu'istian spirit has had to maintain against the selfish spirit of this world; the development of the new life upon which the world had entered, which strives to pervade, reform, and animate all the modes of existence. The reformatory spirit of the new epoch entered into history at first as a dominant power, as the exuberant fulness of a higher light and life: it was that great and unparalleled event of the day of Pentecost, in which the past and the future gloriously became one. The new divine life appeared to the human mind as one in its depth, but manifold in its revelation and adaptation: — to the human conscience, as reconciliation of the divine Creator to man's sinful race ; to the heart, as salvation OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 59 from a shattered and disordered existence ; to the plain childlike mind and to the abstract thinker, as the mystery of compassionate and omni- present love. As the Master said : *' I am the way, the truth, and the life." That life, when opposed to the then existing forms of the world, had on its first appearance to confine itself within itself, as a separate circle, as a community divided from the rest of the world ; its inherent power and depth were to be developed, before it could pervade the diversified movements of the time. In the first instance, the spirit of Christianity had free course only in the family circle and the religious community ; the other sections of common life, the state and the school, continued imbued with the spirit of this world, in its ungodly emptiness and exclusiveness. But the Christian idea was soon to embrace all science, and begin to gather to itself the " treasures of wisdom and knowledge" which had been pro- mised, so that the great word of the apostle might be fulfilled: "All are yours." The last step remained to be taken, — to throw open to Christianity, now grown strong and tried in the storms of time, the arena of the state ; when this was done, the Christian state-church came into exist- ence. This was a step of immeasurable importance, bitterly wept over by thousands since then as the root of future corruption, as a victory of worldliness ; but loudly applauded by others as the spiritualisation of the state, as the foundation-stone of the reconcilation between state and Christian polity, between God and the world. But at that time so much is certain, — men were yet far from that highest end of temporal development. How different would the results have been, if the empire of Constantine and the civilisation of the period had been pervaded in its inmost veins and nerves by the original s})irit of Christianity ! The Roman empire was like a worn-out old man who has wasted his strength in wickedness : he is allowed time for repent- ance ; but a fresh creation, the fulness of life, the freshness of soul, are denied him. Rome, however, by her political organisation and civilisa- tion, was destined by Providence as the fitting vessel to receive and con- tain the eternal treasure, and deliver it over to coming times. 60 A SliETCII OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS Under the shocks of the invading Germanic nations, the Roman empire fell into ruins. What would then have become of the world, if these untamed savage nations had not been met by at least one power capable of civilising and training them for a higher bond of union ? It is true, Christianity did not appear to them in its original simple and pure form ; it had adopted more imposing forms, and the splendours of worldly dignity ; and these splendours, these forms, it borrowed from the state, when it became a state-church. To gain over the world more easily and quickly, the church had not disdained a close alliance with the old Roman spirit of conquest and organisation ; thus she appeared before the victorious Germanic nations, who learnt to bow down to her spiritual superiority. The old empire of Rome arose again as the church of Rome ; the vanquished ruler of the world flourished anew as the papacy. In Rome, and among the people subject to the Roman sway, the tie was formed which was to keep Europe together, no longer as a temporal state, but as a spiritual organisation, as a Christian church. All political power, on the contrary, rested almost entirely with the Germanic nations. In all directions arose warlike feudal states, consisting of triumphant con- querors and enslaved subjects. Thus, in the middle ages, a twofold conquest, a mutual subjection, had been accomplished of the Germanic nations through the church of Rome, and of the nations subject to Rome through the Germanic state. Under the papacy as in the empire, in the Roman hierarchy and in the feudal power of Germany, the two highest points of development in the middle ages had been attained. These tw^o dominant powers, both so strong and so assuming, could not fail to quarrel one with the other. Thus arose that struggle which for centuries continued to shake the world, the temporal and the spi- ritual powers, which the emperors of the Frankonian and the Hohen- stauffen races, and the Innocents and the Gregories, carried on with changing fortunes ; a struggle which gave rise to the theory of the spiri- tual and the temporal sword, or to that poj^ish theory of the church being the ruling spirit of the body politic ; while in embittered oppo- nents of church dominion it excited the suspicion that Christianity itself was but a political invention. Minds more noble and religious sought for the source of the existing confusion and deterioration in the perversion of Christianity to the state-church by Constantine. Wal- OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 61 ter of the Vogelweide, for instance, the poet of his time, on occcision of Constantino bestowing great gifts on the papal chair, causes an angel to lament, " that formerly Christianity stood beauteous in its chastity ; but now a gift was granted it which would convert its honey into gall, to the misfortune of the world." The struggle had brought on exhaustion, but no solution of the two most profound problems regarding humanity, whose temporal and eternal destiny was left undecided and uncomprehended. The church of the middle ages had undoubtedly great, indisputable merits in relation to the Christian world; only ignorance or irreligious stupidity could mistake or despise them. The powerful but unrestrained and savage nature of the victorious races was prepared by the church for a higher morality and an advance in civilisation ; the emblematical lan- guage of the prevailing visible worship in which Christianity clothed itself made a deep impression on the feelings and the imagination of these children of nature. Even in this emblematical language, and in this form of religion, the tacit promise was conveyed of a future more spiritual faith. Nor must it be considered a less important benefit to European development and civilisation, that in a strongly organised church, in a hierarchy established on the monarchical principle, a spiritual and moral bond was formed, which enchained all European nations in one common vmion of faith and progress. With this acknowledgment of what the church of the middle ages has accomplished, we by no means say that its profounder ideas were realised. As yet the Christian spirit had, upon the whole, only been outwardly understood as a symbol, an ordinance ; while life, the world in its multifariousness and liberty, was not yet truly impressed and influenced by it. There was no want of great attempts to attain this last object. Chivalry and monachism were, in their origin, nothing less than bold efforts to make good the Christian spirit in practical life and in over- . coming the world. The spirit of chivalry in its most flourishing time sought to raise active life to a higher moral standard by a powerful and inspired devotedness to honour, fidelity, and love. ]3y reverence of the holy and beautiful, by protecting the weak and helpless, chivalry sought H 62 A SKETCH OF THE EISE AND PROGRESS Christian consecration, which afterwards found a higher object in the defence and extension of the Christian faith through the spiritual orders of knighthood, and reached its highest elevation in the Crusades. Monachism, on the contrary, proceeded from the notion, that the material world, notwithstanding all the victories of the church, was still l^'ing in darkness, that the problem of the inward change of the human race through Christianity remained unsolved. To attack this evil at the very root, men resolved upon an open and unconditional rupture with the world, upon an unconditional subjection and annihilation of all that is worldly in man's nature : love of liberty and desire of dominion were sacrificed to obedience, personal possessions to vows of poverty, and sensual enjoyment to self-mortification. The original idea of mon- achism was (who could mistake it !) an energetic conception of Chris- tianity as the religion of the cross, — a giving up of the world. Erring in the choice of means, equally erring and leading to error in the con- ception of its object, it was nevertheless a grand attempt at achieving a more real victory over the world. But both chivalry and monachism had their time : first blossom, then decay ; attempts at renovation, and a relapse. As the spirit of chi- valry subsided at last into barbarism and absurdity, or the polish of the courtier ; so monachism sank anew, under the weight of the riches and indulgences with which it had loaded itself, into the very depths of that worldliness whence it had so strenuously attempted to extricate man- kind. Both these attempts at Christian improvement, at a victory over this world, ended alike in the very reverse of that which had been their original object. We. return once more to our previous conclusion: the highest task of Christianity remained unaccomplished at the end of the middle ages, and its fundamental ideas were only half understood. In the unbounded striving after worldly dominion, the church of the priests, after having fulfilled one great destiny, had lost sight of its true aim. It was, in close connexion with these spiritual errors, given up also outwardly to the most immoral worldly practices. But one loud cry of indignation is heard throughout the period at this demoralisa- tion. " Never," so mourns the noblest German poet of the thirteenth century, "was Christianity so entirely sunk in error: those who ought to teach the people are abhorred by God, and sin without fear ; they show us the way to heaven, and themselves go to hell ; their words OF THE REFOIIMATION IN GERMANY. 63 they say we may follow, but not their steps. We all complain that our father the Pope confusss us, and yet, like a father, he shows us an example ; we follow him, and depart not from his footsteps : if he be avaricious, all are avaricious with him ; it' he lie, we all lie to ; if he cheat, we also cheat. The shepherd has become a wolf ; young Judas as bad as the old ; the treasurer of God has stolen his heavenly hoard from him ; he has falsified the word of God, and resisted his work 1" Similar and stronger lamentations we find in the poets of those days in southern France. In Italy itself, Dante, in his Dlvina Commedia, speaks with rebuking wrath of " the lord and protector of the new Pharisees in the Lateran ;" and Petrarch depicts the papal court at Avignon in the darkest colours, as the kingdom of Greed, where *' no crime was feared, so money could be gained thereby ; where the hope of a future life was called a vain fable; where the punishment of hell, resurrection, and the last judgment, were accounted children's tales; where truth was called madness, self-denial coarseness, and chastity a reproach !" The state also, in consequence of the struggle against the tyranny and greed of the church, had already begun to withdraw itself here and there, not only from priestly, bat also from religious and moral influence ; and to strive for a position and an importance, sufficient in itself and independent, confined to merely perishable objects, and totally disconnected from all the eternal principles of existence. From these ideas arose the Italian policy, in the same country which had become the centre of the church in its perfect worldliness ; a policy which, in its complete and conscious desertion of all divine motives, all the moral restraints of life, represents the summit of unbounded and self-complacent worldliness. If the Christian spirit were to continue its work for humanity, it must create new instruments for the task, and through them give a new form to the world. As Christianity had at its first appearance kept itself secluded from the world, so long as that world was in open opposition to its spirit; so it now broke away from the church of Rome, the external form it had hitherto assumed, because she had become opposed to its true nature through perversion and servility. The original spirit of Christianity separating under severe struggles 64 A SKETCH OF TllE KISE AND PROGRESS from its first historical form, had to build its church anew in the sanc- tuary of the soul, and seek its home in the depth of the individual, thence to arise as a purified, community. Now, when the earlier communities of church and state had more and more lost their former beneficial influence, and the creation of a completely heathenish body politic was threatened, by the side of which the church would have stood insignificant and inefiectual, — how immea- surably important was it, that exactly at this moment of religious and moral dissolution, a spiritual power should be called forth which led back the worldly spirit to its eternal source, and undertook to regulate and raise the life and, feelings of nations by divine authority! Ihis return to fundamental principles, when contemplated in all its bearings, was precisely the deepest significance of the epoch before the Refor- mation. Through the opening clouds the genius of religion and humanity looked once more towards that eminence which is its ultimate destina- tion. The development of man through Christianity attained its ma- turity ; that which had hitherto been given to the youthful mind of the people in images frequently significant, frequently distorted, and in obscure promises, was now to be offered, to the longing spirit as its own possession, as its true blessedness ; and thus, as the rightful pri- vilege of the heart, enter the world again, purifying and renovating it from within. From the days of the Reformation to our own, we see, therefore, only one intimately connected period, which is yet far from its conclusion. When the Christian spirit abandoned its first strong but merely outward worldly form, to address itself, confiding in its spiritual power, to the minds of men, it undoubtedly entered upon the open sea of life, and exposed itself to all the storms of human passion, uncertainty, and vacillation. As every great revolution throws doubts on all that pre- viously existed, so there arose with the Reformation also great dangers for the spiritual nature and undisturbed organic development of Chris- tianity; having lost its outward influence previously, its moral weight only could be threatened, when it was overwhelmed by the new instincts and desires, the new ideas and convictions of a dififerently constituted period. These dangers showed themselves in their full extent, when, at a later period, the self-seeking, worldly, and carnal interests appeared OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 65 almost exclusively in the foreground, and faith was degraded in the systems of politicians to a cipher, until by degrees most of the de- partments of private, political, and ecclesiastical life, in mutual conflict, in forgetfulness of their high origin, and in selfish isolation, withered or disappeared in lingering dissolving corruption. And yet the Chris- tian spirit need not have recoiled affrighted from all these dangers; for, to prove the irresistible power of its divine nature, it had to con- tend, even in a modest form (such as it assumed at the Reformation), against all the spiritual and temporal powers of the world, and secure of victory, to strive arduously for development during centuries. Only to a strong original mind deeply imbued with religion could a great historical force of so deeply spiritual a nature as the Reformation owe its existence. Luther, by the peculiarity of his natural abilities and of his mind, as well as by the direction of his spiritual and worldly experiences, was called upon to become the spiritual instrument of this great reforma- tory power ; all the important efforts for improvement of the century pervaded his soul in living unity, as the germinating force and the sug- gestive watchword of a new era. PREPARATIONS FOR WAR. We have intentionally described these pages, in which the striking picture of the Reformer of Germany is to be worthily exhibited, as mere historical sketches ; because we wished to remind every reader at the outset, that it is not our intention to add one more to the many biographies of our great man, and to repeat all that has been already related so many times, so thoroughly and minutely. Our principal endeavour is, rather to work out the rich abundance of historical facts, and to arrange them in large, easily comprehended groups, so that the true essential importance of the Reformer and of his work for his time and for our own may be depicted in them to the life. His importance for his time and for our own! these words point to the second peculiarity of our task, certainly not the easiest, but perhaps the most important. 66 A SKETCH OF THE KISE AND TROGRESS The two divisions of our first sketch represent the fundamental principle of the Reformation before Luther and in Luther : first, those imposing spiritual and religious movements in the fourteenth and fif- teenth centuries, in which the want of a vivifying and purifying change announced itself more and more urgently, and in varied forms ; and then the preparation for this change itself in the mind of Luther. THE REFORMATION BEFORE LUTHER. The fifteenth century bore a new order of things in its womb, which, growing out of the gradual decay of the creations of the middle ages, now awaited with increasing struggles the hour of its birth ; but this hour, although announced by so many and significant signs, was slow in appearing. A new era working itself forth out of a former one is an extraordinary spectacle : amidst fierce labours and struggles it tries to assume a new form, and yet cannot find the certain central point round which the new state of things is eventually to be or- ganised and established victoriously and irrevocably. Li the revolution which had been begun, religion and mental culture occupied the most prominent place : the want of a purification of religious faith and life, or, as it was then called, a reformation of the church in its head and members, became the general cry, the eager demand of all Christians ; and never had there been stronger and more urgent reasons ^for this demand. The whole order of church-government, as established in the middle ages through the papacy, in its influence on the minds and lives of the people, had been entirely unhinged ; instead of representing the king- dom of heaven upon earth, according to its original design, it fell into annihilating contradiction with the very essence of its existence, and with the most important foundations of all iiigher moral order. A more fearful and depressing spectacle can scarcely be imagined, than an estab- lishment intended to guide and govern religious interests, meant as a blessing, turned into a curse by the wickedness of men. Such was, at the time of which we speak, the condition of society in Europe : men felt the net in which they were caught, but seemed powerless to break through it, new meshes ever being woven as soon as the old ones were torn asunder. OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 67 Religious faith had hitherto represented the clergy ideally as the mediators between God and man, and monastic life as the highest moral elevation of mankind ; but now the actual state of things showed, to all that could see, the most offensive and disgusting caricature of this ideal. The clergy of all grades, from the Pope to the meanest priest, intended to be the defenders of religion, had sunk (at least, the great majority of them) into the very lowest depth of depravity. Upon this point only one voice is heard among all serious observers of the time. Popedom had celebrated its triumphs, through its most powerful representatives, in the subjection of the temporal states, and in strictly carrying out a system of absolute uniform power. But as early as the fourteenth century a double defeat had followed upon these vic- tories ; namely, oppressive dependence upon a temporal power (France), and the destruction of monarchical unity, by the struggles of several pretenders to the papal crown. The highest clerical powder thus de- stroyed itself, ere any of its subjects dared to lay hand on it ; indeed, authority firndy rooted in the mind usually falls only by undermining its own power. Still, if these two defeats had been all, popedom might have recovered from them ; but by its representatives and by its system, it destroyed all moral faith in both; and such moral self- destruction must lead eventually to external ruin. The papacy, we say, destroyed itself by its system and representa- tives. The system bore on its front a conscious and unconditional sel- fishness, which was stamped especially by the most shameless service of mammon. Judas Iscariot had apparently taken the place of St. Peter. The same spirit which betrayed the Saviour of the world now be- trayed the Christian church. In the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies the venality of the popes and their courts had become prover- bial. " Dear lord and master," wrote the ambassador of the Teutonic order in the year 1420, to Prussia, "ye must send money; for here at court all friendship's at an end when the money's spent." Again : " Whoever wants any thing done here must first give money or money's worth, and lay it in the scales, I thought, when I left Prussia, that whoever could undauntedly speak the truth here must and ought to obtain his right ; but without money, this will not be the case. It is the common way of the world here, — the more money, the better right. Greed is predominant at the court of Rome, and seeks, by new- tricks and arts, to squeeze out day by day more money from Ger- 68 A SKETCH OF THE KISE AN]) PROGRESS many for the church fiefs ; and great outcries and complaints ensue, and a great dispute about the power of the Pope may he the result; indeed, all obedience may be refused hivi, that all the money need no longer be carried away from us to the Italians ; this last, I learn, would cause great satisfaction in many quarters." Thus we hear out of the mouth of a German, a hundred years before Luther, the anticipation of a future secession from Rome. " Do not fear excommunication so greatly," says another account from the same embassy, in 1429; " the devil is not so black as he is often painted, and excommunication is not so terrible as the Popes make it out to us. In Italy, even the lords and princes and cities, who are dependent on the Pope, do not fear unjust excommunication any longer ; nor do they like the Pope much in Italy, only so far as he behaves well to them, and no further. We poor Ger- mans alone still imagine him to be an earthly divinity : it were better we thought him an earthly devil, as he really and truly is !" . . . . *' It had been better for me," exclaims another ambassador from Prus- sia, in 1447, in the most violent indignation, " that I had had my throat cut at Stargard when I was in danger of it, so had not come hither into all this misery and sorrow, nor witnessed all these sins." A state of corruption such as this could not have existed in the church of Rome, if it had not begun, like an infectious plague, among the highest princes of the church themselves. Every one knows the melancholy notoriety attained by individual popes in the fifteenth cen- tury. From John XXIII. (1400) to Alexander (1492-1503), a line of princes occupied the papal chair, who exhibited, with few exceptions, a frightful picture of the depravity of a hierarchical body, whose power could not be valid unless based on the confidence of nations in its moral worth. The popes of that period had passed through all the degrees of moral degeneration, — from weakness to duplicity, from vulgar cupidity to complete depravity. We do not intend to turn over again the impure pages of that history; let it suflice to mention, that John XXIII. never entirely cleared himself of the accusation that he had poisoned his predecessor (Alexander V.), or that Innocent VI 11. employed the advantages of his position exclusively in providing for his seven children. Of his successor, Alexander VI., it would be better to be silent, rather than depict in its true colours the history of a life which fills us with horror, and is a disgrace to human nature. ■Indeed, through him and his children, the name of Borgia has been OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. G9 loaded with the execration of the world; and there is not an abyss of crime, however monstrous, into which he and his family did not fall. In our time it appears astounding, nay sacrilegious, that such de- pravity could ever exist, without the immediate downfall of the whole ecclesiastical edifice. Only those who can appreciate the power of habit, and the strength of old historical institutions, can find the solution of this apparent mystery. What has been said of the spiritual head may be applied, almost without reservation, to all the other members of the priesthood, the great majority of whom gave to the Christian world quite as offensive a spectacle as their high-priest at Home. The reciprocal influence between the clergy and their spiritual prince was, indeed, unavoidable and continuous. An ^neas Sylvius (afterwards Pius II.) could in those days observe facetiously, " that the sheep of Christ were now no longer tended, but only shorn." Perhaps he felt only half, or not at all, the bitter significance and the annihilating truth of his Italian epigram. The pious Abbot Ruisbrock, again, lamented that, " for a hun- dred wicked priests, scarcely one good one was to be found ; that popes, bishops, and priests bent their knees for the sake of temporal wealth ; that visitations led to no improvements, but that every one concerned got that which he wanted : namely, the devil got the soul, the bishops the money, and the poor stupid human being momentary ease." " In my opinion," wrote an ambassador of the Teutonic order to his grand-master, " this only is clear, that the churches and the clergy are too rich by far ; it is an evil that they have more than the holy Apostles had : things will not be better until that which kings and princes have given to the church in olden times be taken away again from them." Thus early was an open free opinion given, that the riches of the church and the clergy were confided to them under certain moral conditions, and could therefore be reclaimed, to be used for a better j)urpose, as soon as those conditions ceased to be observed. Monachism offered a still stronger contrast to the ideal object of its founders ; and instead of practising self-denial, humility, and bro- therly love, the monks gave themselves up to the enjoynient of woi'ldly pleasures, often in their coarsest forms. Convent life, as then under- stood, had become a mere living on the fat of the land in idleness and T 70 A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND niOGKESS sensuality, mostly tinder the cloak of hypocrisy, hut often even with shameless audacity. One of the most respected preachers at S trash urg (Geiler von Kaisersberg, 1478-1516) declares openly : " Convent life had become a mere mockery; convents and monasteries were houses of seduction ; many a pious woman had entered a convent to her undoing." He does not hesitate to use the severe warning words : " When thou seest such a monk, then sign thyself with the cross : if he be black, then is he the devil ; if he be white, then is he the devil's mother ; but if he be grey, then has he a share in both." This hard judgment of the stern German preacher agrees perfectly well with the testimony of the Roman historian Infessura. As the contemporary of Alexander VI., he assures us, " every one in Rome knows, alas, that monasteries have now become dens of moral corruption." So fearful and general a demoralisation of the clergy in all its de- grees would naturally produce the most lamentable reaction upon the laity. The same Geiler von Kaisersberg whom we have quoted above calls the prelates, with unflinching severity, the cause and origin of the destruction of the whole earth. " They lead astray the poor little sheep {Schaflein) wOiich follow them. Whoever trusts to this broken reed will fall. Only Christ, the apostles, and the other saints, are the true pillars on which we can lean." Wishing to point out the pernicious influence of the bad example set by the clergy, he illustrates it in his popular way, by referring to the story of the peasant who is climbing a high tree, having a chain of others hanging to his foot, each in turn grasping the foot of the one above him. All are thus safe, until the flrst, rubbing his hand in absence of mind, lets go his hold, and down they all tumble with himself. By this peasant (Geiler explains) he meant the prelate, who ought to attain the summit of the tree, /". e. the height of Christian life, and persuade his subordinates by an active example to folloAV him ; but as soon as he withdrew heart and hand from the tree of life, he became guilty of the moral apostasy of the whole nation clinging to him. The sight of this demoralisation among the spiritual teachers of the people, produced as a natural consequence, in the one case a grievous want of faith, in the other the dullest superstition. Want of ftiith, among the better-educated, assumed the form of mere cold abstractions of the mind, or of a course of free unbridled sensuality. Among such, it was said (by the father of Capito, e. g.) that only a fool or a hypocrite OF THE KEFORMATIOX IN GERMANY. n could at that time become a priest. Superstition, again, was especially the lot of the poorer and less-educated classes. By means of absurd preaching, false miracles, by a repulsive traffic in relics, and by the establishment of many additional shrines, they were continually taxed and plundered. Both these spiritual perversions — want of faith, and su- perstition — tended, with equal impetus, to utter demoralisation ; which increased so frightfully, year after year, as to call forth the bitterest and most despairing laments from the few noble-minded men of the period. Geiler, who often consoled himself, as well as others, with the hope that " God would soon send a man for the renovation of their corrupted re- ligion," had at other times to struggle against entire hopelessness: " Thou sayest. Can we not cause a general reformation ? I say, no ; there is no hope of amendment in Christendom !" What wonder, therefore, that, as ever happens at the threshold of great revolutions, many serious minds became possessed with the idea that the end of the world and the last judgment were approaching ; or that others expected a second deluge ? An opposition to this corruption in the dominant church — ever becoming more and more manifest — had arisen in men's minds for centuries, which in many directions amounted not only to a complete rupture with the existing visible church, faithless to its original voca- tion, but fell gradually into contradiction to the fundamental ideas of Christian revelation. The violent desire to throw oft' all ecclesiastical authority, and to break through all religious restrictions, took refuge in Pantheism. Only beyond the reach of hierarchical despotism, and the sphere of historical revelation, did men hope to find freedom in those ideas which represent man as divine by nature, not requiring revelation or atonement. By this means the whole historical foundation upon which not only the church of Rome, but all Christianity as a chvirch, had built itself, was overleapt at a bound. This was the doctrine professed at a later period by the Beghards* and the Brethren of the Free Spirit, in their secret meetings. Its practical application appeared in an endeavour to re-establish the * A mmiber of artisans at Antwerp united in 1228, under this name, in the perfurmance of certain rcKgious exercises, conforming to the rule of St. Bcggha, the mother of Pepin of Heristal. At the end of the thirteenth century they subjected themselves to the order of St. Francis, and at a later period became regular monks. They were exposed to many cruel persecutions, and but very few of their monasteries existed in the beginning of the eighteenth century. A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND PllOGRESS original nature of man, liis first innocence in paradise, antl the uncon- ditional equality of all, through the abolition of all distinctions ; all the divisions among men, through family, property, connnunity, or church, were to be lost in the divine unity of his original nature. Man needed only to understand and give an unquestioned course of action to his inborn divine nature, and the freedom, innocence, and equality of para- dise would rcaj^pear of themselves. To use a modern expression, we may say that this movement showed unmistakably the pantheistic com- munism of the close of the middle ages. Its principal seat in Germany was Cologne, where also Master Eccard (who held similar religious, if not moral views) taught. Here the secret meetings were held, and the innnoral practices carried on, which would not be hidden even in the darkest retreats, and were at length (13^5) fully traced and capitally punished. From that time, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, wherever they might be found — on the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Baltic — were exposed to the severest persecutions of the church. This doctrine has since been main- tained in several periods — during the Reformation, in the last century, and in our own time, — and has always exhibited the same fundamental character: a complete denial of the profoundest laws of individuality, human and divine ; and, nearly connected with this, the rudest denial of the most simple and indispensable conditions of human society and civilisation ; a denial of the freedom of thought and of legitimate love. The Brethren of the Free Spirit strove, unsuccessfully and in an eccentric manner, for the radical reform of the church and of social order. There arose at the same time, and also later, a much stronger and more widely-spread party, which cautiously led the attack against existing abuses tvithin the limits of history, on a common Christian and ecclesiastical ground. The princi} al objects of this party were reforms in the constitution and discipline of the church ; the remedy was there- fore to be sought principally in the amendment and progress of forms and institutions. The unlimited monarchical power in the church had destroyed itself so completely through schism (the co-existence and mutvial qviarrels of several popes), that the question concerning the legitimate origin of its su])remacy forced itself naturally upon the minds of men. " Not in the pope alone," they said, " but in the bishops, the clerical councils, with or without the pope, was the true source of spiritual power, of ecclesiastical sovereignty, to be found." In other OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 73 words, the church aristocracy placed itself beside the sovereign of the church, and in decisive moments even above him ; placing the highest law-giving and judicial authority in a vicarious assembly of all Christian nations. Out of this spirit arose, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the great councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, from which Europe ex- pected the ultimate accomplishment of long-cherished wishes : a refor- mation of the head and the menibers ; the rooting out of crying abuses in the government and administration of the church. Minds were not lacking which conceived and occasionally gave utterance to the plan of a comprehensive reformation ; neither was courage wanting boldly to assert the extraordinary power which the voice of nations had granted. Popes were appointed and deposed with undoubting confidence, almost like presidents of an ecclesiastical republic ; and the fundamental idea of a permanent rej^resentative constitution, rightfully established, was solemnly carried out. And yet the efforts of these different bodies of men, although sup- ported by the spirit of the time and by the voice of the whole Christian civilised world, were fruitless. The reformation from above, longed for and resolved upon, was shipwrecked, partly upon the inevitable contra- dictions of this representative government without any firmly established organisation, partly upon the resistance and the cunning policy of tlie papal court, and partly upon the folly of the political j^owers, and the caprice of the peoples. A half-century of the mcst strenuous exertions, of the most hopeful beginnings, was apparently to end in exhaustion and indifference. At that time the way of salvation had been secured from another side; not through disputes about the constitution and the doubtful boundaries of power between the prince of the church and his ecclesiastical parlia- ment, nor by means of the privileged higher classes and ranks of the clergy, but through individuals distinguished hy their i^oiver of persuasion. With the irresistible power of the inspired u-ord, they addressed all Christians, without any distinction of rank or calling — laymen and clei'gymen, learned and unlearned. A severe moral life, and the simpli- fying of the external church according to the rule of the oldest Christian community and of the Scriptures, were the two levers with which they hoped to raise Christianity to a state of purity and renovation. Men like Wickiffe at Oxford, IIuss and Jerome at Prague, John 74 A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS von Wesel at Erfurt and on the Rhine (at Mayence and Worms), and Savonarola at Florence, were the most important leaders of this move- ment. Almost all of them were martyrs to their cause ; the English "VVicklilfe alone died (1384) unmolested in his village cure, although the English hierarchy, at their council in London, had condemned his doc- trine and banished him from the university. Huss and Jerome of Prague suffered a martyr's death in the beginning of the century, as Savonarola at its end, — the two former on the banks of the Rhine, the other on that of the Arno ; and John von Wesel died a bowed-down old man in a convent prison. The papal and the representative ecclesi- astical powers, the court of Rome and the council of Constance, were agreed in their persecution and condemnation. But through these sacri- fices a flame was kindled which no temporal power could quench ; the resistance to the corruptions in the church had found a firm and im- movable foundation in the authority of the Scriptures as the ori- ginal record of revelation, also in the undying ivord and blood of the martyred witnesses to the truth. This, however, is at all times the mysterious ever-flowing source of every great advance in history: faith and sacrifice in inseparable union; the divine certainty of conviction, and the sealing it as a faithful sacrifice unto death; the glorifying of thought and of suffering in eternal love. Hitherto we have spoken of the great attempts at reformation in the fifteenth century to be obtained, here by an organic reform of ecclesi- astical institutions, there through individuals distinguished in the work of reformation ; while throughout all a practical reform of external clerical life, its constitution, morals, and manners, was chiefly the object. Now, however, we turn to quieter efforts for obtaining reform, which kept in view less an external than, in the first instance, an internal spiritual reform. In the one case (although the two cannot well be completely separated), the new birth of forms and of external practice was striven for ; in the other case, on the contrary, the regeneration of the spirit, heart, and mind was first and principally asserted : in the one case a practical, in the other a theoretical reform predominated. The most important testimony to the origin and internal necessity of these endeavours is, that the reform movements in both the above directions took place almost contemporaneously and with equal power ; for only those reforms on a larger scale bear within them the vitality which outlives, which are deep and rich enough to attract the two OF THE EEFORMATIOX IN GERMANY. 75 opposite poles of human knowledge, the spiritual and the temporal, and thus satisfactorily meet the wants of an active as well as a reflective spirit. The more internal efforts at reformation had their deepest founda- tion in two of the most important spiritual events of the fifteenth cen- tury. The true spirit of Christianity, liberated from its disfigurement and disguise, from its fetters and materialisation, was recognised and estimated at its real value, in its original truth and freedom ; but this liberation had been rendered possible only through ilie greater power obtained by the spirit of religio??, and by a more vivid comjyrehension of the original liistory of Christianity. This greater ^^ower of the spirit of religion, and this more liberal comprehension of history, must be looked upon as the two most poicerful springs 0/ the spiritual reforms before Luther. From the depths of this religious feeling, and the moral con- sciousness inspired by it, as well as from the oldest written documents dating from the establishment of the first church, the Christian spirit drew the means for its renovation, and the church for its second birth ; and never have historical knowledge and religious inspiration united in a nobler labour, never have knowledge and faith formed a more beautiful union, than in this dawn of the Reformation. The historical comprehension of primitive Christianity received, through the happy junction of favourable circumstances, an impetus such as had hitherto been unheard-of and impossible. The revived study of ancient languages, and of classical as well as biblical antiquity gene- rally, furnished the necessary key to the comprehension of the biblical records in the original tongues ; and the newly-invented art of printing served to spread them abroad. A more rapid circulation and an easier comprehension went thus hand in hand. It is well known how much Germany owes on this point to men like Agricola, Reuchlin, and Erasmus. These endeavours after mere language and forms, although of incal- culable importance and influence, would not in themselves have opened the very heart of biblical antiquity, or of the original spirit of Chris- tianity, if the liveliest susceptibility for the mysteries of spiritual life and of religious feeling had not been gradually awakened in another direction. This last task was accomplished by a body of men who are ordinarily called the advocates of German mysticism before the Reformation. It 76 A SKETCH OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS is not a light undertaking, in these days of Babylonian confusion of tonoues and ideas, to u])hold tliis innocent expression in its original historical sense, against the most diversified misconstructions. In that free plain signification, mysticism is nothing but the religion of the heart and of feeling, as distinguished from that other religious senti- ment which is founded, in sober cool natures, more exclusively upon moral perception ; in more practical natures, again, upon common sense and reflection. Only he who is capable of distinguishing the subtle essence of religion from reflective thought or active morality can con- ceive that peculiar state of the mind which, in history and philosophy, is denominated mysticism. It is the fulness of spiritual life, which, turning to the eternal origin of all things, derives its sustenance from the pure hidden sources of the soul. This religion of the heart, which, as a clear expression less likely to be misapprehended, we may denominate mysticism, rises in poetical natures on the wings of the imagination ; while it prevails, in minds pre-eminently moral and tenderly attuned, like a warm breath of feeling, as a gentle comprehension of the entire life of the soul. The German Christian mysticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries appears, on a more general review, as the first important step towards the Reformation,- — a first grand effort for the spiritual re-estab- lishment of Christianity. It is, indeed, the natural soil for the growth of the religious freedom and profound depth of feeling which obtained at the period of the Reformation ; and for a long space of time Luther himself is essentially indebted to it for intellectual nourishment and growth. It insists, on all occasions and with great emphasis, upon in- dividual experience, and the life of religion in the heart ; it seeks in the innermost depth of the soul, and by the sacrifice of an active and devoted love, an immediate union with the Supreme Being, immaterial and essential. Among the most important and influential German advocates of this movement before the Reformation are Suso and Tauler (the author of llie German Theology) in the fourteenth, and Thomas a Kcmpis in the fifteenth century. The first two drew from the fulness of a spiritual life, rich in experience, such a power of living words, that they influenced men's minds at great distances, and produced a deep impression particu- larly in the cities on the Rhine, the principal scene of their labours, and awakened in numberless individuals a desire for higher attainments. OF THE KEEORMATION IN GERMANY. Suso (1.'j00-1365) relates most gracefully, in his poetical style, "how he had a great desire to hecoine and be called the servant of eternal wisdom ; and how, whenecer lie heard songs or words of temporal love, or hymns of praise and sweet music, his heart and wishes were bent upon 'his loveliest love, from whom all love Hows.' He thought: 'O God! if I could only once see my beloved, only once get speech of Him !' While he thus strove how far he might see Him ivith his spiritual eyes i?i the express declarations of Scripture, He manifested Himself to him, shining like the morning star, and like the glittering beams of the rising sun. His crown was eternity, his garment bliss, his word sweetness, his embrace the fulness of joy; He was present yet hidden, reaching above the highest heavens, and touching the lowest depths. He bent down to him lovingly, and spoke kindly : ' My son, give me thy heart.' Ah, heart mine, see whence floweth love and all kindli- ness ; whence cometh all tenderness, beauty, heart-enjoyment, and loveli- ness. Cometh it not from the ever-flowing fountain-head of the Divinity itself? Plunge then my heart and mind and courage into the abyss of all good things ! . . . . Thus was his soul impressed with the original emanation of all good, in which he spiritually found all that is worthy of love and desire. Then he often felt like a babe held by its mother on her knee, her hands under its arms, striving to reach that tender mother by the motions of its head and body, and testifying its heartfelt joy by its pretty movements: thus his heart often rose to the blissful presence of eternal Wisdom." Never before Luther was this heartfelt apprehension of the Deity expressed in the German tongue more feelingly, more gracefully, or with greater poetical beauty, than in these words of Suso; the warm longing after the substance, not the mere shadow of religion. That which the greatest German poet of modern times meant to express in the celebrated words : " Man sehnt sich iiach des Lebens Biichen ; Ach! nach des Lebens Quelle hinl"* had previously found the simplest and purest utterance in the mouth of the pious Suabian poet of the fourteenth century. From a mind like Suso's we may justly expect the whole poetical * •' We languish fur the streams of life; All! for life's source itself !" Guellted Faunt. K A SKETf'II OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS depth of a religious nature. He praises the " intelligent Aristotle, the virtuous heathen master," for having found evidence in the well-ordered course of nature of the existence of " one only Lord and Master of all creatures, whom we call God." " Mortal eye," says Suso, " cannot see him ; hut he may he seen in liis works, for his creatures are like a mirror in which God is reflected ; and this recognition we call, therefore, a reflecting or mirroring. So let us reflect upon the great high Master in his works. Look above, and around to all the four quarters of the world; — how vast, how sublime the heavens in their swift course ! How nobly the Lord, has adorned it with planets, and decked it with the countless number of bright stars. Oh ! wlien the beauteous sun arises cheeringly, unclouded, in the sum- mer-time, how beneficently it then bestows upon the earth fruits and all other good things ! How leaf and herb spring forth ! how the lovely flowers smile ! how wood and heath and meadow resound with the sweet songs of the nightingales and little birds ! how all the animals, shut up during the severe winter, rejoice in their release ! how all hu- manity, young and old, frolic joyfully with rapturous delight! Ah, gracious God ! if thou be so lovely in thy creatures, how entirely beau- tiful and delightful art thou in thyself! All cry, Praise and glory to thee, O Lord ! fathomless and immeasurable." *' Now hast thou found thy God, whom thy heart has long sought. Now look upwards, with glistening eyes, with bright countenance and bounding heart, and view him, the great King of all creatures. See, such reflec- tions soon lead a feeling human being to rejoice ; and this rejoicing is a delight which no tongue can express, but which powerfully fills heart and soul." In abstruse minds, such as Suso's, the religion of the heart appears, if we may express it thus, personal, and influences, with quiet but irre- sistible power, all susceptible minds that come within its range. We have a portraiture of his mind in his own words : " I was called the faithful father of the poor; I was the particular friend of all that loved God ; all that came to me weary and heavy-laden ever found counsel, so that they parted from me cheered and comforted : for I wept with those that were weeping, and mourned with the mourners, until I had consoled them as a mother would her child. If a man wronged me ever so eriev- ously, and only smiled on me kindly afterwards, I was ready to forgive him in God's name, and to forget the oflfence as if it never had been. OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. Even the wants and sufferings of the little birds and animals, or of any of God's creatures, went to my heart; and I prayed to the pitiful Lord on high that he would help them." This mildness and loving warmth of his whole character could not, however, prevent his being treated by worldly and hard-hearted persons as a strange, nay a hateful phenomenon: " he converted men," so they reproached him, with violent threats, " into a peculiar eccentric mode of life termed spiritual {der Geist) ; and those belonging to this class, spiritualists [Geister vnd Geisterinnen), the most perverse set that ever lived upon earth." But all this vanished before the power of his life and his preaching. His sermons were often so affecting, that his face appeared to his hearers, as one of them assures us, surrounded by a halo. " Mark ye," so he cried sometimes, at particularly striking pas- sages, in moments of enthusiasm, " the blusterer will bluster."* The greater power of the living and spoken word, as compared with the written word, he points out in a beautiful passage, quite characteristic of himself : "The difference is as great between a sweet musical instrument played upon, and hearing it only talked about ; so unlike are the words conceived in pure grace flowing from a living heart through a living mouth, to the same words written upon lifeless parch- ment, particularly in the vulgar tongue: in the latter case they become cold and weak, as a plucked rose fades and withers; for the unction which touches the human soul dies away then, and the words fall upon the stony grovnid of a hard heart. Never sounded chord so sweeties but is silenced if strung upon a dry board." The degree in which Tauler had influenced Luther is proved by the words of the latter to Spalatin (1516): "If thou takest pleasure in becoming acquainted with the true doctrine as it was received in olden times in the German tongue, buy Dr. John Tauler's sermons. I have never met, either in German or liatin, with a sounder theology, and which agreed more completely with the Gospel. Taste and see how good is the Lord ; if thou hast already tasted and seen how bitter all that is that we ourselves are." " Although," he says in another place, " unknown to the divines of the schools, I know that Tauler gives us more pure doctrine than all the books of the teachers at the univer- sities." Tauler (died 1361) knew perhaps in a yet higher degree than Suso * Der Seuss will sdussen ; a play on the word Suso, Seuss, i.e. der Sausemle, the bhister