History of the Catholic Church, vol 1 - J. MacCaffrey (epub ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Many hoped that the decree might put an end to the confusion, but in reality Charles V. was powerless to enforce it, especially as the majority of the princes were unwilling to carry out its terms in their territories. Hence, outside the hereditary dominions of the House of Habsburg, the lands of Joachim I. of Brandenburg and of Duke George of Saxony, and in Bavaria, it remained a dead letter.

On the route from Worms Luther was taken prisoner by soldiers of the Elector, Frederick of Saxony, according to arrangements that had been made for his protection, and was brought to the castle at Wartburg where he remained for close on a year (May 1521-March 1522) under the assumed name of Yonker George, safe in spite of the imperial decrees.

In the silence of his retreat at Wartburg Luther had an opportunity for reflection on the gravity of the situation that he had created. At times he trembled, as he thought of separating himself definitely from the great worldwide organisation which recognised the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, and of setting up his own judgment against the faith that had been handed down for centuries, and that was supported by the ablest scholars from the days of Clement of Rome to those of St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.

In his anxiety of mind he was the victim of hallucinations, believing that the spirit of evil appeared to him in visible form, and held commune with him in human speech. He was assailed, too, with violent temptations of the flesh, which reduced him to a state bordering on despair. But these moments of depression passed away, to be succeeded by fits of wild exultation in which he rejoiced at the storm that he had created already, and at the still greater storm he was soon to create. He set to work with tireless energy, believing himself to be inspired from on high as was the apostle, St. John, during his stay in the island of Patmos. At the instigation of his friends, who urged him to attack the celibacy of the monks and nuns, he turned his attention to this question, and issued a work On Monastic Vows, in which he declared that such vows of chastity, being opposed to the freedom of the Gospel, were sinful and should be neglected. In his book On the Mass he assailed the Mass and the whole theory of the Christian priesthood, declaring that every believer was in a true sense a priest. He poured out a most violent torrent of abuse against Henry VIII. of England, who, in his Defence of the Seven Sacraments, had ventured to join issue with the German reformer. At the same time he undertook to prepare a translation of the New Testament as a means of advancing his propaganda. By aid of mis-translations and marginal notes he sought to popularise his views on Faith and Justification, and to win favour with the people by opening to them the word of God, which he asserted falsely had been closed against them for centuries.

All his pamphlets were couched in popular language and were exactly the kind of works likely to appeal to the masses of the people, as well as to the debased instincts of those who had entered into the religious state in response to the wishes of their parents or guardians rather than in obedience to the call of God. But while Luther thus catered for the multitude, Melanchthon sought to gain the support of the more educated classes by throwing Luther’s teaching into scientific and systematic form in his work, Loci Communes

(1521), a book that remained for centuries the standard authority on Lutheran teaching.

It would be wrong to assume that Luther developed his theological system in its entirety before his separation from the Church. On the question of Justification and Free-will he had arrived at views distinctly opposed to Catholic doctrine, but his system as such took shape only gradually in response to the attacks of his opponents or the demands of his friends. On the one hand, imbued with the ideas of German Pantheistic mysticism, Luther started with the fixed principle that man’s action is controlled by necessary laws, and that even after justification man is completely devoid of free will at least in religious matters. According to him, human nature became so essentially maimed and corrupted by the sin of Adam that every work which man can do is and must be sinful, because it proceeds in some way from concupiscence. Hence it is, he asserted, that good works are useless in acquiring justification, which can be obtained only by faith; and by faith he understood not the mere intellectual assent to revealed doctrines, but a practical confidence, resulting, no doubt, from this assent, that the merits of Christ will be applied to the soul. Through this faith the sinner seizes upon the righteousness of Christ, and by applying to himself the justice of his Saviour his sins are covered up. For this reason Luther explained that justification did not mean the actual forgiveness of sin by the infusion of some internal habit called sanctifying grace, but only the non-imputation of the guilt on account of the merits of Christ.

Since faith alone is necessary for justification it followed as a logical consequence that there was no place in Luther’s system for the Sacraments, though in deference to old traditions he retained three Sacraments, Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist. These, however, as he took care to explain, do not produce grace in the soul. They are mere outward pledges that the receiver has the faith without which he cannot be justified. Having in this way rejected the sacramental system and the sacrificial character of the Mass, it was only natural that he should disregard the priesthood, and proclaim that all believers were priests. In harmony with his theory on justification, and its dependence on faith, he denounced Purgatory, Prayers for the Dead, Indulgences, and Invocation of the Saints as being in themselves derogatory to the merits of Christ.

On the other hand, he laid it down as the leading principle that the Bible was the sole rule of faith, and that individual judgment was its only interpreter. Consequently he rejected the idea of a visible authority set up by Christ as an infallible guide in religious affairs. In this way he sought to undermine the authority of the Church, to depreciate the value of the decrees of the Popes and General Councils, and to re-assure his less daring followers by stripping ecclesiastical censures of more than half their terrors.[22]

The results of Luther’s literary activity were soon apparent at Wittenberg and other centres in Germany. The Augustinians in Luther’s own convent set aside their vows as worthless, and rejected the Mass.

Carlstadt made common cause with the most radical element in the city, celebrated Mass on Christmas morning in the German language (1521), and administered Holy Communion to every one who came forward to receive, without any inquiry about their spiritual condition. Putting himself at the head of a body of students and roughs he went round the churches destroying the pictures, statues, confessionals, and altars.

To increase the confusion a party of men at Zwickau led by a shoemaker, Nicholas Storch, and a preacher, Thomas Munzer, following the principle of private judgment advocated by Luther, insisted on faith as a condition for baptism and rejected infant baptism as worthless. They were called Anabaptists. They claimed to be special messengers from God, gifted with the power of working miracles, and favoured with visions from on high. In vain did Luther attack them as heretics, and exhort his lieutenants to suppress them as being more dangerous than the Papists. Carlstadt, unable to answer their arguments from Scripture, went over to their side, and even Melanchthon felt so shaken in his opposition that he appealed to Wartburg for guidance. The students at the university became so restless and turbulent that Duke George of Saxony began to take the prompt and decisive action necessary for dealing with such a dangerous situation. Luther, alarmed for the future of his work, abandoned his retreat at Wartburg (March 1522) and returned to Wittenberg, where he had recourse to stern measures to put an end to the confusion. He drove Carlstadt from the city, and even followed him to other places where he tried to find refuge, till at last, after a very disedifying scene between them in a public tavern, he forced him to flee from Saxony. Carlstadt’s greatest offence in the eyes of his master was his preaching against the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though Luther himself admitted that he should have liked to deny the Real Presence if only to annoy the Pope, were it not that the words of Scripture proved too strong. Carlstadt adopted a different interpretation, but Luther was not the man to tolerate individual judgment in the case of one of his own lieutenants. Carlstadt was denounced as a heretic and a blasphemer, for whom no punishment could be sufficiently severe. Munzer, too, was banished, and with the assistance of the Elector, Luther was enabled to overcome all his opponents.

Luther owed his success in the opening years of his campaign mainly to his ability in gauging the feelings of the different classes whose support he wished to obtain, as well as to his complete mastery of the German language. In appealing to the monks and nuns, who were longing to escape from the obligations they had contracted, he offered them complete liberty by denouncing their vows as opposed to the freedom of the Gospel and consequently sinful. Many of the monks and nuns abandoned their cloisters and fled to Wittenberg to seek the pleasures denied them hitherto, and to put in practice Luther’s teaching on the necessity of marriage. Though he encouraged bishops and priests to marry, and though he forwarded his warmest congratulations to Carlstadt on his betrothal to a fifteen year old maiden (1522), Luther himself hesitated long before taking his final plunge; but at last, against the advice of his best friends, he took as his wife Catherine Bora, one of the escaped nuns who had sought refuge in Wittenberg. His marriage (1525) was a source of amusement to his opponents as it was of dismay to his supporters. Melanchthon complained bitterly of the step his master had taken, but he consoled himself with the thought that the marriage might out an end to his former frivolity, and might allay the suspicions that his conduct had aroused.[23] To the princes, the free cities, and the landless knights he appealed by holding out hopes that they might be enriched by a division of the ecclesiastical estates and of the goods of the monasteries and churches. With the overthrow of the Pope and of the bishops the princes were led to expect that they might themselves become spiritual dictators in their own dominions. To the friends of the Humanist movement and the great body of the professors and students he represented himself as the champion of learning and intellectual freedom, anxious to defend them against the obscurantism of the Scholastics and the interference of the Roman congregations.

A large number of the leading Humanists, believing that Luther had undertaken only a campaign against universally recognised abuses, were inclined at first to sympathise with his movement. The friendly attitude they adopted, and the influence employed by Erasmus and others on his behalf during the early years of his revolt contributed not a little to his final success. But as it became evident that his object was the overthrow of the Church and of doctrines accepted as dogmas of faith by the whole Christian world, his former allies fell away