Chapter XL: At the Grave (2)

In the third great controversy, the Adiaphoristic, Flacius Illyricus behaved with great violence, indeed his extreme Lutheran views were the cause of the quarrel which in itself well illustrates the pettiness and acrimony of those concerned in it. The question under dispute was whether certain “indifferent matters” (ἀδιάφορα) sanctioned in the Augsburg Interim of 1547 might be allowed in Protestant circles even though Luther during his lifetime had frowned on them. Under the Elector Maurice the theologians and Estates of the Saxon Electorate had answered in the affirmative. This answer embodied in the so-called “Leipzig Interim,” was firmly contradicted by Flacius. It is true that what was in question was not only ceremonies, images, hymns and such-like external things but also the rites of Confirmation and Extreme Unction, and, in a certain sense, the use of Penance, the celebration of a kind of Mass and the veneration of Saints. Flacius was supported by Nicholas Gallus, Johann Wigand, Nicholas Amsdorf, Joachim Westphal, Caspar Aquila, Johann Aurifaber, Anton Otto and Matthæus Judex. These poured forth a stream of angry tracts against the opposite party, the Wittenbergers, who, however, defended themselves with a will, viz. against Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, George Major, and Paul Eber, and their friends elsewhere, such as the Provost of Magdeburg and Meissen, Prince George of Anhalt, Bernard Ziegler and Johann Pfeffinger of Leipsig, Justus Menius of Gotha, etc. Even the use of lights on the altar and of surplices were to these zealots “Popish abominations” and a sign of the abandoning of all that Luther had won; they even complained, though untruly, that the Wittenberg theologians no longer declared the Pope to be Antichrist.[1523] Bugenhagen, Luther’s right hand man at Wittenberg, had to hear himself charged by Flacius, Amsdorf and Gallus with having denied and falsified Luther’s doctrines and with teaching something not far short of Popery. These Adiaphorists, wrote Amsdorf, “in the name and under the semblance of the Word of God, seek to persuade us to worship the Antichrist at Rome, the Whore of Babylon and the Beast on which she is seated (Apoc. xvii.).” Such dangerous men he brands as “belly servers” “who seek to make terms with the world.” He himself on the other hand was ready to meet the contempt of the world for the falling off in the number of Luther’s true followers, hence on the title-page of the new edition of Luther’s works, which he commenced when the quarrel was at its height (1555), he printed the consoling verses: “Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased the Father to give you a Kingdom” (Luke xii. 32), and “In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John xvi. 33).[1524] Towards the end of the Preface he consoles those who shared his way of looking at things, and, as Luther had done before, he alludes to the near end of the world, when everything would be righted.

At the time when the private judgment Luther had preached was thus bearing fruit we hear Melanchthon groaning: “You see how many teachers are fighting against us in our own Churches; every day new foes spring up, as it were, from the blood of the Titans; gladly would I leave these regions, nay, shake off my mortal coil, to escape the fury of such men.”[1525] Melanchthon too was accused of indirectly promoting Popery. An obstinate opponent of his was that very Johann Aurifaber who had been present at Luther’s death and who subsequently published the Table-Talk. Melanchthon included him in 1556 among the “unlearned fanatics, men filled with furious hate, lickspittles at the Court who seek to curry favour with the populace,” and with whom it was impossible to come to any understanding.[1526] Aurifaber, like many others of his party, was dismissed from his post as Court preacher at Weimar, and, subsequently, when pastor at Erfurt, was excommunicated on account of his teaching, particularly on original sin. His opponents he persisted in charging with Popery.

Against any relapse into Popery the Lutherans were well guarded since 1555, by the Religious Peace of Augsburg and its principle: “_Cuius regio, illius et religio_.” This, however, produced no inward unity, rather the opposite. The war among the theologians on account of the “adiaphora” still went on in the Protestant camp. The hopes entertained of the Protestant Convention at Coswig (1556) suffered shipwreck owing to Melanchthon’s disinclination to come to terms. Nor did the Conference at Altenburg (1568) settle things. It was not until 1577-1580 that the formulas of Concord established a “_modus vivendi_” by leaving to each individual Church the decision about the “adiaphora.” Flacius himself was compelled to leave Wittenberg early in the controversy. He went to Magdeburg, but fell into disgrace on account of his tendency to insist on the Church’s independence and had to go into exile to Ratisbon, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Strasburg, wandering about from place to place until, at last, he, Luther’s most ardent champion, died in want and poverty at Frankfurt-on-the-Main (1575).

With the Synergistic controversy the name of Flacius is likewise very closely linked.

Here, however, the question on which minds were divided was a vital one. Many refused to accept Luther’s rigid doctrine that, in Justification, the Holy Ghost worked on man as on a senseless block. Johann Pfeffinger of Leipsig agreed with Melanchthon in assuming some sort of co-operation (“_synergia_”) of the human will. In this he had the Leipsig Interim on his side; eventually Victorinus Strigel of Jena, George Major, Paul Eber, Christian Lasius and others also embraced this view. Against them stood the zealots like Flacius and Amsdorf, the latter of whom boldly attacked Pfeffinger’s “_De libertate voluntatis_” and insisted on the unfreedom of the will. Certain of the theologians of Jena also distinguished themselves by their opposition to the Synergists.

Flacius Illyricus went to great extremes in his antagonism to Synergism. He asserted that man was powerless by means of free will to effect anything in the matter of his salvation because “original sin was a ‘substance’ for otherwise holiness too would not be a ‘substance’”; the soul was by nature a mirror or image of Satan; it was itself original sin, and original sin was no mere ‘accident.’ It was impossible for Luther’s doctrine to be carried to its legitimate conclusion more ruthlessly than in this theory of Flacius. “It was utter demonism, was this doctrine of the substantial bedevilment of human nature.”[1527] At this point, however, Luther’s true friends drew back: Johann Wigand and Tilman Hesshus, professors at Jena, withstood Flacius, arguing that he was a traitor to Lutheranism and that his teaching was Manichæan. Like some others Cyriacus Spangenberg, then Dean of Mansfeld, was accused of favouring Flacius and of teaching that Satan had created man, that sin was baptised, and that pregnant women bore within them young devils. As was usual in such controversies, the people took an active share in the quarrel.

When the Elector August of Saxony assumed the government of the Duchy of Saxony, Hesshus and Wigand were deprived of their offices and driven from the land. Nine Superintendents and 102 preachers lost their posts at the same time. Hesshus had already tasted exile as pastor of Magdeburg, when in 1562 the Town Council expelled him from the town with his wife and child on account of his too emphatic enforcement of the strictest Lutheranism.

Spangenberg too had to flee when the administrator of Magdeburg called in the troops against the Flacian preachers. Cruel measures were used to force the burghers to accept the doctrine professed by the governor; the bodies of relatives of the Count of Mansfeld were even exhumed and reinterred in places untainted with “substantialist error.”

Spangenberg’s fate was that of many faithful Lutherans.

Having made his escape to Thuringia disguised as a midwife he there accepted a position as pastor, but was again driven out in 1590 owing to the rigid views on original sin he had imbibed from Luther. From that time he lived by his pen until his death at Strasburg in 1604. He declared that he was suffering on behalf of the articles on sin and righteousness, but that he was determined to remain “a staunch old disciple of Luther’s.” The behaviour of the Wittenberg theologians was a source of great grief to Spangenberg: They have not only fallen away from Luther’s doctrine in ten or twelve articles, but also speak of him in the most unseemly manner: “They call Luther a ‘philauticus,’ i.e. a man who thinks highly of no one but himself, and whom nothing pleases but what he has himself said or done; item, a ‘philonisticus’ and ‘eristicus,’ a quarrelsome fellow who always insisted he was in the right, believing no good of anyone, yielding to no one, only seeking his own honour and unable to endure that anyone else should be highly thought of.” “His books [so they say] contain things that are very Manichæan, and others that resemble the old heresies.”[1528]

Nor was Spangenberg doing an injustice to the Wittenberg professors when he charged them with having thrown Luther over.

_Cryptocalvinism_

At the time when Flacianism was being suppressed by force, a trend of opinion known as Cryptocalvinism had the upper hand in the Saxon Electorate where it was causing grave troubles. Such was the name given to the gradual leavening of the pure Lutheran doctrine with elements derived from Calvinism. In other Protestant districts on German soil Calvinism took root openly, and either supplanted Luther’s teaching, or prevented its springing up. This was the case in the Palatinate, where the Elector Frederick III exerted his influence in favour of Calvinism with the help of the Calvinistic professors of Heidelberg Caspar Olevian and Zacharias Ursinus. The Elector himself told his son-in-law Johann Frederick of Saxony, that though for more than forty years the “pure doctrine” of the Evangel and the holy Word of God had been proclaimed, “little amendment of life had followed,” and, in “excessive eating and drinking, gambling, avarice, immorality, envy and hatred we almost outdo the Papists.”[1529] He also said that it was not merely the lack of morality in Lutheranism that prejudiced him against it, but that he had decided to introduce Calvinism into his land because he had discovered in Luther’s writings many errors and contradictions which he must remove, particularly in his views on the “bodily presence of Christ” in the Sacrament of the Altar.[1530]

The spirit of criticism which Luther had let loose in the Saxon Electorate grew among some of the Cryptocalvinists into scepticism, though they boasted of being great admirers of Luther. This scepticism was first directed against the mystery of mysteries. Luther’s own uncertainty regarding the Sacrament of the Altar, his halt mid-way, and his strange theory of the ubiquity of Christ, were in themselves a challenge. Around Melanchthon there grouped themselves at Wittenberg and Leipsig men, who, by a prudent introduction of the Calvinistic view of the Supper according to which Christ is only received spiritually, sought to question at the same time two of Luther’s pet dogmas, viz. the indwelling of Christ in the Bread at the moment of reception (Impanation) and the ubiquitous albeit spiritualised bodily presence of Christ. Hardly six years had elapsed since Luther’s death when the Hamburg preacher, Joachim Westphal, strove to set up a barrier against the threatening inroad of Cryptocalvinism in his “_Farrago Opinionum de Cœna Domini_”(1552). The Elector August, who assumed the reigns of government in the Saxon Electorate (1553-1586), for quite twenty years of his reign was entirely committed to Cryptocalvinism. Among the theologians and Court officials who were responsible for his attitude were, particularly, Melanchthon’s son-in-law, Caspar Peucer, Court physician to the Elector, the Court preacher Christian Schütz, Johann Stössel, Superintendent of Pirna and Privy Councillor Georg Craco, the most influential person in the government of the Saxon Electorate. A “_Corpus doctrinæ Philippicum_” was drawn up in 1560 from Melanchthon’s writings by these so-called “Philippists.” In 1571 a Catechism appeared, which, like the “_Corpus_” had the Elector’s approval. The doctrine it contained was endorsed by an assembly of theologians at Dresden in the same year, and it was intended to enforce it as the true faith throughout the land.

As might have been expected, the opposition of the “Gnesiolutherans” against these doings in the Saxon Electorate, the original home of Lutheranism, was very strong.

Protests were registered by Martin Chemnitz, the “aristarch of Brunswick” as the opposite party called him, and by the Jena theologians, as, for instance, Wigand, Hesshus, Johann Frederick Cœlestinus and Timotheus Kirchner. At Jena the new system was branded as a “fresh incursion of devilish spirit” and, in a “Warning” against the Wittenbergers, it was stated: “They want to make an end of Luther, that is to say, of his doctrine, and at the same time to appear innocent of so doing.”[1531] Similarly in the following year, 1572, a writing entitled “Von den Fallstricken” declared: “They trample Luther’s doctrine under foot, laugh at it, ridicule it and anathematise it in the most scandalous manner,” etc.[1532] The Jena divines, so they asserted, were alone in having the true unalloyed doctrine which they were anxious to keep free from all the extravagances and errors of the Pope, the Turks, blasphemers of the Sacrament, Schwenckfeldians, Servetians, Arians, Antinomians, Interimists, Adiaphorists, Synergists, Majorites, Enthusiasts, Anabaptists, Manichæans and other sects.[1533]

The divergencies were so considerable and far-reaching, and the falling away from Luther’s doctrine so great, that Aurifaber, who boasted of having closed the eyes of his immortal master and of being soaked in his spirit, prefaced as follows the collection of the Table-Talk, which he gave to the world in 1566: “His doctrine is now so despised, and, in the German lands men have become so tired, weary and sick of it, that they no longer care to hear his name mentioned, nor do they much esteem the testimony of his books. It has come about that, if one wishes to find Dr. Martin Luther’s doctrine pure and unfalsified anywhere in the German lands, one has to put on strong spectacles and look very closely; this is a dreadful thing to learn.” Aurifaber has this sole consolation, viz. that Luther, because he had foreseen this state of things, had proved himself a “true prophet.”[1534]

Another writer speaks in the following terms of the decay of Luther’s doctrines and the utter contempt for his person: The endless benefits Luther brought to Germany—of these the author enumerates eighteen—those who now profess the Evangel treat with the “most shocking and gruesome unthank,” doing so not merely by their “evil life” but by “scorning, decrying and condemning” both his benefits and his faith. People refuse any longer to follow the great teacher in his chief doctrines “about the Law and the true knowledge of sin,” “true justice,” “the distinction between Law and Gospel,” and about the holy sacraments. “This worthy sendsman of God” meets with “shameful contempt,” nay, with something worse than contempt, seeing that, “to boot, he is abused, reviled and defamed by most people,” which “is all the more hard in that not only his person but also the wholesome doctrine and divine truth revealed to us by Luther the man of God, is too often contemptuously rejected by the greater number.” The author, in his concern, also fears that as people were also bent on introducing changes in the language “in a few years not much will be left of Luther’s pure German speech.”[1535]

At the Court at Dresden, however, the opposition to the Cryptocalvinism described above gradually gathered strength. Finally the Elector August, too, was won over, partly on political, partly on theological grounds. As early as 1573 August declared: “It would not take much to make him send all the rogues to the devil,”[1536] and, on another occasion that, “for the sake of three persons he would not expose his lands to the harm wrought by the Sacramentarians.”[1537] When at last an unmistakably Calvinistic writing by Joachim Curæus on the Supper was published by a Leipzig printer, known to be well disposed to the Wittenberger party, the fury of the Elector broke loose and he declared at a meeting at Torgau “The venomous plant must now be torn up by the roots.”[1538] In his name the so-called Articles of Torgau denoting more or less a return to Luther’s doctrines were drawn up by an ecclesiastical court. All the theologians who refused to subscribe to them were to be “arrested.” On this the Leipzig theologians all signed the Articles, that they agreed in their hearts to all the things contained in Luther’s writings including his controversial writings against the Heavenly Prophets and his “Kurtz Bekentnis” on the Supper.[1539] Among the many Cryptocalvinists who submitted without any protest was Nicholas Selnecker, the editor of Luther’s Table-Talk. In matters of faith he followed the bidding of the secular authorities, and on one occasion, wrote to the Elector that “he would gladly crawl on hands and knees to Dresden only to escape the suspicion which had been cast on him.”[1540]

Among the Wittenbergers, on the other hand, four theologians refused their assent: “Luther’s books,” they said, “were not positive; sometimes he wrote one way, sometimes another; besides which there were dirty spots and objectionable things in his controversial writings.”[1541] Such was the opinion of Widebram, Pezel, Moller and, particularly, Caspar Cruciger. The latter, a personal friend of Luther’s, called the Articles of Torgau “a medley of all sorts of things which Luther himself, had he been alive, would not have signed.” His fate like that of the three others was removal from his office and banishment from the country.

Of the four former favourites at Court Stössel the Superintendent though he craved pardon was kept a prisoner until his death; the Court-preacher Schütz, in spite of his promise to hold his tongue, was shut up in prison for twelve years; the Privy Councillor Craco was flung into the filthiest dungeon of the Pleissenburg at Leipzig, tortured on the rack for four hours and died with mangled limbs on a miserable layer of straw (March 16, 1575).[1542] Finally Peucer, professor of medicine and history, who, owing to his influence, had once controlled the University, because he declared he would not “abjure the doctrine of the Sacrament that had been rooted in his heart for thirty-three years and adopt Luther’s instead,” was left pining in a damp, dirty dungeon in the Pleissenburg and was constantly harried with injunctions “to desist from his devilish errors” and “not to fancy himself wiser and more learned than His Highness the Elector and his distinguished theologians, who had also searched into and pondered over this Article [of the Sacrament].”[1543] He continued to languish in prison, after the death of his wife, Magdalene, Melanchthon’s daughter, sorrowing over his motherless children, until after wellnigh twelve years of captivity he was released at the instance of a prince. “The behaviour of the Elector and Electress and their advisers towards him gives us a glimpse into an abyss of injustice, brutality and malice made all the more revolting by the hypocritical religious cant and pretended zeal for the Church under which they were disguised. In spite of all the attempts made of old as well as later to excuse the course of the so-called cryptocalvinistic controversies, it remains—especially the case of Peucer—one of the darkest pages in the annals of the Lutheran Church and of civilisation in the 16th Century.”[1544]

But the intolerance displayed by orthodoxy in that struggle had been taught it by Luther. As has been shown already, he had urged that, whoever advocated blasphemous articles, even if not guilty of sedition, should be put to death by the authorities; the sovereign must take care that “there is but one religion in each place”; above all, such was the opinion of his friends,—the sovereign should “put a Christian bit in the mouth of all the clergy.”[1545]

_The so-called formula of concord (1580)_

Owing partly to the wish of the secular authorities for some clearer rule, partly to the sight of the confusion in doctrine and the bad effects of the quarrels on faith, there arose a widespread desire for greater unity based on some new and thoroughly Lutheran formulary.

The Confession of Augsburg and the Apologia were found insufficient; they contained no decisions on the countless controversies which had since sprung up. Thus it came about that “one German province and town after another attempted to satisfy its desire for unity of doctrine by means of a confession of faith of its own.… This in itself, in view of the dismemberment of Germany and the attitude of the Emperor towards the reformation, would necessarily have resulted in a splitting up of the Lutheran Church into countless sects unless some means was found of counteracting individualism and of uniting the Lutherans in one body.”[1546]

It was, however, the politicians, who, in their own interests, were the chief promoters of union.

Elector August of Saxony wishful of achieving the desired end “by means of a princely dictum” led the way in 1576 with the so-called Book of Torgau.

This work was drawn up by the theologians Jakob Andreæ, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytræus, Andreas Musculus and Wolfgang Körner. The Book of Torgau was subsequently revised by Caspar Selnecker and reissued under the title of the Book of Bergen (1577). It was hoped that it would become the theological statute-book for all the Protestant Churches; the Protestant Estates of the Empire were to accept it and it was proposed by the theologians that all the Lutheran preachers and school-teachers should be required to give their assent to it.[1547]

Selnecker supported this attempt by referring to the Council of Trent which had been successfully concluded in 1563. They ought, so he said, at last to draw up a “common body of doctrine” as an “evangelical counterblast to the damnable conciliabulum of Trent”; he adds frankly that this was essential, “in order to check the corruption of morals amongst the Evangelical people which was growing worse and worse”; at the same time he wished to see “a united front against the idolatrous Popedom and its devilish satellites the Jesuits, with all their verminous following.”[1548]

Hopes of preserving Luther’s work by means of the new Formula had risen high since Frederick, the zealous Calvinistic Elector of the Palatinate, had been called away by death in Oct., 1576; his successor, the Elector Louis held Lutheran views and was determined to make a stand for Lutheranism.

In spite, however, of the latter’s patronage, and notwithstanding the efforts of the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Formula, as Louis of the Palatinate sorrowfully admitted, was not approved by even one-half of the Protestant Princes and townships. One of the strongest objectors was Landgrave William of Hesse. He did not hesitate to abuse Luther’s memory in the rudest language, and asserted that the latter had written “contradictory things.”[1549]

The Unionists, not satisfied with their partial success, published on June 25, 1580, the “_Formula Concordiæ_,” consisting of an “_Epitome_” and a “_Solida declaratio_.” This document occupies an important place in the history of Lutheranism.

The doctrines of original sin, unfreedom, justification, the Supper, the ubiquity of Christ and of the “_communicatio idiomatum_” were taken as they had been by Luther, though they are often stated with deliberate ambiguity. Thrusts at Melanchthon, not to speak of Calvin, are found more particularly in the “_Declaratio_.”

The permanent rift with Calvinism was as strongly emphasised, as that with the Papacy. One of the propositions taken from the Articles of Schmalkalden ran: “All Christians ought to shun the Pope and his members and followers as the kingdom of Antichrist, and execrate it as Christ has commanded.”[1550]

The cement, however, which was to bind together the antagonistic Lutheran views and schools was not very durable. The fact that “Melanchthon’s memory had been completely blotted out,”[1551] or that the Pope had been condemned afresh, did not suffice to bring people together, nor did much good come of the smoothing over, toning down and evasions to which it had been necessary to have recourse in the work in order to arrive at a written basis of outward unity. Over and above all this it became known that the Protestant Estates were at liberty to add printed prefaces of their own to the Concord, in which they might, if they chose, set forth their own theological position, and thus interpret as they liked the text of the Concord, so long as they did not interfere with the text itself.[1552] It was also known that the father of the whole scheme, Jakob Andreæ, Inspector General of the churches of Saxony, had quite openly made of the acceptance of the Formula a pure formality and had told the Nurembergers who showed signs of antipathy that all that was required was their signature, and that this would not prevent their being and remaining of the same opinion as before.[1553]

The authors of the Concord, however, displayed such mutual distrust, nay hatred of each other, as greatly to obscure even the origin of the Concord and to raise but scant hopes of its future success. Andreæ bewailed Selnecker’s “diabolical tricks”; he was very well aware that the latter would be delighted were he (Andreæ) strung up on the gallows. Selnecker, on the other hand, complained loudly of Andreæ as a dishonest, egotistical man; he accused Andreæ of calling him: “a damned rascal, a good-for-nothing scoundrel, an arch-villain and a hellish thief.”[1554] Andreæ was equally severe in his censure of the church-councillors and theologians for the part they took in the matrimonial questions: “After a theologian had dealt with marriage cases two years in the Consistory,” he said, “he would by that time be well fitted to be appointed keeper of a brothel.”[1555] We hear an echo of Luther in the coarse language his followers were in the habit of using against each other.

In spite of all this the Concord constitutes the greatest and most important step ever taken by Lutheranism to define its position. The year 1580 gave to the Lutheran Churches a certain definite status, though, among the theologians, the controversies continued to rage as before.

The Concord itself, the supposed new palladium, became a theological bone of contention. The following years were taken up with wild quarrels about the Formula of Concord. At Strasburg alone in three years the different parties hurled against each other approximately forty screeds, full of vulgar abuse, and the literary feuds had their aftermath in the streets in the shape of hand-to-hand scuffles between the students and the burghers. Even at Wittenberg the quarrels went on.

The Calvinistic Count Palatine, Johann Casimir, notorious for his bloody deeds on behalf of the French Huguenots, instructed one of his theologians, Zacharias Ursinus, to draw up the so-called “Neustadt Admonition” in which the adherents of the Concord were accused of “making an idol of Luther”; it was a mere farce when the Concord professed to subordinate his books to Holy Scripture, because in reality they were exalted into a rule of faith and treated as the standard of doctrine; all subscribers to the Augsburg Confession were wont without exception to appeal to these writings whatever their opinions were; as a matter of fact, owing to the errors, exaggerations and contradictions they contained it was possible to quote passages from Luther’s writings in support of almost anything. His controversial works, above all, had no claim to any authority, though it was to these that the followers of the Concord preferred to appeal. “Here, as his own followers must admit,” so the “Admonition” declares, “he had been carried away into excitement and passion which exceeded all bounds and had been guilty of assertions which contradicted his own earlier declarations, and which he himself had often been under pressure obliged to withdraw or modify.”[1556]

There was, however, a large party which did not make an “idol” of Luther, but openly rejected his teaching. It was in this that Aurifaber saw a fulfilment of Luther’s prophecy of the coming extinction of his doctrine among his followers. As early as 1566 he said that the master had not been wrong in his idea, that “the Word of God had seldom persisted for more than forty years in one place.” “The holy man,” he goes on, “had frequently told the theologians and his table companions that, though his teaching had thus far grown and thriven, yet it would begin to dwindle and collapse when its course was finished. And he had declared that his doctrine had stood highest and been at its best at the Diet of Augsburg, anno 1530. But that now it would go downhill.” That, as stated above, the Word of God seldom persisted in one place for more than forty years he had proved “by many examples” taken from the times of the Judges, Kings and Prophets; even the teaching of Christ had not remained pure and free from error for longer “in the land of the Jews, in Greece, Asia and elsewhere.”[1557]

4. Mutual Influence of the Two Camps. Growing Strength of the Catholic Church

One cannot but recognise in the history of the 16th century the religious influence indirectly exerted on one another by Lutheranism and Catholicism, an influence which indeed proved advantageous to both.

_Luther’s Churches_

To begin with the phenomena grouped around the Formula of Concord we may say, that the movement towards greater religious unity, among the Lutherans was largely stimulated by the brilliant and to Luther’s adherents quite unexpected example of Catholic unity resulting from the religious struggle and particularly from the Council of Trent. Selnecker had insisted that Protestants must endeavour to produce an “evangelical counterblast” to Catholic theology and the Council.[1558] In the case of many others too, it was the harmony and united front of the Catholics at the Council of Trent that served as an incentive to create a similar positive bond between their own Churches. Many once more mooted the question of a Protestant General Council, but others, as for instance Andreæ, pointed out how impossible this would be and what a danger it would involve of even greater dissensions. It was also of advantage to the Protestant writers on theology to have a clearly formulated statement of the Catholic doctrine set before them in the definitions of a General Council and explained in the “Roman Catechism.” Though Luther had distorted beyond recognition the Catholic doctrines he attacked, it was less possible than formerly to doubt—after so solemn a declaration—what the teaching of the despised Church was, or, with a good conscience, to deny how alien to her was the anti-Christian doctrine of which she had been accused. Catholic polemics, too, who were growing both in numbers and in strength, must necessarily have opened the eyes of many to the interior continuity, the firm foundation and the logical sequence of the Catholic propositions and, at least in the case of the learned and unprejudiced, led them to regret keenly the absence of clearness and logic on their own side. The latter holds good in particular of the untenability of the conciliatory Lutheran theology which sought to gloss over all the contradictions and which had given rise to the phantom of the Concordia.

“In the work of unifying Protestant theology,” Janssen justly writes, “no slight service was rendered by the Catholic controversialists and apologists and also and especially by the Tridentine Council and the Roman Catechism. Those who opposed to the hurly-burly and confusion of the new teaching the settled, uniform system of a theology, harmonious and consistent in all its parts, thereby made manifest to the dissentient theologians the defects and the glaring discords which Protestantism presented both in its formal and material principles. The sharply defined terminology and the wealth of speculative matter which they offered stood here also in very good stead.”[1559]

This thought also reminds us of the great store of spiritual treasure that Luther’s Churches carried away with them when they severed their connection with Mother Church. Who can question that Luther bequeathed to his Churches much of the heritage of mysteries which Christianity brought to mankind? Faith in the Holy Trinity; in the Father as Source of all being; in the Eternal Son as the Redeemer and Mediator; in the Holy Spirit as the organ of sanctity; again, in the Incarnation, in Christ and His works, miracles and Resurrection; finally a firm belief in an eternal reward, in the again-rising of every man and the everlasting life of the just; in short all the consoling articles of the Apostles’ Creed must be included amongst the treasures which Luther not only took over from the olden Church but, in his own fashion, even defended with warmth and energy against those who differed from him.[1560]

On Catholic principles we may broadmindedly admit that countless well-meaning men since Luther’s day have found in the doctrine he preached the satisfaction of their religious cravings. Very many erred and still err “in good faith” and “with no stubbornness.”[1561] But wherever there is good faith and an honest conviction of having the best, there a religious life is possible. “This the Catholic Church does not deny when she claims to be the one ark of salvation. One would think that this had been repeated often enough to make any misapprehension impossible on the part of Protestants. As to how far this result is due to the Protestant Churches and how far to the Grace of God which instils into every willing heart peace and blessing, is no open question seeing that the Grace of God alone is the foundation of a truly religious life.”[1562]

But if, on the one hand, Lutheranism owes much to the ancient Church, on the other, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the revival in the Catholic Church during the 16th century was indirectly furthered by Luther and his work.

_Progress and Gains of Catholicism_

There were Catholic contemporaries who pointed out that the going over to Luther of many who were members of the Church merely in name, and whose lives did not correspond with her demands, had a wholesome effect on the Church’s body. This held good of the monasteries in particular. In many places relief was felt and a revival of discipline became possible when those, who had entered the religious life from worldly motives, took their departure in order, as Luther himself lamented, to seek greater comfort in the bosom of the new Church. “God has purged His floor and separated the chaff from the wheat,” wrote the Cistercian Abbot, Wolfgang Mayer.[1563] Augustine Alveld, the Franciscan, portrayed with indignant words the evil lives of many apostate monks and declared with relief that: “Those who were of the same pack and lived among us have now, thanks be to God, all of them run away from their convents and institutions.”[1564] In lesser degree the same was true of the laity.

“Indirectly, though very much against his will, Luther helped to promote the regeneration of the Catholic Church by means of the Council of Trent.”[1565] It was his apostasy which made possible that gathering of the Bishops which hitherto external obstacles, shortsightedness, indolence and worldly aims had prevented.

Theological studies profited by the struggle with Protestantism. More attention was bestowed on the question of man’s natural and supernatural equipment; the dangers with which the excessive spread of Nominalism had threatened the doctrine of Grace were effectually circumvented, and the indispensable need of Grace for any work meritorious for heaven was more strongly emphasised. Thus, on the whole, there was a gain which we must not underrate, a new development of theological lore and a clearer formulation of dogma on threatened points similar to that which had resulted from the great controversies in Patristic times.

Under the Divine guidance the Church also more than made up for the numbers torn from her, by the rapid growth of her missions in distant parts of the world, where the voyages of discovery and the conquest of the Western Continent at the dawn of the new century gave rise to unlooked-for new opportunities; this, too, at a time when Lutheranism and the other Protestant sects were still inclined to discountenance any universality and preferred to remain strictly local and national.

Above all it is indisputable that the Catholic Church, in order to emphasise her opposition to the so-called Evangelical freedom, devoted herself ever more assiduously to promoting a true inward life of religion among the people, the lower clergy and the bishops.

Whereas—at the close of the Middle Ages and dawn of the new era—the Papacy had been too eager in the pursuit of humanistic aims, had cultivated too exclusively merely human ideals of art and learning, and at the same time had become entangled in secular business and politics and was altogether too worldly, after Luther’s terrible attack on the formalism of the Church the Popes devoted themselves more and more to the real problems of the Kingdom of God, summoned to their side better advisers in the shape of Cardinals of strict morals, and introduced disciplinary new regulations in the spirit of a St. Charles Borromeo. The charge of shallowness brought against Catholic life was not—so far as it was justified—made in vain. From the new seminaries, from the sublime and saintly figures, who, in greater numbers than ever before, set an example of heroic virtue, and from the newly founded religious Orders such as the Theatines (1524), Capuchins (1528), Somaschans (1528), Barnabites (1530) and last but not least the Jesuits (1534), a new spirit breathed through the Church’s life and revived once more the practice of prayer, self-denial and neighbourly charity.

In this connection we need have no scruple in characterising the “Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius Loyola as a phenomenon typical of the increasing religiousness of the age. Many, particularly amongst the influential representatives of the Church in Germany, under the guidance of such men as Pierre Favre, Peter Canisius and Claude Jaius, found in them a new wellspring of love for the Church and her aims.[1566]

“To the Exercises, through which many of the great German nobles went,” so Pierre Favre wrote from Ratisbon, “almost all the good was due that was afterwards done in Germany.”[1567]

The struggle with the apostasy called forth everywhere an increase of intellectual activity on the part of the threatened Church. Not only was theology deepened, but all the cognate branches of learning were more sedulously cultivated. “I scarcely think,” wrote the Jesuit, Peter Canisius, to the General of his Order, speaking of religious writings, that “Our Order could undertake or carry out any work that would be more useful and more conducive to the general welfare of the Church. Fresh writings on religious questions make a great impression and are a source of immeasurable comfort to the hard-pressed Catholics at a time when the writings of the false teachers are disseminated far and wide and cannot be exterminated.”[1568] Canisius was, however, of opinion that a simple exposition of the Catholic faith was more in place than polemics; he did not wish to see too much heat and human passion in the writings: “We do not heal the sick by such medicine but only make their case worse”;[1569] as he says in a memorandum: “In Germany there are countless numbers who err in religion, but they do not err from stubbornness or bitterness; they err after the manner of Germans who by nature are generally honest, very ready to accept everything that they, born and bred in the Lutheran heresies, have learnt, partly in schools, partly in churches, partly by the writings of false teachers.”[1570]

There is a true saying of Erasmus’s often quoted by Catholics: “Just as it would be wrong to approve all that Luther writes, so, too, it would be unjust, if, out of hatred for his person, we condemned what is true or distorted what is right.”[1571] “What writer is so bad,” he asks elsewhere, “that we do not find some good in his writings?”[1572]—What there was of good in his own and Luther’s writings was not without its effect on Catholicism. Some of their censures of things Catholic were seen to be deserved, and, in the course of time, were acted upon, at least in order to give opponents less cause for fault-finding.

The following remarks of Erasmus also found an echo amongst Catholic contemporaries and bear witness to the good which came of the sad religious struggles: “Often have I pondered in my own mind, whether, perchance, it had not pleased God to send a strong physician to deal with the profound corruption of morals in our day, who should heal by cutting and searing what was incapable of remedy by means of medicines and bandages.”[1573]—“May God, Who is wont to turn evil to good, so dispose matters, that, from this strong and bitter medicine (‘_ex hoc violento amaroque pharmaco_’) with which Luther has purged the world, as a body sick unto death, there may come some good for the morals of Christians.”[1574]—In 1524 he even went so far as to term Luther a “necessary evil” which they must not even desire to see removed.[1575] Yet Erasmus writes severely of him and ranks him with the greatest foes of the people of God: God had chosen to use Luther as a tool just as He had used the Pharaohs, the Philistines, Nabuchodonosor and the Romans.[1576]

That Luther wielded a wholesome rod was admitted even by the Papal Legate Zacharias Ferreri in an admonition he addressed to him in 1520; with such a scourge as this God from time to time tried Christians in order to bring them to repentance. “If you are a scourge, praised be the name of the Lord, if by this wicked instrument He is leading us to a better mind, purifying and purging us!… Is it astonishing if, even through you, we are purified and cleansed? Oh, that the Almighty would pour on us ‘clean water,’ ‘sprinkle us with hyssop’ and wash us!”[1577]

Thomas Murner, the Strasburg Franciscan, a man who was wont to scourge the failings and abuses in the Church of his day in very outspoken language, frankly admitted in a reply to Luther’s book “An den Adel” that much of the Wittenberg monk’s censure might be useful to those who wanted to put a stop to immorality, and to abuses and obsolete ecclesiastical customs and statutes. He even goes so far as to say to Luther: “Where you speak the truth, there undoubtedly the Holy Spirit speaks through you, for all truth is of God.” He adds, however, “Where you do not speak the truth, there assuredly the devil speaks through you, he who is the father of lies.” Speaking of the pictures of Luther with the symbol of the dove, which even then were common, in his satirical fashion, he suggests an improvement: “They paint the Holy Spirit over your head as though He were speaking through you. Now I learn for the first time that the Holy Spirit can say silly things.… I should suggest that they paint over your head, the Holy Ghost on one side and the devil on the other, and, in the middle, the city of Prague,” (to symbolise the heresy of Hus of which he accused Luther).[1578] Anxious as Murner was to see an end of the real abuses which Luther censured, yet, in the true Catholic spirit, he left to the ecclesiastical authorities the right and duty of taking the initiative, and it was to them that he addressed his urgent exhortations.

Cochlæus is likewise unable to refrain from remarking that, in Luther’s writings, side by side with what is worthless there is much that is good, in his exposition of Holy Scripture, in his exhortations and also in his censures. For many men, and among them some of high standing, believed [at first] that he was guided by the Spirit of God and by zeal for virtue to remove the abuses of the hypocrites, to amend morals to improve the education of the clergy, and to promote in people’s hearts the love and worship of God.“[1579] Cochlæus points out how Luther had taught his followers to steep themselves in the Bible, so that they gained “so much skill and experience” that they had “no scruples in disputing about the faith and the Gospel even with magisters and doctors of Holy Scripture”; they had been much more diligent than the Catholics in learning by heart the Bible in its German dress; they were in the habit “of quoting Scripture more than the priests and monks did, for which reason they accused Catholics of being ignorant of it or not understanding it however learned they might be as theologians”; their teachers “quoted the Greek and Hebrew texts, and the variant readings, scoffed at our theologians when they were ignorant of these things and all agreed in representing Luther as the best theologian in the world.” Cochlæus also admits, that, in the field of historical criticism Luther and his party were ahead of many Catholic preachers, who, albeit in good faith, were fond of adducing “fables and tales invented by men.” He describes the zeal of the Protestant printers, which far exceeded that of the Catholics, the “diligence, care and money” lavished on the writings of their party, and “how carefully and accurately they printed their books”; apostates and escaped monks travelled far and wide through Germany, peddling Lutheran writings “like booksellers.”[1580]—It is notorious, on the other hand, that the Catholic writers were hardly able to find publishers. At Ingolstadt Cochlæus managed to preserve a Catholic printing press, which was in danger of being shut down, and established a second at Mayence whence a large number of good works issued. “Stress must be laid on the self-sacrifice with which Cochlæus, after having by dint of many privations amassed a sum of money for the publication of his own writings, devoted it to the printing of the works of one of his colleagues, being convinced that they would prove of greater benefit to the common cause than his own productions.”[1581]

In all these particulars, in the study of Holy Scripture, in the cultivation of historical and critical research among the clergy, in the use of the vernacular and of the art of printing for the instruction of the faithful, a real, though rather slow, change for the better took place. Had it not been for the misgivings felt even in the highest circles, and for a certain amount of prejudice against anything new, due to the fear of heresy, the gains doubtless would have been even greater and more quickly secured. In all this the Church owed much to Protestant example, for it was the innovators who involuntarily pointed out better methods of satisfying the spiritual needs of the new age, and a more effectual way of exerting a religious influence over the people.

Further examples of this are to be found in the sermons and in the catechism.

Clear-sighted Catholic contemporaries, like the worthy Dominican preacher and writer Johann Mensing, comparing the Bible preaching used and advocated by Luther with the empty, vapid sermons in vogue among many of the Catholic preachers were keenly conscious of what was lacking. At the close of a book written in 1532 Mensing exhorts the Catholic clergy to study Holy Writ and to make more use of it in the pulpit: “There are some now who say that Luther has driven the learned to Scripture. Would to God it were true that our well-beloved masters and brothers, the theologians, would turn their hearts wholly to Holy Scripture and leave out those other questions which serve no useful purpose. Some of them preach the laws and canons of heathen doctors and poets which are of small help to salvation, or they air their own opinions, and, where Scripture and Holy Church or the witness of the olden Doctors is not enough, reinforce them by incredible miracles, whereas, with the aid of Holy Scripture, they ought to endeavour to establish in men’s hearts the fear of God, faith, hope and charity, mildness and pity and such like.” If they learn something from the Lutherans in this then “we may hope that God has permitted Luther’s heresy for our good, it being to our profit that such heresy has arisen, and, as some declare, driven us to the Scriptures.” Mensing wonders, however, whether the dispersal of the monks, the plundering of the convents and lack of stipends for learned theologians and preachers will not make study of any kind a difficult matter for a long while to come.[1582]

In the field of catechetical instruction it was clear that Luther and his followers had given their attention very skilfully to the young, the better to imbue the rising generation with their doctrines. At the time of Luther’s first appearance, as recent research has established, in many parts of Germany there was no regular, systematic religious instruction of the young by the clergy or in the schools, but the children were left to pick up what they could in the home or from the public sermons.[1583] There were indeed regulations in force for the priests and the schools, but they were not acted upon. About the very elementary home instruction, Cochlæus had words of commendation in 1533. As they were taken to the services and the sermons, the children had, he says, “sucked in” their religion “as it were with their mothers’ milk, and this is still the case to-day amongst Catholics.”[1584] In his sermons published in 1510 Gabriel Biel asks for no more than that the parents should impart to their children a knowledge of the things essential and prepare them for their first communion.[1585]

Luther, however, as our readers know, insisted that his preachers must concern themselves directly with the children.

He enjoined on them to preach from the pulpit at set times, even daily if necessary, on the most elementary points of doctrine, and again at home in the house to the children and servants in the mornings and evenings; if they wished to make Christians of them these points would have to be recited or read to them, “and this, not merely in such a way that they learn to say the words by heart, but that they be questioned on them one by one and made to say what each means and how they understand it.”[1586] “Let no one think himself above giving such instruction to the children or look down upon it,” he wrote; “Christ, when He wished to train up men, had to become a man, hence, if we are to train up children, we must become children with them.” At Wittenberg and elsewhere from 1528 onwards four sermons a week for two weeks on end were preached on the Catechism four times a year. When, seeing the importance of the matter, Luther himself took the Catechism in hand he was so anxious to make it popular and practical, that he first published his “Smaller Catechism” (1529) in the form of sheets to hang upon the wall (this method had been used even before his day), and thus to act on the memory through the eye.

It would, however, be historically incorrect to describe Luther as the originator of the Catechism. Catholic Catechisms, even illustrated ones, had existed before Luther’s time, having been printed not only in Germany but also elsewhere. But, after the success attained by Luther’s Catechism, writers of Catholic Catechisms tried to profit by his example. The best of these Catholic works was the famous Catechism of Peter Canisius. It was first printed in Vienna in 1555 under the title “_Summa doctrinæ christianæ_”; eighteen years later it had already been translated into twelve different tongues.[1587] It is a work rich in thought and positive matter where almost every word is based on Holy Scripture or some utterance of the Fathers and other ecclesiastical authority. Abbreviated editions, the “_Parvus Catechismus_” (Viennæ, 1559), the “_Institutiones_” (1561), and particularly the short German one: “The Catechism or Sum of Christian Doctrine arranged in question and answer for the simple,” rendered it of greater use for the common people.[1588] “Canisius’s book,” writes a Protestant expert in pedagogics, “is a masterpiece of brevity, precision and erudition; in it one sees from beginning to end an endeavour to excel in style even the great Protestant prototype” (viz. Luther’s Catechism).[1589]

Among the secular no less than among the regular clergy work for the souls of the children continued to win new friends. St. Ignatius of Loyola esteemed the teaching of the Catechism so highly that he expressly made it a duty incumbent on all members of his Order previous to their making their profession. Lainez, his companion and successor, when staying at Trent during the Council, instructed the people and the small folk in the Catechism. The Council itself impressed on the bishops in 1563 the duty of seeing that the children in each parish received religious instruction from the priest on Sundays and holidays.[1590]