The visitations were over when the two Catechisms appeared, although they had not yet been held in all the parishes. Events of another kind and dangers threatening elsewhere now demanded the first attention of the Elector and the Reformers.
CHAPTER III.
ERASMUS AND HENRY VIII.--CONTROVERSY WITH ZWINGLI AND HIS FOLLOWERS, UP TO 1528.
Luther"s controversy with Erasmus, the most important of the champions of Catholic Churchdom, had terminated, it will be remembered, so far as Luther was concerned, with his treatise "On the Bondage of the Will." To the new tract which Erasmus published against him, in two parts, in 1526 and 1527, and which, though insignificant in substance, was violent and insulting enough in tone, Luther made no reply. Erasmus, nevertheless, to the pleasure of himself and his patrons in high places, continued his virulent attacks on the Reformation, which was bringing ruin, he declared, on the n.o.ble arts and letters, and carrying anarchy into the Church, while he himself, in his own mediating manner, and in the sense and with the help of the temporal rulers, was doing his best to promote certain reforms in the Church, within the pale of the ancient system, and on its proper hierarchical basis. On what principles, however, that basis was established, and the Divine rights of the hierarchy reposed, he wisely abstained, now as he had done before, from explaining. In Luther"s eyes he was merely a refined Epicurean, who had inward doubts about religion and Christianity, and treated both with disdain.
Luther"s letter to Henry VIII., which we have noticed in an earlier chapter, took a long time before it reached the King, and before the latter could send an answer to it. The writing of that answer must have given his royal adversary much satisfaction; it turned out a good deal coa.r.s.er than even the one from Duke George; Luther"s marriage in particular afforded Henry an occasion for insulting language. Emser published it in German early in 1527, adding some vituperations and falsehoods of his own. Luther"s only object in replying was to dissipate any impression that he had ever declared to Henry his readiness to recant. His reply consisted of a few but powerfully written pages. He pointed out that in his letter he had expressly excepted his doctrines from any offer of retractation; upon these doctrines he took his stand, let kings and the devil do their worst. Beyond these he had nothing which so encouraged his heart, and gave him such strength and joy. To the personal insults and imputations of sensuality and so forth, which Henry VIII., this man of unbridled pa.s.sions, had poured upon him, he replied that he was well aware that, in regard to his personal life, he was a poor sinner, and that he was glad his enemies were all saints and angels.
He added, however, that though he knew himself to be a sinner before G.o.d and his dear Christian brethren, he wished at the same time to be virtuous before the world, and that virtuous he was--so much so that his enemies were not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes. With regard to his letter to Henry he acknowledged that in this, as in his letter to Duke George, and others, he had been tempted to make a foolish trial of humility. "I am a fool, and remain a fool, for putting faith so lightly in others."
Luther reverts in this reply to enemies of a different sort, who make his heart still heavier. These are to him his "tender children," his "little brothers," his "golden little friends, the spirits of faction and the fanatics," who would not have known anything worth knowing either of Christ or of the gospel, if Luther had not previously written about it. He alluded, in particular, to the new "Sacramentarians," and to Zwingli their leader.
Although this is the first time that Zwingli makes his appearance in the history of Luther, and was never treated by him otherwise than as a new offshoot of fanaticism, it is important, in order to understand and appreciate him aright, to bear in mind the fact that, himself only a few months younger than Luther, he had been working since 1519 among the community at Zurich as an independent and progressive Evangelical Reformer, and had extended his active influence over Switzerland, however little noticed he had been at Wittenberg.
His career hitherto had been made easier for him than was the case with Luther. The Grand Council of the city of Zurich not only afforded him their protection, but in 1520 decreed full liberty to preach the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostles in the sense he ascribed to them, and in 1523 formally declared their acceptance of his doctrines, and abolished all idolatrous practices. No Recess of a Diet was here to disturb or threaten him. The Pope, for political reasons, behaved with unwonted caution and discretion: he delayed in this case for several years the ban of excommunication which he had p.r.o.nounced so readily against Luther. Even Hadrian, the man of firm character, to whom Luther was an object of abhorrence, had only gracious and insinuating words for the Zurich Reformer. The Zurich authorities, at the same time, acting in concert with Zwingli, adopted severe measures against any intrusion of fanatics and Anabaptists, nor did the entire population of the small republic contain any great number of persons so thoroughly neglected, and so difficult of influence by preachers, as was the case with the country people in Germany. Well might Zwingli press forward with a lighter heart than Luther"s in his work.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 38.--ZWINGLI. (From an old engraving.)]
Personally, moreover, he had never pa.s.sed through such severe inward struggles as Luther, nor had ever wrestled with such spiritual anguish and distress. The thought of reconciliation with G.o.d, and the comforting of conscience by the a.s.surance of His forgiving mercy, were not with Zwingli, as with Luther, the centre and focus of his aspirations and religious interests. He knew not that fervour and intenseness which made Luther grasp at every means for bringing home G.o.d"s grace to congregations of believers, or to each individual Christian according to his spiritual need. His view, from the very first, extended rather to the totality of religious truth, as revealed by G.o.d in Scripture, but sadly disfigured in the creeds of the Church by man"s additions and misinterpretations; and he aimed, far more than Luther, at a reconstruction of moral, and especially of communal life, in conformity with what the Word of G.o.d appeared to demand. It was easier for him, therefore, to break with the past: critical scruples against tradition did not weigh so heavily on his conscience. His critical faculties, no doubt, were sharpened by the humanistic culture he had acquired. Compared with Luther"s peculiar meditative mood, and his half-choleric, half-melancholic temperament, Zwingli evinced, in all his conduct and demeanour, a more clear and sober intelligence, and a far calmer and more easy disposition. His practical policy and conduct was allied with a tendency to judicial severity, in contrast to the free spirit which animated Luther. So rigorous and narrow-minded was his zeal against the toleration of images, that the Wittenberg theologians could not help detecting in him a spirit akin to that of Carlstadt and the other fanatics. In renouncing the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the idea of a sacrifice, Zwingli had rejected altogether the supposition of a Real Presence of Christ"s Body at the Sacrament; nay, as he declared later on, he had never truly believed in it. He quoted the words of Christ, "The flesh profiteth nothing" (St. John vi. 63). He would understand by the Sacrament simply a spiritual feeding of the faithful, who, by the Word of G.o.d and His Spirit, are enabled to enjoy in faith the salvation purchased by the death of Christ. He saw no particular necessity for offering this salvation to them by an administration of Christ"s Body, which had been given for them, through the visible medium of the bread; nor did he see how by so doing their faith could be strengthened. In Luther"s view the practical significance of the Real Presence lay in this, that in this special manner the Christian, who felt his need of salvation, was a.s.sured, and became a partaker, of forgiveness and communion with his Saviour. With Zwingli, such a visible communication of the Divine gift of salvation was opposed to his conception of G.o.d and the Divine Nature; just as this conception was opposed to that kind of union of the Divine and human nature in Christ Himself, by virtue of which, according to Luther, Christ was able and willing to be actually present everywhere in the Sacrament with His human, transfigured body. Inasmuch, said Zwingli, as this spiritual feeding took place in faith everywhere, and not only at the Sacrament, it was no essential part of the Sacrament; the real essence whereof consisted in this, that the faithful here confessed by that act their common belief in the commemoration of Christ"s death, and, as members of His Body, pledged themselves to such belief: he called the Sacrament the symbol of a pledge. Luther himself, as we have seen, had taught from the first that the Sacrament or Communion should represent the union of Christians with the spiritual Body, or their communion of the spirit, of faith, and of love. But with him this communion was a secondary condition; it was the feeding on the Body of Christ Himself which was to promote such communion with one another and, above all, with Christ. Zwingli explained the word "is" of our Lord, in His inst.i.tution of the Sacrament, to mean "signifies."
Oecolampadius preferred the explanation that the bread was not the Body in the proper sense of the word, but a symbol of the Body. In point of fact, this was a distinction without a difference.
Such, briefly stated, was the doctrinal controversy in which the two Reformers, the German and the Swiss, now engaged, and which had first brought them into contact.
About the same time Luther made the acquaintance of another opponent of his doctrine of the Lord"s Supper, the Silesian Kaspar Schwenkfeld. He also, like his friend Valentin Krautwald, denied the Real Presence; but sought to interpret the words of inst.i.tution in yet another manner, connecting with his theory of their meaning deeper mystical ideas of the means of salvation in general, which at least in some quarters and to a small extent, have still survived.
In all of them, however--in Carlstadt, Zwingli, Schwenkfeld, and the rest--Luther, as he wrote to his friends at Reutlingen, perceived only one and the same puffed up, carnal mind, twisting about and struggling, to avoid having to remain subject to the Word of G.o.d.
His first public declaration against Zwingli"s new doctrine was in 1526, in his preface to the Syngramma or treatise of the fourteen Swabian ministers, written, as his opening words express it, "against the new fanatics, who put forth novel dreams about the Sacrament, and confuse the world."
Blow upon blow followed in the battle thus commenced. While Oecolampadius was busy composing a reply to the treatise and its preface, by which he in particular had been a.s.sailed, Luther proceeded to follow up the attack. The same year he published a "Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, against the Fanatics;" and in the following spring a larger work with the t.i.tle "A Proof that Christ"s Words of Inst.i.tution, "This is My Body," &c., still stand, against the Fanatics." He concludes the latter with the wish, "G.o.d grant that they may be converted to the truth; if not, that they may twist cords of vanity wherewith to catch themselves, and fall into my hands." Just then, however, Zwingli had written against him, and to him, and the missive arrived at the moment when he had issued the last-named work. Zwingli wrote in Latin, ent.i.tling his tract, "A Friendly Exposition of the matter concerning the Sacrament," and sent it with a letter to Luther.
These were followed almost immediately by a reply, in German, to Luther"s Sermon, under the t.i.tle of "A Friendly Criticism of the Sermon of the Excellent Martin Luther against the Fanatics." Zwingli had scarcely had Luther"s last written work in his hands when he replied to it in a new treatise: "A proof that Christ"s words, "This is My Body which is given for you," will for all ages retain the ancient and only meaning, and that Martin Luther in his last book has neither taught nor proved his own and the Pope"s meaning;" the t.i.tle thus indicating that Luther"s and the Pope"s meaning were one and the same. Oecolampadius at the same time published "A fair Reply" to Luther"s work. These were the writings of the Sacramentarians which reached Luther during the troublous time of the plague at Wittenberg, and filled him with the pain of which we heard him then complain.
Zwingli"s doctrine, from the time of its first announcement, had seemed to Luther nothing but a visionary--nay, "devilish" perversion of the truth and the Word of G.o.d. The progress of the controversy, so far from healing the difference between them, tended only to sharpen and intensify it. From the first hour the two Reformers met in opposition, the gulf was already fixed which henceforth divided Evangelical Protestantism into two separate Confessions and Church communities.
This is not the place to pa.s.s judgment on the matter in controversy, or to trace minutely the leading points of dogma involved in the dispute. Regarding it, however, by the light of history, it must be acknowledged and avowed that this was no mere pa.s.sionate quarrel about words alone or propositions of dogmatic and metaphysical interest, but devoid of any religious importance. Even in the attempts to establish points of detail, reference was constantly made, on both sides, to deep questions and views of Christian religion.
Not only did Zwingli and Oecolampadius, in their anti-literal and figurative interpretation of the words of inst.i.tution, endeavour to support it by Scriptural a.n.a.logies, more or less appropriate, but in the practical objections they raised, which Luther treated as over-curious subtleties of human reason, they were actuated in reality by motives of a religious character. In their view, a pure and reverential conception of G.o.d was inconsistent with the idea of such an offertory of Divine gifts, consisting of material elements and for mere bodily nourishment. Not indeed that Luther, in accepting the words in their literal sense, had become a slave to the letter, in contradiction to the free and lofty spirit in which he had elsewhere accepted the contents of Holy Scripture. The question with him here was about a word of unique importance--a word used by Christ on the threshold, so to speak, of His death for our redemption; and we have already remarked what value he attached to the actual bodily presence indicated by that word, as a.s.suring and imparting salvation to those who partook at His table in faith. No a.n.a.logies to the contrary, derived from other figurative expressions, would content him, though of course he never denied that such expressions could and did occur throughout the Bible. The text, "The flesh profiteth nothing," on which Zwingli primarily relied, Luther understood as referring not to the flesh of Christ, but to the carnal mind of man; though he was careful to declare that it was not the fleshly presence, as such, of our Saviour which gave the Sacrament its value and importance; nor must the feeding of the communicants be a mere bodily feeding, but that the word and promise of Christ were there present, and that faith alone in that word and promise could make the feeding bring salvation. G.o.d"s glory was therein exalted to the highest, that from His pitying love he made Himself equal with the lowest.
In the doctrine concerning the person of the Redeemer, a point to which the controversy further led, the Church had hitherto affirmed simply a union of the Divine and human natures, each retaining the attributes and qualities peculiar to itself. Luther wished to see in the Man Jesus, the Divine nature, which stooped to share humanity, conceived and realised with deeper and more active fervour. As the Son of G.o.d He died for us, and as the Son of Man He was exalted, with His body, to sit at the right hand of G.o.d, which is not limited to any place, and is at once nowhere and everywhere. It is true, Luther does not proceed to explain how this body is still a human body, or indeed a body at all. Zwingli, in keeping the two natures distinct, wished to preserve the sublimity of his G.o.d and the genuine humanity of the Redeemer; but in so doing, he ended by making the two natures run parallel, so to speak, in a mere stiff, dogmatic formulary, and by an artificial interpretation and a.n.a.lysis of the words of Scripture touching the One Jesus, the Son of G.o.d and man.
The manner, however, in which this controversy was conducted on both sides betrays an utter failure on the part of either combatant to apprehend and do justice to the religious and Christian motives, which, with all their antagonism, never ceased to animate the opposite party. Luther"s att.i.tude towards Zwingli we have already noticed. We have seen how his zeal, in particular, prompted him too often to see in the conduct of individual opponents simply and solely the dominating influence of that spirit, from which certain pernicious tendencies, according to his own convictions, proceeded and had to be combated. Thus it was in this instance. It was all visionary nonsense, nay, sheer devilry, and be attacked it in language of proportionate violence. From Zwingli a different att.i.tude was to be expected, from the amicable t.i.tles of his treatises and the personal correspondence with Luther which he himself invited. He adopted here for the most part, as in other matters, a calm and courteous tone, and exercised a power of self-restraint to which Luther was a stranger. But with a lofty mien, though in the same tone, he rejected Luther"s propositions, as the fruit of ludicrous obstinacy and narrowness of mind, nay, as a retrograde step into Popery. His letter, moreover, embittered the contest by importing into it extraneous matter of reproach, such as, in particular, Luther"s conduct in the Peasants" War. Luther had reason to say of him, "He rages against me, and threatens me with the utmost moderation and modesty." Zwingli"s later replies evince a straightforwardness we miss in the earlier ones, but they are marred by much rudeness and coa.r.s.eness of language, and display throughout a lofty self-consciousness and a triumphant a.s.surance of victory.
Luther, after reading the last-mentioned treatises of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, resolved to publish one answer more, the last; for Satan, he said, must not be suffered to hinder him further in the prosecution of other and more important matters. At this time he was particularly anxious to complete his translation of the Bible, being now hard at work with the books of the Prophets. His answer to Zwingli grew ultimately into the most exhaustive of all his contributions to the dispute. It appeared in March 1528 under the t.i.tle of "Confession concerning the Lord"s Supper." He went over once more all the most important questions and arguments which had formed the subject of contention, expounded his ideas more fully on the Person and Presence of Christ, and explained calmly and impressively the pa.s.sages of Scripture relating thereto. He concluded with a short summary of his own confession of Christian faith, that men might know, both then and after his death, how carefully and diligently he had thought over everything, and that future teachers of error might not pretend that Luther would have taught many things otherwise at another time and after further reflection.
Zwingli and Oecolampadius hastened at once to prepare new pamphlets in reply, and to publish them with a dedication to the Elector John and the Landgrave Philip. But Luther adhered to his resolve. He let them have the last word, as he had done with Erasmus. They had not contributed anything new to the dispute.
While Luther was writing his last treatise against the Sacramentarians, he found himself obliged to issue a fresh protest against the Anabaptists. This was a tract ent.i.tled "On Anabaptism; to two pastors." But while denouncing these sectaries, he protested strongly against the manner in which the civil authorities were dealing with them, by the infliction of punishment and even death on account of their principles, even when no seditious conduct could be alleged against them. Everyone, he said, should be allowed to believe what he liked. Similarly he wrote to Nuremberg shortly after, where as we have already mentioned, the new errors were spreading, saying that he could in no wise admit the right to execute false prophets or teachers; it was quite enough to expel them. Luther in this distinguished himself above most of the men of the Reformation. At Zurich, while Zwingli was accusing Luther of cruelty, Anabaptists were being drowned in public.
The foreground is now occupied again by the struggle with Catholicism--in other words, by the contest with the German princes who were hostile to the Reformation, and with the Emperor himself and the majority of the Diet.
CHAPTER IV.
CHURCH DIVISIONS IN GERMANY--WAR WITH THE TURKS--THE CONFERENCE AT MARBURG, 1529.
In the war against the Pope and France an imperial army in 1527 had stormed and plundered Borne. G.o.d, as Luther said, had so ordained, that the Emperor, who persecuted Luther for the Pope, had to destroy the Pope for Luther. But Charles V. was not then in a position to break with the Head of the Church. In the treaty concluded with the Pope in November, mention was again made of extirpating the Lutheran heresy. And whilst in Italy the war with France was still going on, the Emperor in the spring of 1528 sent an amba.s.sador to the German Courts, to rouse fresh zeal for the Church in this matter.
But before the threatened danger actually reached the Evangelical party, it was preceded by disquieting rumours and false alarms.
In March 1528 a new Diet was to a.s.semble at Ratisbon. Luther heard in February of strange designs being meditated there by the Papists.
His wish was that Charles"s brother Ferdinand might be detained in Hungary, where he was occupied in fighting the Turks and their _protege,_ Prince John Zapolya of Transylvania, and that the Diet should be prevented from meeting. Luther"s adversaries, on the other hand, feared an unfavourable decision from the Estates, and the Emperor at length peremptorily forbade their meeting.
Just about this time, John Pack, a steward of the chancery who had been dismissed by Duke George of Saxony, came to the Landgrave Philip and informed him of a league concluded with King Ferdinand by the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, the Electors of Mayence and Brandenburg, and several Bishops, to attack the Evangelical princes.
The Electorate of Saxony, where John was just then engaged in completing the re-organisation of the Church, was to be part.i.tioned among them, and Hesse was to be allotted to Duke George. John and Philip quickly formed an offensive and defensive alliance, and called out their troops. The whole scheme, as was shortly proved beyond dispute, was an invention, and the pretended treaty a forgery, of Pack, who had been paid a large sum for his revelations.
Luther himself had no doubt of the genuineness of the doc.u.ment, and persisted even afterwards in his belief. But while the Landgrave, with his habitual vehemence, was impatient to strike quickly, before their enemies were prepared, both Luther and the other Wittenberg theologians did their utmost to restrain their sovereign from any act of violence. Luther earnestly bade him remember the words: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (St. Matt.
v. 5),--"As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men" (Rom.
xii. 18),--"Those that take the sword, shall perish with the sword"
(St. Matt. xxvi. 52). He warned them that "one durst not paint the devil over one"s door, nor ask him to stand G.o.dfather." He feared a civil war among the princes, which would be worse than a rising of the peasants, and utterly ruinous to Germany. Philip accordingly stayed his hand, until the reply of his supposed enemies, from whom he demanded an explanation, puzzled him as to the meaning of Pack"s overtures.
A private letter sent by Luther to Link, in which he spoke of George as a fool, and said he mistrusted his promises, led afterwards, on George"s learning its contents, to a new and bitter quarrel between the two. The Duke made a violent attack on Luther in a pamphlet, which appeared early in 1521, to which the latter replied with equal violence, denouncing the abuse of "secret (_i.e._ private) and stolen letters." George retorted in the same strain, and persuaded his cousin John, to whom he addressed a formal complaint, to prohibit Luther from printing anything more against him without Electoral permission;--a step which effectually silenced his opponent.
On November 30, 1528, the Emperor summoned a Diet to meet at Spires on February 21 of the following year, in order that decisive and energetic measures should be taken--as recommended once more by the Pope--to secure the unity and sole supremacy of the Catholic Church.
The chief subjects named for deliberation were, the armament against the Turks, and the innovations in matters of religion.
As regards the war against the Turks, Luther, who had previously let fall some occasional remarks about certain wholesome effects it would have in checking the designs of the Papacy, let his voice be heard, notwithstanding, in summoning the whole nation to do battle against the fearful and horrible enemy, whom they had hitherto suffered so shamefully to oppress them. Since the latter part of the summer of 1528 he had been engaged upon a pamphlet "On the War against the Turks," the publication of which was accidentally delayed till March, when he was busy with his Catechism.
In this pamphlet he spoke to his fellow-Germans, with the n.o.blest fire and in the fulness of his strength, as a Christian, a citizen, and a patriot, and with a clearness and decision derived from convictions and principles of his own. He had no wish to preach a new crusade; for the sword had nothing to do with religion, but only with bodily and temporal things. But he exhorted and encouraged the authority, whom G.o.d had entrusted with temporal power, to take up the sword against the all-devouring enemy, with sure trust in G.o.d and certain confidence in his mission. By the "authority" he meant the Emperor, in whom he recognised the head of Germany. He it was who must fight against the Turks; under his banner they must march, and upon that banner should be seen the command of G.o.d, which said "Protect the righteous, but punish the wicked." "But," asked Luther, "how many are there who can read those words on the Emperor"s banner, or who seriously believe in them?" He complained that neither Emperor nor princes properly believed that they were Emperor and princes, and therefore thought little about the protection they owed to their subjects. Further on he rebuked the princes for letting matters go on as if they had no concern in them, instead of advising and a.s.sisting the Emperor with all the means in their power. He knew well the pride of some of the princes, who would like to see the Emperor a nonent.i.ty and themselves the heroes and masters. Rebellion, he said, was punished in the case of the peasants; but if rebellion were punished also among princes and n.o.bles, he fancied there would be very few of them left. He feared that the Turk would bring some such punishment upon them, and he prayed G.o.d to avert it. Finally, he bade them remember not to buckle on their armour too loosely, and underrate their enemies, as Germans were too p.r.o.ne to do. He warned them not to tempt G.o.d by inadequate preparation, and sacrifice the poor Germans at the shambles, nor as soon as the victory was won to "sit down again and carouse until the hour of need returned."
At Spires, however, the whole zeal of the imperial commissaries and of the Catholic Estates was directed, not against the common enemy of Germany and Christendom, but to the internal affairs of the Church. They succeeded in pa.s.sing a resolution or article, declaring that those States which had held to the Edict of Worms should continue to impose its execution on their subjects; the other States should abstain at least from further innovations. The celebration of the ma.s.s was not to be obstructed, nor was anyone to be prevented from hearing it. The subjects of one State were never to be protected by another State against their own. By these means, not only was the Reformation prevented from spreading farther, but it was cut off at a blow in those places where it had already been in full swing. By the decision respecting the ma.s.s, room was given for attempts to reinstate it on Evangelical territory; by the other decision respecting the subjects of different States, power was given to the bishops of the German Empire to coerce, if they chose, the local clergy, as their subordinates. Further steps in the exercise of this power could easily be antic.i.p.ated.
This resolution of the majority was answered on April 19 by the Evangelical party with a formal protest, from which they received the name their descendants still bear--Protestants. They insisted that the Imperial Recess unanimously agreed on at the first Diet of Spires in 1526 could only be altered by the unanimous consent of the States; and they declared "that, even apart from that, in matters relating to the honour of G.o.d and the salvation of our souls, every man must stand alone before G.o.d and give account for himself." In these matters, therefore, "they could not submit to the resolution of the majority."
The majority, however, as well as Ferdinand, the Emperor"s brother and representative, refused to admit their right of opposition. The minority must prepare to submit to coercion and the exercise of force. Against this the Elector and Landgrave concluded, on April 22, a "secret agreement" with the cities of Nuremberg, Strasburg, and Ulm. The Landgrave was eager that this alliance should be strengthened by the admission of Zurich and the other Evangelical towns in Switzerland. And a similar proposal was made to him by Zwingli, who, in connection with his ecclesiastical labours, was carrying on a bold and high policy, in striving to effect an alliance with the republic of Venice and the King of France against the Emperor, He certainly far overrated the importance of his town in the great affairs of the world, and placed a strangely naive confidence in the French monarch.
Luther, on the contrary, set his face as resolutely now as in the affair of Pack, against any appeal to the sword in support of the gospel. He would have his friends rely on G.o.d and not on the wit of man; and, with regard to the last Diet, he was quite content that G.o.d had not allowed their enemies to rage even more. He was willing even to trust to the Emperor for relief; the Evangelical party, he said, should represent to his Majesty how their sole concern was for the gospel and for the removal of abuses which no one could deny to exist; how, at the same time, they had resisted the iconoclasts and other riotous fanatics, nay, how the suppression of the Anabaptists and the peasants was pre-eminently due to them, and how they had been the first to bring to light and vindicate the rights and majesty of authority. A representation of this kind, he hoped, must surely have an influence on the Emperor. He flatly rejected any alliance with those,--namely, the Swiss,--who "strive thus against G.o.d and the Sacrament;" such an alliance would disgrace the gospel and draw down their sins upon their heads. This opinion, in which the other Wittenberg theologians, and especially Melancthon, concurred, determined that of the Elector.
The Landgrave did his utmost to remove this obstacle to an alliance with the Swiss. He urged a personal conference between the rival theologians on the question of the Sacrament. Luther and Melancthon were strongly opposed to such a step, inasmuch as the course of the controversy hitherto had not revealed a single point which offered any hope of reconciliation or mutual approach. Luther reminded him how, ten years before, the Leipzig disputation served only to make bad worse. Intrigues, moreover, were apprehended from the other side, lest the Lutherans should be held up to odium as the enemies of unity and obstacles to an alliance, and the Landgrave be alienated from them. Melancthon, indeed, had brought with him from Spires, where he had been staying with Philip, a suspicion that the latter inclined to the Zwinglians, and was right in his conjecture at least so far, that their doctrine did not appear to him nearly so questionable as to the Wittenbergers. But the simple fear of consequences made Luther unwilling and unable to refuse the Landgrave"s urgent invitation, backed as it was with the concurrence of the Elector. He wrote to him on June 23, declaring his readiness to "render him this useless service with all diligence," and only entreated him to consider once more whether it would do more good than harm. The conference was to take place at the Castle of Marburg on Michaelmas day (1529).
Luther"s sentiments in the interval are expressed in a letter which he wrote on August 2 to a distant friend, the pastor Brismann at Eiga. "Philip (Melancthon) and myself," he says, "after many refusals and much vain resistance, have been at length compelled to give our consent, because of the Landgrave"s importunity; but I know not yet whether our going will come to anything. We have no hopes of any good result, but suspect artifice on all sides, that our enemies may be able to boast of having gained the victory.... I am pretty well in body, but inwardly weak, suffering like Peter from want of faith; but the prayers of my brethren support me.... That youth of Hesse is restless, and boiling over with projects.... Thus everywhere we are threatened with more danger from our own people than from our enemies. Satan rests not, in his bloodthirstiness, from the work of murder and bloodshed."
In the same letter Luther tells of the panic caused by a new pestilence--the Sweating Sickness--which had appeared in Germany and at Wittenberg itself. It was a plague, known already many years before, which used to attack its victims with fever, sweat, thirst, intense pain and exhaustion, and s.n.a.t.c.h them off with fearful rapidity. Luther knew well the danger of it when once it actually appeared. But he watched without terror the supposed symptoms of its appearance at Wittenberg, and remarked that the sickness there was mainly caused by fright. On the 27th he told another friend how the night before he had awoke bathed in sweat, and tormented with anxious thoughts, so much so, that had he given way to them he might very likely have fallen ill like so many others. He named also several of his acquaintances, whom he had driven out of bed, when they lay there fancying themselves ill, and who were now laughing at their own fancies.