These three letters const.i.tute the whole evidence for the Catholic charge against Luther that he offered advice to Weller that is immoral and demoralizing. The indictment culminates in these three distinct points: Luther advises Weller 1. to drink freely and be frivolous; 2. to commit sin to spite the devil; 3. to have no regard for the Ten Commandments. Since we shall take up the last point in a separate chapter, we limit our remarks to the first two points.
When Luther advises Weller to drink somewhat more liberally, that does not mean that Luther advises Weller to get drunk. This, however, is exactly what Luther is made to say by his Catholic critics. They make no effort to understand the situation as it confronted Luther, but pounce upon a remark that can easily be understood to convey an offensive meaning. Neither does what Luther says about his own drinking mean that he ever got drunk. We have spoken of this matter in a previous chapter, and do not wish to repeat. Luther"s remarks about jesting, merry plays, and jolly pranks in which he would have Weller engage are likewise vitiated by the Catholic insinuation that he advises indecent frivolities, yea, immoralities. Why, all the merriment which he urges upon Weller is to take place in Luther"s home and family circle, in the presence of Luther"s wife and children, in the presence of Weller"s little pupil Hans, who at that time was about four years old. The friends of the family members of the Faculty at the University, ministers, students who either stayed at Luther"s home, like Weller, or frequently visited there, are also included in this circle whose company Weller is urged to seek. Imagine a young man coming into this circle drunk, or half drunk, and disporting himself hilariously before the company! We believe that not even all Catholics can be made to believe the insinuations of their writers against Luther when all the facts in the case are presented to them.
Let us, moreover, remind ourselves once more that, to measure the social proprieties of the sixteenth century by modern standards, is unfair. A degree of culture in regard to manners and speech can be reached by very refined people that grows away from naturalness. The old Latin saying: _Naturalia non sunt turpia_ (We need not feel ashamed of our natural acts), will never lose its force. There are expressions in Luther"s writings--and in the Bible--that nowadays are considered unchaste, but are in themselves chaste and pure. Even the extremest naturalness that speaks with brutal frankness about certain matters is a better criterion of moral purity than the supersensitive prudishness that squirms and blushes, or pretends to blush, at the remotest reference to such matters. It all depends on the thoughts which the heart connects with the words which the mouth utters. This applies also to the manner in which former centuries have spoken about drinking. We sometimes begin to move uneasily, as if something Pecksniffian had come into our presence, when we behold the twentieth century sitting in judgment on the manners and morals of the sixteenth century.
In Luther"s remarks about sinning to spite the devil we have always heard an echo from his life at the cloister. One"s judgment about the monastic life is somewhat mitigated when one hears how Dr. Staupitz and the brethren in the convent at Erfurt would occasionally speak to Luther about the latter"s sins. Staupitz called them "Puppensuenden." It is not easy to render this term by a short and apt English term; "peccadillo"
would come near the meaning. A child playing with a doll will treat it as if it were a human being, will dress it, talk to it, and pretend to receive answers from it, etc. That is the way, good Catholics were telling Luther, he was treating his sins. His sins were no real sins, or he had magnified their sinfulness out of all proportion. This same advice Luther hands on to another who was becoming a hypochondriac as he had been. When the mind is in a morbid state it imagines faults, errors, sins, where there are none. The melancholy person in his self-scrutiny becomes an intolerant tyrant to himself. He will flay his poor soul for trifles as if they were the blackest crimes: In such moments the devil is very busy about the victim of gloom and despair. Luther has diagnosed the case of Weller with the skill of a nervous specialist. He counsels Weller not to judge himself according to the devil"s prompting, and, in order to break Satan"s thrall over him, to wrench himself free from his false notions of what is sinful. In offering this advice, Luther uses such expressions as: "Sin, commit sin," but the whole context shows that he advises Weller to do that which is in itself not sinful, but looks like sin to Weller in his present condition. When Luther declares he would like to commit a real brave sin himself as a taunt to the devil, he adds: "Would that I could!" That means, that, as a matter of fact, he could not do it and did not do it, because it was wrong. What bold immoral act did Weller commit in consequence of Luther"s advice? What immoralities are there in Luther"s own life? Luther"s letters did not convey the meaning to his morbid young friend that Catholic writers think and claim they did.
Luther"s advice to Melanchthon which is so revolting to Catholics that they have made it the slogan in their campaign against Luther refers to a state of affairs that is identical with what we noted in our review of the correspondence with Weller. It is contained in a letter which Luther wrote August 1, 1521, while he was an exile in the Wartburg. He says to his despondent friend and colleague at the University of Wittenberg: "If you are a preacher of grace, do not preach a fict.i.tious, but the true grace. If grace is of the true sort, you will also have to bear true, not fict.i.tious, sins. G.o.d does not save those who only acknowledge themselves sinners in a feigned manner. Be a sinner, then, and sin bravely, but believe more bravely still and rejoice in Christ, who is the Victor over sin, death, and the world. We must sin as long as we are in this world; the present life is not an abode of righteousness; however, we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, says Peter (2. Ep. 3, 13). We are satisfied, by the richness of G.o.d"s glory, to have come to the knowledge of the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world. No sin shall wrest us from Him, were we even in one day to commit fornication and manslaughter a thousand times. Do you think the price paltry and the payment small that has been made for us by this great Lamb?" (15, 2589.)
"Be a sinner, and sin bravely, but believe more bravely still"--this is the _chef d"oeuvre_ of the muck-rakers in Luther"s life. The reader has the entire pa.s.sage which contains the outrageous statement of Luther before him, and will be able to judge the connection in which the words occur. What caused Luther to write those words? Did Melanchthon contemplate some crime which he was too timid to perpetrate? According to the horrified expressions of Catholics that must have been the situation. Luther, in their view, says to Melanchthon: Philip, you are a simpleton. Why scruple about a sin? You are still confined in the trammels of very narrow-minded moral views. You must get rid of them.
Have the courage to be wicked, Make a hero of yourself by executing some bold piece of iniquity. Be an "Uebermensch." Sin with brazen unconcern; be a fornicator, a murderer, a liar, a thief, defy every moral statute, --only do not forget to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. His grace is intended, not for hesitating, craven sinners, but for audacious, spirited, high-minded criminals.
This, we are asked to believe, is the sentiment of the same Luther who in his correspondence with Weller declares that he could not if he would commit a brave sin to spite the devil. Can the reader induce himself to believe that Luther advised Melanchthon to do what he himself knew was a moral impossibility to himself because of his relation to G.o.d? And again we put the question which we put in connection with the Weller letters: What brave sin did Melanchthon actually commit upon being thus advised by Luther?
One glance at the context, a calm reflection upon the tenor of this entire pa.s.sage in the letter to Melanchthon, suffices to convince every unbiased reader that Luther is concerned about Melanchthon as he was about Weller: he fears his young colleague is becoming a prey to morbid self-incrimination. It is again a case of "Puppensuenden" being expanded till they seem ethical monstrosities. But, as the opening words of the paragraph show, Luther had another purpose in writing to Melanchthon as he did. Melanchthon was a public preacher and expounder of the doctrine of evangelical grace. He must not preach that doctrine mincingly, haltingly. Is that possible? Indeed, it is. Just as there are preachers afraid to preach the divine Law and to tell men that they are under the curse of G.o.d and merit d.a.m.nation, so there are preachers afraid, actually afraid, to preach the full Gospel, without any limiting clauses and provisos. Just as there are teachers of Christianity who promptly put on the soft pedal when they reach the critical point in their public deliverances where they must reprove sin, and who hate intensive preaching of the Ten Commandments, so there are evangelical teachers who dole out Gospel grace in dribbles and homeopathic doses, as if it were the most virulent poison, of which the sinner must not be given too much. Luther tells Melanchthon: If you are afraid to draw every stop in the organ when you play the tune of Love Divine, All Love Excelling, you had better quit the organ. There are some sinners in this world that will not understand your faint evangelical whispers; they need to have the truth that Christ forgives their sins, all their sins,--their worst sins, blown into them with all the trumpets that made the walls of Jericho fall. If Melanchthon did not require a strong faith in the forgiving grace of G.o.d for himself, he needed it as a teacher of that grace to others; he must, therefore, familiarize himself with the immensity and power of that grace.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the Catholic writers who express their extreme disgust at the immoral principles of Luther belong to a Church whose theologians have made very questionable distinctions between venial sins and others. Papal dispensations and decisions of Catholic casuists, especially in the order of the Jesuits, have startled the world by their moral perverseness. Yea, the very principles of probabilism and mental reservation which the Jesuits have espoused are antiethical. In accordance with the principle last named, "when important interests are at stake, a negative or modifying clause may remain unuttered which would completely reverse the statement actually made. This principle justified unlimited lying when one"s interest or convenience seemed to require it. Where the same word or phrase has more than one sense, it may be employed in an unusual sense with the expectation that it will be understood in the usual. [This is called "amphibology" by them.] Such evasions may be used under oath in a civil court. Equally destructive of good morals was the teaching of many Jesuit casuists that moral obligation may be evaded by directing the intention when committing an immoral act to an end worthy in itself; as in murder, to the vindication of one"s honor; in theft, to the supplying of one"s needs or those of the poor; in fornication or adultery, to the maintenance of one"s health or comfort. Nothing did more to bring upon the society the fear and distrust of the nations and of individuals than the justification and recommendation by several of their writers of the a.s.sa.s.sination of tyrants, the term "tyrant" being made to include all persons in authority who oppose the work of the papal church or order.
The question has been much discussed, Jesuits always taking the negative side, whether the Jesuits have taught that "the end justifies the means." It may not be possible to find this maxim in these precise words in Jesuit writings; but that they have always taught that for the "greater glory of G.o.d," identified by them with the extension of Roman Catholic (Jesuit) influence, the principles of ordinary morality may be set aside, seems certain. The doctrine of philosophical sin, in accordance with which actual attention to the sinfulness of an act when it is being committed is requisite to its sinfulness for the person committing it, was widely advocated by members of the society. The repudiation of some of the most scandalous maxims of Jesuit writers by later writers, or the placing of books containing scandalous maxims on the Index, does not relieve the society or the Roman Catholic Church from responsibility, as such books must have received authoritative approval before publication, and the censuring of them does not necessarily involve an adverse att.i.tude toward the teaching itself, but way be a more measure of expediency." (A. H. Newman, in _New Schaff-Herzog Encycl.,_ 6, 146.)
18. Luther, Repudiates the Ten Commandments?
In Luther"s correspondence with Weller there occurs a remark to the effect that Weller must put the Decalog out of his mind. Similar statements occur in great number throughout Luther"s writings. In some of these statements Luther speaks in terms of deep scorn and contempt of the Law, and considers it the greatest affront that can be offered Christians to place them under the Law of Moses. He declares that Moses must be regarded by Christians as if he were a heretic, excommunicated by the Church, and a.s.signs him to the gallows. Some of the strongest invectives of this kind are found in his exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians. These stern utterances of Luther against the Law serve the Catholics as the basis for their charge that Luther is the most destructive spirit that has arisen within the Church. He is said to have destroyed the only perfect norm of right and wrong by his violent onslaughts on Moses. Once the commandments of G.o.d are abrogated, the feeling of duty and responsibility, they argue, is plucked from the hearts of men, and license and vice rush in upon the world with the force of a springtide.
The reader will remember what has been said in a previous chapter about Luther"s labors to expound and apply the divine Law, also about the intimate and loving relation which he maintained to the Ten Commandments to the end of his life. Luther has spoken of Moses as a teacher of true holiness in terms of unbounded admiration and praise. Ho declares the writings of Moses the princ.i.p.al part of our Bible, because all the prophets and apostles have drawn their teaching from Moses and have expanded the teaching of Moses. Christ Himself has appealed to Moses as an authority in matters of religion. The greatest distinction of Moses in Luther"s view is that he has prophesied concerning Christ, and by revealing the people"s sin through the teaching of the Law has made them see and feel the necessity of a redemption through the Mediator. However, also the laws of Moses are exceedingly fine, Luther thinks. The Ten Commandments are essentially the natural moral law implanted in the hearts of man. But also his forensic laws, his civil statutes, his ecclesiastical ordinances, his regulations regarding the hygiene, and the public order that must be maintained in a great commonwealth, are wise and salutary. The Catholics are forced to admit that alongside of the open contempt which Luther occasionally voices for Moses and the Mosaic righteousness inculcated by the Law there runs a cordial esteem of the great prophet. Luther regards the Law of Moses as divine; it is to him just as much the Word of G.o.d as any other portion of the Scriptures. To save their faces in a debate they must concede this point, but they charge Luther with being a most disorderly reasoner, driven about in his public utterances by momentary impulses: He will set up a rule to-day which he knocks down to-morrow. He will cite the same Principle for or against a matter. He is so erratic that he can be adduced as authority by both sides to a controversy. The Catholic may succeed with certain people in getting rid of Luther on the claim that his is a confused mind, and that in weighty affairs he adopts the policy of the opportunist. Most men will demand a better explanation of the seeming self-contradiction in Luther"s att.i.tude toward the divine Law.
There is only one connection in which Luther speaks disparagingly of the Law, and we shall show that what he says is no real disparagement, but the correct Scriptural valuation of the Law. Luther holds that the Ten Commandments do not save any person nor contribute the least part to his salvation. They must be entirely left out of account when such questions are to be answered as these: How do I obtain a gracious G.o.d? How is my sin to be forgiven? How do I obtain a good conscience? How can I come to I live righteously? How can I hope to die calmly, in the confidence that I am going to heaven? On such occasions Luther says: Turn your eyes away from Moses and his Law; he cannot help you; you apply at the wrong office when you come to him for rest for your soul here and hereafter.
He gives you no comfort, and he cannot, because it is not his function to do so. It is Another"s business to do that. Him you grossly dishonor and traduce when you refuse to come to Him for what He alone can give, and when you go to some one who does not give you what you need, though you pretend that you get it from this other. A proper relation to G.o.d is established for us only by Jesus Christ. He is the exclusive Mediator appointed by G.o.d for His dealing with man and for man in his dealings with G.o.d. There is salvation in none other; nor can our hope of heaven be placed on any other foundation than that which G.o.d laid when He appointed Christ our Redeemer (Acts 4, 12; 1 Cor. 3, 11).
This is Bible-doctrine. "The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," says John (chap. 1, 17). Here the two fundamental teachings of the Scriptures are strictly set apart the one from the other. They have much in common: they have the same holy Author, G.o.d; their contents are holy; they serve holy ends. But they are differently related to sinful man: the Law tells man what he must do, the Gospel, what Christ has done for him; the Law issues demands, the Gospel, gratuitous offers; the Law holds out rewards for merits or severe penalties, the Gospel, free and unconditioned gifts; the Law terrifies, the Gospel cheers the sinner; the Law turns the sinner against G.o.d by proving to him his incapacity to practise it, the Gospel draws the sinner to G.o.d and makes him a willing servant of G.o.d.
Paul demands of the Christian minister that he "rightly divide the Word of Truth" (2 Tim. 2, 15). To preach the Bible-doctrine of salvation aright and with salutary effect, the Law and the Gospel must be kept apart as far as East is from the West. The Law is truth, but, it is not the truth that saves, because it knows of no grace for the breakers of the Law. The Gospel teaches holiness and righteousness, however, not such as the sinner achieves by his own effort, but such as has been achieved for the sinner by his Subst.i.tute, Jesus Christ. The Gospel is not for men who imagine that they can do the commandments of G.o.d; Jesus Christ says: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance" (Matt. 9, 13). On the other hand, the Law is not for sinners who know themselves saved. "The Law is not made for a righteous man" (1 Tim. 1, 9). Christians employ the Law for the regulation of their lives, as a pattern and index of holy works which are pleasing to G.o.d and as a deterrent from evil works, but they do not seek their salvation, neither wholly nor in part, in the Law, nor do they look to the Law for strength to do the will of G.o.d. Moreover Christians, while they are still in the flesh, apply the Law to the old Adam in themselves; they bruise the flesh with its deceitful l.u.s.ts with the scourge of Moses, and thus they are in a sense under the Law, and can never be without the Law while they live. But in another sense they are not under the Law: all their life is determined by divine grace; their faith, their hope, their charity, is entirely from the Gospel, and the new man in them acknowledges no master except Jesus Christ, who is all in all to them (Eph. 1, 23).
When Luther directed men for their salvation away from the Law, he did what Christ Himself had done when He called to the mult.i.tudes: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11, 28). The people to whom these words were addressed had the Law of Moses and wearied themselves with its fulfilment, such as it was under the direction of teachers and guides who had misinterpreted and were misapplying that Law continually. Even in that false view of the Law which they had been taught, and which did not at all exhaust its meaning, there was no ease of conscience, no a.s.surance of divine favor, no rest for their souls. Christ with His gracious summons told them, in effect: You must forget the Law and the ordinances of your elders and your miserable works of legal service. You must turn your back upon Moses. In Me, only in Me, is your help.
Moses himself never conceived his mission to be what the Catholics declare it to be by their doctrine of salvation by faith plus works.
Moses directed his people to the greater Prophet who was to come in the future, and told them: "Unto Him shall ye hearken" (Deut. 18, 15). Jesus was pointed out to the world as that Prophet of whom Moses had spoken, when the Father at the baptism and the transfiguration of Christ repeated from heaven the warning cry of Israel"s greatest teacher under the old dispensation (Matt. 3, 17; 17, 5).
But was it necessary, in speaking of the inability of the Law to save men, to use such strong and contemptuous terms as Luther has used? Yes.
The Catholics do not seen to know in what strong terms the Bible has rejected the Law as a means of salvation. Paul denounces the Galatians again and again as "foolish," "bewitched," and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of a bondwoman, because they think they will be saved by their works done according to the Law (chap. 3, 1. 3; 4, 21 ff.). He calls them G.o.dless infidels, slaves, silly children still in their nonage, because they imagine that they become acceptable to G.o.d by their own righteousness (chap. 4, 9; 3, 23 ff.). Yea, he reprobates their legal service when he says: "As many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse" (chap. 3, 10). How contemptuous does it not sound to hear him call the legal ordinances which the Galatians were observing "beggarly elements" (chap. 4, 9), and the law a "schoolmaster" (chap. 3, 24), that is, a tutor fit only for little abecedarians who cannot be treated as full-grown persons that are able to make a right use of their privileges as children and heirs of G.o.d. Why do not the Catholics turn up their nose at Paul, as they do at Luther, when Paul calls all his legal righteousness "dung" (Phil. 2, 8), or when he speaks slightingly of the observance on which the Colossians prided themselves as "rudiments of the world" (Col. 2, 20)? Why does he call the Law "the handwriting of ordinances that has been blotted out"
(Col. 2, 14) but to declare to the Colossians that they are to fear the Law as little as a debtor fears a canceled note that had been drawn against him? What was it that Paul rebuked Peter for when he told him that he was building again the things which they both had destroyed (Gal. 2, 18)? Mark you, he says, "destroyed." Why, it was this very thing for which Luther is faulted by Rome, the Law as an instrument for obtaining righteousness before G.o.d. Could a person renounce the Law in more determined, one might almost say, ruthless fashion, than by saying: "I am dead to the Law, that I might live unto G.o.d"? Paul is the person who thus speaks of the Law (Gal. 2, 19). The Catholics have again taken hold of the wrong man when they a.s.sail Luther for repudiating the Law of G.o.d; they must start higher up; they will find the real culprit whom they are trying to prosecute among the holy apostles. Yea, even the apostles will decline the honor of being the original criminals, they will pa.s.s the charges preferred against them higher up still; for what contemptuous terms were used by them in speaking of the Law were inspired terms which they received from G.o.d the Holy Ghost. That contempt for the Law which Luther voices under very particular circ.u.mstances Luther has learned from his Bible and under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
That contempt is a mark of every evangelical preacher to-day. If ministers of the Gospel to-day do not denounce the Law when falsely applied, they betray a sacred trust and become traitors to Christ and the Church. For every one who teaches men to seek their salvation in any manner and to any degree in their own works serves not Christ, but Antichrist. This is such a fearful calamity that no terms should be regarded as too scathing in which to rebuke legalistic tendencies. These tendencies are the bane and blight of Christianity; if they are not rooted out, Christianity will perish from off the face of the earth.
Workmongers are missionaries of the father of lies and the murderer from the beginning: so far as in them lies, they slay the souls of men by their false teaching of the Law.
However, Luther reveals another att.i.tude toward the Law. At three distinct times in his public career he had to do with people who had a.s.sumed a hostile att.i.tude to the Law of G.o.d. If the contention of Luther"s Catholic critics were true, Luther ought to have hailed these occasions with delight and made common cause with the repudiators of the Law. While he was at the Wartburg, a disturbance broke out at Wittenberg. Under the leadership of Carlstadt, a professor at the University, men broke into the churches and smashed images. Church ordinances of age-long standing were to be abrogated, the cloisters were to be thrown open, and a new order of things was to be inaugurated by violence. Against the will of the Elector of Saxony, who had afforded Luther an asylum in his castle, Luther, at the risk of his life, came out of his seclusion, boldly went to Wittenberg, and preached a series of sermons by which he quelled the riotous uprising. Even before his return to Wittenberg he had published a treatise in which he warned Christians to avoid tumult and violent proceedings. The eight sermons which he preached to the excited people of Wittenberg are an invaluable evidence that Luther meant to proceed in the way of order. The ma.s.s and the confessional would have been abolished at that time, had it not been for Luther"s interference. He made some lifelong enemies by insisting that the reformatory movement must be conservative. He held that before men"s consciences had been liberated by the teaching of Christ, they were not qualified for exercising true Christian liberty, and their violent proceedings were nothing but carnal license. Everybody knows how deeply Luther himself was interested in the abolition of the idolatrous Ma.s.s and the spiritual peonage which Rome had created for men by means of the confessional. Only a person who puts principles above policies could have acted as Luther did in those turbulent days. He wanted for his followers, not wanton rebels and frenzied enthusiasts, but men who respect the Word of Cod, discreet and gentle men whose weapons of warfare were not carnal. A man who is so cautious as not to approve the putting down of acknowledged evils because he is convinced that the attempt is premature and exceeds the limits of propriety, will not lend his hand to abolishing the divine norm of right, the holy commandments of G.o.d.
The second occasion on which Luther in a most impressive manner showed his profound regard for the maintenance of human and divine laws was during the b.l.o.o.d.y uprising of the peasants. While thoroughly in sympathy with the rebellious peasants in their righteous grievances against their secular and spiritual oppressors, the barons and the bishops, and pleading the peasants" cause in its just demands before their lords, he unflinchingly rebuked their extreme demands and their still extremer actions. If by his preaching of the Gospel Luther had been the instigator of the peasants" uprising, what a brazen hypocrite he must have been in denouncing acts which he must have acknowledged to be fruits of his teaching! Among the n.o.blemen of Germany Luther counted not a few frank admirers and staunch supporters of his reformatory work.
Their influence was of the highest value to him in those critical days when his own life was not safe. Yet he rebuked the sins of the high and mighty, their avarice and insolence, which had brought on this terrible disturbance. In his writings dealing with this sad conflict Luther impresses one like one of the ancient prophets who stand like a rock amid the raging billows of popular pa.s.sions and with even-handed justice deliver the oracles of G.o.d to high and low, calling upon all to bow before the supreme will of the righteous Lawgiver. Would the great lords of the land have meekly taken Luther"s rebuke if they had been able to charge Luther with being an accessory to the peasants" crimes?
The third occasion on which Luther"s innocence of the charges of Romanists that he was an instigator of lawlessness was most effectually vindicated was the Antinomian controversy. This episode, more than any other, embittered the life of the aging Reformer. The Antinomians drew from the evangelical teachings those disastrous consequences which the Catholics impute to Luther: they claimed that the Law is not in any way applicable to Christians. They insisted that the Ten Commandments must not be preached to Christians at all. Christians, they claimed, determine in the exercise of their sovereign liberty what they may or may not do. Being under grace, they are superior to the Law and a law unto themselves. At first Luther had been inclined to treat this error mildly, because it seemed incredible to him that enlightened children of G.o.d could so fatally misread the teaching of G.o.d"s Word. He thought the Antinomians were either misunderstood by people who had no conception of the Gospel and of evangelical liberty, or they were grossly slandered by persons ill-disposed to them because of their successful preaching of the Gospel. When their error had been established beyond a doubt, he did not hesitate a moment to attack it. In sermons and public disputations, before the common people of Wittenberg and the learned doctors and the students of the University, he defended the holy Law of G.o.d as the norm of right conduct and the mirror showing up the sinfulness of man also for Christians, and he insisted that those who had fallen into this error must publicly recant. It was due to Luther"s unrelenting opposition that Agricola, one of the leaders of the Antinomians and at one time a dear friend of Luther, withdrew his false teaching and offered apologies in a published discourse. To his guests Luther in those days remarked at the table: "Satan, like a furious harlot, rages in the Antinomians, as Melanchthon writes from Frankfort. The devil will do much harm through them and cause infinite and vexatious evils. If they carry their lawless principles into the State as well as the Church, the magistrate will say: I am a Christian, therefore the law does not pertain to me. Even a Christian hangman would repudiate the law. If they teach only free grace, infinite license will follow, and all discipline will be at an end." (Preserved Smith, p. 283.) Luther held that forbidding the preaching of the Law meant to prohibit preaching G.o.d"s truth (20, 1635), and to abrogate the Law he regarded as tantamount to abrogating the Gospel (22, 1029).
Far from repudiating the Ten Commandments, then, Luther, by insisting on a distinction between Law and Gospel, and a.s.signing to each a separate sphere of operation in the lives of Christians, has done more than any other teacher in the Church since the days of Paul to impress men with a sincere respect of the Law, and to honor it by obedience to its precepts.
19. Luther"s Invisible Church.
In his Theses against the sale of indulgences, especially in the first two, Luther had uttered a thought which led to a new conception of the Church. He had declared that Christian life does not consist in the performance of certain works of piety, such as going to confession, performing the penances imposed by priests, hearing Ma.s.s, etc.,--all of which are external, visible acts,--but in a continuous penitential relation of the heart to G.o.d. The Christian, conscious of his innate corruption and his daily sinning, faces G.o.d at all times in the att.i.tude of a humble suitor for mercy. The posture of the publican is the typical att.i.tude of the Christian. He recognizes no merit in himself, he pleads no worthiness which would give him a just claim upon G.o.d"s favor. His single hope and sole reliance is in the merit and atoning work of his Savior Jesus Christ. The Christian"s penitence embraces as a const.i.tuent element faith in the forgiveness of sin for Christ"s sake. In the strength of his faith the Christian begins to wrestle with the sin which is still indwelling in him and which besets him from without. The agony of the Redeemer which he places before his eyes at all times proves a deterrent from sin, and the holy example of Jesus, who ran with rejoicing the way of the commandments of G.o.d, becomes an inspiring example to him: actuated by grat.i.tude for the love of the Son of G.o.d who gave Himself for him and reclaimed him from certain perdition, he begins to reproduce the life of Jesus in his own conversation. His whole life is determined by his relation to Jesus: his thoughts, affections, words, and deeds are a reflex of the life of his Lord. For him to live is Christ (Phil. 1, 21). All his acts become expressions of his faith. He says with Paul: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of G.o.d, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2, 20).
During the discussions which followed the publication of the Theses, especially during the Leipzig Debate with Eck in 1519, this thought of Luther was expanded, and applied to the idea of the Church.
Christianity, in Luther"s teaching, came to be set forth as something vastly different from the external and mechanical religiousness which had been accepted as Christianity by Rome. Christianity meant a new life, swayed by new motives, governed by new principles. It was seen to be entirely inward, an affair of the heart and soul and mind, and, ulteriorly, an affair of the body and the natural life. The religion of Rome, with its constant emphasis on works of men"s piety and the merit resulting therefrom, had become thoroughgoing externalism. So many prayers recited, so many altars visited, so many offerings made, meant so many merits achieved. The scheme worked out with mathematical precision. Devout Catholics might well keep a ledger of their devotional acts, as Gustav Freitag in his _Ancestors_ represents Marcus Koenig as having done.
In the Catholic view the Church is a visible society, an ecclesiastical organization with a supreme officer at the head, and a host of subordinate officers who receive their orders from him, and lastly, a lay membership that acknowledges the rule of this organization. The Church in this view is a religious commonwealth, only in form and operation differing from secular commonwealths. Cardinal Gibbons calls it "the Christian Republic." In Luther"s view the Church is, first of all, an invisible society, known to G.o.d, the Searcher of hearts, alone.
The Church of Christ is the sum-total of believers scattered through the whole world and existing in all ages. To this Church we refer when we profess in the Apostles" Creed: "I believe one holy, Christian Church, the communion of saints." This is the Church, the real Church, the Church which G.o.d acknowledges as the spiritual body of Christ, who is the Head of the Church, and with which He maintains the most intimate and tender relations.
This invisible Church exists within the visible societies of organized Christianity, in the local Christian congregations. Christian faith is never independent of the means which G.o.d has appointed for producing faith, the Gospel and the Sacraments. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of G.o.d" (Rom. 10, 17). This faith-creating word of evangelical grace is an audible and visible matter. Its presence in any locality is cognizable by the senses. It becomes attached, moreover, by Christ"s ordaining, to certain visible elements, as the water in Baptism and the bread and wine in the Lord"s Supper. Hence these two Christian ordinances--the only two for which a divine word of command and promise, hence, a divine inst.i.tution can be shown--also become related to faith, to its origin and preservation. For of Baptism our Lord says: "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of G.o.d" (John 3, 5). To be "born again," or to become a child of G.o.d, according to John 1, 12, is the same as "to believe." Accordingly, Paul says: "Ye are all the children of G.o.d by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal.
3, 26. 27). Of the Sacrament our Lord says: "This is the blood of the covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (Matt. 26, 28); and His apostle declares that communicants, "as often as they eat of this bread and drink of this cup, do show the Lord"s death till He come" (1 Cor. 11, 26).
The Gospel and the Sacraments, now, become the marks of the Church, the unfailing criteria of its existence in any place. For, according to the declaration of G.o.d, they are never entirely without result, though many to whom they are brought resist the gracious operation of the Spirit through these means. By Isaiah G.o.d has said: "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater: so shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it" (Is. 55, 10. 11).
Among the people who in a given locality rally around the Word and the Sacraments and profess allegiance to them, there is the Church, because there is the power of G.o.d unto salvation, the faith-producing and faith-sustaining Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who embrace what the Gospel offers with a lively faith, and in the power of their faith proceed to lead holy lives in accordance with the teaching of G.o.d"s Word, are the members of the true Church of G.o.d, the kingdom of Christ.
Those who adhere only externally to these inst.i.tutions are merely nominal members. They may at heart be hypocrites and secret blasphemers.
Catholic writers charge Luther with having set up this teaching, partly to spite the Pope whom he hated, partly to gratify his vainglorious aspirations to become famous. He had at one time held the Catholic dogma that the Church is the visible society of men who profess allegiance to the Bishop of Rome and accept his overlordship in matters of their religion. But through neglect of his religious duties and the failure to bridle his imperious temper he had by degrees begun to revolt from the teaching of the Catholic Church, until he publicly renounced the Church that had existed in all the ages before him, and set up his own Church.
By forsaking the communion of the Roman church organization he severed his soul from Christ and became an apostate. For, according to Catholic belief, Christ founded the Church to be a visible organization with a visible head, the Pope, and plainly and palpably "governing" men.
Everybody who has read the records of Luther"s work knows that no thought was more foreign to his mind than that of founding a new church.
He believed himself in hearty accord with the Catholic Church and the Pope when he published his Theses. He did not wantonly leave the Church, but was driven from it by most ruthless measures. It was while he was defending the principles which he had first uttered against Tetzel that his eyes were opened to the appalling defection which had occurred in the Catholic Church from every true conception of what the Church really is. His appeals to the Word of G.o.d were answered by appeals to the Church, the councils of the Church, the Pope. In his unsophisticated mind Luther held that Church, councils, and Pope are all subject to Christ, the Head of the Church. They cannot teach and decree anything but what Christ has taught and ordained. It is only by abiding in the words of Christ that men become and remain the true disciples of Christ, hence, His Church (John 8, 31). Now, he was told that Christ had erected the visible organization of the Catholic Church with the Pope at its head into the Church, and had handed over all authority to this society, with the understanding that there can be no appeal from this body to Christ Himself. Salvation is only by submitting to the rule of this society, adopting its ways, following its precepts. From this teaching Luther recoiled with horror, and rightly so.
At one time G.o.d had erected a theocracy on earth, a Church which was a visible society, and for which He had made special laws and ordinances.
The Church of the Old Covenant is the only visible Church which G.o.d created. But even in this Church He declared that external compliance with its ways did not const.i.tute any one a true member of His Church. He told the Jews by Isaiah: "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My Word. He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog"s neck; he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine"s blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol" (chap. 66, 2.
8). Here G.o.d abominates the mere external performance of acts of worship as an outrage and a crime that is perpetrated against His holy name.
Repeating a saying of this same prophet, our Lord said to the members of the Jewish Church in His day: "Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoreth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men"
(Matt. 15, 7-9). The Pharisees in the days of Christ are the true ancestors of Catholics in their belief that the Church is a great, powerful, visible organization in this world, subject to the supreme will of a visible ruler, and capable of being employed in great worldly enterprises like a political machine. The Pharisees were always looking for the establishment of a mighty church organization which would dominate the world. They expected the Messiah to inaugurate a Church of this kind. With this ambitious thought in their heart they approached Christ on a certain occasion and asked Him "when the kingdom of G.o.d should come. He answered them and said, The kingdom of G.o.d cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, Lo, there! for, behold, the kingdom of G.o.d is within you" (Luke 17, 20. 21). To the same effect Paul declares "He is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circ.u.mcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly; and circ.u.mcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter" (Rom. 2, 28. 29). And to a young pastor whom he had trained for work in the Church, he describes the Church as follows: "The foundation of G.o.d standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity" (2 Tim. 2, 19).
By making the Gospel the mark of the Church and faith the Gospel the badge of membership in the Church Luther has rendered an incalculable service to Christianity. This view of the Church shows the immense importance of a live, intelligent, and active personal faith. It puts a ban on religious indifference and mechanical worship. It destroys formalism, ceremonialism, Pharisaism in the affairs of religion. Justly Luther has ridiculed the implicit, or blind, faith of Catholics, when he writes: "The papists say that they believe what the Church believes, just as it is being related of the Poles that they say: I believe what my king believes. Indeed! Could there be a better faith than this, a faith less free from worry and anxiety? They tell a story about a doctor meeting a collier on a bridge in Prague and condescendingly asking the poor layman, "My dear man, what do you believe?" The collier replied, "Whatever the Church believes." The doctor: "Well, what does the Church believe?" The collier: "What I believe." Some time later the doctor was about to die. In his last moments he was so fiercely a.s.sailed by the devil that he could not maintain his ground nor find rest until he said, "I believe what the collier believes." A similar story is being told of the great [Catholic theologian] Thomas Aquinas, viz., that in his last moments he was driven into a corner by the devil, and finally declared, "I believe what is written in this Book." He had the Bible in his arms while he spoke these words. G.o.d grant that not much of such faith be found among us! For if these people did not believe in a different manner, both the doctor and the collier have been landed in the abyss of h.e.l.l by their faith." (17, 2013.)
Luther"s teaching regarding the Church leads to a proper valuation of the means of grace. Only through the evangelical Word and the evangelical ordinances is the Church planted, watered, and sustained. It is, therefore, necessary that the world be supplied in abundance with the Word through the missionary operations of Christians, and that the Christians themselves have the Word dwell among them richly (Col. 3, 16). "He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing," says the Head of the Church to His disciples (John 15, 5); and in His last prayer He pleads with the Father in their behalf: "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth" (John 17, 17). For the same reason it is necessary that the Word and Sacraments be preserved in their Scriptural purity, that any deviation from the clear teaching of the Bible be resisted, and orthodoxy be maintained. Errors in doctrine are like tares in a wheat-field: they are useless in themselves, and they hinder the growth of good plants. Error saves no one, but some are still saved in spite of error by clinging to the truth which is offered them along with the error. Luther believed that this happened even in the error-ridden Catholic Church.
Luther"s teaching regarding the Church enables us, furthermore, to form a right estimate of the ministry in the Church. Christ wants all believers to be proclaimers of His truth and grace. The apostle whom Catholics regard as the first Pope says to all Christians: "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2, 9). To the local congregation of believers, which is to deal with an offending brother, even to the extent of putting him out of the church, Christ says: "If he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." There is nothing that G.o.d denies even to the smallest company of believers while they are engaged in the discharge of their rights and duties as members of the Church; for Christ adds: "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18, 17-20). All rights and duties of the Church are common to all members. All have the right to preach, to administer the Sacraments, etc. Over and above this, however, Christ has inst.i.tuted also a personal ministry, men who can be "sent" even as He was sent by the Father (John 20, 21; comp. Rom. 10, 15: "How shall they preach, except they be sent?"); men who are to devote themselves exclusively to the reading of the Word (1 Tim. 4, 13), to teaching and guiding their fellow-believers in the way of divine truth (see the Epistles to Timothy and t.i.tus). But the ministry in the Church does not represent a higher grade of Christianity,--the laymen representing the lower,--but the ministry is a service ordained for the "perfecting of the saints and the edifying of the body of Christ," viz., His Church (Eph. 4, 11. 12; 1, 23). _Minister_ is derived from _minus,_ "less," not from _magis_--from which we have _Magister_--meaning "more."
The ministry of the Church of the New Testament is not a hierarchy, endowed with special privileges and powers by the Lord, but a body of humble workmen who serve their fellow-men and fellow-Christians in the spirit of Christ, who said: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20, 28). Ministers merely exercise in public the common rights of all believers and are the believers" representatives in all their official acts. So Paul viewed the absolution which he p.r.o.nounced upon the penitent member of the Corinthian congregation (2 Cor. 2, 10). When the Corinthians had begun to exalt their preachers unduly, he told them that they were "carnal." "Who is Paul," he exclaims, "and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed? . . . Let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours" (1 Cor. 3, 4. 5. 20. 21). And Peter, the original Pope in the Catholics"
belief, says: "The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of G.o.d which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over G.o.d"s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock" (1 Pet. 5, 1-3).
Lastly, Luther"s teaching regarding the Church affords a wealth of comfort and sound direction in view of the divided condition of the visible Church. Through the ignorance and malice of men and through the wily activity of Satan, who creates divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine of Christ, and is busy sowing tares among the wheat, there have arisen many church organizations, known by party names, differing from one another in their creedal statements, and warring upon each other. This is a sad spectacle to contemplate, and grieves Christian hearts sorely. But these divisions in the external and visible organizations do not touch the body of Christ, the communion of saints, the one holy Christian Church. In all ages and places the true believers in Christ are a unit. Among those who by faith have "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him, there is neither Greek nor Jew, circ.u.mcision nor uncirc.u.mcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free; but Christ is all, and in all"
(Col. 3, 10. 11). This is the true Catholic, that is, universal, Church.
The visible society which has usurped this name never was, nor is to-day, the universal Church. Before Protestantism arose, there was the Eastern Church, which has maintained a separate organization. This holy Christian Church is indestructible, because the Word of Christ, which is its bond, shall never pa.s.s away, and Christ rules even in the midst of His enemies. Visible church organizations are valuable only in as far as they shelter, and are nurseries of, the invisible Church. Luther never conceived the idea of founding a visible organization more powerful than the Catholic; he did not mean to pit one ecclesiastical body of men against another. His single aim was to restore the purity of teaching and the right administration of the Sacraments in accordance with the Scriptures. That his followers were named after him, we have shown not to be Luther"s fault: Luther did not form a Church, but reformed the Church; he did not establish a new creed, but reestablished the old. The visible society of Lutherans to-day does not regard itself as the alone-saving Church, or as immune from error, or as infallible, but it does claim to be the Church of the pure Word and Sacraments. It knows that it is one in faith with all the children of G.o.d throughout the world and in all ages.