Luther

LUTHER (1483-1546). First Period (1483-1517). —Martin Luther (Lyder, Lüder, Ludher—from Lothar, some say) was born at*Eisleben in the county of Mansfeld, in Thuringia, on the 10th of November 1483. His father Hans Luther, a slate-cutter by trade, belonged to a family of free peasants. His mother was Margaret Lindeburn. Hans Luther had left Möhra, his native village, and had come to Eisleben to work as a miner. When Martin was six months old he went to Mansfeld and set up a forge, the small profits of which enabled him to send his son to the Latin school of the place. There the boy so distinguished himself that his father determined to make him a lawyer, and sent him for a year to a Franciscan school at Magdeburg, and then to Eisenach near Möhra. There Luther, with other poor scholars, sang for alms in the streets, and his fine tenor voice and gentle manners attracted the attention and gained for him the motherly care of Ursula Cotta, the wife of the burgomaster of Eisenach. From Eisenach he went in his eighteenth year to the high school of Erfurt, where his favourite master was the humanist Trutwetter, who taught him classics and philosophy. He took his bachelor’s degree in 1502, and his master’s in 1505. At Erfurt the preaching of the town’s pastor Weisemann made a deep impression on his mind, as did the preacher’s frequent exhortations to study the Scripture. Luther tells us that he sought in vain for a whole Bible, and that he could only get portions to read. A dangerous illness, the death of a near friend, together with other circumstances, so Wrought on his pious, sensitive nature that in spite of father and family he resolved to give up all his prospects and become a monk. He entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt in June 1505, taking with him Plautus and Virgil, the solitary mementos of the life he had abandoned. His first years of monastic life were spent in fierce mental struggle. He had found a whole Bible and read it diligently, but it did not bring him peace. The feeling of universal human sinfulness, and of his own, was burnt into him both by his dogmatic studies and by his reading of the Scripture. He lived a life of the severest mortification, and invented continually new forms of penance, and all the while heart and head alike told him that outward acts could never banish sin. “I tormented myself to death,” he said, “to make my peace with God, but I was in darkness and found it not.” The vicargeneral of his order, Staupitz, who had passed through somewhat similar experiences, helped him greatly. “There is no true repentance,” he said, “but that which begins with the love of righteousness and of God. Love Him then who has first loved thee.” Staupitz had been taught heart religion by the mystics, and he sent Luther to the sermons of Tauler and to the Theologia Germanica.

When Luther regained his mental health, he took courage to be ordained priest in May 1507, and next year, on the recommendation of Staupitz, the elector of Saxony appointed him professor in the university of Wittenberg, which had been founded in 1502. While in the monastery Luther had assiduously pursued his studies, and his severe mortifications and penances had never interrupted his theological work. He read all the great scholastic theologians, but Augustine was his master in theology, while Erfurt studies under Trutwetter doubtless made him pore over Occam (“mein lieber Meister,” as he afterwards fondly called him) till he got his bulky folios by heart. He began by lecturing on Aristotle; and in 1509 he gave Biblical lectures, which from the very first were a power in the university. His class-room was thronged; his fellow-professors were students. Staupitz forced him also to preach; and his marvellous eloquence, felt to be from the heart, attracted great crowds of hearers. The year 1511 brought an apparent interruption, but in fact only a new development, of Luther’s character and knowledge of the world. He went to Rome, probably in fulfilment of an old vow, and the journey was a marked event in his life. He went up in true pilgrim spirit, a mediaeval Christian, and he came back a Protestant. The pious German was horrified with what he saw in Rome, and he afterwards made telling use of what he had seen in various tracts, and notably in his address to the German nobles. He tells us that at Wittenberg he had pondered over the text, “The just shall live by faith,” that while in Rome the words came back to him, and that on his return journey to Germany the evangelical meaning of the phrase rushed into his mind. On his return to the university he was promoted to the degree of doctor of divinity, in October 1512. The oath he had to take on the occasion “to devote his whole life to study, and faithfully to expound and defend the holy Scripture,” was to him the seal of his mission. He began his work with lectures on the Psalms, and then proceeded to comment on the epistles of Paul to the Romans and Galatians, enforcing especially his peculiar views of the relations between law and gospel. His lectures and his sermons were attended by great audiences, and disciples gathered round him. As early as 1516 his special principles were publicly defended at academical disputations. Staupitz made him district-vicar of his order for Meissen and Thuringia. He made short preaching tours, and his influence was felt far beyond Wittenberg. When the plague came to that university town he remained at his post when others fled. Then came 1517, the year of the Reformation. The new pope, Leo X., had sent agents through Germany to sell indulgences, and had chosen John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, for Saxony. Luther, who had passed through deep soul-struggles ere he won pardon, knew that God’s forgiveness could not bo purchased for money, and thundered against Tetzel and his indulgences from Wittenberg pulpit. He wrote anxiously to the princes and bishops to refuse the pardon-seller a passage through their lands. When Tetzel got to Jiiterbogk near Wittenberg, Luther could stand it no longer. He wrote out ninety-five propositions or theses denouncing indulgences, and on the eve t of All Saints, October 31, nailed the paper to the door of the Castle church. In a short time all Germany was ablaze.

These ninety-five theses are one continuous harangue against the doctrine and practice of pardon-selling, but they do not openly denounce indulgence in every form. They make plain these three things:—(1) there maybe some good in indulgence if it be reckoned, one of the many ways in which God’s forgiveness of sin can be proclaimed; (2) the external signs of sorrow are not the real inward repentance, nor are they as important as that is, and no permission to neglect the outward expression can permit the neglect of true repentance; (3) every Christian who feels true sorrow for sin is there and then pardoned by God for Christ’s sake without any indulgence ticket or other human contrivance. And in his sermons on indulgence Luther declared that repentance consisted in contrition, confession, and absolution, and that contrition was the most important, and in fact the occasion of the other two. If the sorrow be true and heartfelt, confession and pardon will follow. The inward and spiritual fact of sorrow for sin, he thought, was the great matter; the outward signs of sorrow were good also, but God, who alone can pardon, looks to the inward state. These theses, with the sermons explaining them, brought Germany face to face with the reality of blasphemy in the indulgences. Luther’s public life had opened; the Reformation had begun.

Second Period (1517-1524).—Pilgrims who had come to Wittenberg to buy indulgences returned with the theses of Luther in their hands, and with the impression of his powerful evangelical teaching in their hearts. The national mind of Germany took up the matter with a moral earnestness which made an impression, not only upon the princes, but even upon bishops and monks. At first it seemed as if all Germany was going to support Luther. The traffic in indulgences had been so shameless that all good people and all patriotic Germans had been scandalized. But Luther had struck a blow at more than indulgences, although he scarcely knew it at the time. In his theses and explanatory sermons he had declared that the inward spiritual facts of man’s religious experience were of infinitely more value than their expression in stereotyped forms recognized by the church, and he had made it plain too that in such a solemn thing as forgiveness of sin man could go to God directly without human mediation. Pious Christians since the day of Pentecost had thought and felt the same, and all through the Middle Ages men and women had humbly gone to God for pardon trusting in Christ. They had found the pardon they sought, and their simple Christian experience had been sung in the hymns of the mediaeval church, had found expression in its prayers, had formed the heart of the evangelical preaching of the church, and had stirred the masses of people in the many revivals of the Middle Ages. But those pious people, hymn-writers, and preachers had not seen that this inward experience of theirs was really opposed to a great part of the ecclesiastical system of their day. The church had set such small store by that inward religious experience that the common speech of the times had changed the plain meanings of the words “spiritual,” “sacred,” “holy.” A man was “spiritual” if he had been ordained to office in the church; money was “spiritual” if it had been given to the church; an estate, with its roads, woodlands, fields, was “spiritual” or “holy” if it belonged to a bishopric or abbey. And the church that had so degraded the meaning of “spiritual” had thrust itself and its external machinery in between God and the worshipper, and had proclaimed that no man could draw near to God save through its appointed ways of approach. Confession was to be made to God through the priest; God spoke pardon only in the priest’s absolution. When Luther attacked indulgences in the way he did he struck at this whole system.

Compelled to examine the ancient history of the church, he soon discovered the whole tissue of fraud and imposture by which the canon law had from the 9th century downwards been foisted upon the Christian world. There is scarcely any essential point in ancient ecclesiastical history bearing upon the question of the invocation of saints, of clerical priesthood, of episcopal and metropolitan pretensions, which his genius did not discern in its true light. Whatever Luther denounced as fraud or abuse, from its contradiction to spiritual worship, may be said to have been openly or tacitly admitted to be such. But what produced the greatest effect at the time were his short popular treatises, exegetical and practical—his Interpretation of the Magnificat or the Canticle of the Virgin Mary, his Exposition of the Ten Commandments, and of the Lords Prayer. The latter soon found its way into Italy, although without Luther’s name, and has never been surpassed either in genuine Christian thought or in style. He resolved also to preach throughout Germany, and in 1518 appeared at a general meeting of his order at Heidelberg. There he held a public disputation on certain theses called by him paradoxes, in which he strove to make apparent the contrast between the external view of religion taught by the schoolmen and the spiritual view of gospel truth based upon justifying faith. He made many disciples on this occasion, of whom perhaps the most notable was Martin Bucer. On his return to Wittenberg in May 1518, Luther wrote and published an able and moderate exposition of the theses, and sent it to some of the German bishops. He proclaimed the need for a thorough reformation of the church, which he thought could only be effected, with the aid of God, by an earnest co-operation of the whole of Christendom. This energy awakened opponents. Conrad Wimpina at Frankfort, Hoogstraten at Cologne, Sylvester Trierias at Rome, and above all John Eck, an old fellow student, at Ingolstadt, attacked his theses, and discovered heresy in them. The result was that Luther was summoned to appear before the pope at Rome, but the elector of Saxony intervened, and got the matter so arranged that Luther was cited to appear beforo the pope’s legate at Augsburg.

The pope was unwilling to quarrel with Germany, where the whole people seemed to be supporting Luther, and the cardinal legate James de Vio of Gaeta, commonly called Cajetan, was told to be conciliatory. Luther went to Augsburg on foot, and presented himself before the legate, but the interview was not a successful one. The cardinal began by brow-beating the monk, and ended by being somewhat afraid of him. “I can dispute no longer with this beast,” he said; “it has two wicked eyes and marvellous thoughts in its head.” Luther could not respect either the learning or the judgment of Cajetan. He left Augsburg by stealth, afraid of capture, condemned, but appealing “from the pope ill-informed to the pope to-be-better-informed.” On his return to Wittenberg he found the elector in great anxiety of mind, in consequence of an imperious letter from the cardinal, and offered to leave Saxony for France. The elector, however, allowed him to remain, and the pope sent another legate to settle the affairs of Germany. This was Carl von Miltitz, a native of Saxony, a man of the world, and no great theologian. He resolved to meet Luther privately, and did so in the house of Spalatin, court preacher to the elector of Saxony. In his interview with Cajetan Luther had refused to retract two propositions—that the treasury of indulgences is not filled with the merits of Christ, and that he who receives the sacrament must have faith in the grace offered to him. Miltitz made no such demands. He apparently gave up Tetzel and the indulgences, agreed with much of Luther’s theology, but insisted that he had not been respectful to the pope, and that such conduct weakened the authority which rightly belonged to the church. He wished Luther to write to the pope and apologize. Luther consented. It was further arranged that both parties were to cease from writing or preaching on the controverted matters, and that the pope was to commission a body of learned theologians to investigate. Luther accordingly wrote to the pope, telling him that he “freely confessed that the authority of the church was superior to everything, and that nothing in heaven or on earth can be preferred before it save only Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all.” This was in March 1519. Meanwhile Luther had appealed from the pope to a general council to be held in Germany. In the end of 1518 a papal bull concerning indulgences had appeared, confirming the old doctrine, without any reference to the late dispute.

The years 1519, 1520, 1521 were a time of fierce but triumphant struggle with the hitherto irresistible Church of Rome, soon openly supported by the empire. The first of these years passed in public conferences and disputations. Luther had promised Miltitz to refrain from controversy, on the understanding that his adversaries did not attack him, and he kept his word. But his old antagonist John Eck published thirteen theses attacking Luther, and challenged Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, a friend and colleague of Luther, to a public disputation. Luther instantly replied to Eek’s theses, and the disputation between Carlstadt and Eck was immediately followed by one between Eck and Luther. In this famous Leipsic disputation the controversy took a new shape. It was no longer a theological dispute; it became a conflict between two opposing sets of principles affecting the whole round of church life. Luther and Eck began about indulgences and penance, but the debate soon turned on the authority of the Roman Church and of the pope. Eck maintained the superiority of the Roman Church and of the pope as successor of St Peter and vicar-general of Christ. His argument was “no pope no church.” Luther denied the superiority of the Roman Church, and supported his denial by the testimony of eleven centuries, by the decrees of Nicaea, by the Holy Scriptures. He maintained that the Greek Church was part of the church of Christ, else Athanasius, Basil, and the Gregories were outside Christianity. The pope has more need of the church, he said, than the church has of the pope. Eck retorted that these had been the arguments of Wickliffe and of Huss, and that they had been condemned at the council of Constance. Luther refused to admit that the condemnation was right; Eck refused to debate with an opponent who would not abide by the decision of oecumenical councils; and so the disputation ended. But Luther immediately afterwards completed his argument and published it. He asserted that he did not mean to deny the bishop of Rome’s primacy, provided the pope kept his own place as servant of the church, but that he did mean to deny that there could be no church apart from the pope. The church, he said, is the communion of the faithful, and consists of the elect, and so never can lack the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is not always with popes and councils. This church, he declared, is invisible, but real, and every layman who is in it and has Holy Scripture and holds by it is more to be believed than popes or councils, who do not. This Leipsic disputation had very important consequences. On the one hand, Eck and his associates felt that Luther must now be put down by force, and pressed for a papal bull to condemn him; and Luther himself, on the other hand, felt for the first time what great consequences lay in his opposition to the indulgences. He saw that his Augustinian theology, with its recognition of the heinousness of sin, and of the need of the sovereign grace of God, was incompatible with the whole round of mediaeval ceremonial life, proved it to be impossible for men to live perfectly holy lives, and so made saints and saint worship and relics and pilgrimages impossible things. He saw the uselessness of the monastic life, with its vigils and fasts and scourgings. These things were not helps, he saw, but hindrances to the true religious life. The Leipsic disputation made Luther feel that he had finally broken with Rome, and it made all Germany see it too, and raised the popular enthusiasm to a white heat. The people of the towns declared their sympathy with the bold monk. Ulrich von Hutten and the German humanists saw that this was more than a monkish quarrel, and recognized Luther as their leader. Franz von Sickingen and the free knights hailed him as a useful ally. Even the poor down-trodden peasants hoped that he might be a luckier leader than Joss Fritz, and that he might help them to free themselves from the unbearable miseries of their lot. Luther became the leader of the German nation after the Leipsic disputation.

During 1520 the first great political crisis occurred, on the occasion of the death of Maximilian, and ended fatally, in consequence of the want of patriotic and political wisdom among the German princes. Ranke has pointed out the political elements which then existed for creating a Germany as free and independent as France or England; and Justus Möser of Osnabruck had long before truly declared, “If the emperor at that time had destroyed the feudal system, the deed would have been, according to the spirit in which it was done, the grandest or the blackest in the history of the world.” Möser means that if the emperor had embraced the Reformed faith, and placed himself at the head of the lower nobility and cities, united in one body as the lower house of a German parliament, this act would have saved Germany. Probably some such idea was in the mind of the archbishop of Treves when he proposed that Frederick, the elector of Saxony, should be chosen emperor. Frederick might have carried out this policy, just because, if elected, he had nothing to rely upon except the German nation, then more numerous and powerful than it has been since; but he had not the courage to accept a dignity which he supposed to require for its support a more powerful house than his own. Charles, the son of Maximilian, was elected emperor, and that election meant the continuation of a mediaeval policy in Germany.

Meanwhile Luther was at Wittenberg continuing his course of preaching, lecturing, and writing. The number of matriculated students had increased from 232 in 1517 to 458 in 1519, and to 579 in 1520; but large numbers besides these came to hear Luther. The study of Greek and Hebrew was diligently carried on, and the university was in a most flourishing state. Some of the finest productions of Luther’s pen belong to this period,—his Sermons on the sacraments, on excommunication, on the priesthood, on good works, his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation on the Reformation of Christendom, and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church; The address to the German nobles, published on June 26, 1520, created a great deal of excitement not only in Germany but beyond it. It was this appeal which first made Zwingli feel in sympathy with Luther, who showed in this little book that the Romish doctrine of two estates, one secular and the other spiritual, was simply a wall raised round the church to prevent reform. All Christians are spiritual, he said, and there is no difference among them. The secular power is of God as well as the spiritual, and has rule over all Christians without exception,—pope, bishops, monks, and nuns. He also appealed to the people to prevent so much money going out of the kingdom to Italy. “Why,” he said, “should 300,000 florins be sent every year from Germany to Rome ?” His address raised the cry of Germany for the Germans, civil government uncontrolled by ecclesiastics, a married clergy, while he called for a national system of education as the foundation of a better order of things. The most important work of the time, however, was the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God (October 1520), in which he boldy attacked the papacy in its principles. The main thought in the book is expressed in the title. The catholic church had been taken into bondage by the papacy, as the Jewish people were taken to Babylon, and ought to be brought back into freedom. Luther described the sacraments, real and pretended, and showed how each had been carried into captivity and ought to be delivered. He concluded in a very characteristic fashion. “I hear that bulls and other papistical things have been prepared, in which I am urged to recant or be proclaimed a heretic. If that be true, I wish this little book to be part of my future recantation.” The printing press sent thousands of these books through Germany, and the people awaited the bull, armed beforehand against its arguments. The bull was published at Rome on July 15, 1520. It accused Luther of holding the opinions of Huss, and condemned him. Eck brought it to Leipsic, and published it there in October. It was posted up in various German towns, and usually the citizens and the students tore it down. At last it reached Luther. He answered it in a pamphlet, in which he called it the execrable bull of Antichrist, and at last he proclaimed at Wittenberg that he would publicly burn it. On December 10, 1520, at the head of a procession of professors and students, Luther passed out of the university gates to the market-place, where a bonfire had been laid. One of the professors lighted the fuel, and Luther threw the bull on the flames; a companion flung after it a copy of the canon law. Germany was henceforth to be ruled by the law of the land, and not by the law of Rome. The news flashed over all Germany, kindling stern joy. Rome had shot its last bolt; if Luther was to be crushed, only the emperor could do it. On December 17th Luther drew up before a notary and five witnesses a solemn protest, in which he appealed from the pope to a general council. This protest, especially when we take it along with other future acts of Luther, meant a great deal more than many historians have discerned. It was the declaration that the Christian community is wider than the Roman Church, and was an appeal from later mediaeval to earlier mediaeval ideas of catholicity. In the times immediately preceding the Reformation, the common description of Christian society was social life in communion with the bishop of Rome, but in the earlier Middle Ages Christian society had also been defined to be social life within the holy Roman empire. For the Roman empire had imposed on all its subjects a creed, and to that extent had made itself a Christian community. The oecumenical council was the ecclesiastical assembly and final court of appeal for this society, whose limits were determined by the boundaries of the mediaeval empire, and Luther by this appeal not only declared that he could be a catholic Christian without being in communion with Rome, but secured an ecclesiastical standing ground for himself and his followers which the law could not help recognizing. It was an appeal from the catholic church defined ecclesiastically to the catholic church defined politically, and foreshadowed the future political relations of the Lutheran Church.

The pope had appealed to the emperor to crush heresy in Germany, and Charles V,, with his Spanish training and his dreams of a restored mediaeval empire, where he might reign as vicar of God circa civilia, had promised his aid. He had declared, however, that he must pay some regard to the views of Frederick of Saxony, from whom he had received the imperial crown, and had in the end resolved to summon Luther before the diet to be held at Worms. The diet was opened by Charles in January 1521, and the papal nuncio Hieronymus Alexander (afterwards archbishop of Brindisi and cardinal) urged first privately and then publicly in the diet that Luther should be condemned unheard, as one already tried and convicted by the papal bull. He threatened the Germans with extermination, it is said, in case of their refusal to accede to his requests,— “We shall excite the one to fight against the other, that all may perish in their own blood,”—a threat to which the whole subsequent history of Germany offers the commentary. But the princes had their own quarrel with Rome, and urged besides that it would be unfair to condemn a man unheard and untried. A committee appointed by the diet presented a list of one hundred grievances of the German nation against Rome. This startled the emperor, who, instead of ordering Luther’s books to be burned, issued only a provisional order that they should be delivered to the magistrate. He then sent to summon Luther before him, and granted him a safe conduct to and from the diet. In April Luther set out for Worms. Before leaving Wittenberg he had devised with his friend Lucas Cranach the artist what he called “a good book for the laity,” a series of woodcuts depicting contrasts between Christ and the pope, with explanations in pithy German:— Christ washing the disciples’ feet on one page, the pope holding out his toe to be kissed, on the other; Christ bearing his cross, the pope carried in state through Rome on men’s shoulders; Christ driving money-changers out of the temple, the pope selling indulgences, with piles of money before him; and so on. Luther went to Worms, believing that he was going to his death. Everywhere on the road he saw the imperial edict against his books posted up, yet his journey was in some sort a triumphal progress; the people came out in crowds to meet him, and at Erfurt the herald gave way to the universal request, and, against his instructions, permitted Luther to preach. On the 16th Luther entered the imperial city amidst an immense concourse of people. Next day he was brought before the diet. When the hour approached he fell on his knees, and uttered in great agony a prayer such as can only be pronounced by a man filled with the spirit of Him who prayed in Gethsemane. When he appeared before the diet he was asked by John Eck, an official of the archbishop of Treves (to be distinguished from Eck the theologian), whether the books piled on a table were his, and whether he would retract what was written in them. Luther acknowledged his writings, and requested that as the matter written concerned the highest of all subjects, the word of God and the welfare of souls, he might have time for consideration before he answered the second question. His request was granted, and he retired. Luther’s resolution had been taken before he appeared at the diet; he only desired to convince friends as well as foes that he did not act with precipitation at so decisive a moment. The next day he employed in prayer and meditation, making a solemn vow upon a volume of Scripture to remain faithful to the gospel, should he have to seal his confession with his blood. When he was again brought before the diet, he answered at great length, dividing his writings into three kinds :— (1) those in which he had written about faith and morals in such fashion that even his opponents admitted that what he had said was worth reading: he could not retract these; (2) those in which he had condemned the papacy and popish doings, which had ruined Christendom body and soul: to retract these would be mean and wicked, and he would not; (3) those in which he had attacked private persons with perhaps more vehemence than was right: he would not retract, but would readily listen to any one who pointed out errors. He spoke in German with earnestness and force, but the emperor and his followers scarcely understood him, and he was asked to repeat his answer in Latin. He did so, and the papal party were irritated; the official declared that they were not there to make distinctions or to discuss things which had been long ago settled by councils; let the accused say whether he recanted or not. Luther answered, “Well then, if your imperial majesty and your graces require a plain answer, I will give you one of that kind without horns and teeth. It is this. I must be convinced either by the witness of Scripture or by clear arguments, for I do not trust either pope or councils by themselves, since it is manifest that they have often erred and contradicted themselves—for I am bound by the Holy Scriptures which I have quoted, and my conscience is held by the word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, for to act against conscience is unsafe and unholy. So help me God. Amen.” Eck asked him whether he actually meant to say that general councils had erred. He answered that he declared, and that openly, that councils had erred several times, that the council of Constance had erred. Eck replied that he surely did not mean to say that general councils had erred. Luther persisted that he could prove that they had erred in many places. The emperor made a sign to end the matter, and Luther said, “I can do nought else. Here stand I. God help me. Amen.” He went back to his lodgings in deep depression of spirit, but was comforted on learning that the elector had told Spalatin, “Doctor Martin has spoken well in Latin and in German before the emperor and all the princes and estates of the empire; only he is too keen for me.” Luther’s answer created very various feelings among those who heard him. The Italians and Spaniards wished the safe conduct revoked, and Luther burnt at once. Most of the Germans resolved to protect him at all hazards. The emperor deliberated for a day, and then declared that he meant to permit Luther to return safely from the council, but that his opinions were to be condemned, and all who clung to them punished for the future. But the proposal to cancel the safe conduct had roused the people. There were threatenings of insurrections of the peasants, and of Sickingen and the knights; and the emperor, to allay the feeling, resolved that three days should be given to Luther to reconsider what he had said. Theologians came to argue with him, and to induce him to make some recantation, but in vain. At last the edict of the diet was pronounced, in which Luther was condemned in the severest terms, and placed under the ban of the empire. This meant that when his safe conduct expired he was an outlaw, and that all people were forbidden to give him food or fire or shelter. His books were to be burnt, his goods confiscated, and his adherents punished. Whoever disobeyed the edict incurred the ban of the empire.

I'rederick the elector of Saxony thought that Luther’s life was no longer safe, as in twenty-one days his safe conduct would expire. Luther was hurried away from Worms, and as he travelled back to Wittenberg he was stopped near Eisenach by a band of armed knights, and carried to the fortified castle of the Wartburg above Eisenach by Frederick’s orders. The elector’s fears, as matters turned out, were exaggerated. Germany was in no mood to give Luther up, and there were threatenings of risings when he disappeared, only appeased when it was whispered about that he was in friendly keeping. Luther remained at the Wartburg, dressed as a knight, ordered to let his beard grow, and bearing the name Junker George, for ten months, and made use of his enforced leisure to begin what was perhaps his greatest literary work, his translation of the Scriptures from the original texts. The New Testament was almost entirely his own work. He used for the text Erasmus’s fourth edition, and took incredible pains with his work. Some of his MS. still survives, and shows that he corrected and recorrected with great pains. Some passages were altered at least fifteen times. He often felt at a loss for want of technical knowledge, and kid all his friends under contribution. Thus, when in difficulty about the translation of Rev. xxi. he wrote to Spalatin to ask for names and descriptions of all the precious stones mentioned. When engaged in the translation of the descriptions of the slaughter of beasts for sacrifice, he got a butcher to kill some sheep for him, that he might learn what every part of a sheep was called. His aim was to reproduce the tone and spirit of the original as far as he possibly could. No fine courtly words, he said to Spalatin; this book can only be explained in a simple popular style. It must be understood by the mother in the house, by the children in the streets, and by the u common man in the market.” The translation of the New Testament was first published on September 21, 1522, and a second edition appeared in October. By choosing the Franconian dialect in use in the imperial chancery, Luther made himself intelligible to those whose vernacular dialect was High German or Low German, and his Bible is still the standard of the German tongue, and has preserved unity of language, literature, and thought to the German nation during its political disintegration. The translation of the Old Testament, begun in the same year, was a much more tedious task, and Luther was assisted in it by what Matthesius calls a private Sanhedrim. The friends met once a week, several hours before supper, in the old Augustinian monastery at Wittenberg, which had become Luther’s house. Bugeuhagen, Justus Jonas, Melanchthon, Aurogallus, Roser, and several Jewish rabbis made the “Sanhedrim.” Luther thus describes the work: “We are labouring hard to bring out the prophets in the mothertongue. Ach Gott! what a great and difficult work it is to make the Hebrew writers speak German! They resist it so, and are unwilling to give up their Hebrew existence and become like Germans.” At the Wartburg Luther was ill in health and somewhat troubled in mind. He had been ill before he was summoned to Worms, and his long journey in the waggon with its cloth tent, the excitement at Worms, and the solitude at the Wartburg had enfeebled him; but his literary activity was untiring. He wrote short commentaries on the G8th Psalm and on other portions of Scripture, and a set of homilies intended to guide evangelical preachers, the Kirchen-postille. He also wrote one or two short treatises on worship, on the mass, on confession, and on monkish vows, intended to guide the reformed churches in the rejection of superstitious usages. Up to this time there had been no change in the church services. The true doctrine of the gospel had been preached in Germany, and Romish rites and ceremonies had been exhibited as abuses, but not ∙a single word or portion of these ceremonies had been changed, and Luther felt that the time had come to bring the preaching and the usages into harmony with each other. In the midst of these labours news came to him that Germany was threatened with a new sale of indulgences. The cardinal archbishop of Mainz, Albert of Brandenburg, unable to pay the 26,000 ducats due to Rome for his pallium, had resolved to raise the money by indulgences. Luther wrote a fierce tractate Against the New Idol at Halle. The archbishop getting word of this, sent to Frederick asking him to restrain Luther from attacking a brother-elector, and Frederick wished Luther to desist. He was indignant, but at the request of Melanchthon he agreed to lay the treatise aside until he had written to the archbishop. “Put down the idol within a fortnight, or I shall attack you publicly,” he wrote; and the archbishop in reply thanked Luther for his Christian brotherly reproof, and promised, “with the help of God, to live henceforth as a pious bishop and Christian prince.”

Luther’s absence from his congregation, his students, and his friends and books at Wittenberg weighed heavily upon him, and he began to hear disquieting rumours. Carlstadt and other friends at Wittenberg were urging on the Reformation at too rapid a rate. Their idea was that everything in worship not expressly enjoined in the Bible should at once be abolished. The churches were to be stripped of crucifixes, images of saints, and the ritual of the mass; the festivals of the Christian year were to be neglected, the monastic life put down by force; and some even wished it ordained that all clergymen should be married. To Luther all this seemed dangerous, and sure to provoke a reaction; the changes insisted upon were to him matters of indifference, which might be left to the individual to do or leave undone as he pleased. Auricular confession, the reception of the Lord’s Supper under both forms, pictures in churches, the observance of festivals and fasts, and the monastic life were adiaphora. He wrote earnestly warning his friends against rashness and violence, and he was anxious and distressed. Still he held out patiently till events occurred which called for his presence. Certain men claiming to be prophets, Nicolaus Storch, a weaver, and his disciple Thomas Münzer, belonging to the village of Zwickau, near the Erzgebirge on the borders of Bohemia, preached wildly a thoroughgoing reformation in the church and the banishment of priests and Bibles. All believers were priests, they said, and all the faithful had the Holy Spirit within them, and did not need any such external rule as Holy Scripture. They were banished from Zwickau, and came to Wittenberg, where Carlstadt joined them. Fired by their preaching, the people tore down the images in the churches and indulged in various kinds of rioting. Luther felt he could remain no longer in hiding. He wrote to the elector telling him that he must quit the Wartburg, and at the same time declaring that he left at his own peril. “You wish to know what to do in the present troublesome circumstances,” he said. “Do nothing. As for myself, let the command of the emperor be executed in town or country. Do not resist if they come to seize and kill me; only let the doors remain open for the preaching of the word of God.” He was warned that Duke George of Saxony, a violent enemy of the Reformation, was waiting to execute the sentence of the ban. “If things were at Leipsic as they are at Wittenberg,” he said, “I would go there, if it rained Duke Georges for nine days running, and every one of them nine times as fierce as he.” He left the Wartburg, suddenly appearing in Wittenberg on March 3, 1522, and plunged at once into the midst of struggles very different from those which he had hitherto so victoriously overcome. Hé found things in a worse state than he had feared; even Melanchthon had been carried away. Luther preached almost daily for eight consecutive days against Carlstadt and the fanatics from Zwickau, and in the end he prevailed and the danger was averted. His theme was that violence does no good to God’s word; there are in religion matters of indifference. “The Word created heaven and earth and all things; the same Word must also now create, and not we poor sinners. Summa summarum, I will preach it, I will talk of it, I will write about it, but I will not use force or compulsion with any one.” “In this life every one must not do what he has a right to do, but must forego his rights, and consider what is useful to his brother. Do not make a ‘must be’ out of a t may be,’ as you have now been doing, that you may not have to answer for those whom you have misled by your uncharitable liberty.” Storch and Münzer, sincere though misguided men, sought an interview with him. They laid their claims for support before him; they said that they were inspired and could prove it, for they would tell him what then passed through his mind. Luther challenged them to the proof. “You think in your own heart that my doctrine is true,” said one of them impressively. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” exclaimed Luther, and dismissed them. “They were quite right,” he said to his friends afterwards; “that thought crossed my mind about some of their assertions. A spirit evidently was in them; but what could it be but the evil one ?”

When Charles V. had laid Luther under the ban of the empire, he had undoubtedly been greatly influenced by political considerations. Francis 1. of France and Charles of Spain were rivals, and the whole of the European policy of the time turns on this rivalry. The opponents schemed to attract to themselves and to divert from their neighbour the two outside powers of England and the papacy, and in

1521 it was the policy of Charles to win alliance with the pope. The Germans saw that they were being sacrificed in this game of statecraft, and there was no great willingness even among Roman Catholics to put the edict of Worms in force. Luther at the Wartburg and at Wittenberg was protected by the national feeling of Germany from attack. The diet of the empire met in

1522 at Nuremberg, and the new imperial council, which ruled in the emperor’s absence, and very fairly represented the popular feeling in Germany, was in no mood to yield to the papacy. Leo X. had died, and his successor Adrian VI., an orthodox Dominican and an advocate for reformation in the cloisters and in the lives of the clergy, proposed to begin reformation by crushing the German heresy. He instructed his nuncio to the diet to demand the execution of the edict of Worms. The imperial council refused until the grievances of Germany were heard and redressed. They spoke of concordats broken and papal pledges unfulfilled, and finally they demanded a free oecumenical council to be held in Germany within a year, which should settle abuses, and until it met they wished the creed to be an open question. The nuncio found that the pulpits of the free imperial city were filled with preachers, mostly monks, who were making the city resound with gospel preaching. He asked the diet at least to arrest the preachers; the diet pleaded incompetence. He proposed to seize them himself in the pope’s name; the magistrates threatened to release them by force, and the nuncio had to desist. The diet then presented a hundred gravamina or subjects of complaint which the German nation had against the papacy, including in the list indulgences, dispensations bought for money, absentee bishops and other ecclesiastics, the use of bans and interdicts, pilgrimages, excessive demands for money, and the decisions of matrimonial cases in ecclesiastical courts. The complaint was an expansion of Luther’s address to the German nobles. The nuncio could do nothing, and was forced to accept by way of compromise a decision from the diet that only the verum, purum, sincerum, et sanctum evangelism was to be preached in Germany. Nuremberg reversed the edict of Worms. Next year the diet met again at Nuremberg, and the new pope, Clement VIE., sent the celebrated cardinal-legate Lorenzo Campeggio to demand the execution of the edict of Worms. The diet asked in return what had become of the hundred grievances of the German nation, to which Rome had never deigned to return an answer. Campeggio declared that at Rome the document had been considered merely as a private pamphlet; on which the diet, in great indignation, insisted on the necessity of an oecumenical council, and proceeded to annul the edict of Worms,— declaring, however, in their communication to the pope, that it should be conformed to as much as possible, which with respect to many cities and princes meant not at all. Finally it was resolved that a diet to be held at Spires was to decide upon the religious differences. But between Nuremberg and Spires an event occurred, the revolt of Sickingen and the knights, which was destined to work harm to the Reformation. The diet of Spires met, and, many of the members being inclined to connect Sickingen and Luther, there was a strong feeling against the Reformation, but the feeling was not strong enough to induce the diet to comply with the demands of the legate Campeggio and revoke the decisions of Nuremberg, and it refused to execute the edict of Worms. Campeggio, however, was able to separate Germany into two parties, and this separation became apparent at the convention of Ratisbon, where Bavaria, Austria, and other South-German states resolved to come to separate terms with the papacy. The curia promised to stop a number of ecclesiastical extortions and indulgences, to make better appointments to benefices, and to hand over some of the ecclesiastical estates to the Austrian and Bavarian princes; while the states promised to set aside the gravamina, and to permit no toleration of the new doctrines. On the other hand, many states which had kept aloof from the Reformation now joined it, and declared against the seven sacraments, the abuses of the mass, the worship of saints, and the supremacy of the pope. The emperor’s brother and successor Ferdinand was a bitter foe to the Reformation, and urged persecution. Four Augustinian monks at Antwerp were the first martyrs; they were burnt on 1st July 1523. Ferdinand began the bloody work of persecution in the hereditary states of Austria immediately after the convention of Ratisbon. At Passau in Bavaria, and at Buda in Hungary, the faggots were lighted. The dukes of Bavaria followed the same impulse.

Luther’s literary activity during these years was unparalleled. In 1522 he published, it is said, one hundred and thirty treatises, and eighty-three in the following year, among them the famous Contra Henricum regem Angliae, in which, after having dealt mercilessly with the royal controversialist, he exclaims, “I cry ‘ Gospel! Gospel! Christ! Christ! ’ and they ceasenot to answer ‘Usages! Usages! Ordinances! Ordinances! Fathers! Fathers !’ The apostle St Paul annihilates with a thunderstorm from heaven all these fooleries of Henry.” His principal work, however, during these years was the publication of certain short tracts upon worship and its reform, followed by various directories for public worship, which afterwards served as a model for the numerous Lutheran Church ordinances. In 1522, while Luther was still in the Wartburg, Carlstadt had published for the church at Wittenberg an ordinance for directing the government and worship of the church. It was very brief, but very revolutionary (cf Richter’s Evangel, Kirchenordnungen, vol. ii. p. 484). This was withdrawn after Luther’s return; but the Reformer felt that the time had come for a definite reform of public worship and for publishing his views upon the subject. Accordingly, after a series of tracts in 1522 upon religious and monastic vows, the abolition of private masses, the Lord’s Supper under both forms, saint worship, the so-called spiritual estate, and the married life, he published in 1523 The Order of the Worship of God. He was, as usual, conservative, and made as few changes as possible in the form of service, caring only to give full place to prayer and the reading and preaching of the word. The order of worship was followed by the Formula Hissae, published in Latin, but at once translated into German by Paul Speratus, in which the ancient form was as much preserved as is consistent with evangelical doctrine. Luther was of opinion that the more difficult introits should be removed from the order of the Eucharist, and simpler hymns put in their place, and he also was strongly in favour of the singing of hymns in the common worship. This led to the publication in 1524 of a small collection of church hymns, which was Luther’s first German Church Hymn-book, and which was the beginning of the wonderfully rich German Protestant hymnology. In the same year Luther translated the order of baptism, and published it under the title of Das Tauf- Büchlein. He also drew up a directory for public worship for Leisnig (cf. Richter, op. cit., vol. i.). The hymn-book was followed by a prayer-book, and by the publication of a short summary of the heads of Christian truth fitted for the instruction of the “rude common man.” Luther’s catechism for children completed this series of works, intended to aid worship, public and private. Notwithstanding this immense amount of literary work, Luther found time to make preaching tours, and visited in this way Altenburg, Zwickau, Eilenburg, Erfurt, Weimar, and many other places, and was cheered by the progress of the Reformation throughout North Germany. About this time also he sent a powerful address to the municipal councils of the German towns, exhorting them to establish everywhere Christian schools, both elementary and secondary. “Oh my dear Germans,” he exclaimed, “the divine word is now in abundance offered to you. God knocks at your door; open it to Him! Forget not the poor youth. . . . The strength of a town does not consist in its towers and buildings, but in counting a great number of learned, serious, honest, and well-educated citizens.” He tried to impress upon them the necessity for the highest education, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, by showing how serviceable such learning had been to him in his attack upon the abuses of Rome. He also appealed to the princes and cities to help the gospel and the Reformed churches; but church rule and church maintenance could not be fixed on a legal basis until much later.

Here we conclude this first glorious period of Luther’s life. The problem to be solved was not to be solved by Luther and by Germany; the progressive vital element of reformation passed from Germany to Switzerland, and through Switzerland to France, Holland, England, and Scotland. Before he descended into the grave, and Germany into thraldom, Luther saved, as much as was in him, his country and the world, by maintaining the fundamental principles of the Reformation against Melanchthon’s pusillanimity; but three Protestant princes and the free cities were the leaders. The confession was the work of Melanchthon; but the deed was done by the laity of the nation. The German Reformation was made by a scholastically trained monk, seconded by professors; the Swiss Reformation was the work of a free citizen, an honest Christian, trained by the classics of antiquity, and nursed in true hard-won civil liberty. Luther’s work was continued, preserved, and advanced by the work of the Swiss and French Reformers. The monk began; ∙the citizen finished. If the one destroyed Judaism, the other converted paganism, then most powerful, both as idolatry and as irreligious learning. But as long as Luther lived he did not lose his supremacy, and he deserved to keep it. His mind was universal, and therefore catholic in the proper sense of the word.

Third Period (1525-1546). In this third period the epic of Luther’s life was changed into tragedy; the revolt of the knights under Sickingen, the Anabaptist tumults, and the peasants’ war in the Black Forest alienated the sympathies of many from the Reformation, and resulted in a divided Germany (see vol. x. p. 498, vol. i. p. 786). From Sickingen’s rising Luther sedulously kept himself aloof, but the insurgent had more than once proclaimed himself on Luther’s side, and that was enough to make many of the princes resolve to have nothing to do with reform. The convention of Ratisbon was the result of Sickingen’s abortive revolt. The Anabaptists have to do with Luther’s history mainly in so far as his contact with them modified and gave final shape to his doctrine of baptism. In his tract on the Sacrament of Baptism, 1519, Luther distinguishes carefully between the sign-and the thing signified. The ordinance is just the sign, the thing signified is the death to sin, the new birth, and a new life in Christ. This new life goes on here on earth, so does the death to sin. Believers die daily to sin, not once for all in baptism, and their life in Christ is not a full life whilst earth’s life lasts; and so baptism is merely a sign of what is never really accomplished till after death. In the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God, 1520, Luther adopted a view not unlike Calvin’s. He said that God’s word was always more than a statement, it was also a promise. Baptism was therefore a seal or pledge, a promise that what was signified by the ordinance would be bestowed. Only unbelief can rob the baptized of the benefits of their baptism and make the ordinance of none effect. But after Luther came in contact with the Anabaptists he departed from this simple theory, for he thought that he could not justify infant baptism upon it, and so in his Sermon on Baptism, 1535, he introduced a third theory, which approached much nearer to mediaeval views. He explained that in the ordinance of baptism God through His word so works on the water in the sacrament that it is no longer mere water, but has the power of the blood of Christ in some mysterious fashion. Luther then asked if faith was required for the worthy partaking of the sacrament, and he felt obliged to confess that the faith of the recipient was not needed. This sermon marks Luther’s reaction towards ideas he had abandoned in 1519-20.

More important was the connexion between the Lutheran movement and the peasant revolt. The first coalitions of the peasants against the intolerable rapacity and cruelty of the feudal aristocracy had begun before the close of the 15th century. But all the oppressed inclined towards Luther, and the oppressors, most of whom were sovereigns, bishops, and abbots, towards the pope. The struggle in the peasants’warwas really between the reforming and the papist party, and it could easily be foreseen that Luther would be dragged into it. As early as January 1525 the revolutionary movement had extended from the Black Forest into Thuringia and Saxony, and the peasants were eagerly looking to Luther for help. The more moderate party published their programme in twelve articles, with a very remarkable preface, in which they stated that they did not wish for war, and asked nothing that was not in accordance with the gospel. These articles were the following :—

(1) the whole congregation to have power to elect their minister, and if he was found unworthy to dismiss him;

(2) the great tithe, i.e., the legal tithe of corn, to be still payable for the maintenance of the pastor, and what is over to go to support the poor; the small tithes to be no longer payable; (3) serfdom abolished, since Christ has redeemed us all by His precious blood; (4) game, fish, and fowl to be free as God created them; (5) the rich have appropriated the forests, this to be rearranged; (6) compulsory service to be abolished—wages for work; (7) peasant service to be limited by contract, and work done above contract to be paid for; (8) fair rents; (9) arbitrary punishments abolished; (10) the commons restored; (11) the right of heriot, ue., the right of the lord to take the vassal’s best chattel, to be abolished; (12) all these propositions to be tested by Scripture, and what cannot stand the test to be rejected. Most impartial historians have declared that their demands were on the whole just, and most of them have become law in Germany. The words of Scripture brought forward by the peasants prove clearly that Luther’s preaching of the gospel had acted, not as an incentive, but as a corrective. The peasants declared their desire to uphold the injunctions of the gospel, peace, patience, and union. Like the Puritans in the following century, the peasants say that they raise their voice to God who saved the people of Israel; and they believe that God can save them from their powerful oppressors, as he did the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh. Luther evidently felt himself appealed to. The crisis was difficult, and, in spite of what has been said in his defence, he failed, as he failed afterwards in the conference with the Swiss deputies at Marburg. Had Luther thrown the weight of his influence into the peasants’ scale, and brought the middle classes, who would certainly have followed him, to the side of the peasants, a peaceful solution would in all probability have been arrived at, and the horrors of massacre averted. But Luther, bold enough against the pope or the emperor, never had courage to withstand that authority to which he was constantly accustomed, the German prince. He began by speaking for the peasants in his address to the lords, and had courage enough to tell them some plain truths, as when he said that some of the twelve articles of the peasants are so equitable as to dishonour the lords before God and the world, when he told them that they must not refuse the peasants’ demands to choose pastors who would preach the gospel, and when he said that the social demands of the peasants were just, and that good government was not established for its own interest nor to make the people subservient to caprice and evil passion, but for the interest of the people. “Your exactions are intolerable,” he said, “you take away from the peasant the fruit of his labour in order to spend his labour upon your finery and luxury.” He was courageous enough also in asking the peasants to refrain from violence, and in telling them that they would put themselves in the wrong by rebellion, But what Luther did not see was that the time for good advice had gone by, and that he had to take his stand on one side or the other. He trusted too much in fine language. His advice that arbiters should be chosen, some from the nobility and some from towns, that both parties should give up something, and that the matter should be amicably settled by human law, came ten months too late. The bloody struggle came; the stream of rebellion and destruction rolled on to Thuringia and Saxony, and Luther apparently lost his head, and actually encouraged the nobles in their sanguinary suppression of the revolt, in his pamphlet entitled Against the Murdering, Robbing Rats of Peasants, where he hounds on the authorities to “stab, kill, and strangle.” The princes leagued together, and the peasants were routed everywhere. One army, with neither military arms nor leaders, was utterly routed at Frankenhausen, another in Würtemberg. Fifty thousand were slain or butchered by wholesale executions. Among this number many of the quietest and most moderate people were made victims in the general slaughter, because they were known or suspected to be friends of the Reformation and of Luther, which indeed all the citizens and peasants of Germany were at that time. None felt more deeply, when it was too late, this misery, and what it involved in its effects on the cause of the gospel in Germany, than Luther; and he never recovered the shock. He thus unburdens his soul at the close of this fatal year, which crushed for centuries the rights and hopes of the peasants and labourers, and weakened the towns and cities, the seats of all that was best in the national life,—“The spirit of these tyrants is powerless, cowardly, estranged from every honest thought. They deserve to be the slaves of the people;” and in the next year—“I fear Germany is lost; it cannot be otherwise, for they will employ nothing but the sword.”

The prospect was dark enough for the Reformer. Ferdinand of Austria and the duke of Bavaria were imprisoning and slaying Christians on account of the gospel. The emperor, fresh from his victory at Pavia, and the pope were combining to crush the Reformation, and it was rumoured that the kings of France and England were to lend their aid. The convention of Ratisbon had resulted in a Roman Catholic league in which Duke George of Saxony, Albert elector-archbishop of Mainz, and the duke of Brunswick were the leaders. Luther also found that the war had demoralized the Protestant congregations, and that they were becoming ignorant and savage. And in May 1525 the elector Frederick died.

It was under such auspices that Luther decided at last to take a wife, as he had long advised his friends among the priests and monks to do. He married Catherine von Bora, a lady twenty-four years of age, of a noble Saxon family, who had left her convent together with eight other sisters in order to worship Christ without the oppression of endless ceremonies, which gave neither light to the mind nor peace to the soul. The sisters had lived together in retirement, protected by pious citizens of Torgau. Luther married her on June 11, 1525, in the presence of Lucas Cranach and of another friend as witnesses. Catherine von Bora had no dowry, and Luther lived on his appointment as professor; he would never take any money for his books. His marriage was a happy one, and was blessed with six children. He was a tender husband, and the most loving of fathers. In the close of the year 1525 Luther was engaged in controversy with Erasmus on the freedom of the will.

The princes who were friendly to the Reformation gradually gained more courage. The elector John of Saxony established the principle in his state that all rites should be abrogated which were contrary to the Scriptures, and that the masses for the dead be abolished at once. The young landgrave Philip of Hesse gained over the son of the furious Duke George to the cause of the Reformation. Albert, duke of Prussia, had established it at Königsberg, as hereditary duke, abolishing the vows of the order whose master he had been, saying :—“There is only one order, and that is Christendom.” At the request of the pope, Charles placed Albert under interdict as an apostate monk. The evangelical princes found in all these circumstances a still stronger motive to act at Augsburg as allies in the cause of the evangelical party; and when the diet opened in December 1525 they spoke out boldly :—“It is violence which brought on the war of the peasants. If you will by violence tear the truth of God out of the hearts of those who believe, you will draw greater dangers and evils upon you.” The Romanist party was startled. “The cause of the holy faith” was adjourned to the next diet at Spires. The landgrave and the elector made a formal alliance in February 1526 at Torgau.

Luther, being consulted as to his opinion, felt helpless. “You have no faith; you put not your trust in God; leave all to Him.” The landgrave, the real head of the evangelical alliance, perceived that Luther’s advice was not practical—that Luther forsook the duty of self-defence and the obligation to do one’s duty according to the dictates of reason, in religious matters as well as in other political questions. But the alliance found no new friends. Germany showed all her misery by the meanness of her princes and the absence of any great national body to oppose the league formed by the pope, the emperor,, and the Romanists throughout Europe. The archbishop of Treves preferred a pension from Charles to the defence of the national cause. The evangelically-disposed elector of the palatinate desired to avoid getting into trouble. The imperial city of Frankfort, surrounded by open enemies and timid friends, declined to accede to the alliance. There was more national feeling and courage in the Anglo-Saxon north of Germany. The princes of Brunswick, Luxemburg, Mecklenburg, Anhalt, and Mansfeld assembled at Magdeburg, and made a solemn and heroic declaration of their resolution “to pledge their estates, lives, states, and subjects for the maintenance of the holy word of God, relying on Almighty God, as whose instruments they would act.” The town of Magdeburg (which then had about three times as many inhabitants as now) and Duke Albert of Prussia adhered to the alliance. The league doubled its efforts. Charles, strong and rendered safe by the peace of Madrid concluded with Francis, sent word from Seville in March 1526, through the Romish Duke Henry of Brunswick, that he would soon come himself to crush the heresy. Luther saw the dangers crowding around him; his advice was,—“We are threatened with war; let us force our enemies to keep the peace, conquered by the Spirit of God, before whose throne we most now combat with the arms of prayer; that is the first work to be done.”

The emperor commissioned his brother Ferdinand to preside at the diet of Spires and carry out his wishes. But before the diet met Francis and the pope had formed a league against him, and Charles had commissioned Count Frundsberg to levy an army of Germans to fight against the pope, while Ferdinand was called to Hungary to maintain against the Turks and others the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, bequeathed to him by King Louis after the battle of Mohacz. When the diet at Spires met (June 1526), after some deliberation a proposition presented by the free cities was accepted that until a general council met “every state shall live, rule, and bear itself as it shall be ready to answer for to God and his imperial majesty,”—a decision which foreshadowed the famous Augsburg formula cujιιs regio ejus religio, the principle on which the German Protestant church was afterwards legally based. The Reformation had thus the three years, 1526-1529, to organize and consolidate itself. The man of Germany at that time among the princes was Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and he was taught what to do by a citizen James Sturm, the deputy of Strasburg at Spires. Sturm had convinced Philip that the basis of the true evangelical church was the acknowledgment of the self-government of the church by synods composed of the representatives of the whole Christian people; and this was embodied in the first Protestant constitution, the Deformatio ecclesiarum Hassix juxta certissimam sermonum Dei regulam ordinata. The constitution acknowledged the episcopal element, but not episcopal rule; the jus episcopale was invested in the Christian community, and the flock of Christ were to hear only the voice of their shepherd Christ. Bishops and deacons were to be elected by the Christian people; bishops were to be consecrated by imposition of the hands of three bishops, and deacons instituted by the imposition of the hands of elders; while elders were associated with the pastors in the pastoral care of the congregation. A general or land synod was to be held annually, consisting of the pastor of each parish and of pious men elected from the various congregations, and there were provisions made for provincial and congregational synods. Three men were to be elected annually to exercise the right of visitation. This was afterwards found to be inconvenient, and six and then thirteen superintendents for life were substituted. This board of superintendents became afterwards an oligarchy, and at last a mere instrument of state, overriding the original democratic constitutions of the church, a consequence of the disruption of Germany and of the paralysis of all national institutions. Luther had in 1523 and 1524 professed principles almost identical with those established in 1526 in Hesse. His action ceased there; after the peasants’ war he abandoned his more liberal ideas, and insisted on leaving everything to the princes, and what could a people do cut up into four hundred sovereignties? Luther never acknowledged Caesaropapism or Erastianism as a principle and as a right. He considered the rights of the Christian people as a sacred trust provisionally deposited in the hands of the princes their representatives. “Where,” he asked, “are the people to form the synods? I cannot find them.” It was Melanchthon’s influence that facilitated the despotic system and hampered the thorough reform of the forms of worship. Luther withdrew from a sphere which he felt was not his. He busied himself during these years with plans to improve and simplify the church services at Wittenberg. Some portions of the music in the communion service were too difficult for the people. Luther induced the elector to provide music teachers, and also to permit a simpler service. This led to the German Mass and Order of Worship for Wittenberg. The churches too throughout electoral Saxony were becoming better attended, and Luther had to consider and devise plans for church extension and supervision. His letters to Philip of Hesse, disapproving of the new constitution of the church there, show how jealous he had become of the entrance of democratic ideas. He asked the elector of Saxony to take charge of the church within his dominions, and Melanchthon’s articles for the visitation of the churches in Saxony, which foreshadowed the Lutheran consistorial organization, show that Luther distinctly contemplates the transfer of the jus episcopale to the princes and magistrates. It is true that he called these magistrates Notfιebisch'ofe, but he could not see any other solution of the difficulty, and undoubtedly from the legal point of view it was easy to transfer the right of supervision from one external authority to another, and difficult to hand it over from the bishops to the congregation. The new ecclesiastical organization adopted in Hesse and electoral Saxony had the effect of making the archbishop of Mainz renounce in 1528 the spiritual jurisdiction he had hitherto exercised over these two districts.

Meanwhile the emperor had been again successful in his political schemes. His German army under the Constable Bourbon and General Frundsberg had seized upon Italy and had sacked Rome, and again he had brought the pope and Francis to terms. It only remained to subdue the Reformation, and the mediaeval empire might be restored. He first sent a dispatch saying that the edict of Worms was to be held as in force. When the diet met at Spires in 1529, the imperial commissioners forbade the celebration of worship according to the reformed usage in churches, and afterwards in the houses of the elector and of the landgrave. The Act of Toleration of 1526 was to be abrogated. The diet appeared to be hopelessly divided, a majority with the emperor and a minority with the elector and. the landgrave, and the majority passed an edict which amounted to this that where the edict of Worms could not be executed without fear of revolution no further reforms were to be allowed. The minority prepared a protest. “The diet has overstepped its authority,” they said; “our acquired right is that the decree of 1526, unanimously adopted, remains in force until a council can be convened. Up to this time the decree has maintained the peace, and we protest against its abrogation.” Ferdinand, who represented his brother, assured the princes that nothing remained for them but to submit; he threatened the free cities with the loss of their privileges and with an interdict, and he left the diet while the evangelical members were.deliberating. In spite of these threats the protest was signed by John of Saxony, George of Brandenburg, Ernest of Lüneburg, Philip of Hesse, and Wolfgang of Anhalt among the princes, and by the representatives of the free cities of Strasburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Costnitz (Constance), Lindau, Memmingen, Kempten, Nördlingen, Heilbronn, Reutlingen, Isny, St Gall, Weissenburg, and Windsheim. This celebrated protest of April 15, 1529, from which comes the name Protestant, is one of the noblest documents of Christian history. The protesting princes and cities claimed as their right as Germans the sacred duty freely to preach the word of God and the message of salvation, that all who would hear it might join the community of believers. It was also an earnest of true evangelical union; for it was well known that most of the cities were more inclined towards Zwingli’s than towards Luther’s view of the sacrament.

If this great act be considered impartially, it is impossible not to see that neither Luther nor Melanchthon was the real leader of the time. Luther had no real comprehension of what had to be done in Germany to preserve the gospel from destruction. He had shown little sympathy with the first attempt made in Hesse at the selfgovernment of the church; still less did he see the importance of the protest at Spires, and of the unity it gave to the evangelical cause. It was evident that nothing but the inroad of the Turks had saved the Protestant princes after the diet, and that Charles was so far master of Germany as to make it impossible for Germany to become a Protestant nation. The Protestants w ere lost unless they strengthened the alliance which they had just founded at Spires. But Luther disliked such alliances; he dissuaded the elector from sending deputies to the meeting agreed to be held at Smalkald, and when the Saxon deputies prevented any business being done he was proud of the result. This apparent blindness and perversion of mind requires explanation. Luther lived under the shadow of the Middle Ages, and had been trained in scholastic law as well as in scholastic theology. To the mediaeval jurist the emperor was the impersonation of all social order and moral law; he was the vicar of God. In the later Middle Ages the jurists had exaggerated this sacredness of the emperor, and had done so quite naturally in order to protect civil law from canon law, and to uphold the state against the church. Luther could throw off scholastic theology, but he could not throw off that scholastic jurisprudence that all his mediaeval heroes, Occam, Wickliffe, and Huss had found so useful in their attacks on the papacy, and that Luther himself had found so serviceable when he appealed from the church defined by the pope to the church defined by the empire. He could not bear to think of an alliance against the holy Roman empire. Luther too had been trained in the school of Tauler and the Theologia Germanica, and partook greatly of their quietism. “Suffer God to do His work in you and about you” was their motto. There was a theological scruple also at the bottom of Luther’s opposition to a vigorous Protestant alliance and a national attitude. This betrayed itself, first, in an uneasiness about Zwingli’s rising influence in Germany, and, secondly, as a doctrinal idiosyncrasy respecting the sacrament of the Eucharist. Philip of Hesse saw through this instantly, and said, “I see they are against the alliance on account of these Zwinglians; well, let us see whether we cannot make these theological differences disappear.”

When Luther was raised above himself by the great problem before him in that glorious period of action from 1518 to 1524, he had considered the sacrament as a part of the services of the church, and a secondary matter compared with the right view of faith or the inward Christianity which implies necessarily an unselfish believing and thankful mind. He was convinced that there was no virtue inherent in the elements apart from the communion, and it was a matter indifferent how the spirituality of the action and the real presence, even the transubstantiation, might be reconciled with faith. But the peasants’ war and Carlstadt’s mystical enthusiasm alarmed him. Where was this to lead to, he asked, and he seems to have settled down into a great resolve to abide by the tradition of the church, and alter as little as possible provided room was found for the exercise of living faith. So when he felt called upon to form a theory of the doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist he went back to his scholasticism to find there some theory which should be traditional and yet afford room for the spiritual priesthood of all believers, and for the exercise of faith on the promises of God. He found it in the writings of that schoolman whom he more than once calls “his dear master,” the daring Englishman William of Occam. Transubstantiation, the Romish doctrine, offended Luther in his two essential requirements: it demanded a miracle which could be performed by a priest only, and this miraculous power so separated clergy from laity that it denied the spiritual priesthood of all believers: and, when the elements had been made by the priest’s creating word the body and blood of the Lord, their supernatural efficacy, apart from the faith of the communicant, imparted grace. Occam had championêd a theory which in some form or other had been in the church since the 10th century at least, and which openly rejected one of these stumbling blocks, and, as Luther saw, really did away with the other also. According to Occam’s scholastic distinctions, matter can be present in two ways—(1) when it occupies a distinct place by itself, excluding every other body, e.g., two stones mutually exclude each other, and (2) when it occupies the same space as another body at the same time. Everything which is omnipresent or ubiquitous must be able to occupy the same space as other things, else it could not be ubiquitous. Christ’s resurrection body, said Occam, had this power when our Lord appeared among His disciples while they were in a room with the doors shut; at a certain moment of time it and a portion of door or wall must have been in the same place at the same time; and besides Christ’s body is ubiquitous. It is therefore in the elements bread and wine, in, with, and under them. Luther took over this doctrine from Occam without alteration. The very illustrations he uses in his Bekenntηiss vom Abendmahl are taken almost verbatim from Occam, De Altaris Sacramento. From this it followed that consubstantiation involved no miracle. Christ’s body was not brought into the elements by the priest; it was there naturally. But its presence in these elements on sacramental occasions brought with it a blessing, and imparted grace, not because of the presence, but because God had promised that this particular presence of the everywhere present body of Christ would bring blessings to the faithful partaker. Occam’s theory of consubstantiation fulfilled all Luther’s wants, and above all it involved no explaining away of the plain meaning of the sentence, “This is my body,” such as had offended him in Carlstadt. It is easy to see therefore how Luther was alarmed at Zwingli. The Swiss Reformer seemed to attack everything that Luther prized. He did not care for tradition or church usage; he seemed engaged in a rationalistic attack on the presence of Christ in the church, and on the word of God, and so he was guilty, in Luther’s estimation, both of self-confidence and of a rationalism. On the other hand, Zwingli could not understand what Luther meant; and yet he was anxious to unite with him, and was willing to leave this one difficulty an open question. It was in these circumstances—suspicion on the part of Luther, blank amazement on the part cf Zwingli—that Philip of Hesse induced the Swiss and the German theologians to meet at Marburg. Luther was gloomy and suspicious, “as he had never been seen before,” a friend said. The frank declarations of the Swiss Reformers soon cleared away all shadows of difference and dissent on all points but one, and fourteen articles defining the chief heads of Christian doctrine were adopted by both parties. Then came the discussion on the fifteenth, the doctrine of the Eucharist. Luther took a piece of chalk and wrote upon the table Hoc est corpus meum, and when worsted in argument, as he usually was, appealed to the sentence. The discussion, which lasted four days, however, resulted in the parties recognizing exactly where the point of difference lay, and in reducing it to its smallest dimensions. Both declared that they agreed in recognizing the Eucharist to be a sacrament of the true body and blood of Christ, and that a spiritual partaking of this body was a means of grace. They differed whether the true body and blood of Christ were corporeally in the sacrament. It was hoped that time would bring about alliance if not agreement, but Luther was obstinate. “Submit yourselves, believe as we do, or you cannot be acknowledged as Christians.” He refused Zwingli’s hand; “You have another spirit from us,” he said, meaning that there was no objective basis of faith between them owing to what he thought to be Zwingli’s rationalism. The result was a sad one, but Zwingli was to some extent a gainer; his view became naturalized in Germany, where Swabia adopted it, as did many of the imperial cities, and Philip of Hesse indicated that he preferred it.

The Marburg conference was a sad prelude to the decisive diet to be held at Augsburg in 1530. The new diet was anxiously awaited. Charles had made known his intention to be present, and that he intended to enforce obedience to the edict of Worms. He entered Augsburg with great magnificence, and was in fact at the zenith of his power. He had broken the might of France, humbled the papacy, been crowned at Bologna, reorganized Italy, and driven back the Turk. His only remaining task, and it seemed easy, was to crush the Reformation. He first summoned before him the protesting princes and asked them to withdraw the protest. This they refused to do; they had a clear constitutional right, founding on the decision of Spires, to resist the emperor, and they resolved to exercise it. Divine service after Lutheran fashion was held at their quarters, and they refused to join in the procession of the host at the festival of Corpus Christi. Meanwhile Luther, Melanchthon with him, was at Coburg, near enough at hand for consultation and yet beyond the emperor’s reach. Melanchthon was preparing a confession with a defence, the so-called Apology, in case the emperor should require a statement of their doctrines. Luther was writing commentaries on the Psalms and the prophets, and was also preparing a popular edition of Aesop's Fables. He also wrote comforting letters to the elector, and addressed one of his most powerful writings to the Roman Catholic clergy assembled in the diet at Augsburg. Melanchthon was sent for to consult about the confession which the emperor had asked for, and Luther remained alone at Coburg full of anxiety, for he knew his friend’s helplessness in the actual bustle of life. When Melanchthon got to Augsburg he really became a source of weakness. He induced the elector for the sake of peace to give up the services in the Franciscan church, and the Protestant preachers left the town in despair. Luther all the while had been quiet, waiting in patience; but this was too much for him, and he wrote to encourage the elector to resist. At length the Protestants were asked to present their confession. The emperor ordered it to be read in Latin. “No,” said the elector, “we are Germans and on German ground. I hope therefore your majesty will allow us to speak German.” When the vice-chancellor of the elector, Dr Christian Baier, had read the first part of the confession, which expounds the principles of the Reformation, and in particular the doctrine of justification by faith, “that faith which is not the mere knowledge of an historical fact, but that which believes, not only the history, but also the effect of that history upon the mind,” it is said that an indescribable effect was produced upon the assembly. The opponents felt that there was a reality before them which they had never imagined; and others said that such a profession of faith by such princes was a more effectual preaching than that which had been stopped. “Christ,” said Jonas, “is in the diet, and he does not keep silence; the word of God is indeed not to be bound.” The Roman Catholic theologians present answered the confession, and then the emperor engaged Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians in negotiations in which Melanchthon soon showed his yielding character, even granting that the Protestants might acknowledge the jurisdiction of the bishops and the supremacy of the pope. At this critical moment Luther’s indignation found vent. “I understand,” he wrote to Melanchthon, “that you have begun a marvellous work, to make Luther and the pope agree together, but the pope will say that he will not, and Luther begs to be excused. Should you, however, after all succeed in your affair, I will follow your example and make an agreement between Christ and Belial. Take care that you give not up justification by faith; that is the heel of the seed of the woman to crush the serpent’s head. Take care not to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the bishops; they will soon take all. In short, your negotiations have no chance of success unless the pope will renounce papacy.” The Romanists fortunately demanded too much. Not even Melanchthon could yield the acknowledgment of private masses, of auricular confession, and of the meritorious character of good works; and the negotiations ceased. While they were in progress the emperor tried to intimidate the princes by calling the imperial troops into the free city of Augsburg and closing the gates. The landgrave escaped, and this frightened the Catholics. Unfortunately the Protestants had confessed their want of union by presenting three confessions of faith :—the Lutherans had presented the Augsburg confession; Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, which sympathized to some extent with Zwingli, presented the Confessio Tetrapolitana; and Zwingli had sent a confession which was not, however, laid before the diet. The diet broke up with the final decision that the Protestants should have till next spring to consider whether they would voluntarily return to the church, and that, if they proved obstinate, then measures would be taken for their extermination.

To the student of Luther’s life the diet of Augsburg is noteworthy chiefly because it was the occasion of the composition of the Augsburg confession, or Augustana, which afterwards became the symbol or confession of faith for the Lutheran Church. It was prepared by Melanchthon, founding on the fifteen articles of the Marburg conference, on the seventeen articles of Schwabach, and on the articles of Torgau. These various sets of articles had been written by Luther, and therefore the Augsburg confession was strictly Luther’s own. It consists of two parts—one dogmatic, in twenty-one articles, which states the principal doctrines of the evangelical church, beginning with the Trinity and ending with the worship of saints; and the other in seven articles, rejecting the celibacy of the clergy, the sacrifice of the mass, auricular confession, ceremonial feasts and fasts, monastic vows, and the secular jurisdiction of bishops. It was signed at Augsburg by John of Saxony, George of Brandenburg, Ernest of Lüneburg, Philip of Hesse, and Wolfgang of Anhalt, and by the representatives of the towns of Nuremberg and Reutlingen, and during the sitting of the diet by the representatives of Kempten, Heilbronn, Windsheim, and Weissenburg.

The edict of the diet was published on November 19, and the Protestant princes, after having overcome the resistance of Luther, met for conference at Smalkald on Christmas 1530, and formed an armed league for mutual defence. It had been declared that the edict would be put into execution in the spring of 1531, but when the time came the emperor had other work on hand: France had become troublesome, and the Turks were again moving. He found also that he could not count on the support of the Roman Catholic princes in the suppression of the Protestants. In presence of danger the Zwinglians and Lutherans showed a united front, and the Smalkald league grew to be a formidable power. The emperor resolved to come to terms with his Protestant subjects, and the result was the religious peace or rather truce of Nuremberg, which left things as they were until a general council should settle matters. The years following this peace of Nuremberg were comparatively prosperous to the Reformation. The Smalkald league was the only organized power in Germany, and very effectually prevented the oppression of Protestants by Roman Catholics. Year by year their numbers increased, and Luther saw the evangelical cause prospering. First Würtemberg was won back for young Duke Christopher, who had become a Protestant, and found on his entry to his dukedom that his people were already secret Protestants. In northern and central Germany whole districts embraced the evangelical doctrines. Electoral Brandenburg and ducal Saxony had received Protestant rulers, who found their people more than willing to accept the creed of their new sovereigns. At last the only large states that were able to maintain a firm front against the Lutheran doctrines were Austria, Bavaria, the Palatinate, and the great ecclesiastical provinces on the Rhine, and even in these regions visitations of the churches had shown that the people were forsaking the old faith. It appeared that a more serious defection than any might at any moment be made. The electorarchbishop of Cologne showed signs of abandoning the Roman Catholic faith and secularizing his vast episcopal territories, and this threatened defection made Charles bestir himself. If the elector became a Protestant the Lutherans would be in a majority in the electoral college, and a Protestant emperor might he elected.

During all these years Luther was quietly at work at Wittenberg, lecturing, preaching, and writing. At first he felt anxious lest civil war should break out, and he had scruples about many of the doings, and even about the very existence, of that league which was really giving the land peace. Under Philip of Hesse the Reformation was assuming a national and political shape which alarmed Luther, who was more than ever content to keep out of public life and keep himself to his books. He began publishing his lectures on various portions of Scripture, on the Epistle to the Galatians and on the Psalms of Degrees. He wrote one or two controversial tracts, mainly to show how the Reformed could not accept the conditions offered by the Roman Catholics at Augsburg. In 1534, to his great joy, the first complete translation of the whole Bible was published, and next year appeared a new edition of the Wittenberg hymn-book, containing several new hymns. Philip of Hesse, notwithstanding the failure of the conference at Marburg, still thought that something might be done to remove the theological differences between Switzerland and Saxony, or at least between Swabia, Strasburg, and Wittenberg. The divines of Switzerland and of South Germany had by their publications made this somewhat easier. The confession of Basel, drafted by Oecolampadius (1531), revised by Myconius, and published by the magistracy of Basel, had declared that in the Lord’s Supper Christ is the· food of the soul to everlasting life, and Bucer and the other South-German divines were anxious for a union. Philip of Hesse, Bucer, and Melanchthon met in conference at Cassel to arrange preliminaries, not without suspicion on Luther’s part, for he could not trust Melanchthon at a conference, and, as he remarked to Justus Jonas, he hated trimmers above all men on the earth’s round. The result, however, was better than he had hoped for. Bucer drew up a short confession which was to be submitted to the Wittenberg theologians, and was favourably received by them, and the South German theologians were invited, to a further conference at Wittenberg. The meeting very fairly represented all the German states, and the result was the document known as the Wittenberg Concordia. This document, mainly drawn up by Bucer and Melanchthon, contains a statement of the doctrine of the sacrament of the supper expressed according to the Lutheran formula, with the declaration that unworthy or faithless partakers really do not participate in the sacrament. Melanchthon and Bucer had used too much diplomatic skill in drawing up the formula, for the essential differences between the Wittenberg and the Strasburg school were not really faced and explained; they were covered over with ambiguous language. Nor could the document be accepted by the Swiss; but for a time it seemed as if a satisfactory basis of peace had been established. The general satisfaction was increased by the publication of the First Helvetic Confession, which, while stating the doctrine of the sacrament of the supper in a manner essentially Zwinglian, laid special emphasis on the real spiritual presence of Christ in the elements. Luther in a letter to Meyer, burgomaster of Basel, and also in his answer to the Reformed cantons, acknowledged the earnest Christianity of the confession, and promised to do his best to promote union with the Swiss. It is sad to think that only three years later his old animosity to Zwingli and his countrymen broke out again in his book against the Turks, and that he renewed the sacramental controversy with even more than the old fury in his Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament, published in 1544. This first Helvetic confession was drawn up, however, for another purpose than to appease the Wittenberg theologians. Charles V. was urging the pope to call a general council to end the disputes within the Christian church, and it seemed so probable that a council would meet that the Protestants were everywhere preparing themselves by doctrinal statements for taking their share in its work. The German princes and their theologians were also greatly exercised about this council, and the thought of it and how Protestants should bear themselves in its presence was filling Luther’s mind. He wrote several short papers on the subject in the years 1534-39, beginning with the Convocatio Concilii liberi and ending with Von den Conciliis und Kirchen. The pope, Paul ΠI., yielding to the pressure of the emperor and of such liberal Roman Catholics as Vergerius, his legate in Germany, called a council to meet in May 1537 at Mantua, and invited the Lutherans to be present. The Lutheran princes and theologians felt compelled to face the question whether they could or could not accept the invitation, and Luther, at the request of the elector of Saxony, prepared a creed to be used as a basis of negotiations. This was submitted to the princes and theologians assembled at Smalkald, and was in substance adopted by them. It is called the Smalkald Articles, and is important because in its statement of the doctrine of the sacrament of the supper it repudiates the Wittenberg Cuncord. The princes decided that they would have nothing to do with a council which did not meet on German soil. The emperor, alarmed at the progress of Protestantism, and at the united front shown by German Protestants, and troubled by the refusal of the pope to consent to a council to be held out of Italy, strove to bring Protestants and Roman Catholics together by means of religious conferences. The first of these, held at Hagenau, came to nothing. Next year (1541) the conference was renewed at Worms, when the Roman Catholic party promised reforms on condition that the Protestants first submitted to the pope. This condition could not be accepted. Representatives met the same year at Ratisbon, and here the conference was wrecked on the doctrine of transubstantiation, but the diet renewed the terms of the edict of Nuremberg of 1532—the Ratisbon Interim. It was felt by all parties that this provisional state of matters must come to an end some time, and that the Protestants must either be allowed to have their own way or win it by fighting. The emperor was not ready for war, and at the diet at Spires in 1544 it was agreed that the Protestants were to maintain their rights until a general council met. Whatever hopes they might have from such a council were soon dissipated. The council of Trent was opened that year, and its earliest acts were to refuse to pass the conciliatory measures proposed by some of the liberal Roman Catholics. The emperor still temporized and promised reforms, if not by a council then by a national assembty, and many of the Protestants, Luther among them, still hoped that matters might settle themselves without civil war. This hope inspired what was called the Wittenberg Deformation, a document setting forth how near the evangelical church might approach the Roman Catholic and still retain the truths it had upheld. The year 1546 began, however, with unmistakable indications that Charles was now ready to strike a decisive blow.

Luther had been suffering much during the last few years, and he felt his end to be near. In the month of January 1546 he undertook a journey to Eisleben in very inclement weather, in order to restore peace in the family of the counts of Mansfeld; he caught a violent cold, but preached four times, and took all the time an active part in the work of conciliation. On the 17th of February he felt that his release was at hand; and at Eisleben, where he was born, he died, in faith and prayer, on the following day. Nothing can be more edifying than the scene presented by the last days of Luther, of which we have the most authentic and detailed accounts. When dying, he collected his last strength and offered up the following prayer:—“Heavenly Father, eternal, merciful God, thou hast revealed to me Thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Him I have taught, Him I have confessed, Him I love as my Saviour and Redeemer, whom the wicked persecute, dishonour, and reprove. Take my poor soul up to Thee !” Then two of his friends put to him the solemn question,— “Reverend Father, do you die in Christ and in the doctrine you have constantly preached!” He answered by an audible and joyful “Yes”; and, repeating the verse, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” he expired peacefully, without a struggle, on the 18th of February 1546, at four o’clock in the afternoon.

The books on the life and work of Luther are so very numerous that it is impossible to do more than mention one or two. The best editions of Luther’s works are (1) the Wittenberg, 1539-58, 19 vols, folio (7 in Latin and 12 in German; Melanchthon wrote the prefaces, and inserted a life of Luther in the beginning of the 2d vol.); (2) Walch’s edition, 24 vols. 4to, 1740-53; (3) the Erlangen edition, 65 vols, and 2 vols, of indices, in all 67 vols., in German, and 33 vols, in Latin, and not yet complete, 1826-73; (4) the last edition is from Frankfort-on-the-Main, publishing at the expense of the Prussian Government.

Luther’s letters have been collected and edited by (1) De Wette and Seidemann, L. Briefe, 6 vols., 1825-56; (2) this emendated by Burkhardt, Luther’s Briefwechsel, 1866; (3) Seidemann, Luther-bricfe, 1859.

The Table Talk was translated (1) by William Hazlitt, 1848, and (2) by Bindseil, Colloquia, &c., 3 vols., last published 1866.

Lives of Luther.— (1) J. Mathesius, Historie von D. Μ. Luther's, &c., Nuremberg, 1566; (2)Cochlieus, Acta et Scripta Lut Jieri, Paris, 1565 (Roman Catholic and abusive); (3) Merle d’Aubigné, Hist, of the Ref., vols, i,-iii., 1838, &c.; (4) Michelet, Life of Luther (his statements about himself collected), translated by Hazlitt, 1846 and 1862; (5) Croly, Life of Luther, 1857; (6) Julius Kostlin,' Martin Luther, sein Leben, <kc., 2 vols., 1875. The last is the best; it has been summarized for popular reading in one volume, with interesting illustrations, 1882.

The Times ofLutJιer.— (1 ) Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter d. Ref, 6 vols., 1st ed. 1839-47, reached a 6th ed., Eng. transi, by Sarah Austin, 1845-47; (2) Löscher, Reformations Akta, Leipsic, 1720; (3) Hausser, TJιe Period of the Reformation, 2 vols., 1873; (4) Seebohm, Era of the Protestant Revolution, 1877 (a very short but good and clear summary of events). (T. Μ. L.)