“The foolish fellow was concerned about his honour,” Luther says very characteristically of this quarrel. He was anxious “that the Wittenbergers should be nothing and Eisleben everything.”[1328]“He is hardened,” and nothing can be done for him; “Agricola says, ‘I, too, have a head.’ Well, were that all that God requires, I might say I have one too. Thus they go on in their obstinacy and see not that they are in the wrong.... Our Lord God evidently intends to go on worrying me yet a while so as to defy the Papists.”[1329]Elsewhere he says: “Agricola looks on at these doings with a merry mien, and refuses to humble himself. Yet he has submitted his recantation to me, perhaps in the hope that I would treat him more leniently. But I shall seek the glory of Christ and not his; I shall pillory him and his words, as a cowardly, proud, impious man, who has done much harm to the Church.”[1330]Another who fell into serious disagreements with Luther over the Antinomian question was Dr. Jacob Schenk, then preacher at Freiberg in Saxony (afterwards Court-preacher at Weimar). At Wittenberg his conduct began to give rise to suspicion at the same time as Agricola’s. He was reported to have said in a sermon: Whoever goes on preaching the law, is possessed of the devil. The eloquence of this man of no mean talents was as great as his aims were strange.In Lauterbach’s Diary we find the following, under date October 7, 1538, concerning Luther and Schenk: At Luther’s table the conversation turned upon Jacob Schenk, “who, in his arrogant and lying fashion was doing all manner of things [so Luther declared] which he afterwards was wont to deny. Wherever he was, he raised up strife, relying on the authority of the Prince and the applause of the people. But he will be put to shame in the end [so Luther went on to say], just as Johann Agricola, who enjoyed great consideration at Court and was almost a Privy Councillor; his reputation vanished without my having any hand in the matter. When Schenk preached at Zeitz he gave general dissatisfaction. The wretched man is puffed up with pride and deceives himself with new-fangled words.... He has concealed his wickedness under a Satanic hypocrisy and is ever aping me. Never shall I trust him again, no, not to all eternity.”[1331]Lauterbach gives a striking picture of Luther’s behaviour at his encounter with Jacob Schenk on September 11, 1538. Luther and Jonas, after a sermon which had greatly displeased them, paid him a visit. They found him, “sad to relate, impenitent and unabashed, rebellious, ambitious, and perjurious.” Luther pointed out to him his ignorance; how could he, unexperienced as he was, and understanding neither dialectics nor rhetoric, venture thus to oppose his teachers? Schenk replied: “I must do so for the sake of Christ’s Blood and His dear Passion; my own great trouble of conscience also compels me to it” (thus adducing a motive similar to that so often alleged by Luther in his own case). I must “fear God more than all my preceptors; for I have a God as much as you.” Luther replied: “It may be that you understand my doctrine perfectly, but you ought nevertheless, for the honour of God, to honour us as the teachers who first instructed you.” This seems to have made no impression on Schenk. Luther’s parting shot was: “If you are torn to pieces, may the devil lap your blood. We also are ‘in peril from false brethren.’ Poor Freiberg [the scene of Schenk’s labours] will never recover from this. But God, the Avenger, will destroy the man who has defiled His temple. The proverb says: ‘Where heart and mind both are bad, the state of a man indeed is sad.’” At supper, Schenk, seated at table with Luther and Jonas, began to abuse Luther and the inhabitants of Freiberg; after saying much that was scarcely complimentary, he added: “‘When I have made the Court as pious as you have made the world, then my work will be finished.’ In spite of all this impertinence he remained seated, though his hypocritical show of humility revealed how depraved his heart really was. When Luther got up to leave the room Schenk attempted to start the quarrel anew.”[1332]Finally they parted unreconciled.Schenk subsequently led a wandering existence, ever under suspicion as to the purity of his faith. In 1541 he was at Leipzig and in 1543 he visited Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg. It was given out by adversaries, such as Melanchthon and Alberus, that he ultimately committed suicide, driven thereto by melancholy; the statement is, however, not otherwise confirmed,Johann Wildenauer (or Silvius), the theologian, was born at Eger in Bohemia, and hence was generally known as Egranus. This priest, who was a man of talent and of Humanistic culture, and an enthusiastic follower of Erasmus, had been won over to the new teaching in the very beginning. After having been preacher at the Marienkirche at Zwickau until Thomas Münzer made any further stay impossible, we find him from 1521-23 and, again, from 1533-34, preacher of the new faith at Joachimstal, where he was one of the predecessors of Mathesius.Wildenauer was one of the most remarkable and independent characters of the time, but an “extremely restless spirit.”[1333]Although a Lutheran, he openly expressed his dissatisfaction, not only with the moral conditions under Lutheranism, but also with many points of his master’s doctrine, particularly with his theory that faith alone justifies, and that man cannot co-operate in the work of his salvation. Luther became at an early date suspicious and angry concerning him. He wrote to Joachimstal “to warn the people against the dubious doctrines of Egranus,” as Mathesius relates, on the strength of copies of certain letters he had seen.[1334]The more dutiful Mathesius speaks of his predecessor as “a Mameluke and an ungrateful pupil.”[1335]His fault consisted in his following the example of Erasmus, as did in progress of time so many other admirers of the Dutch scholar, and relinquishing more and more his former good opinion of Luther’s person and work; with this change his own sad experiences had not a little to do. To the Catholic Church, which had excommunicated him, he apparently never returned. When, in 1534, he was deprived of his post at Joachimstal, he complained in a letter, that he had been “driven into exile and outlawed by Papists and Lutherans alike.”[1336]In that same year he published at Leipzig a work entitled “A Christian Instruction on the righteousness of faith and on good works,”[1337]which, in spite of its bitterness, contained many home-truths. There, apart from what he says on doctrinal matters, we find an account of the “temptations and trials” he had to endure for having ventured to teach that “good works and a Christian life, side by side with faith, are useful and necessary for securing eternal life.”[1338]About this time Luther again sent forth a challenge to Erasmus and to all Erasmians generally who had broken with him, Egranus included.He told his friends that now his business was to “purify the Church from the brood of Erasmus” (“a fœtibus eius”); he was referring particularly to Egranus, also to Crotus Rubeanus, Wicel, [Œcolampadius, and Campanus.[1339]Erasmus had already “seduced” Zwingli and now he had also “converted Egranus, who believes just as much as he,” viz. nothing.[1340]—Egranus he calls a “proud donkey,” who teaches that Christ must not be exalted so high, having learnt this from Erasmus;[1341]“this proud spirit declared that though Christ had earned it, yet we must merit it.”[1342]—He had long been acquainted with this false spirit, so he wrote in 1533 or 1534 to a Joachimstal burgher; he, like other sectarians, was full of “devil’s venom.” “Even though no syrup or purgative be given them, yet they cannot but expel their poison from mouth and anus. The time will come when they will be unable any longer to pass the matter, and then their belly must burst like that of Judas; for they will not be able toretain what they have stolen and devoured of [the doctrine of] Christ.”[1343]That Egranus finally drank himself to death with Malmsey “is a despicable calumny, which can be traced back to Mathesius.”[1344]In the sixteenth-century controversies it was the usual thing on either side to calumniate opponents and to make them die the worst death conceivable,[1345]and it would appear, that, in the case of Egranus, at a very early date unfavourable reports were circulated concerning his manner of death. His lamentable end (“misere periit”), Luther likens to that of Zwingli, struck down in the battle of Cappel by a divine judgment.[1346]His death occurred in 1535.In the “Christian Instruction,” referred to above, Egranus had written: “The new prophets can only tell us that we are freed from sin by Christ; what He commanded or forbade in the Gospel that they pass over as were it not in the Gospel at all.” “If we simply say: Christ has done everything and what we do is of no account, then we are making too much of Christ’s share, for we also must do something to secure our salvation. By such words Christ is made a cloak for our sins, and, as is actually now the case, all seek to conceal and excuse their wickedness and viciousness under the mantle of Christ’s merits.”“If such faith without works continues to be preached much longer, the Christian religion will fall into ruins and come to a lamentable end, and the place where this faith without works is taught will become a Sodom and Gomorrha.”[1347]4. Bugenhagen, Jonas and othersDisagreements such as these never arose to mar the relations between Luther and some of his other more intimate co-workers, for instance, his friendship with Bugenhagen and Jonas, who have been so frequently alluded to already. He was always ready to acknowledge in the warmest manner the great services they rendered him in the defence and spread of his teaching, and to support them when they stood in need of his assistance. He was never stingy in his bestowal of praise, narrow-minded or jealous, in his acknowledgement of the merits of friendly fellow-preachers, or of those writers who held Lutheran views.Nicholas von Amsdorf, who introduced the new faith into Magdeburg in 1524 and there became Superintendent, he praises for the firmness with which he confessed the faith and for his fearless conduct generally. In Disputations he was wont to go straight to the heart of the matter like the “born theologian” he was; at Schmalkalden, when preaching before the Princes and magnates, he had not shrunk from declaring that our Evangel was intended for the weak and oppressed and for those who feel themselves sinners, though he could not discern any such in the audience.[1348]Johann Brenz, preacher in Schwäbisch-Hall since 1522, and one of the founders of the new church system in Suabia, was greatly lauded by Luther for his exegetical abilities. “He is a learned and reliable man. Amongst all the theologians of our day there is not one who knows how to interpret and handle Holy Scripture like Brenz. When I gaze in admiration at his spirit I almost despair of my own powers. Certainly none of our people can do what he has done in his exposition of the Gospel of St. John. At times, it is true, he is carried away by his own ideas, yet he sticks to the point and speaks conformably to the simplicity of God’s Word.”[1349]Next to Melanchthon, however, the friend whom Luther praised most highly as a “thoroughly learned and most able man,” was Johann Bugenhagen. “He has, under most trying circumstances, been of service to many of the Churches.”[1350]In his Preface to Bugenhagen’s Latin Commentary on the Psalms—a work which, even in the opinion of Protestant theologians, “leaves much to be desired”[1351]from the “point of view of learning,” and which in reality is merely a sort of polemical work of edification, written from the standpoint of the new faith—Luther declared, that the spirit of Christ had at length unlocked the Psalter through Bugenhagen; every teacher must admit that now “the spirit was revealing secrets hiddenfor ages.” “I venture to assert that the first person on earth to give an explanation of the Book of Psalms is Pomeranus. Almost all earlier writers have introduced their own views into the book, but here the judgment of the spirit will teach you wondrous things.”[1352]Yet at the very outset, in the first verse of the Psalms, instead of a learned commentary, we find Bugenhagen expounding the new belief, and attacking the alleged self-righteousness of Catholicism, termed by him the “cathedra pestilentiæ”; he even relates at length his conversion to Lutheranism, which had given scandal “to those not yet enlightened by the sun of the Evangel.”[1353]They were no longer to wait for the completion of his own Commentary on the Psalms, Luther concludes, since now—in place of poor Luther—David, Isaias, Paul, and John were themselves speaking to the reader.“He had no clear perception of the defects of Bugenhagen’s exegetical method,” remarks O. Albrecht, the editor of the above Preface in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.[1354]The explanation of this “uncalled-for praise,” as Albrecht terms it, is to be found in the feeling expressed by Luther in the first sentence of the Preface: At the present time God had caused His Word to shine like crystal, whereas of yore there prevailed only chill and dismal mists.The truth is that few of Luther’s assistants promoted his cause with such devotion and determination combined as did Pomeranus, who, for all his zeal, was both practical and sober in his ways. Such were his achievements for the cause, that Luther greets him in the superscription of a letter as “Bishop of the Church of Wittenberg, Legate of Christ’s face and heart to Denmark, my brother and my master.” He thus explains the words “legatus a facie et a corde”: “the Pope boasts of his ‘legati a latere,’ I boast of my pious preachers ‘a facie et a corde.’”[1355]Luther was in the habit of putting Bugenhagen on the same footing with himself and Melanchthon: Luther, Philip, and Pomeranus will support the Evangel as long as they are there, he says, but after this there will come a fall (“fiet lapsus”).[1356]Let those braggarts who pretend they know better “come to me, to Philip, and to Pomeranus ... then they will be nicely confounded.”[1357]Köstlin is, however, rightly ofopinion that, as compared with Luther and Melanchthon, Bugenhagen was “merely a subordinate, though endowed by nature with considerable powers of mind and body.”[1358]Yet the sun of Luther’s favour shone upon him. Agricola, “the poor fellow,” says Luther, “looks down on Pomeranus, but the latter is a great theologian and has plenty nerve for his work (‘multum habet nervorum’); Agricola, of course, would make himself out to be more learned than Master Philip or I.”[1359]“Pomeranus is a splendid professor”; “his sermons are full of wealth.”[1360]The truth is that the “wealth,” or rather expansiveness, of his discourses was so great that Luther had to reprove him severely for the length of his sermons.Johann Bugenhagen, called Pommer or Pomeranus because he hailed from Wollin in Pomerania, after two years spent at the University of Greifswald and a further course devoted mainly to Humanist studies, was ordained priest by the Bishop of Cammin, when “as yet he probably had not begun to study theology.”[1361]At the College at Treptow he earned respect as professor of Humanism and as Rector; in his desire to further the better theology advocated by Erasmus he took to studying the Bible, and, on Luther’s appearance, was soon won over to the cause, though on first reading Luther’s work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” he “had been repelled by the palpable heresies” it contained. He settled at Wittenberg, delivered private lectures on the Psalms, and married, on October 13, 1522, a servant-maid of Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer; in the following year he was inducted at the Schlosskirche as parish-priest of Wittenberg by the magistrates, acting together with Luther. In defiance of right and justice and of the murmurs raised, Luther, from the pulpit, proclaimed him pastor, thus overruling the objections of the Chapter; his choice by the board of magistrates “and by the congregation agreeably with the evangelical teaching of Paul,” Luther held to be quite sufficient.[1362]As pastor, Bugenhagen displayed great energy not merely in preaching to and instructing the people, but in furthering in every way the spread of Lutheranism in the civic andsocial life of the Electorate. His practical talents made him eventually the apostle of the new Church, even beyond the confines of Saxony. He successively introduced or organised it in Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, and in Pomerania, his own country; then in Denmark, from 1537-39, where he fixed his residence at Copenhagen. Two main features are apparent in all he did; everywhere the new Churches were established on a strictly civil basis, and, so far as the new religion allowed of it, the old Catholic forms were retained.In his indefatigable and arduous undertakings Bugenhagen made himself one with Luther, and became, so to speak, a replica of his master. In his scrupulous observance of Luther’s doctrine he was to be outdone by none, save possibly by Amsdorf; in rudeness and want of consideration where the new Evangel was concerned, and in his whole way of thinking, he stood nearest to Luther, the only difference being, that, in his discourses and writings we miss Luther’s imagination and feeling. In the literary field, in addition to the Commentary on the Psalms and other similar writings, he distinguished himself by a work in vindication of the new preaching, addressed to the city of Hamburg and entitled: “Von dem Christen-loven und den rechten guden Werken” (1526), also by the share he took, with Melanchthon and Cruciger, in Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and his labours in connection with the Low-Saxon version. Most important of all, however, were his Church-constitutions. Bugenhagen died at Wittenberg on April 20, 1558, after having already lost his sight—broken down by the bitter trials which had come on him subsequent to Luther’s death.Such was Luther’s confidence in his friend and appreciation of his power, that, during Bugenhagen’s prolonged absence, we often find Luther expressing his desire to see him again by his side and in charge of the Wittenberg pastorate. “Your absence,” so in 1531 he wrote to him at Lübeck, “is greatly felt by us. I am overburdened with work and my health is not good. I am neglecting the Church-accounts, and the shepherd should be here. I cannot attend to it. The world remains the world and the devil is its God.... Since the world refuses to allow itself to be saved, let it perish. Greet your Eve and Sara in my name and that of my wife and give greetings to all our friends.”[1363]When Bugenhagen was at Wittenberg Luther loved to open to him the secret recesses of his heart, especially when sufferingfrom “temptations.” Frequently he even aroused in Bugenhagen a sort of echo of his own feelings, which shows us how close a tie existed between them, and gives us an idea of the kind of suggestion Luther was wont to exercise over those who surrendered themselves to his influence.Bugenhagen, like Luther, was not conscious of any good-will or merit of his own, but—apart from the merits of Christ with which we are bedecked—merely of the oppression arising from his “great weakness” and “secret idolatry against the first Table of the Law of Moses.” Hence, when Luther, in June, 1540, complained that Agricola was after some righteousness of his own, whereas he (Luther) could find nothing of the sort in himself, Bugenhagen at once chimed in with the assurance that he was no less unable to discover any such thing in himself.[1364]Luther’s anger against the fanatics and Sacramentarians was imbibed by Bugenhagen. To him and his other Table-guests Luther complained that his adversaries, Carlstadt, Grickel and Jeckel (i.e. Agricola and Jacob Schenk), were ignorant braggarts; they accuse us of want of charity because we will not allow them to have their own way, though we read in Paul: “A man that is a heretic avoid.” Bugenhagen was at once ready to propose a drastic remedy. “Doctor, we should do what is commanded in Deuteronomy [xiii. 5 ff.], where Moses says they should be put to death.” Whereupon Luther replied: “Quite so, and the reason is given in the same text: It is better to make away with a man than with God.”[1365]Bugenhagen was also the first to take up his pen in Luther’s defence[1366]when the Swiss heresy concerning the doctrine of the Supper began to be noised abroad owing to a letter of Zwingli’s to Alber at Reutlingen, and to his book, “Commentarius de vera et falsa religione,” of March, 1525. When Melanchthon showed signs of incliningtowards the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament, there was soon a rumour at Wittenberg that “Melanchthon and Pomeranus have fallen out badly on the Article concerning the Supper,” and an apprehension of “dreadful dissensions amongst the foremost theologians.”[1367]In 1532 Luther declared: There must be some ready to show a “brave front” to the devil; “there must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan, as we three [Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen]; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[1368]And on another occasion he described, in Bugenhagen’s presence, how he was wont cynically to mock the devil when “he comes by night to worry me ... by bringing up my sins”; Satan did not, however, torment him about his really grave sins, such as his “celebration of Mass and provocation of God [in the religious life].” “May God preserve me from that! For were I to realise keenly how great these sins were, the horror of it would kill me!” It was on the occasion of this fantastic outburst, employed by Luther to quiet his conscience, that Bugenhagen, not to be outdone in coarseness, uttered the words already recorded (above, p. 178).[1369]The spiritual kinship between Luther and Bugenhagen produced in the latter a similar liking for coarse language. He was much addicted to the use of strong expressions, witness, for instance, his saying that friars wore ropes around their waists that we might have wherewith to hang them.[1370]In his most severe temptations Luther found consolation in the words of comfort spoken by the pastor of Wittenberg, and he assures us he was often refreshed by such exhortations, the memory of which he was slow to lose.[1371]Bugenhagen assisted him during his severe illness in 1527, and again in the other attack some ten years later. On the latter occasion he summoned his friend to Gotha, made his confession to him, so he says, and commended the “Church and his family” to his care.[1372]When separated they were in the habit of begging each other’s prayers.In his letters Bugenhagen recounts to Luther the success of his labours, in order to afford him pleasure, giving due thanks to God. Somewhat strange is the account he sent Luther of an encounter he had at Lübeck with a girl supposed to be possessed by the devil; through her lips the devil had given testimony to him just as at Ephesus, so the Acts of the Apostlestell us, he had borne witness to the power of Jesus and Paul.[1373]Hardly had he come to the town and visited the girl than the devil, speaking through her, called him by name (we must not forget that her parents, at least, were acquainted with Bugenhagen) and declared his coming to Lübeck to be quite uncalled for. That, in spite of his prayers and tears, he was unable to expel the devil, he himself admits.[1374]The account of the incident, written down by him soon after his arrival at Lübeck, and before he had properly inquired into the case, was soon published under a curious title.[1375]So much did Luther think of the encounter with this hysterical or mentally deranged girl,[1376]that he wrote: “Satan is giving Pomeranus a great deal to do at Lübeck with a maid who is possessed. The cunning demon is planning marvels.” This, when forwarding from the Coburg to Wenceslaus Link, preacher at Nuremberg, the account he had received.[1377]In 1536 Bugenhagen related at table, during the conciliation meetings held at Wittenberg, the encounters he had had in Lübeck and Brunswick with “delivered demoniacs.”[1378]Luther on his side gave his friend, when busy abroad, frequent tidings of the state of things at Wittenberg. In 1537 he sent to him, at Copenhagen, an account of a nasty trick played by Paul Heintz, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, “greatly to the detriment of the town and University.” The latter, in order to possess himself of an inheritance, had given out that a youthful stepson of his was dead, and had caused a dog to be solemnly buried in his place with all the usual rites. “The Master’s drama makes me almost burst with rage.” If these lawyers (who in Luther’s opinion treated the case too leniently) “look upon the disgrace to our Church as a small matter,” he writes, to Bugenhagen, “I will show them a bit of the true Luther (‘ero, Deo volente, Lutherus in hac causa’).”[1379]He did actually write a furious letter to the Elector to secure the severe punishment of the offender, who has caused us “to be jeered at everywhere as dogs’ undertakers”; the lawyers, whoin the Pope’s or the devil’s name had shown themselves lenient, he would denounce from the pulpit.[1380]To Magister Johann Saxo, who in turn related it to Bugenhagen, he declared, that, should the burial of the dog with all the rites of the Church be proved to have taken place, then “Paul would pay for it with his neck” on account of the mockery of religion involved.[1381]Even later Luther declared: “I should have liked to have written his death-sentence”; he added, however, that the culprit had really “buried the dog in order to drive away the plague.”[1382]Possessed, like Luther, by a positive craze for seeing diabolical intervention everywhere, Bugenhagen shared his superstitions to the full. He it was who knew how to expel the devil from the churn by what Luther termed the “best” method, which certainly was the coarsest imaginable.[1383]When, in December, 1536, a storm broke over Wittenberg he vied with Luther in declaring, that since it was quite out of the order of nature, it must be altogether satanic (“plane sathanicum”).[1384]He discerned the work of the devil just as clearly in the persistence of Catholicism and its resistance to Lutheranism. “Dear Lord Jesus Christ,” he writes, “arise with Thy Holy Angels and thrust down into the abyss of hell the diabolical murder and blasphemy of Antichrist.”[1385]Elsewhere he prays in similar fashion, “that God would put to shame the devil’s doctrines and idolatries of the Pope and save poor people from the errors of Antichrist.”[1386]Among all the qualities he had acquired from Luther, his patron and model, this hatred—which the Sectarians of the new faith who differed from Luther were also made to feel—is perhaps the most striking. In his case, however, fanaticism was tempered with greater coolness and calculation. For calm obstinacy Bugenhagen in many ways recalls Calvin.When Superintendent of the Saxon Electorate he introduced into the Litanies a new petition: “From the blasphemy, cruel murder and uncleanness of Thine enemies the Turk and the Pope, graciously deliver us.”[1387]With delight he was able to write to Luther from Denmark,[1388]that the Mass was forbidden throughout the country and that the mendicant Friars had been driven over the borders as “sedition-mongers” and “blasphemers” because they refusedto accept the King’s offers (“some of them were hanged”).[1389]The Canons had everywhere been ordered to attend the Lutheran Communion on festivals; the four thousand parishes had now to be preserved in the new faith which had dawned upon the land. Bugenhagen, on August 12, 1537, a few weeks after his arrival, vested in alb and cope, and with great ecclesiastical pomp, had placed the crown on the head of King Christian III. who had already given the Catholics a foretaste of what was to come and had caused all the bishops to be imprisoned.“All proceeds merrily,” Luther told Bucer on December 6, “God is working through Pomeranus; he crowned the King and Queen like a true bishop. He has given a new span of life to the University [of Copenhagen].”[1390]Bugenhagen was inexorable in his extirpation of the worship of “Antichrist” in Denmark, even down to the smallest details. To the King, concerning a statue of Pope St. Lucius in the Cathedral Church at Roskilde, he wrote, that this must be removed; it was an exact representation of the Pauline prophecy concerning Antichrist; the sword, which the Pope carried in his hand as the symbol of his death, Bugenhagen regarded as emblematic of the cruelty of the Popes, who now preferred to cut off the heads of others and to arrogate to themselves authority over all kings and rulers; if a true likeness of the Pope was really wanted, then he would have to be represented as a devil with claws and a fiendish countenance, and be decked out in a golden mantle, a staff, a sword and three crowns; from such a book the laity would be able to read the truth.[1391]Justus Jonas, who, of all his acquaintances, remained longest with Luther at Wittenberg, like Bugenhagen, bestowed upon the master his enduring veneration and friendship. His numerous translations of Luther’s works are in themselves a proof of his warm attachment to his ideas and of his rare affinity to him. He, next to Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, was the clearest-headed and most active assistant in the affairs of Wittenberg, and his name frequently appears, together with those of Luther and the two other intimates, among the signatures appended to memoranda dealing with matters ecclesiastical.To the close relationship between Luther and Jonas manyinteresting details preserved in the records remain to attest.Jonas once dubbed Luther a Demosthenes of rhetoric.[1392]Luther in his turn praised Jonas not merely for his translations, but also for his sermons; he had all the gifts of a good orator, “save that he cleared his throat too often.”[1393]Yet he also accuses him of conceit for declaring that “he knew all that was contained in Holy Scripture” and also for his annoyance and surprise at the doubts raised concerning the above assertion.[1394]On the other hand, the bitter hostility displayed by Jonas towards all Luther’s enemies, pleased the latter. Jonas, taking up the thread of the conversation, remarked on one occasion to the younger guests at Luther’s table: “Remember this definition: A Papist is a liar and a murderer, or the devil himself. They are not to be trusted in the least, for they thirst after our blood.”[1395]His opinion of Jacob Schenk coincided with that of Luther: His “head is full of confused notions”; he was as “poison” amongst the Wittenberg theologians, so that Bugenhagen did well in refusing him his daughter in marriage.[1396]Of Agricola he remarked playfully, when the latter had uttered the word “oportet” (it must be): “The ‘must’ must be removed; the salt has got into it and we refuse to take it.” Whereupon Luther replied: “He must swallow the ‘must’ but I shall put such salt into it that he will want to spit it out again.”[1397]No one, so well as Jonas, knew how to cheer up Luther, hence Katey sometimes invited him to table secretly.[1398]It is true that his chatter sometimes proved tiresome to the other guests, for one of them, viz. Cordatus, laments that he interrupted Luther’s best sayings with his endless talk.[1399]The truth is, of course, that the pupils were anxious to drink in words from Luther’s own lips. Luther for his part encouraged his friend when the latter was oppressed by illness or interior anxieties. Jonas suffered from calculus, and, during one of his attacks, Luther said to him: “Your illness keeps you watchful and troubled, it is of more use to you than ten silver mines. God knows how to direct the lives of His own people and we must obey Him, each one according to our calling. Beloved God, how is Thy Church distracted both within and without!”[1400]When Jonas on one occasion, being already unwell, was greatly troubled with scruples of conscience and doubts about the faith (“tentatus gravissime”), Luther senthim, all written out, the consoling words with which he himself was wont to find comfort in similar circumstances: “Have I not been found worthy to be called to the service of the Word and been commanded, under pain of Thine everlasting displeasure, to believe what has been revealed to me and in no way to doubt it?... Act manfully and strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in God.”[1401]In the matter of faith Jonas was easily contented, and, for this, Luther praised him; since a man could not comprehend the Articles, it was sufficient for him to begin with a mere assent (“ut incipiamus tantum assentiri”). This theology actually appealed to Luther so much that he exclaimed: “Yes, dear Dr. Jonas, if a man could believe it as it stands, his heart would burst for joy! That is sure. Hence we shall never attain to its comprehension.”[1402]On Ascension Day, 1540, Luther’s pupils wrote down these words which fell from his lips: “I am fond of Jonas, but if he were to ascend up to heaven and be taken from us, what should I then think?... Strange, I cannot understand it and cannot believe it, and yet all the Apostles believed.... Oh, if only a man could believe it!”[1403]Jonas found the faith amongst the country people around Wittenberg so feeble and barren of fruit, that, on one occasion, he complained of it with great anger. Luther sought to pacify him: God’s chastisement will fall upon those peasants in due time; God is strong enough to deal with them. He added, however, admitting that Jonas was right: “Is it not a disgrace that in the whole Wittenberg district only one peasant can be found in all the villages who seriously exhorts his household in the Word of God and the Catechism? The others are all going to the devil!”[1404]Justus Jonas, whose real name was Jodocus (Jobst) Koch, was a native of Nordhausen in the province of Saxony. He, like Bugenhagen, could not boast of a theological education as he had devoted himself to jurisprudence, and, as an enthusiastic Erasmian, to Humanism. In 1514 or 1515 he became priest at Erfurt, and in 1518 Doctor of Civil and Canon Law, at the same time securing a comfortable canonry. He attached himself to Luther during the latter’s journey to Worms, and in July, 1521, migrated to Wittenberg, where he lectured at the University on Canon Law and also on theology, after having been duly promoted to the dignity of Doctor in the theological Faculty; at the same time he was provost of the Schlosskirche.In 1522 he married a Wittenberg girl, and, in the following year, vindicated this step against Johann Faber in “Adv. J. Fabrum, scortationis patronum, pro coniugio sacerdotali,” just as Bugenhagen after his marriage had found occasion to defend in print priestly matrimony. In 1523 he lectured on Romans. Of his publications his translations of Luther’s works were particularly prized.His practical mind, his schooling in the law, and his business abilities, no less than the friendship of Luther bestowed upon a man so ready with the pen, procured for him his nomination as dean of the theological Faculty; this position he retained from 1523 till 1533. Jonas, the “theologian by choice,” as Luther termed him in contradistinction to Amsdorf, the “theologian by nature,” took part in all the important events connected with Lutheranism, in the Conference at Marburg, the Diet of Augsburg and the Visitations in the Saxon Electorate from 1528 onwards, also in the introduction of the innovations into the Duchy of Saxony in 1539. In 1541 he introduced the new church-system in the town of Halle, which till then had been the residence of the Cardinal-Elector, Albert of Mayence. From the time of the War of Schmalkalden and the misfortunes which ensued, his interior troubles grew into a mental malady. Melanchthon speaks of his “animus ægrotus.” His was a form of the “morbus melancholicus”[1405]which we meet with so often at that time amongst disappointed and broken-down men within the Protestant fold, and which was unquestionably due to religious troubles. According to the report of one Protestant, Cyriacus Schnauss (1556), and of a certain anonymous writer, his death († October 9, 1555),[1406]was happier than his life. To the darker side of his character belongs the malicious and personal nature of his polemics, as experienced, for instance, by Johann Faber and Wicel, whom he attacked with the weapon of calumny, and his “constant, often petty, concern in the increase of his income.”[1407]
“The foolish fellow was concerned about his honour,” Luther says very characteristically of this quarrel. He was anxious “that the Wittenbergers should be nothing and Eisleben everything.”[1328]“He is hardened,” and nothing can be done for him; “Agricola says, ‘I, too, have a head.’ Well, were that all that God requires, I might say I have one too. Thus they go on in their obstinacy and see not that they are in the wrong.... Our Lord God evidently intends to go on worrying me yet a while so as to defy the Papists.”[1329]Elsewhere he says: “Agricola looks on at these doings with a merry mien, and refuses to humble himself. Yet he has submitted his recantation to me, perhaps in the hope that I would treat him more leniently. But I shall seek the glory of Christ and not his; I shall pillory him and his words, as a cowardly, proud, impious man, who has done much harm to the Church.”[1330]Another who fell into serious disagreements with Luther over the Antinomian question was Dr. Jacob Schenk, then preacher at Freiberg in Saxony (afterwards Court-preacher at Weimar). At Wittenberg his conduct began to give rise to suspicion at the same time as Agricola’s. He was reported to have said in a sermon: Whoever goes on preaching the law, is possessed of the devil. The eloquence of this man of no mean talents was as great as his aims were strange.In Lauterbach’s Diary we find the following, under date October 7, 1538, concerning Luther and Schenk: At Luther’s table the conversation turned upon Jacob Schenk, “who, in his arrogant and lying fashion was doing all manner of things [so Luther declared] which he afterwards was wont to deny. Wherever he was, he raised up strife, relying on the authority of the Prince and the applause of the people. But he will be put to shame in the end [so Luther went on to say], just as Johann Agricola, who enjoyed great consideration at Court and was almost a Privy Councillor; his reputation vanished without my having any hand in the matter. When Schenk preached at Zeitz he gave general dissatisfaction. The wretched man is puffed up with pride and deceives himself with new-fangled words.... He has concealed his wickedness under a Satanic hypocrisy and is ever aping me. Never shall I trust him again, no, not to all eternity.”[1331]Lauterbach gives a striking picture of Luther’s behaviour at his encounter with Jacob Schenk on September 11, 1538. Luther and Jonas, after a sermon which had greatly displeased them, paid him a visit. They found him, “sad to relate, impenitent and unabashed, rebellious, ambitious, and perjurious.” Luther pointed out to him his ignorance; how could he, unexperienced as he was, and understanding neither dialectics nor rhetoric, venture thus to oppose his teachers? Schenk replied: “I must do so for the sake of Christ’s Blood and His dear Passion; my own great trouble of conscience also compels me to it” (thus adducing a motive similar to that so often alleged by Luther in his own case). I must “fear God more than all my preceptors; for I have a God as much as you.” Luther replied: “It may be that you understand my doctrine perfectly, but you ought nevertheless, for the honour of God, to honour us as the teachers who first instructed you.” This seems to have made no impression on Schenk. Luther’s parting shot was: “If you are torn to pieces, may the devil lap your blood. We also are ‘in peril from false brethren.’ Poor Freiberg [the scene of Schenk’s labours] will never recover from this. But God, the Avenger, will destroy the man who has defiled His temple. The proverb says: ‘Where heart and mind both are bad, the state of a man indeed is sad.’” At supper, Schenk, seated at table with Luther and Jonas, began to abuse Luther and the inhabitants of Freiberg; after saying much that was scarcely complimentary, he added: “‘When I have made the Court as pious as you have made the world, then my work will be finished.’ In spite of all this impertinence he remained seated, though his hypocritical show of humility revealed how depraved his heart really was. When Luther got up to leave the room Schenk attempted to start the quarrel anew.”[1332]Finally they parted unreconciled.Schenk subsequently led a wandering existence, ever under suspicion as to the purity of his faith. In 1541 he was at Leipzig and in 1543 he visited Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg. It was given out by adversaries, such as Melanchthon and Alberus, that he ultimately committed suicide, driven thereto by melancholy; the statement is, however, not otherwise confirmed,Johann Wildenauer (or Silvius), the theologian, was born at Eger in Bohemia, and hence was generally known as Egranus. This priest, who was a man of talent and of Humanistic culture, and an enthusiastic follower of Erasmus, had been won over to the new teaching in the very beginning. After having been preacher at the Marienkirche at Zwickau until Thomas Münzer made any further stay impossible, we find him from 1521-23 and, again, from 1533-34, preacher of the new faith at Joachimstal, where he was one of the predecessors of Mathesius.Wildenauer was one of the most remarkable and independent characters of the time, but an “extremely restless spirit.”[1333]Although a Lutheran, he openly expressed his dissatisfaction, not only with the moral conditions under Lutheranism, but also with many points of his master’s doctrine, particularly with his theory that faith alone justifies, and that man cannot co-operate in the work of his salvation. Luther became at an early date suspicious and angry concerning him. He wrote to Joachimstal “to warn the people against the dubious doctrines of Egranus,” as Mathesius relates, on the strength of copies of certain letters he had seen.[1334]The more dutiful Mathesius speaks of his predecessor as “a Mameluke and an ungrateful pupil.”[1335]His fault consisted in his following the example of Erasmus, as did in progress of time so many other admirers of the Dutch scholar, and relinquishing more and more his former good opinion of Luther’s person and work; with this change his own sad experiences had not a little to do. To the Catholic Church, which had excommunicated him, he apparently never returned. When, in 1534, he was deprived of his post at Joachimstal, he complained in a letter, that he had been “driven into exile and outlawed by Papists and Lutherans alike.”[1336]In that same year he published at Leipzig a work entitled “A Christian Instruction on the righteousness of faith and on good works,”[1337]which, in spite of its bitterness, contained many home-truths. There, apart from what he says on doctrinal matters, we find an account of the “temptations and trials” he had to endure for having ventured to teach that “good works and a Christian life, side by side with faith, are useful and necessary for securing eternal life.”[1338]About this time Luther again sent forth a challenge to Erasmus and to all Erasmians generally who had broken with him, Egranus included.He told his friends that now his business was to “purify the Church from the brood of Erasmus” (“a fœtibus eius”); he was referring particularly to Egranus, also to Crotus Rubeanus, Wicel, [Œcolampadius, and Campanus.[1339]Erasmus had already “seduced” Zwingli and now he had also “converted Egranus, who believes just as much as he,” viz. nothing.[1340]—Egranus he calls a “proud donkey,” who teaches that Christ must not be exalted so high, having learnt this from Erasmus;[1341]“this proud spirit declared that though Christ had earned it, yet we must merit it.”[1342]—He had long been acquainted with this false spirit, so he wrote in 1533 or 1534 to a Joachimstal burgher; he, like other sectarians, was full of “devil’s venom.” “Even though no syrup or purgative be given them, yet they cannot but expel their poison from mouth and anus. The time will come when they will be unable any longer to pass the matter, and then their belly must burst like that of Judas; for they will not be able toretain what they have stolen and devoured of [the doctrine of] Christ.”[1343]That Egranus finally drank himself to death with Malmsey “is a despicable calumny, which can be traced back to Mathesius.”[1344]In the sixteenth-century controversies it was the usual thing on either side to calumniate opponents and to make them die the worst death conceivable,[1345]and it would appear, that, in the case of Egranus, at a very early date unfavourable reports were circulated concerning his manner of death. His lamentable end (“misere periit”), Luther likens to that of Zwingli, struck down in the battle of Cappel by a divine judgment.[1346]His death occurred in 1535.In the “Christian Instruction,” referred to above, Egranus had written: “The new prophets can only tell us that we are freed from sin by Christ; what He commanded or forbade in the Gospel that they pass over as were it not in the Gospel at all.” “If we simply say: Christ has done everything and what we do is of no account, then we are making too much of Christ’s share, for we also must do something to secure our salvation. By such words Christ is made a cloak for our sins, and, as is actually now the case, all seek to conceal and excuse their wickedness and viciousness under the mantle of Christ’s merits.”“If such faith without works continues to be preached much longer, the Christian religion will fall into ruins and come to a lamentable end, and the place where this faith without works is taught will become a Sodom and Gomorrha.”[1347]4. Bugenhagen, Jonas and othersDisagreements such as these never arose to mar the relations between Luther and some of his other more intimate co-workers, for instance, his friendship with Bugenhagen and Jonas, who have been so frequently alluded to already. He was always ready to acknowledge in the warmest manner the great services they rendered him in the defence and spread of his teaching, and to support them when they stood in need of his assistance. He was never stingy in his bestowal of praise, narrow-minded or jealous, in his acknowledgement of the merits of friendly fellow-preachers, or of those writers who held Lutheran views.Nicholas von Amsdorf, who introduced the new faith into Magdeburg in 1524 and there became Superintendent, he praises for the firmness with which he confessed the faith and for his fearless conduct generally. In Disputations he was wont to go straight to the heart of the matter like the “born theologian” he was; at Schmalkalden, when preaching before the Princes and magnates, he had not shrunk from declaring that our Evangel was intended for the weak and oppressed and for those who feel themselves sinners, though he could not discern any such in the audience.[1348]Johann Brenz, preacher in Schwäbisch-Hall since 1522, and one of the founders of the new church system in Suabia, was greatly lauded by Luther for his exegetical abilities. “He is a learned and reliable man. Amongst all the theologians of our day there is not one who knows how to interpret and handle Holy Scripture like Brenz. When I gaze in admiration at his spirit I almost despair of my own powers. Certainly none of our people can do what he has done in his exposition of the Gospel of St. John. At times, it is true, he is carried away by his own ideas, yet he sticks to the point and speaks conformably to the simplicity of God’s Word.”[1349]Next to Melanchthon, however, the friend whom Luther praised most highly as a “thoroughly learned and most able man,” was Johann Bugenhagen. “He has, under most trying circumstances, been of service to many of the Churches.”[1350]In his Preface to Bugenhagen’s Latin Commentary on the Psalms—a work which, even in the opinion of Protestant theologians, “leaves much to be desired”[1351]from the “point of view of learning,” and which in reality is merely a sort of polemical work of edification, written from the standpoint of the new faith—Luther declared, that the spirit of Christ had at length unlocked the Psalter through Bugenhagen; every teacher must admit that now “the spirit was revealing secrets hiddenfor ages.” “I venture to assert that the first person on earth to give an explanation of the Book of Psalms is Pomeranus. Almost all earlier writers have introduced their own views into the book, but here the judgment of the spirit will teach you wondrous things.”[1352]Yet at the very outset, in the first verse of the Psalms, instead of a learned commentary, we find Bugenhagen expounding the new belief, and attacking the alleged self-righteousness of Catholicism, termed by him the “cathedra pestilentiæ”; he even relates at length his conversion to Lutheranism, which had given scandal “to those not yet enlightened by the sun of the Evangel.”[1353]They were no longer to wait for the completion of his own Commentary on the Psalms, Luther concludes, since now—in place of poor Luther—David, Isaias, Paul, and John were themselves speaking to the reader.“He had no clear perception of the defects of Bugenhagen’s exegetical method,” remarks O. Albrecht, the editor of the above Preface in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.[1354]The explanation of this “uncalled-for praise,” as Albrecht terms it, is to be found in the feeling expressed by Luther in the first sentence of the Preface: At the present time God had caused His Word to shine like crystal, whereas of yore there prevailed only chill and dismal mists.The truth is that few of Luther’s assistants promoted his cause with such devotion and determination combined as did Pomeranus, who, for all his zeal, was both practical and sober in his ways. Such were his achievements for the cause, that Luther greets him in the superscription of a letter as “Bishop of the Church of Wittenberg, Legate of Christ’s face and heart to Denmark, my brother and my master.” He thus explains the words “legatus a facie et a corde”: “the Pope boasts of his ‘legati a latere,’ I boast of my pious preachers ‘a facie et a corde.’”[1355]Luther was in the habit of putting Bugenhagen on the same footing with himself and Melanchthon: Luther, Philip, and Pomeranus will support the Evangel as long as they are there, he says, but after this there will come a fall (“fiet lapsus”).[1356]Let those braggarts who pretend they know better “come to me, to Philip, and to Pomeranus ... then they will be nicely confounded.”[1357]Köstlin is, however, rightly ofopinion that, as compared with Luther and Melanchthon, Bugenhagen was “merely a subordinate, though endowed by nature with considerable powers of mind and body.”[1358]Yet the sun of Luther’s favour shone upon him. Agricola, “the poor fellow,” says Luther, “looks down on Pomeranus, but the latter is a great theologian and has plenty nerve for his work (‘multum habet nervorum’); Agricola, of course, would make himself out to be more learned than Master Philip or I.”[1359]“Pomeranus is a splendid professor”; “his sermons are full of wealth.”[1360]The truth is that the “wealth,” or rather expansiveness, of his discourses was so great that Luther had to reprove him severely for the length of his sermons.Johann Bugenhagen, called Pommer or Pomeranus because he hailed from Wollin in Pomerania, after two years spent at the University of Greifswald and a further course devoted mainly to Humanist studies, was ordained priest by the Bishop of Cammin, when “as yet he probably had not begun to study theology.”[1361]At the College at Treptow he earned respect as professor of Humanism and as Rector; in his desire to further the better theology advocated by Erasmus he took to studying the Bible, and, on Luther’s appearance, was soon won over to the cause, though on first reading Luther’s work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” he “had been repelled by the palpable heresies” it contained. He settled at Wittenberg, delivered private lectures on the Psalms, and married, on October 13, 1522, a servant-maid of Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer; in the following year he was inducted at the Schlosskirche as parish-priest of Wittenberg by the magistrates, acting together with Luther. In defiance of right and justice and of the murmurs raised, Luther, from the pulpit, proclaimed him pastor, thus overruling the objections of the Chapter; his choice by the board of magistrates “and by the congregation agreeably with the evangelical teaching of Paul,” Luther held to be quite sufficient.[1362]As pastor, Bugenhagen displayed great energy not merely in preaching to and instructing the people, but in furthering in every way the spread of Lutheranism in the civic andsocial life of the Electorate. His practical talents made him eventually the apostle of the new Church, even beyond the confines of Saxony. He successively introduced or organised it in Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, and in Pomerania, his own country; then in Denmark, from 1537-39, where he fixed his residence at Copenhagen. Two main features are apparent in all he did; everywhere the new Churches were established on a strictly civil basis, and, so far as the new religion allowed of it, the old Catholic forms were retained.In his indefatigable and arduous undertakings Bugenhagen made himself one with Luther, and became, so to speak, a replica of his master. In his scrupulous observance of Luther’s doctrine he was to be outdone by none, save possibly by Amsdorf; in rudeness and want of consideration where the new Evangel was concerned, and in his whole way of thinking, he stood nearest to Luther, the only difference being, that, in his discourses and writings we miss Luther’s imagination and feeling. In the literary field, in addition to the Commentary on the Psalms and other similar writings, he distinguished himself by a work in vindication of the new preaching, addressed to the city of Hamburg and entitled: “Von dem Christen-loven und den rechten guden Werken” (1526), also by the share he took, with Melanchthon and Cruciger, in Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and his labours in connection with the Low-Saxon version. Most important of all, however, were his Church-constitutions. Bugenhagen died at Wittenberg on April 20, 1558, after having already lost his sight—broken down by the bitter trials which had come on him subsequent to Luther’s death.Such was Luther’s confidence in his friend and appreciation of his power, that, during Bugenhagen’s prolonged absence, we often find Luther expressing his desire to see him again by his side and in charge of the Wittenberg pastorate. “Your absence,” so in 1531 he wrote to him at Lübeck, “is greatly felt by us. I am overburdened with work and my health is not good. I am neglecting the Church-accounts, and the shepherd should be here. I cannot attend to it. The world remains the world and the devil is its God.... Since the world refuses to allow itself to be saved, let it perish. Greet your Eve and Sara in my name and that of my wife and give greetings to all our friends.”[1363]When Bugenhagen was at Wittenberg Luther loved to open to him the secret recesses of his heart, especially when sufferingfrom “temptations.” Frequently he even aroused in Bugenhagen a sort of echo of his own feelings, which shows us how close a tie existed between them, and gives us an idea of the kind of suggestion Luther was wont to exercise over those who surrendered themselves to his influence.Bugenhagen, like Luther, was not conscious of any good-will or merit of his own, but—apart from the merits of Christ with which we are bedecked—merely of the oppression arising from his “great weakness” and “secret idolatry against the first Table of the Law of Moses.” Hence, when Luther, in June, 1540, complained that Agricola was after some righteousness of his own, whereas he (Luther) could find nothing of the sort in himself, Bugenhagen at once chimed in with the assurance that he was no less unable to discover any such thing in himself.[1364]Luther’s anger against the fanatics and Sacramentarians was imbibed by Bugenhagen. To him and his other Table-guests Luther complained that his adversaries, Carlstadt, Grickel and Jeckel (i.e. Agricola and Jacob Schenk), were ignorant braggarts; they accuse us of want of charity because we will not allow them to have their own way, though we read in Paul: “A man that is a heretic avoid.” Bugenhagen was at once ready to propose a drastic remedy. “Doctor, we should do what is commanded in Deuteronomy [xiii. 5 ff.], where Moses says they should be put to death.” Whereupon Luther replied: “Quite so, and the reason is given in the same text: It is better to make away with a man than with God.”[1365]Bugenhagen was also the first to take up his pen in Luther’s defence[1366]when the Swiss heresy concerning the doctrine of the Supper began to be noised abroad owing to a letter of Zwingli’s to Alber at Reutlingen, and to his book, “Commentarius de vera et falsa religione,” of March, 1525. When Melanchthon showed signs of incliningtowards the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament, there was soon a rumour at Wittenberg that “Melanchthon and Pomeranus have fallen out badly on the Article concerning the Supper,” and an apprehension of “dreadful dissensions amongst the foremost theologians.”[1367]In 1532 Luther declared: There must be some ready to show a “brave front” to the devil; “there must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan, as we three [Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen]; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[1368]And on another occasion he described, in Bugenhagen’s presence, how he was wont cynically to mock the devil when “he comes by night to worry me ... by bringing up my sins”; Satan did not, however, torment him about his really grave sins, such as his “celebration of Mass and provocation of God [in the religious life].” “May God preserve me from that! For were I to realise keenly how great these sins were, the horror of it would kill me!” It was on the occasion of this fantastic outburst, employed by Luther to quiet his conscience, that Bugenhagen, not to be outdone in coarseness, uttered the words already recorded (above, p. 178).[1369]The spiritual kinship between Luther and Bugenhagen produced in the latter a similar liking for coarse language. He was much addicted to the use of strong expressions, witness, for instance, his saying that friars wore ropes around their waists that we might have wherewith to hang them.[1370]In his most severe temptations Luther found consolation in the words of comfort spoken by the pastor of Wittenberg, and he assures us he was often refreshed by such exhortations, the memory of which he was slow to lose.[1371]Bugenhagen assisted him during his severe illness in 1527, and again in the other attack some ten years later. On the latter occasion he summoned his friend to Gotha, made his confession to him, so he says, and commended the “Church and his family” to his care.[1372]When separated they were in the habit of begging each other’s prayers.In his letters Bugenhagen recounts to Luther the success of his labours, in order to afford him pleasure, giving due thanks to God. Somewhat strange is the account he sent Luther of an encounter he had at Lübeck with a girl supposed to be possessed by the devil; through her lips the devil had given testimony to him just as at Ephesus, so the Acts of the Apostlestell us, he had borne witness to the power of Jesus and Paul.[1373]Hardly had he come to the town and visited the girl than the devil, speaking through her, called him by name (we must not forget that her parents, at least, were acquainted with Bugenhagen) and declared his coming to Lübeck to be quite uncalled for. That, in spite of his prayers and tears, he was unable to expel the devil, he himself admits.[1374]The account of the incident, written down by him soon after his arrival at Lübeck, and before he had properly inquired into the case, was soon published under a curious title.[1375]So much did Luther think of the encounter with this hysterical or mentally deranged girl,[1376]that he wrote: “Satan is giving Pomeranus a great deal to do at Lübeck with a maid who is possessed. The cunning demon is planning marvels.” This, when forwarding from the Coburg to Wenceslaus Link, preacher at Nuremberg, the account he had received.[1377]In 1536 Bugenhagen related at table, during the conciliation meetings held at Wittenberg, the encounters he had had in Lübeck and Brunswick with “delivered demoniacs.”[1378]Luther on his side gave his friend, when busy abroad, frequent tidings of the state of things at Wittenberg. In 1537 he sent to him, at Copenhagen, an account of a nasty trick played by Paul Heintz, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, “greatly to the detriment of the town and University.” The latter, in order to possess himself of an inheritance, had given out that a youthful stepson of his was dead, and had caused a dog to be solemnly buried in his place with all the usual rites. “The Master’s drama makes me almost burst with rage.” If these lawyers (who in Luther’s opinion treated the case too leniently) “look upon the disgrace to our Church as a small matter,” he writes, to Bugenhagen, “I will show them a bit of the true Luther (‘ero, Deo volente, Lutherus in hac causa’).”[1379]He did actually write a furious letter to the Elector to secure the severe punishment of the offender, who has caused us “to be jeered at everywhere as dogs’ undertakers”; the lawyers, whoin the Pope’s or the devil’s name had shown themselves lenient, he would denounce from the pulpit.[1380]To Magister Johann Saxo, who in turn related it to Bugenhagen, he declared, that, should the burial of the dog with all the rites of the Church be proved to have taken place, then “Paul would pay for it with his neck” on account of the mockery of religion involved.[1381]Even later Luther declared: “I should have liked to have written his death-sentence”; he added, however, that the culprit had really “buried the dog in order to drive away the plague.”[1382]Possessed, like Luther, by a positive craze for seeing diabolical intervention everywhere, Bugenhagen shared his superstitions to the full. He it was who knew how to expel the devil from the churn by what Luther termed the “best” method, which certainly was the coarsest imaginable.[1383]When, in December, 1536, a storm broke over Wittenberg he vied with Luther in declaring, that since it was quite out of the order of nature, it must be altogether satanic (“plane sathanicum”).[1384]He discerned the work of the devil just as clearly in the persistence of Catholicism and its resistance to Lutheranism. “Dear Lord Jesus Christ,” he writes, “arise with Thy Holy Angels and thrust down into the abyss of hell the diabolical murder and blasphemy of Antichrist.”[1385]Elsewhere he prays in similar fashion, “that God would put to shame the devil’s doctrines and idolatries of the Pope and save poor people from the errors of Antichrist.”[1386]Among all the qualities he had acquired from Luther, his patron and model, this hatred—which the Sectarians of the new faith who differed from Luther were also made to feel—is perhaps the most striking. In his case, however, fanaticism was tempered with greater coolness and calculation. For calm obstinacy Bugenhagen in many ways recalls Calvin.When Superintendent of the Saxon Electorate he introduced into the Litanies a new petition: “From the blasphemy, cruel murder and uncleanness of Thine enemies the Turk and the Pope, graciously deliver us.”[1387]With delight he was able to write to Luther from Denmark,[1388]that the Mass was forbidden throughout the country and that the mendicant Friars had been driven over the borders as “sedition-mongers” and “blasphemers” because they refusedto accept the King’s offers (“some of them were hanged”).[1389]The Canons had everywhere been ordered to attend the Lutheran Communion on festivals; the four thousand parishes had now to be preserved in the new faith which had dawned upon the land. Bugenhagen, on August 12, 1537, a few weeks after his arrival, vested in alb and cope, and with great ecclesiastical pomp, had placed the crown on the head of King Christian III. who had already given the Catholics a foretaste of what was to come and had caused all the bishops to be imprisoned.“All proceeds merrily,” Luther told Bucer on December 6, “God is working through Pomeranus; he crowned the King and Queen like a true bishop. He has given a new span of life to the University [of Copenhagen].”[1390]Bugenhagen was inexorable in his extirpation of the worship of “Antichrist” in Denmark, even down to the smallest details. To the King, concerning a statue of Pope St. Lucius in the Cathedral Church at Roskilde, he wrote, that this must be removed; it was an exact representation of the Pauline prophecy concerning Antichrist; the sword, which the Pope carried in his hand as the symbol of his death, Bugenhagen regarded as emblematic of the cruelty of the Popes, who now preferred to cut off the heads of others and to arrogate to themselves authority over all kings and rulers; if a true likeness of the Pope was really wanted, then he would have to be represented as a devil with claws and a fiendish countenance, and be decked out in a golden mantle, a staff, a sword and three crowns; from such a book the laity would be able to read the truth.[1391]Justus Jonas, who, of all his acquaintances, remained longest with Luther at Wittenberg, like Bugenhagen, bestowed upon the master his enduring veneration and friendship. His numerous translations of Luther’s works are in themselves a proof of his warm attachment to his ideas and of his rare affinity to him. He, next to Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, was the clearest-headed and most active assistant in the affairs of Wittenberg, and his name frequently appears, together with those of Luther and the two other intimates, among the signatures appended to memoranda dealing with matters ecclesiastical.To the close relationship between Luther and Jonas manyinteresting details preserved in the records remain to attest.Jonas once dubbed Luther a Demosthenes of rhetoric.[1392]Luther in his turn praised Jonas not merely for his translations, but also for his sermons; he had all the gifts of a good orator, “save that he cleared his throat too often.”[1393]Yet he also accuses him of conceit for declaring that “he knew all that was contained in Holy Scripture” and also for his annoyance and surprise at the doubts raised concerning the above assertion.[1394]On the other hand, the bitter hostility displayed by Jonas towards all Luther’s enemies, pleased the latter. Jonas, taking up the thread of the conversation, remarked on one occasion to the younger guests at Luther’s table: “Remember this definition: A Papist is a liar and a murderer, or the devil himself. They are not to be trusted in the least, for they thirst after our blood.”[1395]His opinion of Jacob Schenk coincided with that of Luther: His “head is full of confused notions”; he was as “poison” amongst the Wittenberg theologians, so that Bugenhagen did well in refusing him his daughter in marriage.[1396]Of Agricola he remarked playfully, when the latter had uttered the word “oportet” (it must be): “The ‘must’ must be removed; the salt has got into it and we refuse to take it.” Whereupon Luther replied: “He must swallow the ‘must’ but I shall put such salt into it that he will want to spit it out again.”[1397]No one, so well as Jonas, knew how to cheer up Luther, hence Katey sometimes invited him to table secretly.[1398]It is true that his chatter sometimes proved tiresome to the other guests, for one of them, viz. Cordatus, laments that he interrupted Luther’s best sayings with his endless talk.[1399]The truth is, of course, that the pupils were anxious to drink in words from Luther’s own lips. Luther for his part encouraged his friend when the latter was oppressed by illness or interior anxieties. Jonas suffered from calculus, and, during one of his attacks, Luther said to him: “Your illness keeps you watchful and troubled, it is of more use to you than ten silver mines. God knows how to direct the lives of His own people and we must obey Him, each one according to our calling. Beloved God, how is Thy Church distracted both within and without!”[1400]When Jonas on one occasion, being already unwell, was greatly troubled with scruples of conscience and doubts about the faith (“tentatus gravissime”), Luther senthim, all written out, the consoling words with which he himself was wont to find comfort in similar circumstances: “Have I not been found worthy to be called to the service of the Word and been commanded, under pain of Thine everlasting displeasure, to believe what has been revealed to me and in no way to doubt it?... Act manfully and strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in God.”[1401]In the matter of faith Jonas was easily contented, and, for this, Luther praised him; since a man could not comprehend the Articles, it was sufficient for him to begin with a mere assent (“ut incipiamus tantum assentiri”). This theology actually appealed to Luther so much that he exclaimed: “Yes, dear Dr. Jonas, if a man could believe it as it stands, his heart would burst for joy! That is sure. Hence we shall never attain to its comprehension.”[1402]On Ascension Day, 1540, Luther’s pupils wrote down these words which fell from his lips: “I am fond of Jonas, but if he were to ascend up to heaven and be taken from us, what should I then think?... Strange, I cannot understand it and cannot believe it, and yet all the Apostles believed.... Oh, if only a man could believe it!”[1403]Jonas found the faith amongst the country people around Wittenberg so feeble and barren of fruit, that, on one occasion, he complained of it with great anger. Luther sought to pacify him: God’s chastisement will fall upon those peasants in due time; God is strong enough to deal with them. He added, however, admitting that Jonas was right: “Is it not a disgrace that in the whole Wittenberg district only one peasant can be found in all the villages who seriously exhorts his household in the Word of God and the Catechism? The others are all going to the devil!”[1404]Justus Jonas, whose real name was Jodocus (Jobst) Koch, was a native of Nordhausen in the province of Saxony. He, like Bugenhagen, could not boast of a theological education as he had devoted himself to jurisprudence, and, as an enthusiastic Erasmian, to Humanism. In 1514 or 1515 he became priest at Erfurt, and in 1518 Doctor of Civil and Canon Law, at the same time securing a comfortable canonry. He attached himself to Luther during the latter’s journey to Worms, and in July, 1521, migrated to Wittenberg, where he lectured at the University on Canon Law and also on theology, after having been duly promoted to the dignity of Doctor in the theological Faculty; at the same time he was provost of the Schlosskirche.In 1522 he married a Wittenberg girl, and, in the following year, vindicated this step against Johann Faber in “Adv. J. Fabrum, scortationis patronum, pro coniugio sacerdotali,” just as Bugenhagen after his marriage had found occasion to defend in print priestly matrimony. In 1523 he lectured on Romans. Of his publications his translations of Luther’s works were particularly prized.His practical mind, his schooling in the law, and his business abilities, no less than the friendship of Luther bestowed upon a man so ready with the pen, procured for him his nomination as dean of the theological Faculty; this position he retained from 1523 till 1533. Jonas, the “theologian by choice,” as Luther termed him in contradistinction to Amsdorf, the “theologian by nature,” took part in all the important events connected with Lutheranism, in the Conference at Marburg, the Diet of Augsburg and the Visitations in the Saxon Electorate from 1528 onwards, also in the introduction of the innovations into the Duchy of Saxony in 1539. In 1541 he introduced the new church-system in the town of Halle, which till then had been the residence of the Cardinal-Elector, Albert of Mayence. From the time of the War of Schmalkalden and the misfortunes which ensued, his interior troubles grew into a mental malady. Melanchthon speaks of his “animus ægrotus.” His was a form of the “morbus melancholicus”[1405]which we meet with so often at that time amongst disappointed and broken-down men within the Protestant fold, and which was unquestionably due to religious troubles. According to the report of one Protestant, Cyriacus Schnauss (1556), and of a certain anonymous writer, his death († October 9, 1555),[1406]was happier than his life. To the darker side of his character belongs the malicious and personal nature of his polemics, as experienced, for instance, by Johann Faber and Wicel, whom he attacked with the weapon of calumny, and his “constant, often petty, concern in the increase of his income.”[1407]
“The foolish fellow was concerned about his honour,” Luther says very characteristically of this quarrel. He was anxious “that the Wittenbergers should be nothing and Eisleben everything.”[1328]“He is hardened,” and nothing can be done for him; “Agricola says, ‘I, too, have a head.’ Well, were that all that God requires, I might say I have one too. Thus they go on in their obstinacy and see not that they are in the wrong.... Our Lord God evidently intends to go on worrying me yet a while so as to defy the Papists.”[1329]Elsewhere he says: “Agricola looks on at these doings with a merry mien, and refuses to humble himself. Yet he has submitted his recantation to me, perhaps in the hope that I would treat him more leniently. But I shall seek the glory of Christ and not his; I shall pillory him and his words, as a cowardly, proud, impious man, who has done much harm to the Church.”[1330]
“The foolish fellow was concerned about his honour,” Luther says very characteristically of this quarrel. He was anxious “that the Wittenbergers should be nothing and Eisleben everything.”[1328]“He is hardened,” and nothing can be done for him; “Agricola says, ‘I, too, have a head.’ Well, were that all that God requires, I might say I have one too. Thus they go on in their obstinacy and see not that they are in the wrong.... Our Lord God evidently intends to go on worrying me yet a while so as to defy the Papists.”[1329]Elsewhere he says: “Agricola looks on at these doings with a merry mien, and refuses to humble himself. Yet he has submitted his recantation to me, perhaps in the hope that I would treat him more leniently. But I shall seek the glory of Christ and not his; I shall pillory him and his words, as a cowardly, proud, impious man, who has done much harm to the Church.”[1330]
Another who fell into serious disagreements with Luther over the Antinomian question was Dr. Jacob Schenk, then preacher at Freiberg in Saxony (afterwards Court-preacher at Weimar). At Wittenberg his conduct began to give rise to suspicion at the same time as Agricola’s. He was reported to have said in a sermon: Whoever goes on preaching the law, is possessed of the devil. The eloquence of this man of no mean talents was as great as his aims were strange.
In Lauterbach’s Diary we find the following, under date October 7, 1538, concerning Luther and Schenk: At Luther’s table the conversation turned upon Jacob Schenk, “who, in his arrogant and lying fashion was doing all manner of things [so Luther declared] which he afterwards was wont to deny. Wherever he was, he raised up strife, relying on the authority of the Prince and the applause of the people. But he will be put to shame in the end [so Luther went on to say], just as Johann Agricola, who enjoyed great consideration at Court and was almost a Privy Councillor; his reputation vanished without my having any hand in the matter. When Schenk preached at Zeitz he gave general dissatisfaction. The wretched man is puffed up with pride and deceives himself with new-fangled words.... He has concealed his wickedness under a Satanic hypocrisy and is ever aping me. Never shall I trust him again, no, not to all eternity.”[1331]Lauterbach gives a striking picture of Luther’s behaviour at his encounter with Jacob Schenk on September 11, 1538. Luther and Jonas, after a sermon which had greatly displeased them, paid him a visit. They found him, “sad to relate, impenitent and unabashed, rebellious, ambitious, and perjurious.” Luther pointed out to him his ignorance; how could he, unexperienced as he was, and understanding neither dialectics nor rhetoric, venture thus to oppose his teachers? Schenk replied: “I must do so for the sake of Christ’s Blood and His dear Passion; my own great trouble of conscience also compels me to it” (thus adducing a motive similar to that so often alleged by Luther in his own case). I must “fear God more than all my preceptors; for I have a God as much as you.” Luther replied: “It may be that you understand my doctrine perfectly, but you ought nevertheless, for the honour of God, to honour us as the teachers who first instructed you.” This seems to have made no impression on Schenk. Luther’s parting shot was: “If you are torn to pieces, may the devil lap your blood. We also are ‘in peril from false brethren.’ Poor Freiberg [the scene of Schenk’s labours] will never recover from this. But God, the Avenger, will destroy the man who has defiled His temple. The proverb says: ‘Where heart and mind both are bad, the state of a man indeed is sad.’” At supper, Schenk, seated at table with Luther and Jonas, began to abuse Luther and the inhabitants of Freiberg; after saying much that was scarcely complimentary, he added: “‘When I have made the Court as pious as you have made the world, then my work will be finished.’ In spite of all this impertinence he remained seated, though his hypocritical show of humility revealed how depraved his heart really was. When Luther got up to leave the room Schenk attempted to start the quarrel anew.”[1332]Finally they parted unreconciled.
In Lauterbach’s Diary we find the following, under date October 7, 1538, concerning Luther and Schenk: At Luther’s table the conversation turned upon Jacob Schenk, “who, in his arrogant and lying fashion was doing all manner of things [so Luther declared] which he afterwards was wont to deny. Wherever he was, he raised up strife, relying on the authority of the Prince and the applause of the people. But he will be put to shame in the end [so Luther went on to say], just as Johann Agricola, who enjoyed great consideration at Court and was almost a Privy Councillor; his reputation vanished without my having any hand in the matter. When Schenk preached at Zeitz he gave general dissatisfaction. The wretched man is puffed up with pride and deceives himself with new-fangled words.... He has concealed his wickedness under a Satanic hypocrisy and is ever aping me. Never shall I trust him again, no, not to all eternity.”[1331]
Lauterbach gives a striking picture of Luther’s behaviour at his encounter with Jacob Schenk on September 11, 1538. Luther and Jonas, after a sermon which had greatly displeased them, paid him a visit. They found him, “sad to relate, impenitent and unabashed, rebellious, ambitious, and perjurious.” Luther pointed out to him his ignorance; how could he, unexperienced as he was, and understanding neither dialectics nor rhetoric, venture thus to oppose his teachers? Schenk replied: “I must do so for the sake of Christ’s Blood and His dear Passion; my own great trouble of conscience also compels me to it” (thus adducing a motive similar to that so often alleged by Luther in his own case). I must “fear God more than all my preceptors; for I have a God as much as you.” Luther replied: “It may be that you understand my doctrine perfectly, but you ought nevertheless, for the honour of God, to honour us as the teachers who first instructed you.” This seems to have made no impression on Schenk. Luther’s parting shot was: “If you are torn to pieces, may the devil lap your blood. We also are ‘in peril from false brethren.’ Poor Freiberg [the scene of Schenk’s labours] will never recover from this. But God, the Avenger, will destroy the man who has defiled His temple. The proverb says: ‘Where heart and mind both are bad, the state of a man indeed is sad.’” At supper, Schenk, seated at table with Luther and Jonas, began to abuse Luther and the inhabitants of Freiberg; after saying much that was scarcely complimentary, he added: “‘When I have made the Court as pious as you have made the world, then my work will be finished.’ In spite of all this impertinence he remained seated, though his hypocritical show of humility revealed how depraved his heart really was. When Luther got up to leave the room Schenk attempted to start the quarrel anew.”[1332]Finally they parted unreconciled.
Schenk subsequently led a wandering existence, ever under suspicion as to the purity of his faith. In 1541 he was at Leipzig and in 1543 he visited Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg. It was given out by adversaries, such as Melanchthon and Alberus, that he ultimately committed suicide, driven thereto by melancholy; the statement is, however, not otherwise confirmed,
Johann Wildenauer (or Silvius), the theologian, was born at Eger in Bohemia, and hence was generally known as Egranus. This priest, who was a man of talent and of Humanistic culture, and an enthusiastic follower of Erasmus, had been won over to the new teaching in the very beginning. After having been preacher at the Marienkirche at Zwickau until Thomas Münzer made any further stay impossible, we find him from 1521-23 and, again, from 1533-34, preacher of the new faith at Joachimstal, where he was one of the predecessors of Mathesius.
Wildenauer was one of the most remarkable and independent characters of the time, but an “extremely restless spirit.”[1333]Although a Lutheran, he openly expressed his dissatisfaction, not only with the moral conditions under Lutheranism, but also with many points of his master’s doctrine, particularly with his theory that faith alone justifies, and that man cannot co-operate in the work of his salvation. Luther became at an early date suspicious and angry concerning him. He wrote to Joachimstal “to warn the people against the dubious doctrines of Egranus,” as Mathesius relates, on the strength of copies of certain letters he had seen.[1334]The more dutiful Mathesius speaks of his predecessor as “a Mameluke and an ungrateful pupil.”[1335]His fault consisted in his following the example of Erasmus, as did in progress of time so many other admirers of the Dutch scholar, and relinquishing more and more his former good opinion of Luther’s person and work; with this change his own sad experiences had not a little to do. To the Catholic Church, which had excommunicated him, he apparently never returned. When, in 1534, he was deprived of his post at Joachimstal, he complained in a letter, that he had been “driven into exile and outlawed by Papists and Lutherans alike.”[1336]
In that same year he published at Leipzig a work entitled “A Christian Instruction on the righteousness of faith and on good works,”[1337]which, in spite of its bitterness, contained many home-truths. There, apart from what he says on doctrinal matters, we find an account of the “temptations and trials” he had to endure for having ventured to teach that “good works and a Christian life, side by side with faith, are useful and necessary for securing eternal life.”[1338]
About this time Luther again sent forth a challenge to Erasmus and to all Erasmians generally who had broken with him, Egranus included.
He told his friends that now his business was to “purify the Church from the brood of Erasmus” (“a fœtibus eius”); he was referring particularly to Egranus, also to Crotus Rubeanus, Wicel, [Œcolampadius, and Campanus.[1339]Erasmus had already “seduced” Zwingli and now he had also “converted Egranus, who believes just as much as he,” viz. nothing.[1340]—Egranus he calls a “proud donkey,” who teaches that Christ must not be exalted so high, having learnt this from Erasmus;[1341]“this proud spirit declared that though Christ had earned it, yet we must merit it.”[1342]—He had long been acquainted with this false spirit, so he wrote in 1533 or 1534 to a Joachimstal burgher; he, like other sectarians, was full of “devil’s venom.” “Even though no syrup or purgative be given them, yet they cannot but expel their poison from mouth and anus. The time will come when they will be unable any longer to pass the matter, and then their belly must burst like that of Judas; for they will not be able toretain what they have stolen and devoured of [the doctrine of] Christ.”[1343]That Egranus finally drank himself to death with Malmsey “is a despicable calumny, which can be traced back to Mathesius.”[1344]In the sixteenth-century controversies it was the usual thing on either side to calumniate opponents and to make them die the worst death conceivable,[1345]and it would appear, that, in the case of Egranus, at a very early date unfavourable reports were circulated concerning his manner of death. His lamentable end (“misere periit”), Luther likens to that of Zwingli, struck down in the battle of Cappel by a divine judgment.[1346]His death occurred in 1535.In the “Christian Instruction,” referred to above, Egranus had written: “The new prophets can only tell us that we are freed from sin by Christ; what He commanded or forbade in the Gospel that they pass over as were it not in the Gospel at all.” “If we simply say: Christ has done everything and what we do is of no account, then we are making too much of Christ’s share, for we also must do something to secure our salvation. By such words Christ is made a cloak for our sins, and, as is actually now the case, all seek to conceal and excuse their wickedness and viciousness under the mantle of Christ’s merits.”“If such faith without works continues to be preached much longer, the Christian religion will fall into ruins and come to a lamentable end, and the place where this faith without works is taught will become a Sodom and Gomorrha.”[1347]
He told his friends that now his business was to “purify the Church from the brood of Erasmus” (“a fœtibus eius”); he was referring particularly to Egranus, also to Crotus Rubeanus, Wicel, [Œcolampadius, and Campanus.[1339]Erasmus had already “seduced” Zwingli and now he had also “converted Egranus, who believes just as much as he,” viz. nothing.[1340]—Egranus he calls a “proud donkey,” who teaches that Christ must not be exalted so high, having learnt this from Erasmus;[1341]“this proud spirit declared that though Christ had earned it, yet we must merit it.”[1342]—He had long been acquainted with this false spirit, so he wrote in 1533 or 1534 to a Joachimstal burgher; he, like other sectarians, was full of “devil’s venom.” “Even though no syrup or purgative be given them, yet they cannot but expel their poison from mouth and anus. The time will come when they will be unable any longer to pass the matter, and then their belly must burst like that of Judas; for they will not be able toretain what they have stolen and devoured of [the doctrine of] Christ.”[1343]
That Egranus finally drank himself to death with Malmsey “is a despicable calumny, which can be traced back to Mathesius.”[1344]In the sixteenth-century controversies it was the usual thing on either side to calumniate opponents and to make them die the worst death conceivable,[1345]and it would appear, that, in the case of Egranus, at a very early date unfavourable reports were circulated concerning his manner of death. His lamentable end (“misere periit”), Luther likens to that of Zwingli, struck down in the battle of Cappel by a divine judgment.[1346]His death occurred in 1535.
In the “Christian Instruction,” referred to above, Egranus had written: “The new prophets can only tell us that we are freed from sin by Christ; what He commanded or forbade in the Gospel that they pass over as were it not in the Gospel at all.” “If we simply say: Christ has done everything and what we do is of no account, then we are making too much of Christ’s share, for we also must do something to secure our salvation. By such words Christ is made a cloak for our sins, and, as is actually now the case, all seek to conceal and excuse their wickedness and viciousness under the mantle of Christ’s merits.”
“If such faith without works continues to be preached much longer, the Christian religion will fall into ruins and come to a lamentable end, and the place where this faith without works is taught will become a Sodom and Gomorrha.”[1347]
Disagreements such as these never arose to mar the relations between Luther and some of his other more intimate co-workers, for instance, his friendship with Bugenhagen and Jonas, who have been so frequently alluded to already. He was always ready to acknowledge in the warmest manner the great services they rendered him in the defence and spread of his teaching, and to support them when they stood in need of his assistance. He was never stingy in his bestowal of praise, narrow-minded or jealous, in his acknowledgement of the merits of friendly fellow-preachers, or of those writers who held Lutheran views.
Nicholas von Amsdorf, who introduced the new faith into Magdeburg in 1524 and there became Superintendent, he praises for the firmness with which he confessed the faith and for his fearless conduct generally. In Disputations he was wont to go straight to the heart of the matter like the “born theologian” he was; at Schmalkalden, when preaching before the Princes and magnates, he had not shrunk from declaring that our Evangel was intended for the weak and oppressed and for those who feel themselves sinners, though he could not discern any such in the audience.[1348]
Johann Brenz, preacher in Schwäbisch-Hall since 1522, and one of the founders of the new church system in Suabia, was greatly lauded by Luther for his exegetical abilities. “He is a learned and reliable man. Amongst all the theologians of our day there is not one who knows how to interpret and handle Holy Scripture like Brenz. When I gaze in admiration at his spirit I almost despair of my own powers. Certainly none of our people can do what he has done in his exposition of the Gospel of St. John. At times, it is true, he is carried away by his own ideas, yet he sticks to the point and speaks conformably to the simplicity of God’s Word.”[1349]
Next to Melanchthon, however, the friend whom Luther praised most highly as a “thoroughly learned and most able man,” was Johann Bugenhagen. “He has, under most trying circumstances, been of service to many of the Churches.”[1350]
In his Preface to Bugenhagen’s Latin Commentary on the Psalms—a work which, even in the opinion of Protestant theologians, “leaves much to be desired”[1351]from the “point of view of learning,” and which in reality is merely a sort of polemical work of edification, written from the standpoint of the new faith—Luther declared, that the spirit of Christ had at length unlocked the Psalter through Bugenhagen; every teacher must admit that now “the spirit was revealing secrets hiddenfor ages.” “I venture to assert that the first person on earth to give an explanation of the Book of Psalms is Pomeranus. Almost all earlier writers have introduced their own views into the book, but here the judgment of the spirit will teach you wondrous things.”[1352]Yet at the very outset, in the first verse of the Psalms, instead of a learned commentary, we find Bugenhagen expounding the new belief, and attacking the alleged self-righteousness of Catholicism, termed by him the “cathedra pestilentiæ”; he even relates at length his conversion to Lutheranism, which had given scandal “to those not yet enlightened by the sun of the Evangel.”[1353]They were no longer to wait for the completion of his own Commentary on the Psalms, Luther concludes, since now—in place of poor Luther—David, Isaias, Paul, and John were themselves speaking to the reader.“He had no clear perception of the defects of Bugenhagen’s exegetical method,” remarks O. Albrecht, the editor of the above Preface in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.[1354]The explanation of this “uncalled-for praise,” as Albrecht terms it, is to be found in the feeling expressed by Luther in the first sentence of the Preface: At the present time God had caused His Word to shine like crystal, whereas of yore there prevailed only chill and dismal mists.
In his Preface to Bugenhagen’s Latin Commentary on the Psalms—a work which, even in the opinion of Protestant theologians, “leaves much to be desired”[1351]from the “point of view of learning,” and which in reality is merely a sort of polemical work of edification, written from the standpoint of the new faith—Luther declared, that the spirit of Christ had at length unlocked the Psalter through Bugenhagen; every teacher must admit that now “the spirit was revealing secrets hiddenfor ages.” “I venture to assert that the first person on earth to give an explanation of the Book of Psalms is Pomeranus. Almost all earlier writers have introduced their own views into the book, but here the judgment of the spirit will teach you wondrous things.”[1352]
Yet at the very outset, in the first verse of the Psalms, instead of a learned commentary, we find Bugenhagen expounding the new belief, and attacking the alleged self-righteousness of Catholicism, termed by him the “cathedra pestilentiæ”; he even relates at length his conversion to Lutheranism, which had given scandal “to those not yet enlightened by the sun of the Evangel.”[1353]They were no longer to wait for the completion of his own Commentary on the Psalms, Luther concludes, since now—in place of poor Luther—David, Isaias, Paul, and John were themselves speaking to the reader.
“He had no clear perception of the defects of Bugenhagen’s exegetical method,” remarks O. Albrecht, the editor of the above Preface in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.[1354]The explanation of this “uncalled-for praise,” as Albrecht terms it, is to be found in the feeling expressed by Luther in the first sentence of the Preface: At the present time God had caused His Word to shine like crystal, whereas of yore there prevailed only chill and dismal mists.
The truth is that few of Luther’s assistants promoted his cause with such devotion and determination combined as did Pomeranus, who, for all his zeal, was both practical and sober in his ways. Such were his achievements for the cause, that Luther greets him in the superscription of a letter as “Bishop of the Church of Wittenberg, Legate of Christ’s face and heart to Denmark, my brother and my master.” He thus explains the words “legatus a facie et a corde”: “the Pope boasts of his ‘legati a latere,’ I boast of my pious preachers ‘a facie et a corde.’”[1355]Luther was in the habit of putting Bugenhagen on the same footing with himself and Melanchthon: Luther, Philip, and Pomeranus will support the Evangel as long as they are there, he says, but after this there will come a fall (“fiet lapsus”).[1356]Let those braggarts who pretend they know better “come to me, to Philip, and to Pomeranus ... then they will be nicely confounded.”[1357]Köstlin is, however, rightly ofopinion that, as compared with Luther and Melanchthon, Bugenhagen was “merely a subordinate, though endowed by nature with considerable powers of mind and body.”[1358]Yet the sun of Luther’s favour shone upon him. Agricola, “the poor fellow,” says Luther, “looks down on Pomeranus, but the latter is a great theologian and has plenty nerve for his work (‘multum habet nervorum’); Agricola, of course, would make himself out to be more learned than Master Philip or I.”[1359]“Pomeranus is a splendid professor”; “his sermons are full of wealth.”[1360]The truth is that the “wealth,” or rather expansiveness, of his discourses was so great that Luther had to reprove him severely for the length of his sermons.
Johann Bugenhagen, called Pommer or Pomeranus because he hailed from Wollin in Pomerania, after two years spent at the University of Greifswald and a further course devoted mainly to Humanist studies, was ordained priest by the Bishop of Cammin, when “as yet he probably had not begun to study theology.”[1361]At the College at Treptow he earned respect as professor of Humanism and as Rector; in his desire to further the better theology advocated by Erasmus he took to studying the Bible, and, on Luther’s appearance, was soon won over to the cause, though on first reading Luther’s work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” he “had been repelled by the palpable heresies” it contained. He settled at Wittenberg, delivered private lectures on the Psalms, and married, on October 13, 1522, a servant-maid of Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer; in the following year he was inducted at the Schlosskirche as parish-priest of Wittenberg by the magistrates, acting together with Luther. In defiance of right and justice and of the murmurs raised, Luther, from the pulpit, proclaimed him pastor, thus overruling the objections of the Chapter; his choice by the board of magistrates “and by the congregation agreeably with the evangelical teaching of Paul,” Luther held to be quite sufficient.[1362]
As pastor, Bugenhagen displayed great energy not merely in preaching to and instructing the people, but in furthering in every way the spread of Lutheranism in the civic andsocial life of the Electorate. His practical talents made him eventually the apostle of the new Church, even beyond the confines of Saxony. He successively introduced or organised it in Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, and in Pomerania, his own country; then in Denmark, from 1537-39, where he fixed his residence at Copenhagen. Two main features are apparent in all he did; everywhere the new Churches were established on a strictly civil basis, and, so far as the new religion allowed of it, the old Catholic forms were retained.
In his indefatigable and arduous undertakings Bugenhagen made himself one with Luther, and became, so to speak, a replica of his master. In his scrupulous observance of Luther’s doctrine he was to be outdone by none, save possibly by Amsdorf; in rudeness and want of consideration where the new Evangel was concerned, and in his whole way of thinking, he stood nearest to Luther, the only difference being, that, in his discourses and writings we miss Luther’s imagination and feeling. In the literary field, in addition to the Commentary on the Psalms and other similar writings, he distinguished himself by a work in vindication of the new preaching, addressed to the city of Hamburg and entitled: “Von dem Christen-loven und den rechten guden Werken” (1526), also by the share he took, with Melanchthon and Cruciger, in Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and his labours in connection with the Low-Saxon version. Most important of all, however, were his Church-constitutions. Bugenhagen died at Wittenberg on April 20, 1558, after having already lost his sight—broken down by the bitter trials which had come on him subsequent to Luther’s death.
Such was Luther’s confidence in his friend and appreciation of his power, that, during Bugenhagen’s prolonged absence, we often find Luther expressing his desire to see him again by his side and in charge of the Wittenberg pastorate. “Your absence,” so in 1531 he wrote to him at Lübeck, “is greatly felt by us. I am overburdened with work and my health is not good. I am neglecting the Church-accounts, and the shepherd should be here. I cannot attend to it. The world remains the world and the devil is its God.... Since the world refuses to allow itself to be saved, let it perish. Greet your Eve and Sara in my name and that of my wife and give greetings to all our friends.”[1363]When Bugenhagen was at Wittenberg Luther loved to open to him the secret recesses of his heart, especially when sufferingfrom “temptations.” Frequently he even aroused in Bugenhagen a sort of echo of his own feelings, which shows us how close a tie existed between them, and gives us an idea of the kind of suggestion Luther was wont to exercise over those who surrendered themselves to his influence.Bugenhagen, like Luther, was not conscious of any good-will or merit of his own, but—apart from the merits of Christ with which we are bedecked—merely of the oppression arising from his “great weakness” and “secret idolatry against the first Table of the Law of Moses.” Hence, when Luther, in June, 1540, complained that Agricola was after some righteousness of his own, whereas he (Luther) could find nothing of the sort in himself, Bugenhagen at once chimed in with the assurance that he was no less unable to discover any such thing in himself.[1364]Luther’s anger against the fanatics and Sacramentarians was imbibed by Bugenhagen. To him and his other Table-guests Luther complained that his adversaries, Carlstadt, Grickel and Jeckel (i.e. Agricola and Jacob Schenk), were ignorant braggarts; they accuse us of want of charity because we will not allow them to have their own way, though we read in Paul: “A man that is a heretic avoid.” Bugenhagen was at once ready to propose a drastic remedy. “Doctor, we should do what is commanded in Deuteronomy [xiii. 5 ff.], where Moses says they should be put to death.” Whereupon Luther replied: “Quite so, and the reason is given in the same text: It is better to make away with a man than with God.”[1365]Bugenhagen was also the first to take up his pen in Luther’s defence[1366]when the Swiss heresy concerning the doctrine of the Supper began to be noised abroad owing to a letter of Zwingli’s to Alber at Reutlingen, and to his book, “Commentarius de vera et falsa religione,” of March, 1525. When Melanchthon showed signs of incliningtowards the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament, there was soon a rumour at Wittenberg that “Melanchthon and Pomeranus have fallen out badly on the Article concerning the Supper,” and an apprehension of “dreadful dissensions amongst the foremost theologians.”[1367]In 1532 Luther declared: There must be some ready to show a “brave front” to the devil; “there must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan, as we three [Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen]; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[1368]And on another occasion he described, in Bugenhagen’s presence, how he was wont cynically to mock the devil when “he comes by night to worry me ... by bringing up my sins”; Satan did not, however, torment him about his really grave sins, such as his “celebration of Mass and provocation of God [in the religious life].” “May God preserve me from that! For were I to realise keenly how great these sins were, the horror of it would kill me!” It was on the occasion of this fantastic outburst, employed by Luther to quiet his conscience, that Bugenhagen, not to be outdone in coarseness, uttered the words already recorded (above, p. 178).[1369]The spiritual kinship between Luther and Bugenhagen produced in the latter a similar liking for coarse language. He was much addicted to the use of strong expressions, witness, for instance, his saying that friars wore ropes around their waists that we might have wherewith to hang them.[1370]In his most severe temptations Luther found consolation in the words of comfort spoken by the pastor of Wittenberg, and he assures us he was often refreshed by such exhortations, the memory of which he was slow to lose.[1371]Bugenhagen assisted him during his severe illness in 1527, and again in the other attack some ten years later. On the latter occasion he summoned his friend to Gotha, made his confession to him, so he says, and commended the “Church and his family” to his care.[1372]When separated they were in the habit of begging each other’s prayers.In his letters Bugenhagen recounts to Luther the success of his labours, in order to afford him pleasure, giving due thanks to God. Somewhat strange is the account he sent Luther of an encounter he had at Lübeck with a girl supposed to be possessed by the devil; through her lips the devil had given testimony to him just as at Ephesus, so the Acts of the Apostlestell us, he had borne witness to the power of Jesus and Paul.[1373]Hardly had he come to the town and visited the girl than the devil, speaking through her, called him by name (we must not forget that her parents, at least, were acquainted with Bugenhagen) and declared his coming to Lübeck to be quite uncalled for. That, in spite of his prayers and tears, he was unable to expel the devil, he himself admits.[1374]The account of the incident, written down by him soon after his arrival at Lübeck, and before he had properly inquired into the case, was soon published under a curious title.[1375]So much did Luther think of the encounter with this hysterical or mentally deranged girl,[1376]that he wrote: “Satan is giving Pomeranus a great deal to do at Lübeck with a maid who is possessed. The cunning demon is planning marvels.” This, when forwarding from the Coburg to Wenceslaus Link, preacher at Nuremberg, the account he had received.[1377]In 1536 Bugenhagen related at table, during the conciliation meetings held at Wittenberg, the encounters he had had in Lübeck and Brunswick with “delivered demoniacs.”[1378]Luther on his side gave his friend, when busy abroad, frequent tidings of the state of things at Wittenberg. In 1537 he sent to him, at Copenhagen, an account of a nasty trick played by Paul Heintz, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, “greatly to the detriment of the town and University.” The latter, in order to possess himself of an inheritance, had given out that a youthful stepson of his was dead, and had caused a dog to be solemnly buried in his place with all the usual rites. “The Master’s drama makes me almost burst with rage.” If these lawyers (who in Luther’s opinion treated the case too leniently) “look upon the disgrace to our Church as a small matter,” he writes, to Bugenhagen, “I will show them a bit of the true Luther (‘ero, Deo volente, Lutherus in hac causa’).”[1379]He did actually write a furious letter to the Elector to secure the severe punishment of the offender, who has caused us “to be jeered at everywhere as dogs’ undertakers”; the lawyers, whoin the Pope’s or the devil’s name had shown themselves lenient, he would denounce from the pulpit.[1380]To Magister Johann Saxo, who in turn related it to Bugenhagen, he declared, that, should the burial of the dog with all the rites of the Church be proved to have taken place, then “Paul would pay for it with his neck” on account of the mockery of religion involved.[1381]Even later Luther declared: “I should have liked to have written his death-sentence”; he added, however, that the culprit had really “buried the dog in order to drive away the plague.”[1382]Possessed, like Luther, by a positive craze for seeing diabolical intervention everywhere, Bugenhagen shared his superstitions to the full. He it was who knew how to expel the devil from the churn by what Luther termed the “best” method, which certainly was the coarsest imaginable.[1383]When, in December, 1536, a storm broke over Wittenberg he vied with Luther in declaring, that since it was quite out of the order of nature, it must be altogether satanic (“plane sathanicum”).[1384]He discerned the work of the devil just as clearly in the persistence of Catholicism and its resistance to Lutheranism. “Dear Lord Jesus Christ,” he writes, “arise with Thy Holy Angels and thrust down into the abyss of hell the diabolical murder and blasphemy of Antichrist.”[1385]Elsewhere he prays in similar fashion, “that God would put to shame the devil’s doctrines and idolatries of the Pope and save poor people from the errors of Antichrist.”[1386]Among all the qualities he had acquired from Luther, his patron and model, this hatred—which the Sectarians of the new faith who differed from Luther were also made to feel—is perhaps the most striking. In his case, however, fanaticism was tempered with greater coolness and calculation. For calm obstinacy Bugenhagen in many ways recalls Calvin.When Superintendent of the Saxon Electorate he introduced into the Litanies a new petition: “From the blasphemy, cruel murder and uncleanness of Thine enemies the Turk and the Pope, graciously deliver us.”[1387]With delight he was able to write to Luther from Denmark,[1388]that the Mass was forbidden throughout the country and that the mendicant Friars had been driven over the borders as “sedition-mongers” and “blasphemers” because they refusedto accept the King’s offers (“some of them were hanged”).[1389]The Canons had everywhere been ordered to attend the Lutheran Communion on festivals; the four thousand parishes had now to be preserved in the new faith which had dawned upon the land. Bugenhagen, on August 12, 1537, a few weeks after his arrival, vested in alb and cope, and with great ecclesiastical pomp, had placed the crown on the head of King Christian III. who had already given the Catholics a foretaste of what was to come and had caused all the bishops to be imprisoned.“All proceeds merrily,” Luther told Bucer on December 6, “God is working through Pomeranus; he crowned the King and Queen like a true bishop. He has given a new span of life to the University [of Copenhagen].”[1390]Bugenhagen was inexorable in his extirpation of the worship of “Antichrist” in Denmark, even down to the smallest details. To the King, concerning a statue of Pope St. Lucius in the Cathedral Church at Roskilde, he wrote, that this must be removed; it was an exact representation of the Pauline prophecy concerning Antichrist; the sword, which the Pope carried in his hand as the symbol of his death, Bugenhagen regarded as emblematic of the cruelty of the Popes, who now preferred to cut off the heads of others and to arrogate to themselves authority over all kings and rulers; if a true likeness of the Pope was really wanted, then he would have to be represented as a devil with claws and a fiendish countenance, and be decked out in a golden mantle, a staff, a sword and three crowns; from such a book the laity would be able to read the truth.[1391]
Such was Luther’s confidence in his friend and appreciation of his power, that, during Bugenhagen’s prolonged absence, we often find Luther expressing his desire to see him again by his side and in charge of the Wittenberg pastorate. “Your absence,” so in 1531 he wrote to him at Lübeck, “is greatly felt by us. I am overburdened with work and my health is not good. I am neglecting the Church-accounts, and the shepherd should be here. I cannot attend to it. The world remains the world and the devil is its God.... Since the world refuses to allow itself to be saved, let it perish. Greet your Eve and Sara in my name and that of my wife and give greetings to all our friends.”[1363]
When Bugenhagen was at Wittenberg Luther loved to open to him the secret recesses of his heart, especially when sufferingfrom “temptations.” Frequently he even aroused in Bugenhagen a sort of echo of his own feelings, which shows us how close a tie existed between them, and gives us an idea of the kind of suggestion Luther was wont to exercise over those who surrendered themselves to his influence.
Bugenhagen, like Luther, was not conscious of any good-will or merit of his own, but—apart from the merits of Christ with which we are bedecked—merely of the oppression arising from his “great weakness” and “secret idolatry against the first Table of the Law of Moses.” Hence, when Luther, in June, 1540, complained that Agricola was after some righteousness of his own, whereas he (Luther) could find nothing of the sort in himself, Bugenhagen at once chimed in with the assurance that he was no less unable to discover any such thing in himself.[1364]
Luther’s anger against the fanatics and Sacramentarians was imbibed by Bugenhagen. To him and his other Table-guests Luther complained that his adversaries, Carlstadt, Grickel and Jeckel (i.e. Agricola and Jacob Schenk), were ignorant braggarts; they accuse us of want of charity because we will not allow them to have their own way, though we read in Paul: “A man that is a heretic avoid.” Bugenhagen was at once ready to propose a drastic remedy. “Doctor, we should do what is commanded in Deuteronomy [xiii. 5 ff.], where Moses says they should be put to death.” Whereupon Luther replied: “Quite so, and the reason is given in the same text: It is better to make away with a man than with God.”[1365]Bugenhagen was also the first to take up his pen in Luther’s defence[1366]when the Swiss heresy concerning the doctrine of the Supper began to be noised abroad owing to a letter of Zwingli’s to Alber at Reutlingen, and to his book, “Commentarius de vera et falsa religione,” of March, 1525. When Melanchthon showed signs of incliningtowards the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament, there was soon a rumour at Wittenberg that “Melanchthon and Pomeranus have fallen out badly on the Article concerning the Supper,” and an apprehension of “dreadful dissensions amongst the foremost theologians.”[1367]
In 1532 Luther declared: There must be some ready to show a “brave front” to the devil; “there must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan, as we three [Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen]; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[1368]And on another occasion he described, in Bugenhagen’s presence, how he was wont cynically to mock the devil when “he comes by night to worry me ... by bringing up my sins”; Satan did not, however, torment him about his really grave sins, such as his “celebration of Mass and provocation of God [in the religious life].” “May God preserve me from that! For were I to realise keenly how great these sins were, the horror of it would kill me!” It was on the occasion of this fantastic outburst, employed by Luther to quiet his conscience, that Bugenhagen, not to be outdone in coarseness, uttered the words already recorded (above, p. 178).[1369]
The spiritual kinship between Luther and Bugenhagen produced in the latter a similar liking for coarse language. He was much addicted to the use of strong expressions, witness, for instance, his saying that friars wore ropes around their waists that we might have wherewith to hang them.[1370]
In his most severe temptations Luther found consolation in the words of comfort spoken by the pastor of Wittenberg, and he assures us he was often refreshed by such exhortations, the memory of which he was slow to lose.[1371]Bugenhagen assisted him during his severe illness in 1527, and again in the other attack some ten years later. On the latter occasion he summoned his friend to Gotha, made his confession to him, so he says, and commended the “Church and his family” to his care.[1372]When separated they were in the habit of begging each other’s prayers.
In his letters Bugenhagen recounts to Luther the success of his labours, in order to afford him pleasure, giving due thanks to God. Somewhat strange is the account he sent Luther of an encounter he had at Lübeck with a girl supposed to be possessed by the devil; through her lips the devil had given testimony to him just as at Ephesus, so the Acts of the Apostlestell us, he had borne witness to the power of Jesus and Paul.[1373]Hardly had he come to the town and visited the girl than the devil, speaking through her, called him by name (we must not forget that her parents, at least, were acquainted with Bugenhagen) and declared his coming to Lübeck to be quite uncalled for. That, in spite of his prayers and tears, he was unable to expel the devil, he himself admits.[1374]The account of the incident, written down by him soon after his arrival at Lübeck, and before he had properly inquired into the case, was soon published under a curious title.[1375]So much did Luther think of the encounter with this hysterical or mentally deranged girl,[1376]that he wrote: “Satan is giving Pomeranus a great deal to do at Lübeck with a maid who is possessed. The cunning demon is planning marvels.” This, when forwarding from the Coburg to Wenceslaus Link, preacher at Nuremberg, the account he had received.[1377]In 1536 Bugenhagen related at table, during the conciliation meetings held at Wittenberg, the encounters he had had in Lübeck and Brunswick with “delivered demoniacs.”[1378]
Luther on his side gave his friend, when busy abroad, frequent tidings of the state of things at Wittenberg. In 1537 he sent to him, at Copenhagen, an account of a nasty trick played by Paul Heintz, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, “greatly to the detriment of the town and University.” The latter, in order to possess himself of an inheritance, had given out that a youthful stepson of his was dead, and had caused a dog to be solemnly buried in his place with all the usual rites. “The Master’s drama makes me almost burst with rage.” If these lawyers (who in Luther’s opinion treated the case too leniently) “look upon the disgrace to our Church as a small matter,” he writes, to Bugenhagen, “I will show them a bit of the true Luther (‘ero, Deo volente, Lutherus in hac causa’).”[1379]He did actually write a furious letter to the Elector to secure the severe punishment of the offender, who has caused us “to be jeered at everywhere as dogs’ undertakers”; the lawyers, whoin the Pope’s or the devil’s name had shown themselves lenient, he would denounce from the pulpit.[1380]To Magister Johann Saxo, who in turn related it to Bugenhagen, he declared, that, should the burial of the dog with all the rites of the Church be proved to have taken place, then “Paul would pay for it with his neck” on account of the mockery of religion involved.[1381]Even later Luther declared: “I should have liked to have written his death-sentence”; he added, however, that the culprit had really “buried the dog in order to drive away the plague.”[1382]
Possessed, like Luther, by a positive craze for seeing diabolical intervention everywhere, Bugenhagen shared his superstitions to the full. He it was who knew how to expel the devil from the churn by what Luther termed the “best” method, which certainly was the coarsest imaginable.[1383]When, in December, 1536, a storm broke over Wittenberg he vied with Luther in declaring, that since it was quite out of the order of nature, it must be altogether satanic (“plane sathanicum”).[1384]
He discerned the work of the devil just as clearly in the persistence of Catholicism and its resistance to Lutheranism. “Dear Lord Jesus Christ,” he writes, “arise with Thy Holy Angels and thrust down into the abyss of hell the diabolical murder and blasphemy of Antichrist.”[1385]Elsewhere he prays in similar fashion, “that God would put to shame the devil’s doctrines and idolatries of the Pope and save poor people from the errors of Antichrist.”[1386]Among all the qualities he had acquired from Luther, his patron and model, this hatred—which the Sectarians of the new faith who differed from Luther were also made to feel—is perhaps the most striking. In his case, however, fanaticism was tempered with greater coolness and calculation. For calm obstinacy Bugenhagen in many ways recalls Calvin.
When Superintendent of the Saxon Electorate he introduced into the Litanies a new petition: “From the blasphemy, cruel murder and uncleanness of Thine enemies the Turk and the Pope, graciously deliver us.”[1387]
With delight he was able to write to Luther from Denmark,[1388]that the Mass was forbidden throughout the country and that the mendicant Friars had been driven over the borders as “sedition-mongers” and “blasphemers” because they refusedto accept the King’s offers (“some of them were hanged”).[1389]The Canons had everywhere been ordered to attend the Lutheran Communion on festivals; the four thousand parishes had now to be preserved in the new faith which had dawned upon the land. Bugenhagen, on August 12, 1537, a few weeks after his arrival, vested in alb and cope, and with great ecclesiastical pomp, had placed the crown on the head of King Christian III. who had already given the Catholics a foretaste of what was to come and had caused all the bishops to be imprisoned.
“All proceeds merrily,” Luther told Bucer on December 6, “God is working through Pomeranus; he crowned the King and Queen like a true bishop. He has given a new span of life to the University [of Copenhagen].”[1390]Bugenhagen was inexorable in his extirpation of the worship of “Antichrist” in Denmark, even down to the smallest details. To the King, concerning a statue of Pope St. Lucius in the Cathedral Church at Roskilde, he wrote, that this must be removed; it was an exact representation of the Pauline prophecy concerning Antichrist; the sword, which the Pope carried in his hand as the symbol of his death, Bugenhagen regarded as emblematic of the cruelty of the Popes, who now preferred to cut off the heads of others and to arrogate to themselves authority over all kings and rulers; if a true likeness of the Pope was really wanted, then he would have to be represented as a devil with claws and a fiendish countenance, and be decked out in a golden mantle, a staff, a sword and three crowns; from such a book the laity would be able to read the truth.[1391]
Justus Jonas, who, of all his acquaintances, remained longest with Luther at Wittenberg, like Bugenhagen, bestowed upon the master his enduring veneration and friendship. His numerous translations of Luther’s works are in themselves a proof of his warm attachment to his ideas and of his rare affinity to him. He, next to Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, was the clearest-headed and most active assistant in the affairs of Wittenberg, and his name frequently appears, together with those of Luther and the two other intimates, among the signatures appended to memoranda dealing with matters ecclesiastical.
To the close relationship between Luther and Jonas manyinteresting details preserved in the records remain to attest.
Jonas once dubbed Luther a Demosthenes of rhetoric.[1392]Luther in his turn praised Jonas not merely for his translations, but also for his sermons; he had all the gifts of a good orator, “save that he cleared his throat too often.”[1393]Yet he also accuses him of conceit for declaring that “he knew all that was contained in Holy Scripture” and also for his annoyance and surprise at the doubts raised concerning the above assertion.[1394]On the other hand, the bitter hostility displayed by Jonas towards all Luther’s enemies, pleased the latter. Jonas, taking up the thread of the conversation, remarked on one occasion to the younger guests at Luther’s table: “Remember this definition: A Papist is a liar and a murderer, or the devil himself. They are not to be trusted in the least, for they thirst after our blood.”[1395]His opinion of Jacob Schenk coincided with that of Luther: His “head is full of confused notions”; he was as “poison” amongst the Wittenberg theologians, so that Bugenhagen did well in refusing him his daughter in marriage.[1396]Of Agricola he remarked playfully, when the latter had uttered the word “oportet” (it must be): “The ‘must’ must be removed; the salt has got into it and we refuse to take it.” Whereupon Luther replied: “He must swallow the ‘must’ but I shall put such salt into it that he will want to spit it out again.”[1397]No one, so well as Jonas, knew how to cheer up Luther, hence Katey sometimes invited him to table secretly.[1398]It is true that his chatter sometimes proved tiresome to the other guests, for one of them, viz. Cordatus, laments that he interrupted Luther’s best sayings with his endless talk.[1399]The truth is, of course, that the pupils were anxious to drink in words from Luther’s own lips. Luther for his part encouraged his friend when the latter was oppressed by illness or interior anxieties. Jonas suffered from calculus, and, during one of his attacks, Luther said to him: “Your illness keeps you watchful and troubled, it is of more use to you than ten silver mines. God knows how to direct the lives of His own people and we must obey Him, each one according to our calling. Beloved God, how is Thy Church distracted both within and without!”[1400]When Jonas on one occasion, being already unwell, was greatly troubled with scruples of conscience and doubts about the faith (“tentatus gravissime”), Luther senthim, all written out, the consoling words with which he himself was wont to find comfort in similar circumstances: “Have I not been found worthy to be called to the service of the Word and been commanded, under pain of Thine everlasting displeasure, to believe what has been revealed to me and in no way to doubt it?... Act manfully and strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in God.”[1401]In the matter of faith Jonas was easily contented, and, for this, Luther praised him; since a man could not comprehend the Articles, it was sufficient for him to begin with a mere assent (“ut incipiamus tantum assentiri”). This theology actually appealed to Luther so much that he exclaimed: “Yes, dear Dr. Jonas, if a man could believe it as it stands, his heart would burst for joy! That is sure. Hence we shall never attain to its comprehension.”[1402]On Ascension Day, 1540, Luther’s pupils wrote down these words which fell from his lips: “I am fond of Jonas, but if he were to ascend up to heaven and be taken from us, what should I then think?... Strange, I cannot understand it and cannot believe it, and yet all the Apostles believed.... Oh, if only a man could believe it!”[1403]Jonas found the faith amongst the country people around Wittenberg so feeble and barren of fruit, that, on one occasion, he complained of it with great anger. Luther sought to pacify him: God’s chastisement will fall upon those peasants in due time; God is strong enough to deal with them. He added, however, admitting that Jonas was right: “Is it not a disgrace that in the whole Wittenberg district only one peasant can be found in all the villages who seriously exhorts his household in the Word of God and the Catechism? The others are all going to the devil!”[1404]
Jonas once dubbed Luther a Demosthenes of rhetoric.[1392]Luther in his turn praised Jonas not merely for his translations, but also for his sermons; he had all the gifts of a good orator, “save that he cleared his throat too often.”[1393]Yet he also accuses him of conceit for declaring that “he knew all that was contained in Holy Scripture” and also for his annoyance and surprise at the doubts raised concerning the above assertion.[1394]
On the other hand, the bitter hostility displayed by Jonas towards all Luther’s enemies, pleased the latter. Jonas, taking up the thread of the conversation, remarked on one occasion to the younger guests at Luther’s table: “Remember this definition: A Papist is a liar and a murderer, or the devil himself. They are not to be trusted in the least, for they thirst after our blood.”[1395]
His opinion of Jacob Schenk coincided with that of Luther: His “head is full of confused notions”; he was as “poison” amongst the Wittenberg theologians, so that Bugenhagen did well in refusing him his daughter in marriage.[1396]Of Agricola he remarked playfully, when the latter had uttered the word “oportet” (it must be): “The ‘must’ must be removed; the salt has got into it and we refuse to take it.” Whereupon Luther replied: “He must swallow the ‘must’ but I shall put such salt into it that he will want to spit it out again.”[1397]No one, so well as Jonas, knew how to cheer up Luther, hence Katey sometimes invited him to table secretly.[1398]It is true that his chatter sometimes proved tiresome to the other guests, for one of them, viz. Cordatus, laments that he interrupted Luther’s best sayings with his endless talk.[1399]The truth is, of course, that the pupils were anxious to drink in words from Luther’s own lips. Luther for his part encouraged his friend when the latter was oppressed by illness or interior anxieties. Jonas suffered from calculus, and, during one of his attacks, Luther said to him: “Your illness keeps you watchful and troubled, it is of more use to you than ten silver mines. God knows how to direct the lives of His own people and we must obey Him, each one according to our calling. Beloved God, how is Thy Church distracted both within and without!”[1400]When Jonas on one occasion, being already unwell, was greatly troubled with scruples of conscience and doubts about the faith (“tentatus gravissime”), Luther senthim, all written out, the consoling words with which he himself was wont to find comfort in similar circumstances: “Have I not been found worthy to be called to the service of the Word and been commanded, under pain of Thine everlasting displeasure, to believe what has been revealed to me and in no way to doubt it?... Act manfully and strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in God.”[1401]
In the matter of faith Jonas was easily contented, and, for this, Luther praised him; since a man could not comprehend the Articles, it was sufficient for him to begin with a mere assent (“ut incipiamus tantum assentiri”). This theology actually appealed to Luther so much that he exclaimed: “Yes, dear Dr. Jonas, if a man could believe it as it stands, his heart would burst for joy! That is sure. Hence we shall never attain to its comprehension.”[1402]On Ascension Day, 1540, Luther’s pupils wrote down these words which fell from his lips: “I am fond of Jonas, but if he were to ascend up to heaven and be taken from us, what should I then think?... Strange, I cannot understand it and cannot believe it, and yet all the Apostles believed.... Oh, if only a man could believe it!”[1403]
Jonas found the faith amongst the country people around Wittenberg so feeble and barren of fruit, that, on one occasion, he complained of it with great anger. Luther sought to pacify him: God’s chastisement will fall upon those peasants in due time; God is strong enough to deal with them. He added, however, admitting that Jonas was right: “Is it not a disgrace that in the whole Wittenberg district only one peasant can be found in all the villages who seriously exhorts his household in the Word of God and the Catechism? The others are all going to the devil!”[1404]
Justus Jonas, whose real name was Jodocus (Jobst) Koch, was a native of Nordhausen in the province of Saxony. He, like Bugenhagen, could not boast of a theological education as he had devoted himself to jurisprudence, and, as an enthusiastic Erasmian, to Humanism. In 1514 or 1515 he became priest at Erfurt, and in 1518 Doctor of Civil and Canon Law, at the same time securing a comfortable canonry. He attached himself to Luther during the latter’s journey to Worms, and in July, 1521, migrated to Wittenberg, where he lectured at the University on Canon Law and also on theology, after having been duly promoted to the dignity of Doctor in the theological Faculty; at the same time he was provost of the Schlosskirche.
In 1522 he married a Wittenberg girl, and, in the following year, vindicated this step against Johann Faber in “Adv. J. Fabrum, scortationis patronum, pro coniugio sacerdotali,” just as Bugenhagen after his marriage had found occasion to defend in print priestly matrimony. In 1523 he lectured on Romans. Of his publications his translations of Luther’s works were particularly prized.
His practical mind, his schooling in the law, and his business abilities, no less than the friendship of Luther bestowed upon a man so ready with the pen, procured for him his nomination as dean of the theological Faculty; this position he retained from 1523 till 1533. Jonas, the “theologian by choice,” as Luther termed him in contradistinction to Amsdorf, the “theologian by nature,” took part in all the important events connected with Lutheranism, in the Conference at Marburg, the Diet of Augsburg and the Visitations in the Saxon Electorate from 1528 onwards, also in the introduction of the innovations into the Duchy of Saxony in 1539. In 1541 he introduced the new church-system in the town of Halle, which till then had been the residence of the Cardinal-Elector, Albert of Mayence. From the time of the War of Schmalkalden and the misfortunes which ensued, his interior troubles grew into a mental malady. Melanchthon speaks of his “animus ægrotus.” His was a form of the “morbus melancholicus”[1405]which we meet with so often at that time amongst disappointed and broken-down men within the Protestant fold, and which was unquestionably due to religious troubles. According to the report of one Protestant, Cyriacus Schnauss (1556), and of a certain anonymous writer, his death († October 9, 1555),[1406]was happier than his life. To the darker side of his character belongs the malicious and personal nature of his polemics, as experienced, for instance, by Johann Faber and Wicel, whom he attacked with the weapon of calumny, and his “constant, often petty, concern in the increase of his income.”[1407]