CHAPTER XXIILUTHER AND LYING1. A Battery of Assertions.[216]Luther’sfrank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks, “if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience, or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t matter in the least.”[217]It is worth while ascertaining how Luther—who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness—behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, thestrength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,”[219]and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans—in which they differed from Italians and Greeks—their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds—and the words do him credit—“To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in theDecretals.[222]Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.”[223]In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224]on Feb. 3,[225]and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226]he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth.—In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection.[227]Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.[228]In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.”[229]—And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”[230]To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V.[231]Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him.—Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.”[232]He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233]And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.[234]If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversyof 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235]“While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236]His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237]The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238]In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239]In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.)This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240]Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542),[241]whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,”[244]although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.”—Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws of the monster Behemoth.”[245]Yet he knew well enough that the promise of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby forfeited his safe conduct.[246]Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the Evangel. In confidencehe declared that he “believed the Bull to be real and authentic,”[247]and yet at that very time, in his “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.[250]While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.[251]In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point ofraising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “quantum fragilitas humana permittit”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”[252]To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their false doctrines.[253]His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says, are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single article of the Faith.[254]—Of Carlstadt, his theological child of trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the Bible,[255]and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt, a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurringflood of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.”[257]Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.[258]When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope.[259]Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.[260]Denifle has followed up the “Perdite vixi” with great acumen, shown the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here, again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death, as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262]The bloodthirsty Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples, whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263]Of this E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and, according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed text published at Wittenberg in 1520came from his pen.[265]The manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s teaching.[266]To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne! Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which, needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his being a Marane?When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes, instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of Christendom.[267]In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable character regarding theirhistory and meaning. He certainly was exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction, that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.” It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p. 434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the original.[268]The following excuse of his statement as to their having been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that, owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery, he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians? Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official Confessions.[269]Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies, he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270]He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against Duke George of Saxony.[271]Yet not a single attempt on his life can be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke that “nothing credible is known ofany attempt on George’s part to assassinate Luther.”[272]Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had offered their services to Duke George;[273]beyond that nothing.Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages, which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition. Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s standpoint.”[274]In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation. Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations and the text of the Breviary and Missal—books with which he was thoroughly conversant—and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism. Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful ofthe fact that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted out of all recognition.”[276]The untruthfulness of his polemics is peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible, even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all, to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “De servo arbitrio” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace, such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to Catholics.[277]Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy Luther even declared of the author of the “Hyperaspistes” that he denied the Trinity![278]Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom. i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279]This was whathe taught from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks (“hunc locum”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise. Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false interpretation gradually.Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration. All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him, because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the scapular as a crime.[280]Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on account of such common-sense teaching as the above.Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz. that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church had become a whore.”[281]Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis of all the good works enjoined.[282]All were aware, as Luther himself once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless. And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black frock. The Papist: Dothis or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast, give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone, without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true righteousness.”[283]Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst, himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560, replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay, we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285]Again, during the menacingDiet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable “Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks and failings” (“doli et lapsus”), should they occur amongst his followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for once we have escaped the danger.”[286]He even adds: “For God’s Mercy watches over us.”In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530, where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet] is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid—“once we have escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part—likewise for the better furtherance of his cause—was his attempt to persuade the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”;“therefore that it would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment (“ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret”); to wait until the people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had been conquered by their arguments.”[287]Couched in Luther’s ordinary language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288]then a prisoner, that the Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise against the allies of the evangelical confession.
CHAPTER XXIILUTHER AND LYING1. A Battery of Assertions.[216]Luther’sfrank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks, “if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience, or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t matter in the least.”[217]It is worth while ascertaining how Luther—who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness—behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, thestrength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,”[219]and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans—in which they differed from Italians and Greeks—their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds—and the words do him credit—“To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in theDecretals.[222]Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.”[223]In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224]on Feb. 3,[225]and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226]he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth.—In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection.[227]Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.[228]In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.”[229]—And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”[230]To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V.[231]Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him.—Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.”[232]He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233]And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.[234]If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversyof 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235]“While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236]His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237]The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238]In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239]In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.)This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240]Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542),[241]whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,”[244]although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.”—Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws of the monster Behemoth.”[245]Yet he knew well enough that the promise of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby forfeited his safe conduct.[246]Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the Evangel. In confidencehe declared that he “believed the Bull to be real and authentic,”[247]and yet at that very time, in his “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.[250]While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.[251]In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point ofraising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “quantum fragilitas humana permittit”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”[252]To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their false doctrines.[253]His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says, are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single article of the Faith.[254]—Of Carlstadt, his theological child of trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the Bible,[255]and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt, a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurringflood of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.”[257]Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.[258]When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope.[259]Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.[260]Denifle has followed up the “Perdite vixi” with great acumen, shown the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here, again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death, as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262]The bloodthirsty Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples, whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263]Of this E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and, according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed text published at Wittenberg in 1520came from his pen.[265]The manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s teaching.[266]To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne! Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which, needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his being a Marane?When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes, instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of Christendom.[267]In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable character regarding theirhistory and meaning. He certainly was exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction, that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.” It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p. 434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the original.[268]The following excuse of his statement as to their having been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that, owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery, he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians? Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official Confessions.[269]Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies, he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270]He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against Duke George of Saxony.[271]Yet not a single attempt on his life can be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke that “nothing credible is known ofany attempt on George’s part to assassinate Luther.”[272]Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had offered their services to Duke George;[273]beyond that nothing.Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages, which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition. Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s standpoint.”[274]In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation. Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations and the text of the Breviary and Missal—books with which he was thoroughly conversant—and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism. Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful ofthe fact that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted out of all recognition.”[276]The untruthfulness of his polemics is peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible, even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all, to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “De servo arbitrio” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace, such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to Catholics.[277]Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy Luther even declared of the author of the “Hyperaspistes” that he denied the Trinity![278]Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom. i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279]This was whathe taught from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks (“hunc locum”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise. Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false interpretation gradually.Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration. All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him, because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the scapular as a crime.[280]Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on account of such common-sense teaching as the above.Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz. that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church had become a whore.”[281]Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis of all the good works enjoined.[282]All were aware, as Luther himself once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless. And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black frock. The Papist: Dothis or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast, give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone, without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true righteousness.”[283]Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst, himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560, replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay, we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285]Again, during the menacingDiet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable “Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks and failings” (“doli et lapsus”), should they occur amongst his followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for once we have escaped the danger.”[286]He even adds: “For God’s Mercy watches over us.”In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530, where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet] is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid—“once we have escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part—likewise for the better furtherance of his cause—was his attempt to persuade the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”;“therefore that it would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment (“ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret”); to wait until the people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had been conquered by their arguments.”[287]Couched in Luther’s ordinary language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288]then a prisoner, that the Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise against the allies of the evangelical confession.
LUTHER AND LYING
Luther’sfrank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks, “if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience, or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t matter in the least.”[217]
It is worth while ascertaining how Luther—who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness—behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, thestrength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.
There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.
On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]
To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,”[219]and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans—in which they differed from Italians and Greeks—their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds—and the words do him credit—“To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]
This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.
We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]
For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in theDecretals.[222]Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.”[223]In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224]on Feb. 3,[225]and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226]he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth.—In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection.[227]Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.[228]In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.”[229]—And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”[230]To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V.[231]Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him.—Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.”[232]He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233]And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.[234]If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversyof 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235]“While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236]His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237]The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238]In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239]In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.)This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240]Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542),[241]whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,”[244]although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.”—Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.
For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in theDecretals.[222]Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.”[223]In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224]on Feb. 3,[225]and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226]he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth.—In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection.[227]Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.[228]
In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.
In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.”[229]—And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”[230]
To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.
It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V.[231]Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him.—Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.”[232]He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233]And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.[234]
If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversyof 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.
“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235]“While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236]
His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237]
The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238]In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239]In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.)
This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240]Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542),[241]whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]
In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]
We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,”[244]although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.”—Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.
At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws of the monster Behemoth.”[245]Yet he knew well enough that the promise of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby forfeited his safe conduct.[246]
Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the Evangel. In confidencehe declared that he “believed the Bull to be real and authentic,”[247]and yet at that very time, in his “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]
His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]
A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.[250]
While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.[251]
In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point ofraising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.
Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.
He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “quantum fragilitas humana permittit”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”[252]
To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their false doctrines.[253]His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says, are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single article of the Faith.[254]—Of Carlstadt, his theological child of trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the Bible,[255]and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt, a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurringflood of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]
Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.
St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.”[257]Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.[258]When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope.[259]Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.[260]Denifle has followed up the “Perdite vixi” with great acumen, shown the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.
St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.”[257]Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.[258]
When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope.[259]Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.[260]
Denifle has followed up the “Perdite vixi” with great acumen, shown the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]
St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.
Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here, again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death, as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262]The bloodthirsty Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples, whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263]Of this E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]
The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and, according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed text published at Wittenberg in 1520came from his pen.[265]The manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s teaching.[266]
To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne! Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which, needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his being a Marane?
When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes, instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of Christendom.[267]
In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable character regarding theirhistory and meaning. He certainly was exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction, that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.” It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p. 434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the original.[268]The following excuse of his statement as to their having been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that, owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery, he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians? Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official Confessions.[269]
Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies, he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270]He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against Duke George of Saxony.[271]Yet not a single attempt on his life can be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke that “nothing credible is known ofany attempt on George’s part to assassinate Luther.”[272]Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had offered their services to Duke George;[273]beyond that nothing.
Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages, which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition. Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s standpoint.”[274]In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation. Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]
However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations and the text of the Breviary and Missal—books with which he was thoroughly conversant—and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism. Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful ofthe fact that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted out of all recognition.”[276]The untruthfulness of his polemics is peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible, even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all, to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “De servo arbitrio” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace, such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to Catholics.[277]Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy Luther even declared of the author of the “Hyperaspistes” that he denied the Trinity![278]
Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom. i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279]This was whathe taught from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks (“hunc locum”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise. Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false interpretation gradually.
Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration. All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him, because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the scapular as a crime.[280]Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on account of such common-sense teaching as the above.
Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz. that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church had become a whore.”[281]Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis of all the good works enjoined.[282]All were aware, as Luther himself once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless. And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black frock. The Papist: Dothis or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast, give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone, without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true righteousness.”[283]
Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst, himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560, replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay, we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]
But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285]Again, during the menacingDiet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable “Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks and failings” (“doli et lapsus”), should they occur amongst his followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for once we have escaped the danger.”[286]He even adds: “For God’s Mercy watches over us.”
In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530, where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet] is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid—“once we have escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)
The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part—likewise for the better furtherance of his cause—was his attempt to persuade the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”;“therefore that it would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment (“ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret”); to wait until the people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had been conquered by their arguments.”[287]Couched in Luther’s ordinary language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.
Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288]then a prisoner, that the Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise against the allies of the evangelical confession.