Life of Luther Part 25

In the office of preacher, which he continued to fill voluntarily and without emolument, he undertook again, after he had returned from Schmalkald, and had gained fresh strength and, at least, a temporary recovery from his recent illness, labours at once beyond and more arduous than his ordinary duties. He resumed, in short, the duties of Bugenhagen, who was given leave of absence till 1539 to visit Denmark, for the purpose of organising there, under the new king Christian III., the new Evangelical Church. He preached regularly on week-days, in addition to his Sunday sermons; continuing his discourses, as Bugenhagen had done, though with many interruptions, on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. The chancellor Bruck wrote to the Elector from Wittenberg on August 27: 'Doctor Martin preaches in the parish church thrice a week; and such mightily good sermons are they, that it seems to me, as everyone is saying, there has never been such powerful preaching here before. He points out in particular the errors of the Popedom, and mult.i.tudes come to hear him. He closes his sermons with a prayer against the Pope, his Cardinals and Bishops, and for our Emperor, that G.o.d may give him victory and deliver him from the Popedom.'

Among his literary labours he again took in hand in 1539 his German translation of the Bible--the most important work, in its way, of all his life--and persevered with intense and unremitting industry, in order to revise it thoroughly for a new edition, which was published at the end of two years. For this work he a.s.sembled around him a circle of learned colleagues, whose a.s.sistance he succeeded in obtaining and whom he regularly consulted. These were Melancthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, Matthew Aurogallus, professor of Hebrew, and afterwards the chaplain Rorer, who attended to the corrections. From outside also some joined them, such as Ziegler, the Leipzig theologian, a man learned in Hebrew. Luther's younger friend Mathesius, who had been Luther's guest in 1540, relates of these meetings how 'Doctor Luther came to them with his old Bible in Latin and his new one in German, and besides these he had always the Hebrew text with him. Philip (Melancthon) brought with him the Greek text, Dr. Kreuziger (Cruciger) besides the Hebrew, the Chaldaic Bible (the translation or paraphrase in use among the ancient Jews); the professors had with them their Rabbis (the Rabbinical writings of the Old Testament). Each one had previously armed himself with a knowledge of the text, and compared the Greek and Latin with the Jewish version. The president then propounded a text, and let the opinions go round;--speeches of wondrous truth and beauty are said to have been made at these sittings.'

In other respects Luther's literary activity was chiefly devoted to the great questions remaining to be dealt with at a Council. In 1539, the year after his publication of the Schmalkaldic Articles, appeared a larger treatise from his pen 'On Councils and Churches,'

one of the most exhaustive of his writings, and important to us as showing how firmly and confidently his idea of the Christian Church, as a community of the faithful, was maintained amidst all the practical difficulties which events prepared. He complains of the subst.i.tution of the blind, unmeaning word 'Church'--and that even in the Catechism for the young--for the Greek word in the New Testament 'Ecclesia,' as the name of the community or a.s.sembly of Christian people. Much misery, he said, had crept in under that word Church, from its being understood as consisting of the Pope and the bishops, priests, and monks. The Christian Church was simply the ma.s.s of pious Christian people, who believed in Christ and were endowed with the Holy Spirit, Who daily sanctified them by the forgiveness of sins, and by absolving and purifying them therefrom.

Of Luther's love for his German mother-language, and of the services he rendered it, so conspicuously shown by these his writings, and especially by his persevering industry in his translation of the Bible, we are further reminded by a request he made in a letter of March 1535, to his friend Wenzeslaus Link at Nuremberg. He suddenly in that letter breaks off from the Latin--which was still the customary language of correspondence between theologians--and continues in German, with the words, 'I will speak German, my dear Herr Wenzel,' and then begs his friend to make his servant collect for him all the German pictures, rhymes, books, and ballads that had recently been published at Nuremberg, as he wished to familiarise himself more with the genuine language of the people. Luther himself made a goodly collection of German proverbs. His original ma.n.u.script which contained them was inherited by a German family, but unfortunately it was bought about twenty years ago in England. There was published also at Wittenberg, in 1537, a small anonymous book on German names, written (unquestionably by Luther) in Latin, and therefore intended for students. It contains, it is true, many strange mistakes, but it is, nevertheless, a proof of the interest he took in such studies, and is interesting as a maiden effort in this field of national learning.

In the regular government and legal administration of his Saxon Church, Luther did not occupy any post of office. When in 1539 a Consistory was established at Wittenberg for the Electoral district, and afterwards, indeed, for the regulation of marriage and discipline, he did not become a member; he was certainly never called upon or qualified to take part in the exercise of such a jurisdiction. And yet this also was done with his concurrence, and in cases of difficulty he was resorted to for his advice. All Church questions of public interest continued, with this exception, to occupy his independent and influential discussion. And even the moral evils on the domain of civil, munic.i.p.al and social life, to which Luther at the beginning of the Reformation appeared desirous of extending his preaching of reform, so far, at least, as that preaching represented a general call and exhortation, but which he afterwards seemed to discard altogether as something foreign to his mission, never wholly faded from his purview, or ceased to enlist his active interest. He wrote again in 1539 against usury, much as he had written at an earlier period, remarking to his friends that his book would p.r.i.c.k the consciences of petty usurers, but that the big swindlers would only laugh at him in their sleeves. And in publishing his Schmalkaldic Articles he briefly refers again in his preface to the 'countless matters of importance' which a genuine Christian Council would have to mend in the temporal condition of mankind--such as the disunion of princes and states, the usury and avarice, which had spread like a deluge and had become the law, and the sins of unchast.i.ty, gluttony, gambling, vanity in dress, disobedience on the part of subjects, servants, and workmen of all trades; as also the removal of peasants, &c. Nor at the same time was he less prompt to interfere on behalf of individuals who were suffering from want and injustice, either by his humble intercession with their lords, or with the sharp sword of his denunciation.

It was Luther's indignation and zeal on such an occasion that caused now his irremediable rupture with the Archbishop, Cardinal Albert, and induced him to attack that magnate as recklessly as he did; for the Cardinal had hitherto been always disposed to treat him with a certain respect; and Luther, on his side, had refrained at least from any open exhibition of hostility. The immediate cause of this rupture was a judicial murder, perpetrated against one John Schonitz (or Schanz) of Halle, on the river Saale. This man had for years had the charge, as the confidential servant of the Archbishop, of the public and even the private funds which his master required for his stately palaces, his luxury, and his sensual enjoyments, refined or coa.r.s.e, legitimate or illegitimate; and had actually lent him large sums. The Estates of the Archbishopric complained of the demands made on them for money, and rightly suspected that the funds supplied were improperly and dishonestly misappropriated. Schonitz grew alarmed on account of the clandestine 'practices' which he was carrying on for his master. The latter, however, a.s.sured him of his protection. But when the Estates refused to grant any more subsidies until a proper account was laid before them, he basely sacrificed his servant in order to extricate himself from his embarra.s.sment.

For deceptions alleged to have been practised against himself, he had Schonitz arrested, and confined, in September 1534, in the Castle of Giebichenstein. In vain Schonitz demanded a public trial by impartial judges; in vain did the Imperial Court of Justice give judgment in his favour. A second judgment of the court was answered by Albert's directing the prisoner, who was a citizen of Halle and sprung from an old local family, to be tried on June 21, 1535, at Giebichenstein, by a peasant tribunal hastily summoned from the surrounding villages, for the trial merely, as the rumour ran in Halle, of a horse-stealer. The unhappy prisoner was allowed no regular defence, and no counsel. An admission of guilt was extorted from him by the rack, and he was summarily sentenced to death. Time was only allowed him to say to the bystanders that he confessed himself a sinner in the sight of G.o.d, but that he had not deserved this fate. He was quickly strung up on the gallows, where his corpse remained hanging till the wind blew it down in February 1537. Albert took possession of his property. And this was done by the supreme prince of the Roman Church in Germany, who played the part of a modern Maecenas with regard to art and science.

Whilst now the justices of the town of Halle were protesting against this treatment of their fellow-townsman to the Archbishop, who turned a deaf ear to their remonstrance, and Antony, the brother of the murdered man, exerted himself in vain to vindicate his honour and the rights of their family, Luther was drawn into the affair by the fact that one of his guests, Ludwig Rabe, was threatened with punishment by Albert, for expressions he let fall soon after the deed was committed. Luther thereupon wrote several times to Albert himself, and told him openly he was a murderer, and, for his squandering of Church property, deserved a gallows ten times higher than the Castle of Giebichenstein. He was restrained, however, from taking further steps by the Elector of Brandenburg and other of Albert's influential relatives, who appealed to John Frederick on his behalf, whilst Albert sought to make a cheap compensation to the family of the murdered man, or at least pretended to do so.

When, however, a young Humanist poetaster at Wittenberg, named Lemnius--properly Lemchen--actually glorified the Archbishop in verse, or, as Luther put it, 'made a saint of the devil,' and at the same time vilified some men and women at Wittenberg, Luther read aloud from the pulpit, in 1538, a short indictment, couched in the plainest possible terms, against the shameless libeller, as also against the Archbishop whom he glorified; and this indictment soon appeared in print. And now he no longer refrained from taking up the cause of Schonitz in a pamphlet of some length. When the Duke of Prussia endeavoured once more in a friendly way to dissuade him from his purpose, for the honour of the house of Brandenburg, he replied, 'Wicked sons have sprung from the n.o.ble race of David, and princes ought not to disgrace themselves by unprincely vices.' In the pamphlet to his opening he declared that a stone was lying upon his heart which was called 'Deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain' (Prov. xxiv. 11). He denounced the contempt and denial of justice of which the Archbishop was guilty, and at the same time boldly exposed the real objects of those private expenses which the Archbishop, together with his servant, had incurred, and of which the latter was naturally unable to give an account--least of all, those that ministered to his carnal appet.i.tes, such as his establishment at Morizburg in Halle. He himself, says Luther, does not judge the Cardinal; he is simply the bearer of the sentence p.r.o.nounced by the great Judge in heaven. To those who might perhaps have taken exception to his words he says, 'I sit here at Wittenberg, and ask my most gracious lord the Elector for no further favour or protection than what is given to all alike.' Albert found it more prudent to keep silent.

But what disturbed and grieved Luther more than anything else during this, the closing chapter of his life, was the bitter experience he had yet to make in his own religious community, nay, amidst his most intimate companions and friends.

The way of life--in other words, the way of saving faith--was now rediscovered and clearly brought to light; and, as Luther said, a truly moral life should be the consequence. And great pains were taken to stamp this new truth clearly and distinctly on doctrine, and to guard against new errors and perversions. Differences, however, now arose among those who had hitherto worked so loyally together for the establishment of the faith--a beginning of those doctrinal disputes which after Luther's death became so disastrous to his Church. Again and again Luther bitterly complained of the moral wrongs and scandals which proved that the faith, however widely its confession had spread through Germany, was far from living in its purity and strength in the hearts of men, and bearing the expected fruit. Only his own conviction, his own faith was never shaken by this result. It must needs be, as Christ Himself had said, that offences must come; and, in the words of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi.

19), 'there must be also heresies,' and false teachers and deceivers must arise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 44.--AGRICOLA. (From a miniature portrait by Cranach, in the University Alb.u.m at Wittenberg, 1531.)]

We have seen above how cordially Luther welcomed Agricola back at Wittenberg after throwing up his appointment at Eisleben. He obtained for him from the Elector in 1537 an ample salary, to enable him to fill the long-coveted office of teacher at the university, and be a preacher as well. It soon became known that Agricola persisted in maintaining that doctrine of repentance in defence of which he had attacked Melancthon at the first visitation of churches in the Saxon Electorate. He had been accused of this at Eisleben, and Count Albert of Mansfeld, whose service he had quitted with rudeness and discontent, denounced him as a restless and dangerous fellow. And now at Wittenberg also Agricola had some sermons printed, and some theses circulated, embodying a statement of his peculiar doctrine. Luther considered it his duty to refute these, and he did so from the pulpit, but without naming their author.

The proclamation of G.o.d's law, so Agricola now taught, was no necessary part of Christianity, as such, nor of the way of salvation prepared and revealed by Christ. The Gospel of the Son of G.o.d, our Saviour, this alone should be proclaimed, and operate in touching the hearts of men and exposing the true character of their sins as sinfulness against the Son of G.o.d. In this way he sought to give full effect to the fundamental evangelical doctrine, that the grace of G.o.d alone had power to save through the joyful message of Christ.

The personal vanity, however, which was the chief weakness of this gifted, intellectual, and fairly eloquent man, and which was now increased by the dissatisfaction it had caused at Eisleben, displayed itself further in the a.s.sertion of his eccentricities of dogma. Moreover, he was far from clear in his first principles, and while maintaining his tenets he was unwilling to stake too much on his own account, and yet refused actually to abandon them.

He came at first to an understanding with Luther by offering an explanation which the latter deemed satisfactory, but he then proceeded to revert to his peculiar tenets in a new publication.

Luther now launched a sharp reply against these antinomian theses, as well as against others, which went much further, and whose origin is unknown. He found wanting in Agricola that earnest moral appreciation of the law, and of the moral demands made of us by G.o.d, whereby the heart of the sinner, as he himself had experienced, must first be bruised and broken, and thus opened to receive the word of grace, before that word can truly renew, revive, and sanctify it.

But together with Agricola's tenets he then placed the others, betraying an equally frivolous estimate of the real nature of those demands and of the duties they entailed, as evidence of one tendency and one character, since Agricola, indeed, taught like them, that the good willed by G.o.d in His Commandments was fulfilled in Christians by the simple fact of their belief in Christ, and as the fruit of His word of grace. Thus it came about that this tendency which Luther found represented in Agricola, stood out before him in all its compa.s.s and with its extremest and most alarming consequences, and called forth the boldest exercise of his zeal. It grieved him sorely, nevertheless, to have to enter into this dispute with his old friend. 'G.o.d knows,' he said, 'what trials this business has prepared for me; I shall have died of sheer anxiety before I have brought my theses against him (Agricola) to the light.'

At the instance, however, of the Elector, who valued Agricola, another reconciliation was brought about. Agricola humbled himself; he even authorised his great opponent to draw up a retractation in his name, and Luther did this in a manner very damaging to Agricola, in a letter to his former colleague and opponent at Eisleben, Caspar Guttel. Agricola thereupon received a place in the newly-formed consistory. But even now he could not refrain from fresh utterances which betrayed his old opinions. Luther's confidence in him was thus destroyed for ever: he spoke with indignation, pain, and scorn of 'Grikel (Agricola), the false man.' The latter at length complained to the Elector against Luther for having unjustly aspersed him. The Elector testified to him his displeasure; Luther gave a sharp answer to the charge, and his prince made further inquiries into the matter of complaint. Agricola finally s.n.a.t.c.hed at a means of escape offered by his summons to Berlin, whither he had been called as a preacher of distinction by the Elector Joachim II., who was a convert to the Reformation. In August 1540 he left Wittenberg. He sent thither from Berlin another and fully satisfactory retractation in order to retain his official appointment. But Luther's friendship with him was broken for ever.

In another quarter also Melancthon had been charged with deviating in certain statements from the path of right doctrine.

We know already how his anxiety about the dangers caused by the separation from the great Catholic Church seemed to tempt him to indulge in questionable concessions, and how it was Luther himself, with a disposition so different to Melancthon's, who nevertheless held firmly to his trust in his friend and fellow-labourer, particularly during the Diet of Augsburg. And, indeed, subsequent events brought this tendency to concession more fully into notice.

Certain peculiarities now a.s.serted themselves in Melancthon's independent opinions, with regard both to theology and practical life, which distinguished his mode of teaching from that of Luther.

He who, again and again, in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology, as also in the system of evangelical theology which in his 'Loci Communes' he was the first to elaborate, had expounded with full and active conviction the fundamental evangelical truth of a justifying and saving Faith, was anxious also--more so, even, than many strict confessors of that doctrine--to have the whole field of moral improvement and the fruits of morality which were necessary to preserve that faith, estimated at their proper value. And further, with respect to G.o.d's will and the operation of His grace, whereby alone the sinner could obtain inward conversion and faith, he wished to make this depend entirely on man's own will and choice, so that the blame might not appear to lie with G.o.d if the call to salvation remained fruitless, and a temptation thereby be offered to many to indulge in carelessness or despondency. In addition to this, he differed unmistakably from Luther in his doctrine of the Sacrament.

For, though it was he who at Augsburg in 1530 had flatly rejected the Zwinglians, still his historical researches impressed him with the belief, that, in reality, as indeed the Zwinglians maintained, not Augustine himself, among the ancients, had taught the Real Bodily Presence after the manner of Luther, or even of Roman Catholicism; and his own theological opinion induced him at least to satisfy himself with more or less obscure propositions about the communion of the Saviour Who died for us with the guests at His table, without any fixed or clear declarations about the substantiality of the Body. This appears, for instance, in his 'Loci Communes,' although in the formula of the Wittenberg Concord of 1536 he went farther, together with Luther.

On the first point above-mentioned, a priest named Cordatus, a strict adherent of Luther, had raised a protest against him in 1536.

But the opponent whom Melancthon chiefly feared in this respect was the theologian Amsdorf, who was not only an old familiar friend of Luther, but the especial guardian, both then and still more after Luther's death, of Lutheran orthodoxy. But Luther himself was anxious to avoid, even in this matter, any rupture or discord with Melancthon. He took great pains to reconcile the difference, and knew also how to keep silence, though without deviating from his own strict standpoint, or being able to overlook the peculiarity of his friend's teaching, conspicuously apparent as it was in the new edition of his book.

We are reminded by this, moreover, how Luther, during his illness at Schmalkald in 1537, made no secret of his fear of a division breaking out at Wittenberg after his death.

CHAPTER V.

LUTHER AND THE PROGRESS AND INTERNAL TROUBLES OF PROTESTANTISM.

1538--1541.

In the great affairs of the Church, amid the threats of his enemies and in all his dealings with them, Luther continued from day to day to trust quietly in G.o.d, as the Guider of events, Who suffers none to forestall His designs, and puts to shame and rebuke the inventions of man. His hope of external peace had hitherto been fulfilled beyond all expectation. And it had been permitted him to see the Reformation gain strength and make further progress in the German Empire. Indeed, it seemed possible that a union might be effected with those Catholics who had been impressed with the evangelical doctrine of salvation. These were results accomplished by the inward power of G.o.d's Word, as. .h.i.therto preached to the people, under a Divine and marvellously favourable dispensation of outer relations and events--fruits as unexpected as they were gratifying to Luther. Great plans or projects of his own, however, were still far from his thoughts; nor even did the details of this historical development demand such activity on his part as he had shown in the earlier years of the movement. And yet there was no lack of discord, difficulty, and trouble within the pale of the new Church and amongst its members; prospects of further, and possibly much more serious dangers to be encountered; thoughts of sadness and disquietude to vex the soul of the Reformer, now aged, suffering, and weary. The goal of his hopes had ever been, and still remained, not indeed a victory to be gradually achieved for his cause, perhaps even in his own lifetime, by the course of ecclesiastical and political changes and events, but the end which the Lord Himself, according to His promises, would make of the whole wicked world, and the Hereafter whither he was ever waiting to be summoned.

Since the Schmalkaldic allies had rejected the Emperor with his invitation to a Council, the Romish zealots might well hope that Charles at length would prepare to use force against them. He was not yet able to bring his quarrel with King Francis to a final termination; but, nevertheless, he concluded a truce with him in 1538 for ten years, while at the same time his vice-chancellor Held contrived to effect a union of Roman Catholic princes in Germany in opposition to the Schmalkaldic League. This union was joined, in addition to Austria, Bavaria, and George of Saxony, by Duke Henry of Brunswick, the bitter enemy of the Landgrave Philip. Already in the spring of that year people at Wittenberg talked of operations on a large scale ostensibly directed against the Turks, but in reality against the Protestants. Or at least it was feared that the imperial army, in the event of its defeating the Turks, might, as Luther expressed it, turn their spears against the Evangelical party. In this respect Luther had no fears; he did not believe in a victory over the Turks, and, even in that case, his opinion was that the imperial troops would no more submit to be made the instruments of such a policy than they had done some years before, after their victory at Vienna. Most earnestly he exhorted the Elector, for his part at least, to do his duty again in the war against the Turks, for the sake of his Fatherland and the poor oppressed people. On the other hand, the right of the Protestant States to resist the Emperor, if it came to a war of religion, was one which he now a.s.serted without scruple or hesitation. The Emperor, he said, in such a war would not be Emperor at all, but merely a soldier of the Pope. He appealed to the fact that once among the people of Israel pious and G.o.dly men had risen up against their sovereign; and the German princes had additional rights over their Emperor, by virtue of their const.i.tution. Finally, he reasoned from the law of nature itself, that a father was bound to protect his wife and children from open murder; and he likened the Emperor, who usurped a power notoriously illegal, to a murderer. For the rest, he declared, in a publication exhorting the Evangelical clergy to pray for peace, that as to whether the Papists chose to carry out their designs or not he was perfectly indifferent, in case G.o.d did not will to work a miracle. His only fear was lest a war might arise, if they did so, which would never end, and would be the total ruin of Germany.

But the Emperor was less zealous and more cautious than his vice-chancellor. He sent another representative to Germany, with instructions to prevent an outbreak of hostilities. This envoy, in the course of some negotiations conducted at Frankfort in April 1539, agreed to an understanding by which the ecclesiastical law-suits. .h.i.therto inst.i.tuted in the Imperial Chamber against the Protestants were suspended, and a number of chosen theologians of piety and laymen were to 'arrange a praiseworthy union of Christians' at an a.s.sembly of the German Estates.

On April 17, in the midst of these transactions, Duke George of Saxony died after a short illness. His country pa.s.sed to his brother Henry, who in his own smaller territory of Freiburg had for some years, much to the grief of George, established the Evangelical form of worship, and given shelter to the heretics banished by his brother. The latter had left no male issue to succeed him. He had lost two sons in boyhood; and his son John, who held the same opinions as himself, had died two years ago, when quite a young man, without leaving any children. His last remaining son Frederick was of weak intellect, but had nevertheless been married after his brother's death, and died a few weeks later. He was soon followed by his unhappy father and sovereign. Luther said of him that he had gone to everlasting fire, though he would have wished him life and conversion. To us his end appears the more tragic because we cannot but acknowledge the honest zeal with which, from his own point of view, he endeavoured to serve G.o.d, and would willingly even have effected a reform in the Church; whilst, in spite of all his severity against heretics, he never suffered himself to be hurried into deeds of coa.r.s.e violence and cruelty. There are extant prayers and religious discourses, composed and written down by himself. He read the Bible, and expressed a wish, when Luther's translation appeared, that 'the monk would put the whole Bible into German, and then go about his business.'

Thus the old and constantly revived quarrel between Luther and the Duke came at length to an end. The Reformation was immediately introduced throughout the duchy by the appointment of Evangelical clergy, by changes in public worship, and by a visitation of churches after the example of the one in Electoral Saxony. When Henry was solemnly acknowledged sovereign at Leipzig, he invited Luther and Jonas to be present. On the afternoon of Whitsunday, May 24, 1539, Luther preached a sermon in the court chapel of that Castle of Pleissenburg, where he had once disputed before George with Eck, and on the following afternoon he preached in one of the churches of the town, not venturing to do so in the morning on account of his weak state of health. He now proclaimed aloud, in his sermon on the Gospel for Whitsunday, that the Church of Christ was not there, where men were madly crying 'Church! Church!' without the Word of G.o.d, nor was it with the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops; but there, and there only, where Christ was loved and His Word was kept, and where accordingly He dwelt in the souls of men.

He refrained from any special reference to the state of things. .h.i.therto existing at Leipzig and in the duchy, or to the change brought about by G.o.d. But we call to mind the words he had spoken in 1532, 'Who knows what G.o.d will do before ten years are over?' Very soon, indeed, the magnates of the Saxon court and the n.o.bility, though accepting the reformed faith of their new sovereign, gave occasion to Luther for bitter complaints of their rapacity, their indifference to religion, and their improper and tyrannical usurpations on the territory of the Church.

In addition to the Saxon duchy, the Electorate of Brandenburg was also about to go over to Protestantism. The Elector Joachim I.

adhered so strictly to the ancient Church, that his wife Elizabeth, who was evangelically inclined, had fled to Saxony, where she became an intimate friend of Luther's household. But on his death in 1535, his younger son John, together with his territory, the 'Neumark,'

joined at once the Schmalkaldic allies. And now, after longer consideration, his elder brother also, Joachim II.--a man of quieter disposition and more attached to ancient ways--took the decisive step, after an agreement with his Estates and the territorial bishop, Jagow. On November 1, 1539, he received from the latter publicly the Sacrament in both kinds.

Under these circ.u.mstances the Emperor resolved to give effect to the essential part of the Frankfort agreement. He summoned a meeting at Spire 'for the purpose of so arranging matters that the wearisome dissension in religion might be reconciled in a Christian manner.'

In consequence of a pestilence which appeared at Spire, the a.s.sembly was removed to Hagenau. Here it was actually held in June 1540.

Meanwhile, the most vigorous champion of Protestantism, the Landgrave Philip, took a step which was calculated to damage the position of the Evangelical Church and to embarra.s.s its adherents more than anything which their enemies could possibly attempt.

Philip, in his youth (1523) had taken to wife a daughter of Duke George of Saxony, but soon repented of his ill-considered resolve, on the ground that she was of an unamiable disposition and was afflicted with bodily infirmities, and accordingly proceeded to look elsewhere for a mistress, after the fashion only too common at that time with emperors and princes, but scarcely commented upon in their case. The earnest remonstrances made to him on religious grounds against this step had the effect of causing him certain p.r.i.c.kings of conscience; he had not ventured on that account, as he now complained, to present himself at the Lord's table, with one single exception, since the Peasants' War. But his conscience was not strong enough to make him give up his evil ways. At last the Bible, which he read industriously, seemed to him to provide a means of outlet from his difficulty. He sheltered himself, as the Anabaptist fanatics had done before him, behind the Old Testament precedent of Abraham and other G.o.dly men, to whom it had been permitted to have more than one wife, and pleaded, moreover, that the New Testament contained no prohibition of polygamy. With all the energy and stubbornness of his nature, he fastened on these notions and clung to them, when, at the house of his sister, the d.u.c.h.ess Elizabeth, at Rochlitz, he chanced to meet and fall in love with a lady named Margaret von der Saal. She refused to be his except by marriage. Her mother even demanded of him that Luther, Butzer, and Melancthon, or at least two of them, together with an envoy of the Elector and the Duke of Saxony, should be present as witnesses at the marriage.

Philip himself found the consent of these divines and of his most distinguished ally, John Frederick, indispensable. He succeeded first of all in gaining over the versatile Butzer, and sent him in December 1539, on this errand, to Wittenberg.

He appealed to the strait that he was in, no longer able with a good conscience to go to war or to punish crime, and also to the testimony of Scripture, adding, very truly, that the Emperor and the world were quite willing to permit both him and anyone else to live in open immorality. Thus, he said, they were forbidding what G.o.d allowed, and winking at what He prohibited. In other respects, indeed, a double marriage was not a thing unheard of even by the Christendom of those days. It was said, for instance, of the Christian Emperor of Rome, Valentinian II., to whose case Philip himself appealed, that he had been permitted to contract a marriage of that kind. To the Pope was ascribed the power to grant the necessary dispensation.

On December 10 Butzer brought back to the Landgrave from Wittenberg an opinion of Luther and Melancthon. They told him in decided terms that it was in accordance with creation itself, and recognised as such by Jesus, 'that a man was not to have more than one wife;' and they, the preachers of G.o.d's Word, were commanded to regulate marriage and all human things 'in accordance with their original and Divine inst.i.tution, and to adhere thereto as closely as possible, while at the same time avoiding to their utmost all cause of pain or annoyance.' They urgently exhorted him not to regard incontinence, as did the world, in the light of a trifling offence, and represented to him plainly that if he refused to resist his evil inclinations, he would not mend matters by taking a second wife. But with all this exhortation and warning, they confessed themselves bound to admit that 'what was allowed in respect of marriage by the law of Moses was not actually forbidden in the gospel;' thereby maintaining, in point of fact, that an original ordinance in the Church must be adhered to as the rule, but nevertheless admitting the possibility of a dispensation under very strong and exceptional circ.u.mstances. They did not say that such a dispensation was applicable to the case of Philip; they only wished him earnestly to reconsider the matter with his own conscience. In the event, however, of his keeping to his resolve, they would not refuse him the benefit of a dispensation, and only required that the matter should be kept private, on account of the scandal and possible abuse it would occasion if generally known.

Luther himself abandoned afterwards the conclusions he drew from the Old Testament in this respect, and, as a consequence, rejected the admissibility of a double marriage for Christians. Friends of the evangelical and Lutheran belief can only lament the decision he p.r.o.nounced in this matter. With that belief itself it has nothing whatever to do. Instead of drawing his conclusions from the moral aspect of marriage, as amply attested by the spirit of the New Testament, though not indeed exactly expressed, Luther on this occasion clung to the letter, and failed, of course, to find any written declaration on the point. At the same time he mistook, in common with all the theologians of his time, the difference, in point of matured morality and knowledge, between the New Covenant and the standpoint of the Old, which was that also of his best adherents.

The simple Christian common sense of the Elector John Frederick, and his practical view of the position, preserved him this time from the error into which the theologians had fallen. He lamented that they should have given an answer, and would have nothing to do with the business.

Philip, however, rejoiced at the decision, and obtained, moreover, his wife's consent to take a second one.

In the following March the Protestants held another conference at Schmalkald, with a view of coming to an agreement as to their conduct in the attempts at unity in the Church. The Elector summoned Melancthon thither, but excused Luther, at his own request. Philip then invited the former, under some pretext or other, to the neighbouring Castle of Rothenburg on the Fulda. Arrived there, he was obliged to be a witness with Butzer, on March 4, 1540, to the marriage of the Landgrave with Margaret. Philip thanked Luther some weeks after for the 'remedy' allowed him, without which he should have become 'quite desperate.' He had kept the name of his second wife a secret from the Wittenbergers; he now told Luther that she was a virtuous maiden, a relative of Luther's own wife, and that he rejoiced to have honourably become his kinsman.

Very soon, however, the news of this unheard of event got wind. The Evangelicals were not less scandalised than their enemies, who in other respects were glad to see the mischief. The first to demand an explanation was the Ducal Court of Saxony, the Duke being so nearly related to Philip's first wife, and on the eve of a quarrel with Philip about a claim of inheritance. The Landgrave's whole position was in jeopardy; for bigamy, by the law of the Empire, was a serious offence. Luther heard now with indignation that the 'necessity' to which Philip had thought himself justified in yielding had been exaggerated. The latter, on the other hand, finding concealment no longer possible, wished to announce his marriage publicly, and defend it. He went so far as to imagine that even if the allies should renounce him he might still procure the favour and consideration of the Emperor. Unpleasant and very painful discussions arose between him, John Frederick, and Duke Henry of Saxony.

Meanwhile, the day was now approaching for the conference at Hagenau. Melancthon was sent there too by the Elector. But on reaching Weimar on June 13, where the prince was then staying, he suddenly fell ill, and it seemed as if his end was close at hand. He was oppressed with trouble and anxiety about the wrongdoing of the Landgrave. The Elector himself wrote reproachfully to Philip, saying that 'Philip Melancthon was disturbed with miserable thoughts about him,' and he now lay between life and death. Luther was sent for by the Elector from Wittenberg. He found the sick man lying in a state of unconsciousness and seemingly quite dead to the world. Shocked at the sight, he exclaimed, 'G.o.d help us! how has Satan marred this vessel of Thy grace!' Then the faithful, manly friend fell to praying G.o.d for his precious companion, casting, as he said, all his heart's request before Him, and reminding Him of all the promises contained in His own Word. He exhorted and bade Melancthon to be of good courage, for that G.o.d willed not the death of a sinner, and he would yet live to serve Him. He a.s.sured him he would rather now depart himself. On Melancthon's gradually showing more signs of life, he had some food prepared for him, and on his refusing it said, 'You really must eat, or I will excommunicate you.' By degrees the patient revived in body and soul. Luther was able to inform another friend, 'We found him dead, and by an evident miracle he lives.'

Luther, after this, was taken to Eisenach by his prince, to advise him on the news which he expected to receive there from Hagenau. At Eisenach he and the chancellor Bruck had an earnest consultation with envoys from Hesse. Against these, both Luther and Bruck insisted that the proceedings which had taken place between Philip and the theologians in respect to his marriage should be kept as secret as a confession, and that Philip must be content to have his second marriage regarded, in the eyes of the world and according to the law, as concubinage. He must make up his mind, therefore, to parry, as best he could, the questions which were being noised abroad about him, with vague statements or equivocations. He would then incur no further personal danger. But any attempt to brazen it out would inevitably land him in confusion and embarra.s.sment, and only increase and continue the damage done to the Evangelical cause by this affair.

The Diet at Hagenau made no further demand on Luther's activity. It was there resolved to take in hand again, at another meeting to be held at Worms late in the autumn, and after further preparation, the religious and ecclesiastical questions at issue. Peaceably-disposed and competent men were to be appointed on both sides for this purpose. Thus Luther was now at liberty to leave Eisenach towards the end of July, and return home, dissatisfied, as he wrote to his wife, with the Diet at Hagenau, where labour and expense had been wasted, but happy in the thought that Melancthon had been restored from death to life.