Luther Examined and Reexamined Part 10

It is only external protection against the people being misled by false doctrine. How else can heretics be kept it bay?' Answer: That is the business of bishops, to whom the office is entrusted, and not to princes. For heresy can never be kept off by force; another grip is wanted for that. This is another quarrel and conflict than that of the sword. G.o.d's Word must contend here. If that avail nothing, temporal power will never settle the matter, though it fill the world with blood.

Heresy pertains to the spiritual world. You cannot cut it with iron, nor burn it with fire, nor drown it in water. You cannot drive the devil out of the heart by destroying, with sword or fire, the vessel in which he lives. This is like fighting a blade of straw." (10, 395 ff.)

Referring to the Anabaptists, Luther wrote in 1528: "It is not right, and I think it a great pity, that such wretched people should be so miserably slain, burned, cruelly put to death; every one should be allowed to believe what he will. If he believe wrongly, he will have punishment enough in the eternal fire of h.e.l.l. Why should he be tortured in this life, too; provided always that it be a case of mistaken belief only, and that they are not also unruly and oppose themselves to the temporal power?" (17, 2188.)

To his friend Cresser he wrote: "If the courts wish to govern the churches in their own interests, G.o.d will withdraw His benediction from them, and things will become worse than before. Satan still is Satan.

Under the Popes he made the Church meddle in politics; in our time he wishes to make politics meddle with the Church." (21b, 2911.

Translations by Waring.)

But why did not these excellent principles attain better results in Luther's own time? On this question we have no better answer than that given by Bryce: "The remark must not be omitted in pa.s.sing how much less than might have been expected the religious movement did at first actually effect in the way of promoting either political progress or freedom of conscience. The habits of centuries were not to be unlearned in a few years, and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence and activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a time." (_Holy Roman Empire_, p. 381.) This would be Luther's own answer. His work was among people who were just emerging from the ignorance and spiritual bondage in which they had been reared in the Catholic Church. They had to be gradually and with much patience taught, not only in regard to their rights and privileges, but also in regard to their proper and most efficient application. But it is not in agreement with the facts when the charge is directed against Luther that he employed the authority of the State for furthering the ends of the Church because he urged the Saxon Elector to arrange for a visitation of the demoralized churches in the country, and to order such improvements to be made as would be found necessary (Erlangen Ed. 55, 223); also when he sought the Elector's aid for the reform party at Naumburg at the election of a new bishop (17, 113). In both instances he speaks of the Elector as a "Notbischof," that is, an emergency bishop. But his remarks must be carefully studied to get his exact meaning. For he declares that the Elector as a magistrate is under no obligation to attend to these matters. They are not state business. But he is asked as a Christian to place himself at the head of a laudable and necessary movement, and to place his influence and ability at the disposition of the Master, just as a Christian laborer, craftsman, merchant, musician, painter, poet, author, consecrate their abilities to the Lord. This means that the "emergency bishop" has not the right to issue commands in the Church, but he has the privilege and duty to serve. The people needed a leader, and who was better qualified for that than their trusted prince?

Besides, the churches had to be protected in their secular and civil interests in those days. The young Protestant faith would have been mercilessly extirpated by Rome, which was gathering the secular powers around her to fight her battles with material weapons against Protestants. The Protestant princes would have betrayed a trust which citizens rightly repose in their government, if they had not taken steps to afford the Protestant churches in their domains every legal protection. The protection of citizens in the exercise of their religious liberty is within the sphere of the civil magistrates. The citizens can appeal to the government for such protection, and when the government in the interest of religious liberty represses elements that are hostile, it is not intolerant, but just. If a religion, like that of the bomb-throwing anarchists and the vice-breeding Mormons, is forbidden to practise its faith in the land, that is not intolerance, but common equity.

One of the most pathetic spectacles which the student of medieval history has to contemplate is the treatment of the Jews at the hands of the Christians. "Few were the monarchs of Christendom," says Prof.

Worman, "who rose above the barbarism of the Middle Ages. By considerable pecuniary sacrifices only could the sons of Israel enjoy tolerance. In Italy their lot had always been most severe. Now and then a Roman pontiff would afford them his protection, but, as a rule, they have received only intolerance in that country. Down even to the time of the deposition of Pius IX from the temporal power (1810) it has been the barbarous custom, on the last Sat.u.r.day before the Carnival, to compel the Jews to proceed _en ma.s.se_ to the capitol, and ask permission of the pontiff to reside in the city another year. At the foot of the hill the pet.i.tion was refused them, but, after much entreaty, they were granted the favor when they had reached the summit, and as their residence the Ghetto was a.s.signed them." In France a prelate condemned the Jews because the "country people looked upon them as the only people of G.o.d," whereupon "all joined in a carnival of persecution, and the history of the Jews became nothing else than a successive series of ma.s.sacres." In Spain the Jews were treated more kindly by the Moors than by the Catholics. At first their services were valued in the crafts and trades, "but the extravagance and consequent poverty of the n.o.bles, as well as the increasing power of the priesthood, ultimately brought about a disastrous change. The estates of the n.o.bles and, it is also believed, those attached to the cathedrals and churches, were in many cases mortgaged to the Jews; hence it was not difficult for 'conscience' to get up a persecution when goaded to its 'duty' by the pressure of want and shame. Gradually the Jews were deprived of the privilege of living where they pleased; their rights were diminished and their taxes augmented."

To their lowest stage of misery, however, the Jews were reduced during one of the most holy enterprises which the papacy launched during the Middle Ages--the Crusades. "The crusading movement was inaugurated by a wholesale ma.s.sacre and persecution first of the Jew, and afterwards of the Mussulman. . . . Shut out from all opportunity for the development of their better qualities, the Jews were gradually reduced to a decline both in character and condition. From a learned, influential, and powerful cla.s.s of the community, we find them, after the inauguration of the Crusades, sinking into miserable outcasts; the common prey of clergy and n.o.bles and burghers, and existing in a state worse than slavery itself. The Christians deprived the Jews even of the right of holding real estate; and confined them to the narrower channels of traffic.

Their ambition being thus fixed upon one subject, they soon mastered all the degrading arts of acc.u.mulating gain; and prohibited from investing their gain in the purchase of land, they found n more profitable employment of it in lending it at usurious interest to the thoughtless and extravagant." In course of time the borrowers recouped their losses by inaugurating raids upon the Jews. Jew-baiting, persecutions, expatriations of Jewish settlers, were of frequent occurrence. Towards the end of the thirteenth century 16,000 Jews were expelled from England and their property confiscated. In Germany "they had to pay all manner of iniquitous taxes--body tax, capitation tax, trade taxes, coronation tax, and to present a mult.i.tude of gifts, to mollify the avarice or supply the necessities of emperor, princes, and barons. It did not suffice, however, to save them from the loss of their property. The populace and the lower clergy also must be, satisfied; they, too, had pa.s.sions to gratify. A wholesale slaughter of the 'enemies of Christianity' was inaugurated. Treves, Metz, Cologne, Mentz, Worms, Spires, Stra.s.sburg, and other cities were deluged with the blood of the 'unbelievers.' The word _Hep_ (said to be the initials of _Hierosolyma est perdita_, Jerusalem is taken) throughout all the cities of the empire became the signal for ma.s.sacres, and if an insensate monk sounded it along the streets, it threw the rabble into paroxysms of murderous rage. The choice of death or conversion was given to the Jews; but few were found willing to purchase their life by that form of perjury.

Rather than subject their offspring to conversion and such Christian training, fathers presented their breast to the sword after putting their children to death, and wives and virgins sought refuge from the brutality of the soldiers by throwing themselves into the river with stones fastened to their bodies." (_McClintock and Strong Cyclop_., 4, 908 f.)

All this happened under the most Christian rule of the Popes. The characteristic temper of the Jew in the Middle Ages, his fierce hatred of Christianity, his sullen mood, his blasphemous treatment of matters and objects sacred to Christians, are the result of the treatment he received even from the members and high officials of the Church. Now here comes Rome in our day a.s.serting the kindness and generosity shown the Jews by their Popes, because these afforded them shelter in the Ghetto of the Holy City! How differently, they say, was this from the treatment accorded the Jews by Luther. Why, these Catholic writers do not tell the hundredth part of the truth about the att.i.tude of their Church to the Jews in the Middle Ages.

Let this be remembered when Luther's remarks about the Jews are taken up for study. He is very outspoken against them; his utterances, however, relate for the most part to the false teaching and religious practises, to their perversion of the text and the meaning of the Scriptures, and to the blasphemies which they utter against G.o.d, Jesus Christ, and His Church, and to the lies which they a.s.siduously spread about the Christian religion. In all that Luther says against the Jews under this head he is simply discharging the functions of a teacher of Christianity; for Scripture says that it was given also "for reproof"

(2 Tim. 3, 16). No one can be a true theologian without being polemical on occasion. In another cla.s.s of his references to the Jews Luther refers to their character: their arrogance and pride, their stiffneckedness and contumacy, their greed and avarice, which makes their presence in any land a public calamity. Though their church and state has long been overthrown, and they are a people without a country, homeless wanderers on the face of the earth, they still boast of being "the people of G.o.d," and are indulging the wildest dreams about the reestablishment of their ancient kingdom. They are looking for a Messiah who will be a secular prince, and will make them all barons living in beautiful castles and receiving the tribute of the Goyim. One may reason and plead with them and show them that their belief contradicts their own Scriptures, that their Talmud is filled with palpable falsehoods, and that their hope is a chimera; but they turn a deaf ear to argument and entreaty, and turn upon you with fierce resentment at your efforts to show them the truth. Although they know that their habits of grasping and h.o.a.rding wealth, driving hard and unfair bargains, their hunting for small profits by contemptible methods like hungry dogs searching the offal in the alley, rouses the enmity of communities against them and causes them to become a blight to all true progress, to honest trade and business in any land where they have become firmly established, so that laws must be made against them, still they blindly and pa.s.sionately continue their covetous strivings. When Luther observes the corrupting influence of the Jews on the public life and morals, he declares that they ought to be expelled from the country, and their synagogs ought to be destroyed, that is, they have deserved this treatment. But it is a remarkable fact that even in these terrible denunciations of the Jews Luther moves on Bible ground, as any one can see that will examine his exposition of an imprecatory psalm, like Psalm 109 and 59. If these words of G.o.d mean anything and admit of any application to an apostate and hardened race, the Jews are that race, and a teacher of the Bible has the duty to point out this fact. But Luther has not been a Jewbaiter; he has not incited a riot against then, nor headed a raid upon them, as Prof. Worman tells us that Catholic priests in the Middle Ages occasionally would do. What Luther thought of persecuting the Jews for their religion can be seen from his exposition of Psalm 14. He did not believe in a general conversion of the Jews, but he held that individual Jews would ever and anon be won for Christ and would be grafted on the olive-tree of the true Church. "Therefore," he says, "we ought to condemn the rage of some Christians--if they really deserve to be called Christians--who think that they are doing G.o.d a service by persecuting the Jews in the most hateful manner, imagining all manner of evil about them, proudly and haughtily mocking them in their pitiful misery. According to the statement in this Psalm (Ps. 14, 7) and the example of the Apostle Paul in Rom. 9, 1, we ought rather to feel a profound and cordial pity for them and always pray for them. . . . By their tyrannical bearing these wicked people, who are nominally Christians, cause not a little injury, not only to the cause of Christianity, but also to Christian people, and they are responsible for, and sharers in, the impiety of the Jews, because by their cruel bearing toward them they drive them away from the Christian faith instead of attracting them with all possible gentleness, patience, pleading, and anxious concern for them. There are even some theologians so unreasonable as to sanction such cruelty to the Jews and to encourage people to it; in their proud conceit they a.s.sert that the Jews are the Christians' slaves and tributary to the emperor, while in truth they are themselves Christians with as much right as any one nowadays is Roman Emperor. Good G.o.d, who would want to join our religion, even though he were of a meek and submissive mind, when he sees how spitefully and cruelly he is treated; and that the treatment he can expect is not only unchristian, but worse than b.e.s.t.i.a.l? If hating Jews and heretics and Turks makes people Christians, we insane people would indeed be the best Christians. But if loving Christ makes Christians, we are beyond a doubt worse than Jews, heretics, and Turks, because no one loves Christ less than we. The rage of these people reminds me of children and fools, who, when they see a picture of a Jew on a wall, go and cut out his eyes, pretending that they want to help the Lord Christ. Most of the preachers during Lent treat of nothing else than the cruelty of the Jews towards the Lord Christ, which they are continually magnifying. Thus they embitter believers against them, while the Gospel aims only at showing and exalting the love of G.o.d and Christ." (4, 927.)

The Catholic claim that the Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to enter upon this moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more exhaustively stated. Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has called attention to: "The Maryland charter of toleration was the gift of an English monarch, the nominal head of Church of England, and the credit of any merit in this donative is due the giver, and not the recipient, of the kingly grant." Prof. Fisher has called attention to another fact: "Only two references to religion are to be found in the Maryland charter. The first gives to the proprietary patronage and advowson of churches. The second empowers him to erect churches, chapels, and oratories, which he may cause to be consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England. The phraseology is copied from the Avalon patent (drawn up in England in 1623 for a portion of the colony of Newfoundland) that was given to Sir George Calvert (first Lord Baltimore) when he was a member of the Church of England. Yet the terms were such that recognition of that Church as the established form of religion does not prevent the proprietary and the colony from the exercise of full toleration toward other Christian bodies." (_Colonial Era_, p. 64.) The Maryland Colony was admittedly organized as a business venture, and its original members were largely Protestants. It was to secure the financial interests of the proprietary that tolerance was shown the colonists. Prof. Fisher says: "Any attempt to proscribe Protestants would have proved speedily fatal to the existence of the colony. In a doc.u.ment which emanated partly from Baltimore himself, it is declared to be evident that the distinctive privileges 'usually granted to ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church by Catholic princes in their own countries could not be possibly granted hero (in Maryland) without great offense to the King and State of England.'" (p.

63.) We have not the s.p.a.ce in this review of Catholic charges and claims to go into the religious history of the Maryland Colony as we should like to do; otherwise we should explain the machinations of the Jesuits in this colony, and prove that what tolerance Maryland in its early days enjoyed it owed to the preponderating influence of non-Catholic forces.

It requires an unusual amount of courage for a Catholic writer at this late day to parade his Church as the mother and protectress of religious liberty and tolerance. Any person who has but a smattering knowledge of the history of the world during the last four centuries will smile at this claim. The old Rome of the days of the Inquisition and the _auto da fes_ may seem tolerant in our days, but she is so from sheer necessity, not from any voluntary and joyous choice of her own. Her intolerant principles remain the same, only she has not the power to carry them into effect.

One of the Catholic bishops who was opposed to the dogma of papal infallibility, Reinkens, published a book bearing the remarkable t.i.tle _Revolution and Church_. In this book a thought is suggested which connects the Roman Curia with political disturbances that occur in the world. The author regards the declaration of papal infallibility as another step forward in the imperialistic program of the Curia looking towards world-dominion. He argues that it is in the interest of the Vatican policies to foment trouble and breed revolutions in the commonwealths of the world. "The thoughts of the Roman Curia," he says, "are not the thoughts of G.o.d. Inasmuch, however, as it is these latter that are realized with increasing force in the history of the world, and that animate the formation of every true civil and ecclesiastical inst.i.tution, the Curia is gradually forced into a conflict with the whole world. . . . The Curia (to carry its aims into effect) tries one last means: its last attempt is to bring about a revolution. As 'the Church' succeeded in digging her charter out of the ruins of the commonwealths of the ancient world, so the spirits of Vaticanism hope again to rebuild the palace of their dominion out of ruins." (p. 4.) Again: "Bishop Hefele entertains the fear that the recent elevation of the Pope to power (the infallibility dogma) will soon become the primary dogma in the instruction of children. We regret to say that this fear has proven well founded: all the governments, even the German, aid in this instruction of the schoolchildren, because they retain religious instruction on a confessional basis [we in America say on "sectarian"

lines], hence also that prescribed by the Vatican, as obligatory, and the infallibilist clergy is salaried by the State for providing this instruction The divine authority of the Pope extending over all men tends to disturb the minds of the children in the schools: they are taught at an early age to obey the Viceregent of G.o.d in preference to obeying the Emperor and the State. In the higher schools this is done by the clergy that is commissioned to teach in such schools." (p. 7.) Again: "The Roman order of the Jesuits is not only spread like a net over all countries, but it sinks its roots into every age, s.e.x, estate, and loosens and forces apart the ligaments of civil inst.i.tutions." (p.

8.)

Luther's views on human free will are brought forward once more to show that his teaching necessarily is hostile to liberty. Luther's famous reply to Erasmus _On the Bondage of the Will_ is made to do yeoman's service in this respect. What Luther has declared regarding the sovereignty of G.o.d's rulership over men, regarding the relation of G.o.d also to the evil existing in this world, regarding the absence of chance in the affairs of men, regarding man's utter helplessness over and against the supreme will of G.o.d, is cited to prove that Luther's teaching leads, not to liberty, but either to recklessness or despair.

Luther's views on "the captive, or enslaved, will" are declared to be the most degrading and demoralizing teaching that men have been offered during the last centuries. Luther's famous ill.u.s.tration, _viz_., that man is like a horse which either G.o.d or the devil rides, has prompted the following remarks of one of Luther's most recent critics: "This parable summarizes the whole of Luther's teaching on the vital and all-important subject of man's free will. . . . All who are honest and fearless of consequences must admit in frankest terms that Luther's teaching on free will, as expounded in his book, and explicitly making G.o.d the author of man's evil thoughts and deeds, cannot but lend a mighty force to the pa.s.sions and justify the grossest violations of the moral law. Indeed, the enemy of souls, as Anderson remarks, 'could not inspire a doctrine more likely to effect his wicked designs than Luther's teaching oil the enslavement of the human will.'" There is a dogmatic reason for this excoriation of Luther: Rome's teaching of righteousness by works and human merit. The same author says, in immediate connection with the foregoing: "Likening man to a 'beast of burden,' does Luther not maintain that man is utterly powerless 'by reason of his fallen nature' to lead a G.o.dly life, and merit by the practise of virtue the rewards of eternal happiness? Does he not say: 'It is written in the hearts of men that there is no freedom of will,'

that 'all takes place in accordance with inexorable necessity,' and that, even 'were free will offered him, he should not care to have it'?

But does not all this contradict the Spirit of G.o.d when, speaking in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, He says: 'Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him'?"

We submitted in chap. 15 the Scriptural evidence on the spiritual disability of man. (The pa.s.sage from Ecclesiasticus in the last quotation is not Scripture.) It is useless to argue with a person who refuses to accept this teaching of Scripture. We can only repeat what we said before: Let the advocates of human free will proceed to do what they claim they are able to do, and do it thoroughly. No one will begrudge them the crown of glory when they obtain it. On the other hand, they will have none but themselves to blame if they do not obtain it. In the light of G.o.d's holy Word, in the light, moreover, of the experience of the most spiritual-minded and saintly men that have lived on earth, we see in the claim of the advocates of human free will regarding the fulfilment of G.o.d's Law nothing but a vain boast, and a most mischievous attempt to be smarter than G.o.d. The theory of salvation by merit is the most disastrous risk that the human heart can take. Christ has mercifully warned men not to take this risk. If they will not hear Him, they will have to perish in their sins (John 8, 24).

In chap. 15 we also explained Luther's views on human free will in the affairs of this life. We only have to add a word on the subject of contingency. Are Luther's Catholic, critics really so blind as not to see that man even in his ordinary affairs of common every-day life is subject to the inscrutable government of G.o.d? Our physical life in its most trivial aspects is entirely dependent not only on the laws of nature, which are nothing but the order which the Creator has appointed for the created universe, but also on extraordinary acts of G.o.d over which no man has control. The farmer sows his wheat and expects to reap a crop. How? By reason of the power of germination which the Creator has put in the grain, and the laws which govern atmospheric changes, which laws, again, the Creator governs. The farmer can do nothing to make the wheat grow and ripen. He is utterly dependent upon G.o.d.--A merchant decides that he will make a business trip to New York. He will leave the next morning on the nine o'clock train. He orders his transportation, and the next morning-he does not leave. "Something happened; I had to change my plans," he tells his friends. Ah, says our Catholic critic, but was he not free to change his mind? We say: You may talk as much as you wish about the person's freedom; the fact remains that the person would not have changed his mind unless he had to. - Let us follow this merchant a little further: He actually starts on his trip two days later. He is to arrive at his destination at two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, and very much depends on his arriving just at that time. But he does not even get to Cincinnati. "Something happened,"

he wires to his friend. And now his human free will goes into operation again: he changes his mind. - "Man proposes, but G.o.d disposes," this belief is ineradicably written into the consciousness of all intelligent men, even of intelligent pagans, and no philosophy of free will will wipe it out. The wise farmer, after he has finished sowing his field, says, "G.o.d willing, I shall reap a good crop." The wise merchant says, "G.o.d willing, I shall be in New York to-morrow." And G.o.d approves of this wise reservation which causes the prudent to submit their most ordinary actions to divine revision. He says in Jas. 4, 13-16: "Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil."

Let Luther's Catholic critics wrestle with these and similar texts of Scripture, with these and similar facts of daily life. Luther has rightly declared the sovereignty of G.o.d a mighty ax and thunderbolt that shatters the a.s.sertion of human free will.

We have shown that Luther is no fatalist. His warning, on the one hand, not to disregard the secret will of G.o.d, and on the other, not to seek to find it out, is a masterpiece of wisdom. In view of the absolute sovereignty of G.o.d and man's absolute dependence upon it, Luther urges man to go to work in his chosen occupation in childlike reliance upon G.o.d. He is to employ to the utmost capacity all his G.o.d-given energies of mind and body and work as if everything depended on his industry, strength, prudence, thrift, planning, and arranging. Having done all, he is to say: Dear Lord, it is all subject to Thy approval. Thou art Master; do Thou boss my business. If Thou overrulest my plans, I have nothing to say; Thou knowest better. Not my will, but Thine, be done.

This is the whole truth in a nutsh.e.l.l that Luther drives home in that part of his reply to Erasmus which treats of contingency. If ever statements garbled from the context are unfair to the author, what the Catholics are constantly doing in quoting Luther on the Bondage of the Will is one of the most glaring exhibitions of unfairness on record.

This treatise of Luther deserves to be studied thoroughly and repeatedly, and measured against the facts of the common experience of all men. For a profitable study of this treatise there is, moreover, required a very humble mind, a mind that knows its sin, and is sincere in acknowledging its insufficiency.

The generation of Luther and the generations after him have had this particular teaching of Luther before them four hundred years. What effect has it had on human progress in every field of secular activity in Protestant lands? Has it created that chaos and confusion which Catholics claim it must inevitably lead to? Quite the contrary has happened. And now let the patrons of the theory of human free will measure their own success as recorded by history against that of Protestants.

25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage."

This is the honorary t.i.tle which Catholics bestow upon Martin Luther and Catherine von Bora, who were married June 13, 1525, during the Peasants'

War. Luther was forty-two years old at the time and his bride past twenty-six. She had left the cloister two years before her marriage, and had found employment during that time in the home of one of the citizens of Wittenberg. Their first child, Hans, was born June 7, 1526.

The grounds on which Catholics object to this marriage are, chiefly, three. In the first place, they declare the marriage the outcome of an impure relation which had existed between Luther and Catherine prior to their marriage. The marriage had virtually become a matter of necessity, to prevent greater scandal. Moreover, in this impure relationship Luther with his lascivious and l.u.s.tful mind, in which fleshly desires were continually raging, had been the prime mover. The second ground on which Catholics object to Luther's marriage is, because Luther held professedly low views of the virtue of chast.i.ty and the state of matrimony. He had stripped matrimony of its sacramental character, and regarded it as a mere physical necessity and a social and civil contract. Thirdly, Catholics criticize Luther's marriage because it was entered into by both the contracting parties in violation of a sacred vow: Luther had been a monk and Catherine a nun, both sworn to perpetual celibacy.

Moral cleanness is indelibly stamped upon hundreds of pages of Luther's writings. The Sixth Commandment in its wider application to the mutual relation of the s.e.xes and the s.e.xual condition of the individual was to Luther the solemn voice of G.o.d by which the holy and wise Creator guards and protects the fountains whence springs human life. "Because there is among us," he says, "such a shameful mixture and the very dregs of all kinds of vice and lewdness, this commandment is also directed against all manner of impurity, whatever it may be called; and not only is the external act forbidden, but every kind of cause, incitement, and means, so that the heart, the lips, and the whole body may be chaste and afford no opportunity, help, or persuasion for impurity. And not only this, but that we may also defend, protect, and rescue wherever there is danger and need; and give help and counsel, so as to maintain our neighbor's honor. For wherever you allow such a thing when you could prevent it, or connive at it as if it did not concern you, you are as truly guilty as the one perpetrating the deed. Thus it is required, in short, that every one both live chastely himself and help his neighbor do the same."

(_Large Catechism_, p. 419.) The reason why G.o.d in the Sixth Commandment refers to only one form of s.e.xual impurity Luther states correctly thus: "He expressly mentions adultery, because among the Jews it was a command and appointment that every one must be married. Therefore also the young were early married, so that the state of celibacy was held in small esteem, neither were public prost.i.tution and lewdness tolerated as now.

Therefore adultery was the most common form of unchast.i.ty among them."

(_Ibid_.)

In his _Appeal to the German n.o.bility_ Luther says: "Is it not a terrible thing that we Christians should maintain public brothels, though we all vow chast.i.ty in our baptism? I well know all that can be said on this matter; that it is not peculiar to one nation, that it would be difficult to demolish it, and that it is better thus than that virgins, or married women, or honorable women should be dishonored. But should not the spiritual and temporal powers combine to find some means of meeting these difficulties without any such heathen practise? If the people of Israel existed without this scandal, why should not a Christian nation be able do so? How do so many towns and villages manage to exist without these houses? Why should not great cities be able to do so? . . . It is the duty of those in authority to see the good of their subjects. But if those in authority considered how young people might be brought together in marriage, the prospect of marriage would help every man and protect him from temptations." (10, 349; transl. by Waring.)

This is the Luther of whom Catholic writers say that he would not be considered qualified to sit with a modern Vice Commission.

But what about the many coa.r.s.e references in Luther's writings to s.e.xual matters-references which are unprintable nowadays? Do these not show that Luther was far from being even an ordinary gentleman, that he was depraved in thought and vulgar nauseating, in speech whenever he approached the subject of marriage and s.e.xual conditions? We have just cited a few of Luther's references to these matters. They are clean and proper. We could fill pages with them, and they would prove most profitable reading in our loose, profligate, and adulterous age. Those other references which are also found in Luther's writings should be studied in their connection. Leaving out of the account humorous references and playful remarks, which only malice can twist into a lascivious meaning, they are indignant and scornful expostulations with the defenders and practisers of vice that flaunted its shame in the face of the public. Righteous anger will give a person the courage to speak out boldly and in no mincing words about things which otherwise nauseate him. When Catholic writers cull from Luther vile and disgusting remarks about s.e.xual affairs, it should be investigated to whom Luther made those remarks, and what reason he had for making them. There is another side to this matter, and that concerns medieval Catholicism itself. We have indicated in sundry places in this review the social conditions in respect of the s.e.x relations that existed under the spiritual sovereignty of the Roman Church in Luther's day in the very city of Rome, and had grown up and were being fostered by her leading men.

Luther's references to l.u.s.tfulness are paraded as evidence of the l.u.s.t that was consuming him; they are, in reality, evidences of the l.u.s.t that he knew to be raging in very prominent people with whom he had dealings.

Luther's words and teaching would count for little if his personal conduct and his acts were in open contradiction to his chaste professions. We would simply have to set him down as a hypocrite. But so would the people in Luther's own day have done. It is a poor argument to say that the common people were no match for Luther in an argument. They were cowed into silence, they were afraid to tell him to his face that he ought to practise what he preached. Luther's work proved the spiritual emanc.i.p.ation of the common people, and one of the effects which mark his reformatory work is the intelligent layman, who forms his own judgment on what he hears and sees, and speaks out to his superiors.

The Wittenbergers in Luther's day were not a set of ninnies; the constant a.s.sociation with the professors and students of the university, the growing fame of their town, which brought many strangers to it, important civil and religious affairs on which they had to come to a decision, had made many of them far-sighted and resolute men of affairs.

Luther's home life before and after his marriage was open to public inspection as few homes are. The most intimate and delicate affairs had to be arranged before company at times. In a small town-and Wittenberg was no modern metropolis-what one person knows becomes public information in a short time. Small communities have no secrets, or at least find it extremely difficult to have any.

But the lewdness which Luther attacked in his writings on chast.i.ty existed chiefly among persons of wealth and among the n.o.bility. Not a few of them resented Luther's invectives against their mode of life.

They surely did not lack the courage nor the ability to express themselves in retaliation against Luther if they had known him to be immoral himself while preaching morality to others. Last, not least, there were the Catholic priests and dignitaries of the Roman Church whose scandalous life Luther exposed. Aside from their disagreement from Luther in point of doctrine, personal revenge animated not a few of them with the desire to find a flaw in Luther's conduct. A few reckless spirits among them insinuated and declared openly that Luther was immoral, but the animus back of the charge was so well understood at the time, and the people who were in daily and close touch with Luther were so fully convinced of the purity of his life, that the charges were treated with contempt.

Luther's life from the age of p.u.b.erty to his marriage was, indeed, a fight against temptations to unchast.i.ty. Is it anything else in the case of other men? The physical effects of adolescence, as we remarked before, are a natural and morally pure phenomenon; Luther's frank way of speaking of them does not make them impure. But this physical condition in a growing young man or woman may become the occasion for impure acts.

Against these Luther strove as every Christian strives against them who has not the special grace of which our Lord speaks Matt. 19, 12, in the first part of the verse. Luther had his flesh fairly well in subjection to the Spirit. History has not recorded those acts of immorality which his enemies insinuate or openly charge him with. The illegitimate children which are imputed to him were born in Catholic fancy. His const.i.tutional amorous propensities, too, are fiction. Though Luther admits a few months prior to his marriage that he wears no armor plate around his heart, it is known that he had been all his life anything rather than a ladies' man.

Luther's courtship of Catherine--if we may call it that--was almost void of romance. The nine nuns who had fled from the cloister at Nimpschen to escape "the impurities of the life of celibacy," had turned to Wittenberg in their trouble. They were not seeking new impurities, but running away from old ones. What was more natural than that they should seek the protection of the man whose teaching had opened the road to liberty for them. They did not come to Wittenberg to surrender themselves to Luther, but to seek his protection, advice, and help in beginning a new, natural life after the unnatural life which they had been leading. Luther responded to the call of distress. He did not receive them into his own domicile in the cloister where he lived, but found shelter for them with kind citizens of the town. Next, he found husbands for them. In less than two years after the escape from the cloister all had been respectably married, except Catherine. A love-affair of hers with Jerome Baumgaertner of Nuernberg had terminated unhappily, in spite of Luther's urging the young man. Another choice which Luther proposed to her--Dr. Glatz of Orlamuende--was declined peremptorily by Catherine, because, it seems, she had read the man's character. In declining this second offer, Catherine had made complaint to Luther's friend Amsdorf that Luther was trying to marry her against her will. She appears to have been a frank and resolute woman; in her conversation with Amsdorf she remarked that her decision would be altogether different if either he or even Luther were to ask for her hand. This was not, as has been said, a bald invitation to either of these two gentlemen, but only Catherine's energetic way of explaining what sort of a husband she would like, and why she would not take Glatz.

Amsdorf so understood her remark and made nothing of it. By an accident he came to relate it to Luther six months later, when the latter had written to him in great despondency, describing his lonely life and the disorderly state of his domicile which needed very much the care of a woman's hand. Then it was that Amsdorf related what Catherine had remarked. Luther had never thought of her in such a relation. He had been attracted, it seems, by another of the nine escaped nuns, Ave von Schoenfeld, but whatever affection he may have entertained for her must have been a pa.s.sing incident, never seriously entertained, for it must be remembered that at that time Luther declared that he would live and die a bachelor. Besides, Ave had now been happily married to another. At this juncture the influence of another woman enters into the private life of Luther. Argula von Staufen, a n.o.blewoman who had been won over to the cause of the Reformation and was actively engaged in breaking down the power of the hierarchy even by her pen, wrote to Luther, expressing her surprise that he who had written so ably and so well on the holy estate of matrimony was still single. Among the peasants, too, the question was being debated whether Luther would follow up his preaching with the logical action. Luther was ruminating on these matters when the Peasants' Revolt broke out, and with them in his mind went to Mansfeld. He soon reached the conclusion that he owed it to his profession as a preacher of the divine Word, to his Creator, to himself, and to the lonely Catherine to marry. He foresaw that the celibate clergy of Rome would raise a hue and cry about the act, but he considered it a n.o.ble work to offend these men, because they had by their law of celibacy offended the most holy G.o.d. He would marry to spite all of them, and the Pope, and the devil. This resolution was promptly carried out, for Luther was not in the habit of dallying long with serious matters. If he had asked his timid friend Melanchthon, he would most likely have been advised against his marriage. Faint-hearted Philip was not the man to advise in a matter which at the time required a heroic faith. Philip, therefore, was duly shocked when he heard about it. His consternation is now used by Catholics to prove that he regarded Luther's marriage as a wanton act prompted by l.u.s.t. This is utterly unhistorical: Philip was only afraid of the wild talk that would now be started against all of them. On the right and duty of the clergy to marry he believed with Luther.

And now a word about the chast.i.ty of Rome, particularly that peculiar brand which was inaugurated by Gregory VII for the Roman clergy and the religious of both s.e.xes, and riveted upon them by the Council of Trent- the chast.i.ty of the celibate state. That the unnatural principle had never worked out toward true chast.i.ty, that the robbery which it has perpetrated on men and women had to be compensated for by connivance at, and open permission of, concubinage, is a matter of current knowledge.

Luther's advice to priests and bishops who had opened their hearts to him on the state of their chast.i.ty to marry their cooks, even if they had to do it secretly; rather than maintain the other relation to them, was a good man's effort to meet a grave difficulty as best he could.

This advice is now used to show that Luther was ready to approve any kind of cohabitation. The very opposite is true: it was because he did not approve of any kind of s.e.xual intercourse, but because he desired to obtain some kind of a legal character for that relation, that he gave the advice to which we have referred.

Before the a.s.sembled representatives of the Church and of the German nation the following statements were read in Article XXIII of the Augsburg Confession: "There has been common complaint concerning the examples of priests who were not chaste. For that reason, also, Pope Pius is reported to have said that there were certain reasons why marriage was taken away from priests, but that there were far weightier ones why it ought to be given back; for so Platina writes. Since, therefore, our priests were desirous to avoid these open scandals, they married wives, and taught that it was lawful for them to contract matrimony. First, because Paul says (1 Cor. 7, 2): 'To avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife.' Also (9): 'It is better to marry than to burn.' Secondly, Christ says (Matt. 19, 11): 'All men cannot receive this saying,' where He teaches that not all men are fit to lead a single life; for G.o.d created man for procreation (Gen. 1, 23).

Nor is it in man's power, without a singular gift and work of G.o.d, to alter this creation. Therefore, those that are not fit to lead a single life ought to contract matrimony. For no man's law, no vow, can annul the commandment and ordinance of G.o.d. For these reasons the priests teach that it is lawful for them to marry wives. It is also evident that in the ancient Church priests were married men. For Paul says (1 Tim. 3, 2) that a bishop should be the husband of one wife. And in Germany, four hundred years ago for the first time, the priests were violently compelled to lead a single life, who indeed offered such resistance that the Archbishop of Mayence, when about to publish the Pope's decree concerning this matter, was almost killed in the tumult raised by the enraged priests. And so harsh was the dealing in the matter that not only were marriages forbidden for the time to come, but also existing marriages were torn asunder, contrary to all laws, divine and human, contrary even to the canons themselves, made not only by the Popes, but by most celebrated councils.

"Seeing also that, as the world is aging, man's nature is gradually growing weaker, it is well to guard that no more vices steal into Germany. Furthermore, G.o.d ordained marriage to be a help against human infirmity. The old canons themselves say that the old rigor ought now and then, in the latter times, to be relaxed because of the weakness of men; which, it is to be devoutly wished, were also done in this matter.

And it is to be expected that the churches shall at length lack pastors, if marriage should any longer be forbidden.

"But while the commandment of G.o.d is in force, while the custom of the Church is well known, while impure celibacy causes many scandals, adulteries, and other crimes deserving the punishments of just magistrates, yet it is a marvelous thing that in nothing is more cruelty exercised than against the marriage of priests. G.o.d has given commandment to honor marriage. By the laws of all well-ordered commonwealths, even among the heathen, marriage is most highly honored.

But now men, and also priests, are cruelly put to death, contrary to the intent of the canons, for no other cause than marriage. Paul (in 1 Tim.

4, 3) calls that a doctrine of devils which forbids marriage. This may now be readily understood when the law against marriage is maintained by such penalties.

"But as no law of man can annul the commandment of G.o.d, so neither can it be done by any vow. Accordingly Cyprian also advises that women who do not keep the chast.i.ty they have promised should marry. His words are, these (Book I, Epistle XIX): 'But if they be unwilling or unable to persevere, it is better for them to marry than to fall into the fire by their l.u.s.ts; at least, they should give no offense to their brethren and sisters.' And even the canons show some leniency toward those who have taken vows before the proper age, as heretofore has generally been the case." (p. 48 f.)