1516-1524.]

famous challenge to Tetzel or any emissary of the Pope to prove from Holy Scripture that a certificate signed by the bishop of Rome had the power of putting away sin. The protest consisted of ninety-five theses on the various features of these papal indulgences or pardons, which were especially sought for by anxious souls fearing for relatives or dear ones suffering the unknown pains of purgatory, and who hoped, possibly in some cases against hope, that the pardon of the Pope would free these departed souls, or at least shorten the period of their anguish. Luther boldly asserted that the papal assertion was monstrous. The church might cancel penances which it imposed, but the church's pardon could not reach to purgatory, on the other side of the grave. Those, he said, whom God had condemned, must there remain till He Himself was pleased to set them free.

The

The story of the act and words of Luther rang through Germany and most of Europe. The protest of the bold teacher of Wittenberg was generally applauded. Even many churchmen, faithful and loyal to the Pope, heartily approved. scandal of the sale of indulgences was absolutely indefensible. It had long been felt by many to be a gross abuse, and the exposure of Tetzel brought the question to a head. As yet, however, Luther remained. loyal to the Pope. He only demanded a disclaimer of Tetzel and his proceedings from Rome; and if that had been given the matter, so far as he was concerned, would probably have ended.

But the disclaimer never came. At first, Pope Leo X. treated the affair as of no importance. Luther, however,

was in bitter earnest, and stoutly defended his bold theses. Disputations on the subject were held at Heidelberg. Other and grave charges came up against the exactions of the papal court through its varied emissaries, and in the end Luther was summoned to Rome. He refused to go. The German princes were urged by Leo to arrest the daring heretic, as he was soon styled. The princes, however, declined to take any step against one who unmistakably had public opinion on his side. Luther demanded that a General Council of the church should be held to consider these grave accusations. The whole question of the papal supremacy, its enormous claims, its crying abuses, was soon brought to the front; and actual revolt against the old order of things in the religious world had begun.

Rome curiously underrated the influence of Luther in Germany. No real attempt was made to understand his remonstrances, or to reply to his charges. The Pope

and his cardinals dreaded the General Council, for which so many earnest men were hoping, and a bull anathematising Luther was published. This bull brought things to an absolute crisis. Luther replied by publicly burning the papal bull at Wittenberg, before a crowd of professors and students who sympathised with him. The decretals and other traditional documents, upon which the claims of the bishop of Rome were largely based, were tossed by the daring reformer into the same bonfire. This public and insulting renunciation of the Roman supremacy by Luther and his friends took place in A.D. 1520.

Charles V. had recently been crowned emperor, and his first Germanic Diet met

at Worms in the following year (1521). The principal business before that august and important assembly of the German sovereign princes, electors, and magnates was "to check the progress of new and dangerous opinions." Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet. Although a safe-conduct was promised him, he was urged to keep away. The burning of Huss at Constance, in spite of a similar guarantee, was in vain urged upon him. Luther's celebrated reply to these friendly warnings is well known: "Though there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the houses, I will go there."

was

As might have been expected, the Diet condemned him, although he had many friends in the Council-some open, more perhaps unavowed. But it was impossible for the supreme Council of the Empire to sanction an open rupture with the established order of religion. Luther, of course, declined to submit to Rome, and formally placed under the ban of the empire as an excommunicated heretic. The edict of Worms styled him "the evil fiend in human form," and ordered that his writings should be burned and never reprinted; but before the time granted him by the imperial safe-conduct had expired, his friends forcibly seized him and placed him in safety in the castle of Wartburg in Saxony. There he remained shut up, but strictly guarded by his well-wishers from harm, for nearly a year. In the meantime the edict of Worms remained practically unheeded, and the revolt against Rome spread with strange rapidity over Germany. The details of this rapid German Reformation lie, of course, altogether outside the scope of our present

Images Private

work, and are only referred to in this brief sketch as bearing on the more general question of the Reformation of the church. The people of Germany took the reform of their own church largely into their own hands. The monasteries were generally dissolved. The old church courts were abolished. were removed from the churches. masses were abolished, and the Mass itself was changed into a Communion Service. The church lands were sequestrated. To all these startling changes there was little resistance. The free German cities became" Lutheran" in doctrine and practice almost without exception.

We return to the great Reformer who had kindled this mighty, widespread conflagration. During his seclusion in the castle of Wartburg he prepared, mainly from the Greek Testament recently published by Erasmus, his German version of the New Testament. This was published in 1522. The Old Testament was added after a year or two. This German Bible had an enormous and rapid sale, and advanced the cause of the Reformation with an influence no invective, however bitter, or merely human argument, however powerful, could have possessed. It has been well said that it was the disinterment and subsequent publication of the Greek New Testament by Erasmus, and the translation of it into English and German a few years later, "which did the work of the Reformation; without this divine witness it would inevitably have failed."

In 1524 Luther abandoned the monastic dress, and in 1525 he married Catherine von Bora, somewhiles a nun, who had left her convent some two years before.

Much both of warm praise and bitter blame has been awarded to his casting off his early monastic and priestly vows, and adopting, about the age of forty, the married life and the responsibility of a home and family; but we are not concerned here with the wisdom or the

righteousness of his action. His own defence is powerful, and from his own standpoint difficult to answer. He had for years inculcated the advantage of the married state, and had pointed out the evils attendant upon enforced celibacy; surely, he argued, he was bound to endorse his teaching and that of his friends by his own example. The picture we possess of Luther's home is unmistakably a beautiful one. His loving devotion to his wife was ever unbroken, and his relations to his children are at once touching and admirable. No regrets for his action in this respect seem ever to have darkened the atmosphere of that loving home circle.

In the same year (1524) a council was held at Augsburg, which in 1526 adjourned. to Spires; but nothing was done on either side in the direction of conciliation or agreement. The rift grew broader and ever broader. In 1529-30 met, under the summons of the emperor Charles V., the famous Diet of Augsburg, from which may be dated the final and formal separation of a large part of Germany from communion with Rome. The Lutheran confession of faith, known as the "Confession of Augsburg," drawn by Melancthon, was formally presented to the emperor by the elector of Saxony, who ranked as the first of the German sovereign princes. But still not compromise between the opposing parties was arrived at. The emperor put out

another edict, confirming the edict of Worms of 1521, and insisted on uniformity of observance in religious matters. The married priests were ordered to put away their wives. The laity were recommended to attend mass, to pray to the Virgin and saints, and to restore the monasteries. Each prince was enjoined, under penalties, to enforce the law in his own province. On the other hand, a General Council of the church was promised immediately.

The reply to the edict of Augsburg was the League of Schmalkald, half of the states and cities of Germany agreeing to band together in defence of their liberties. The name of "Protestants" now appears generally on the stage of church history; as the appellation of the men who "protested," not so much against doctrines in themselves, as is the too common view, but against being coerced into accepting doctrines which they believed to be false, or into practising ceremonies they held to be idolatrous.

Luther survived these events some sixteen years, dying in 1546 at Eisleben. He was interred with all possible honours at Wittenberg, the scene of his first protest against the indulgences of Leo X., the act which immediately led to all these mighty changes.

For the purposes of our history of the English Church, the above bare sketch of events connected with the Reformation in Germany is sufficient; but something more is necessary in regard to the remarkable man, to whom in the providence of God the reformation work in Germany is mainly due. It is indisputable that the theology of Luther and of his associates-men like

1502-1546.] Melancthon-in no inconsiderable degree influenced the views of our own English reformers, upon which we must presently dwell at length, and inspired at least portions of the formularies of faith which they put forth; formularies which have been adopted as the basis of all the teaching of the Church of England from the Reformation period downwards.

We have briefly alluded to the circumstances of Luther's early career. In appearance he was a stalwart man ; he seems to have been sensuous, passionate, imaginative, tender, easily moved to laughter or to tears, susceptible of the strongest love or hate.

His eyes, men say, were especially remarkable. They were black, with a yellow rim round the iris, such as one sees in the eyes of a lion. His passionate devotion, his intense earnestness, his student's work-work as translator, commentator, lecturer, preacher-never flagged. Much of his work is enduring, and likely to endure.

Luther in his private life was never the gloomy ascetic. He loved music, and was himself no mean composer, assigning to this popular art a place second only to theology itself. He was also an ardent admirer of painting, and his are among the earliest works made interesting by the help of engravings. Like so many of the great and eminent men of God in different ages, he had a curious and strange intimacy with the animal world, and like Francis of Assisi and our English Cuthbert, the birds of the air knew him and loved him as their friend.

What shall we say of his theology? What was there in Luther's belief and teaching which won so quickly an empire over countless human hearts; an empire which is enduring, and which shows no

19 The

symptom of change or of decay? dominant thought in his own mind has been well expressed in the following terms: "He possessed, what is perhaps the most awful and imperious creation of Christianity -the sense of sin. Such a sense

is at root a passion for the possession of Deity, in a man who feels Deity too awful in His goodness to be possessed by him. . . He knows the impossibility of being worthy of God, yet feels the necessity to him of the God who seems so unapproachable, so inaccessible. To such a man reconciliation, to be real, must be of God and to God, a work of infinite grace; and religion, to be true, must be the way or method of such reconciliation. The Christian doctrine of sin would be intolerable, were it not transfigured by the Christian doctrine of grace; indeed, it is the splendour of the one which makes the shadow lie so dark on the other."*

In his earlier studies Luther had come across the Vulgate version of the New Testament, not much studied in the schools of his time, save in the Epistles and Gospels selected for the church's services. With this Latin version he was aided by the treatises of Augustine, of which he was ever a diligent student. Deep thoughts had begun to work in his mind. Then came the Greek New Testament of Erasmus; and with this before him, the awful mistakes which the church was propagating in her teaching, flashed upon him in all their extent. The New Testament came to him, not as the voice of the church, but as the voice of God. "The first Christian age rises before him, wakes into life, stands out in vivid contrast with his * Dr. Fairbairn: "Christ in Modern Theology."