CHAPTER II. Luther—and Some of the Causes of the German Reformation—which the Jesuits were Founded to Combat.

THE name of Luther is familiar as a household word. There are few who do not know something of his simple history. His parents were poor and his friends were few. If his words sometimes offend the sensibilities of the 19th century, we should remember that he had a work to do in the 16th, which required some very plain speaking. Besides, at this period blunt and even coarse speech was used in the ordinary affairs of life. If Luther is blamed for expressions which shock us, we may at least do him the justice to remember that he was brought up in a Church which had ever set its face determinately against education in the highest sense of the word. Neither honied phrases (flattery), nor that liberality which is so often made a cloak for cowardice, would have served the cause for which he fought, or the work which he had to do.

Ignatius Loyola had not even thought of his Order, or seen his visions, when the hungry little lad Luther was singing for his daily bread in the streets of Eisenach. His early life was one of hardship and much suffering. The times were. hard. The severities of the Inquisition had made men callous and brutal to each other. If the Church considered cruelty a virtue, why should the populace resent the infliction of pain? The tyrannies of the nobles had also their evil effect on human life, and on the formation of character. A word, and a blow, and often the blow without the word was the common rule of life. But there were tender hearts for all the hardness of the times, and Frau Cotta was one of the gentle ones who loved mercy and practised peace. Luther had a voice of some power and sweetness, and sang from time to time at her door. The good Frau, who had no children of her own, was touched by the boy’s poverty, and became his friend. The lad who sang himself into her heart eventually became a priest. His father was strongly opposed to this step, and no wonder. The name of priest and monk had long been a term of reproach because of the evil lives of so many of those who bore it.

The Wycliffite movement in England had been rather a revolt against the wickedness in the high places of the Church, than doctrinal. In Germany the revolt began in the same way, but ended in the discovery that what men did depended on what men believed. By their fruits ye shall know them. The clergy, too, were very much more concerned with what touched their material interests than with what touched their faith. Nor has this ceased to be true, for when Ireland manifested a determination to resist the political interference of the Pope and showed her displeasure by the reduction of payments to the ecclesiastical treasury she was at once conciliated (appeased).

Writing in Latin.

The custom of writing in Latin, which was universal during the middle ages, greatly facilitated the transmission of thought, and information as to movements religious or secular. Hence Huss was thoroughly familiar with the writings of Wycliffe and made them his text books when teaching in the University of Prague. It was a noted fact that licentious living was far more common amongst the religious orders than amongst the secular priests. Hence the success of Ignatius Loyola in founding a new and professedly reformed rule. Men who still clung to the ancient faith, and who could not deny existing evils, were ready to aid any plan which promised amendment. The quarrels between the two great religious orders was another source of scandal, yet serious as they were, they seem insignificant when compared with the intestine disputes and scandals which eventually developed amongst the Jesuits themselves.

It was no wonder then that Luther’s plain thinking and pious father, should have objected strongly to his becoming a priest. A public scandal in the shape of a quarrel between Dominicans and Franciscans, which has been very fully recorded by contemporary historians, had nearly as great an effect in shaking the power of the Roman Catholic Church, as the sale of indulgences.

Metaphysical Absurdities.

The facts of history are so strongly against the Church of Rome, that she has found it necessary to omit or minimise these facts in the histories which she places in the hands of the young. She would fain (be obliged) have all men believe that her faith has never changed, and when it is pointed out that she has continually added new articles to her creed, she replies that these new articles have always been believed. History attests that the very reverse has been the case. There is scarcely an article of the creed of Rome which has not been hotly, and even acrimoniously, disputed for centuries by members of that Church. This has been especially the case with regard to the doctrine of the so called immaculate conception of Mary. The great mediaeval orders, the Franciscan, and the Dominican, were rivals for the support of the people, and for the honours of the theological schools. Between these religious bodies, the war of opinion raged with a fury which could scarcely be credited by those who are not familiar with the subject. An appeal to Scripture was of course never thought of. There was not a word in the Bible which could be turned to account, even by the most dexterous metaphysical theologian. St. Thomas might write learned essays on the number of angels who could exist on the point of a needle, but for the doctrine of the immaculate conception of her who had declared that she rejoiced in God her Saviour, there was so little that could be pressed into the service, that the Franciscans were driven to supply a miracle. Sebastian Franck gives the story at great length in his “Chronica,” published in 1531. We can only give the briefest abridgment here, but the affair is too characteristic of the times, and the consequences were too important to omit all notice of it.

How a Miracle was Made.

Miracles come in sometimes very opportunely. The Dominicans, who had always opposed the doctrine of the immaculate conception, were losing ground on that account. They were reproached with want of devotion to the Virgin, which practically is the greatest crime of which a Roman Catholic can be guilty. The Franciscans, on the contrary, were lauded for their piety and zeal, much to their satisfaction. Something had to be done to help the lessening prestige of the order of Friars Preachers. And something was done. A miracle was carefully arranged and carried out with precautions which ought to have secured success. What makes the matter most revolting is, that the miracle was not the result of either the fraud or the imagination of a single and perhaps scarcely responsible individual. On the contrary, it was planned and authorised in a secret Chapter of the Order, held at Wimpfen, in 1506.

Nurnburg and Frankfort were first proposed as suitable places for carrying out the pious fraud, but eventually Berne was selected, as the inhabitants of the other places were believed to be rather too much inclined to make careful investigations before accepting evidence. The victim selected was a young novice who had just entered the convent, and who was full of zeal, and more likely to believe than to question anything apparently supernatural. Mysterious noises were made in his cell at night, and he was led to suppose that he had been visited by a spirit. Between fright and gratification that he should have been selected by heaven for such favours, he was soon in just the state of mind to believe anything. The prior appeared to him in the form of a spirit, and told him that he (the spirit) needed prayers, that he should ask to have eight masses read in the chapel of St. John, and that the friars should also scourge themselves during this period.

The vision, according to pre-arrangement, was made the subject of sermons in the Dominican Church, the preacher declaring that suffering souls never came to ask help from the Franciscans, whom he described in the coarse and violent terms characteristic of the theological disputes of the day. The prior placed relics in the cell of the favoured youth, sprinkled holy water, and went through the usual Roman Catholic forms of protecting him from bad spirits, and encouraging the good. The spirits continued their visits. The confessor of the unfortunate youth gave him a letter addressed to the Virgin Mary, which contained questions on the disputed theological points, and desired him to implore the Queen of Heaven for a reply. The reply came as was to be expected, and in order to make the miracle more convincing, it was found in the tabernacle, with the host where it had been placed “miraculously.” Further, the novice was told by the Virgin to ask the Pope (Julius II) to order a festival in honour of her having been born in original sin. If this had been done the Church would have been so bound to this doctrine, that it would have been impossible, if indeed anything is impossible to infallibility, to have proclaimed her immaculate conception hereafter.

It was now considered time to bring the novice forward publicly as an inspired person. So far all had gone well. He was deprived of his senses by some draught which the monks gave him, and while in a state of apparent trance, they made the marks of the wounds of Christ on his hands and feet, a form ardently coveted by Roman Catholic visionaries. This was another triumph over their Franciscan brethren, for no male saint had ever received the stigmata except St. Francis of Assisi.

The novice, who seems to have acted so far in good faith, began to find out, through the carelessness of his deceivers, who were now sure of their success, that he had been made their tool. They tried to poison him, they tried to starve him, they tried to bribe him, but all was in vain. Rumours got about, as rumours will, and there were loud cries for ecclesiastical intervention. The matter was referred to Rome. Rome appointed a commission of inquiry, but the good burghers (citizens) of Berne were not quite so credulous (ready to believe) as the monks had hoped, and they had not quite as much faith in ecclesiastical investigation of ecclesiastical cases as might have been expected. They demanded that eight of their own councillors should be joined with the ecclesiastical commissioners, with the result that four of the monks were sentenced to death, and were burned alive in the market place at Berne, according to the barbarous custom of the times.

Luther’s Brave Father.

Nor was this a solitary example of the state of the monastic institutions of the age of Loyola. Other and similar cases might be recorded, but enough has been said to show how the people were prepared for revolt. It has, unfortunately, been too much the habit with controversialists of all denominations, to attack the character of those from whom they have differed. Of course, one who has held such a prominent position as Luther could not escape. Even his parents were made the subject of attack, yet they were simple and God fearing people. If they were not anxious to see their son a member of a religious Order, facts such as that which we have just related might plead their excuse, even with members of the Church in which they lived and died. But Luther’s father was guilty of what was then considered a serious crime. He refused to obey the demand of the priest who attended him on his deathbed, and who tried to make him leave all, or nearly all his little property to the ever grasping church instead of to his children, who sorely needed it.

We find a marked difference between the views with which Luther and Loyola studied for the priesthood. Ignatius desired only just as much knowledge even of theology as would enable him to obtain the dignity to which he aspired. Indeed, so great was his ignorance, and so self-evident his inability to learn, that he never could have received orders, even in that lax age, if his want of the necessary qualifications had not been dispensed with. Luther had many advantages in his educational career. He lived in Germany, where the Inquisition had not the power which it had in Spain, and where, consequently, learning was encouraged rather than forbidden. He found a superior in the Augustinian Monastery at Erfurth in the person of the Vicar General of the Order, John von Staupitz, who entered into his spiritual difficulties and exhorted him to study the Scriptures. How little either the master or the pupil anticipated the result! But the chains which bound Luther to his Church were broken slowly. It is indeed difficult for those who have not had personal experience of the Church of Rome to realise what a tremendous force of spiritual strength is required to forsake this strange religion. To those who never have suffered it is in vain to speak. It needs a Christlike sympathy to feel for and with others at any time, but above all in circumstances which are foreign to our personal experience.

Some Christians Accuse Luther Falsely.

It is true that Rome has forbidden the reading of the Bible in language too plain, and by authority too strong to be questioned. It is also true that under certain conditions Rome relaxes her rule. It is also true that every monk, nun, and priest is obliged to read portions of the Bible daily, when saying the Office. But whether a small portion of the Bible or the whole Bible is read matters little in the end, for, small or large, what is read must be read with the eyes of the Church, and explained as required by the Church. Hence the Bible is practically a sealed book to the Roman Catholic. This is a point which is scarcely understood, either by those who think that Roman Catholics are never allowed to see a Bible, or by those who think that they can use it freely. The words used by our Lord to the Jews exactly describe this condition of things in the Church of Rome: “Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered” (Mark vii. 13). The mere mechanical reading of the Bible can avail little, and the mere mechanical reading of part of the Bible is all that Rome allows.

There is no doubt that Luther felt very keenly the false accusations which were brought against him, not only by his enemies, but even by those who ought to have been his warmest supporters. The unity of Rome has always been its strength. The disunion of Christians has been the greatest hindrance to the spread of the Gospel. As the end of time draws nearer may we not hope that Christians will draw nearer to each other, and to their coming Lord.

Luther’s Trials from Brethern.

There are few things more touching than the appeal which Luther makes to posterity for the justice which was denied to him even by some of his Christian contemporaries. He says: “I am yet alive, and I write books, and I preach sermons, and read public lectures every day, and yet virulent minded men, adversaries and false brethren, allege my own doctrines against me, and represent me as saying what I do not say, and as believing what I do not believe. If they do this while I am alive, and while I look on and hear it, what will they do when I am dead? But how is it possible for me to stop all the mouths of the evil speakers, especially of those who set themselves to pervert my words.” No doubt Luther must have often felt that it was indeed hard for him to suffer from both sides from the Roman Catholics against whose errors he was fighting so earnestly, and from those professing Christians, who, through jealousy or ignorance, were ever ready to attack him. Surely the path of an earnest reformer is ever one of pain. It should be said, however, that the best and noblest men of his day were his defenders, but this did not lessen the guilt of those who added to his already heavy burdens.

Erasmus has left it on record that the better any man was the more he appreciated the writings of Luther. In the same letter, which is addressed to Archbishop Albert, he says “that he (Luther) was accounted a good man even by his enemies, and that the best men were least offended by his writings.” Even the Roman Catholic historian Lingard admits that Luther’s morals were unexceptional. He says “He (Staupitz) selected a young friar of his own order, Martin Luther, a man of an ardent mind, and unimpeached morals, and of strong prejudices against the Church of Rome.” Luther’s last words have been placed on record, and with these words we shall conclude this part of our subject.

“O my Father, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all consolation, I thank Thee for having revealed to me Thy well beloved Son, in whom I believe, whom I have preached and acknowledged, loved and celebrated, and whom the Pope and the impious persecute. I commend to Thee my soul. O Jesus Christ my Lord, I am quitting this earthly body, I am leaving this life, but I know that I shall abide eternally with Thee.”

And so Luther was gathered to his fathers, and rests in the unchanging peace of God. Rome could no more threaten him with its thunders, nor could the mistrust and unkindness of false friends vex his tender heart. And his work follows him. It is still the same because it is Divine. And those who worked with him and those who worked against him know now that his teaching was the teaching of the Spirit, and that with him was the grace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

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