bold the edifice was which he had planned in the evangelical Churches is plain from other statements contained in the writing addressed to the Leisnig Assembly.
The president was indeed to preside, but all the members were to rule. “Whoever is chosen for the office of preacher is thereby raised to the most exalted office in Christendom; he is then authorised to baptise, to say Mass and to hold the cure of souls.”[289] Yet he is subject both to the community and to every member of it. “In the world the masters command what they please and their servants obey. But amongst you, Christ says, it shall not be so; amongst Christians each one is judge of the other, and in his turn subject to the rest.”[290]
He might say what he pleased against the abuses of the old Church, such systematic disorder never prevailed within her as that each one should teach as he pleased and even correct the preacher publicly, or that the Demos should be acknowledged as supreme. It is in vain that, in the writing above referred to, he mocks at this city set on a hill, with her firmly established hierarchy, saying: “Bishops and Councils determine and settle what they please, but where we have God’s Word on our side it is for us to decide what is right or wrong and not for them, and they shall yield to us and obey our word.”[291] We may well explain the saying “to obey our word” by Luther’s own eloquent paraphrase: “Pay no heed to the commandments of men, law, tradition, custom, usage and so forth, whether established by Pope or Emperor, Prince or Bishop, whether observed by half the world or by the whole, whether in force for one year or for a thousand!” “Obey our word!” For we declare that we have the “Word of God on our side.”[292]
The new congregations will, in spite of their own and every member’s freedom to teach, agree with Luther, so he assures them with the most astounding confidence, because “his mouth is the mouth of Christ,” and because he knows that his word is not his, but Christ’s. We must emphasise the fact, that here we have the key to many of the strange trains of thought already met with in Luther, and also a proof of the endurance of his unpractical ultra-spiritualism.
Luther, in fact, declares that he had “not merely received his teaching from heaven, but on behalf of one who had more power in his little finger than a thousand popes, kings, princes and doctors.”[293] Before receiving his enlightenment he had had to learn what was meant by being “born of God, dying often and surviving the pains of hell.”[294] Whoever differed from him, as the fanatics did, had not been through such an experience. “Wouldst thou know where, when and how we are vouchsafed the divine communications? When that which is written takes place: ‘As a lion, so hath He broken all my bones’ (Isa. xxxviii. 13). … God’s Majesty cannot speak in confidence with the old man without previously slaying. … The dreams and visions of the saints are dreadful.”[295] Such was the mysticism of the Wartburg.
2. Against Celibacy. Doubtful Auxiliaries from the Clergy and the Convents
In establishing his new ecclesiastical organisation Luther thought it his duty to wage war relentlessly on the celibacy of the clergy and on monastic vows in general. Was he more successful herein than in his project of reforming the articles of faith and the structure of the Church?
According to Catholic ideas his war against vows and sacerdotal celibacy constituted an unwarrantable and sacrilegious interference with the most sacred promises by which a man can bind himself to the Almighty, for it is in this light that a Catholic considers vows or the voluntary acceptance of celibacy upon receipt of the major orders. Luther was, moreover, tampering with institutions which are most closely bound up with the life of the Church and which alone render possible the observance of that high standard of life and that independence which should distinguish the clergy. Yet his mistaken principles served to attract to his camp all the frivolous elements among the clergy and religious, i.e. all those who were dissatisfied with their state and longed for a life of freedom. As a matter of fact, experience speedily showed that nothing was more calculated to bring the Reformation into disrepute. Lutheranism threw open the doors of the convents, burst the bonds imposed by vows, and reduced hundreds of the clergy to a moral debasement against which their own conscience raised a protest. In outward appearance it was thereby the gainer, for by this means it secured new adherents in the shape of preachers to spread the cause, but in reality the positive gain was nil; in fact, the most vital interests of the new work were endangered owing to the low moral standard of so many of its advocates. Apart from the preachers, many followers of the new Evangelical teaching, fugitive religious and more especially escaped nuns, played a very lamentable part.
In various writings and letters Luther sought to familiarise the clergy and monks with the seductive principles contained in his books “On the Clerical State” and “On Monastic Vows.” His assurances all went to prove that the observance of priestly celibacy and the monastic state was impossible. He forgot what he had once learnt and cheerfully practised, viz. that the sexual renunciation demanded in both professions was not merely possible, but a sacrifice willingly offered to God by all who are diligent in prayer and make use of the means necessary for preserving their virtue, and the numerous spiritual helps afforded by their state.
The powerful and seductive language he knows how to employ appears, for instance, in his letter to Wolfgang Reissenbusch, an Antonine monk,[296] who was already wavering, and in whose case Luther’s strenuous efforts were crowned with success. The letter, which is dated March 27, 1525, was written shortly before Luther’s union with Catharine von Bora.
The writer in the very first lines takes pains to convince this religious, that “he had been created by God for the married state and was forced and impelled by Him thereto.” The religious vow was worthless, because it required what was impossible, since “chastity is as little within our power as the working of miracles”; man was utterly unable to resist his natural attraction to woman; “whoever wishes to remain single let him put away his human name and fashion himself into an angel or a spirit, for to a man God does not give this grace.”
Elsewhere Luther, nevertheless, admits that some few by the help of God were able to live unmarried and chaste. In view of the sublime figures to be found in the history of the Church, and which it was impossible to impeach, he declares that “it is rightly said of the holy virgins that they lived an angelical and not a human life, and that by the grace of the Almighty they lived indeed in the flesh yet not according to it.”
He proceeds to heap up imaginary objections against the vow of chastity, saying that whoever makes such a vow is building “upon works and not solely on the grace of God”; trusting to “works and the law” and denying “Christ and the faith.” In the case of Reissenbusch, the only obstacle lay in his “bashfulness and diffidence.” “Therefore there is all the more need to keep you up to it, to exhort, drive and urge you and so render you bold. Now, my dear Sir, I ask of you, why delay and think about it so long, etc.? It is so, must be and ever shall be so! Pocket your scruples and be a man cheerfully. Your body demands and needs it. God wills it and forces you to it. How are you to set that aside?” He points out to the wavering monk the “noble and excellent example which he will give”; he will become the “cloak of marriage” to many others. “Did not Christ become the covering of our shame? … Among the raving madmen [the Papists], it is accounted a shameful thing, and though they do not make any difficulty about fornication they nevertheless scoff at the married state, the work and Word of God. If it is a shameful thing to take a wife, then why are we not ashamed to eat and drink, since both are equally necessary and God wills both?” Thus he attributes to the Catholics, at least in his rhetorical outbursts, the view that it was a “shameful thing to take a wife,” and accuses them of scoffing at the “married state,” and of “not objecting to fornication.” He did not see that if anyone strives to observe chastity in accordance with the Counsel of Christ without breaking his word and perjuring himself, this constancy is far from being a disgrace, but that the disgrace falls rather on him who endeavours to entice the monk to forsake his vows.
“The devil is the ruler of the world,” Luther continues. “He it is who has caused the married state to be so shamefully