depravity and abominable error, dragging down countless numbers with you! Where now is Tauler, where the ‘Theologia Deutsch’ from which you boasted you had received so much light? The ‘Theologia’ condemns as utterly wicked, nay, devilish through and through, all that you are now doing, teaching and proclaiming in your books. Glance at it again and compare. Alas, you ‘theologian of the Cross!’ What you now have to show is nothing but the filthiest wisdom of the flesh, that wisdom which, according to the Apostle Paul (Rom. viii. 6 f.), is the death of the soul and the enemy of God.”
Dungersheim then quotes for his benefit the passage from the Epistle of St. James concerning the “earthly and devilish wisdom,” notwithstanding that Luther treats this Epistle with contempt; his real reason for refusing to recognise it was that it witnessed so strongly against his teaching. “What will you say on the day of reckoning to the holy Father Augustine [the reputed founder of the Augustinians] and the other founders of Orders? They come accompanied by a countless multitude of the faithful of both sexes who have faithfully followed in the footsteps of Christ, and in the way of the evangelical counsels. But you, you have led astray and to destruction so many of their followers. All these will raise their voices against you on the dreadful Day of Judgment.”[369]
The Leipzig University professor, in his indignation, refers Luther to the warning he himself (in his sermons on the Ten Commandments) had given against manners of talking and acting which tempt to impurity; he continues: “And now you set aside every feeling of shame, you speak and write of questionable subjects in such a disgraceful fashion that decent men, whether married or unmarried, cover their faces and fling away your writings with execration. In order to cast dishonour upon the brides of Christ you [in your writings], so to speak, lead unchaste men to their couches, using words which for very shame I cannot repeat.”
He also answers his opponent’s constant objection that without marriage, on account of the impulse of nature, people must needs be ever falling into sin. “You forget two things, viz. that grace is stronger than nature and that, as Augustine rightly teaches, no one sins without free consent. You exaggerate that impulse and speak of ‘sin’ merely to exonerate your own behaviour and your doctrine. In other matters you declare that everything is possible to him who believes. You, like all other Catholics, were formerly convinced that involuntary movements of the flesh are not sinful unless a man consents to them; they are to the good a cross rather than a fault, and frequently only come from the devil and are not imputed to them at all.”[370]
This protest from Leipzig was reinforced in 1523 from Ingolstadt by Dr. Johann Eck, who kept a keen eye on Luther and pursued him with a sharp pen. In the following description of Luther his bitter opponent complains not only of the frivolous behaviour of the apostate monk in his former monastery which the Elector had made over to him, but above all of the untruth and dishonesty displayed in his writings. “More than once have I proved,” he says, “that he is a liar and hence that he has for his father, him [the devil] of whom the Scripture says that he is a liar and a murderer.” “The fellow exudes lies from every pore and is inconstancy itself (homo totus mendaciis scatens nil constat). His teaching too is full of deception and calumny. What he has just advanced, he presently rejects without the least difficulty.” “The dregs of those vices of which he is always accusing the Christians, we rightly pour back upon his own head; let him drink himself of the cup he has mixed.” “He heaps up a mountain of evil on the Pope and the Church,” but with “his nun,”—this is what he adds in a later edition in his indignation with Luther’s marriage—“he is really worshipping Asmodeus”; and this he is not ashamed to do in the old monastery of the Augustinians, “where once pious monks served the Lord God, and pious foundations, now alienated from their original purpose, proclaimed the Christian virtues to the faithful.”[371]
It is no pleasant task to examine Luther’s sermons and writings of those years, and to represent to ourselves the turmoil of his mind at the time directly preceding his marriage.
In 1524 he repeatedly discourses to his Wittenberg hearers on his favourite theme, i.e. that man cannot control himself in sexual matters, save by a miracle and with the help of an “exceedingly rare grace.” Speaking of impotence, he says, that although he himself “by the grace of God does not desire a wife,” yet he would not like, as a married man, to go through the experience of those who are impotent. If nature was not to be satisfied, “then death were preferable.” “I have no need of a wife,” he says, “but must provide a relief for your need.”[372] This was perhaps his reply to those who said: “Oh, how the monk feels the weight of his frock, how glad he would be to have a wife!”[373] “Hitherto,” he says, “the married state has been condemned and styled a sensual state. … Alas, would that all men were therein … in support of it we have the Word of God. … Those who have the grace to be chaste are few, and among a thousand there is scarcely one to be found.”[374]
“I have frequently tried to be good,” he says to his hearers in 1524, “but the more I try the less I succeed. See from this what free-will amounts to.” And then, in excuse, he unfolds his theology. “Sin urges so greatly that we long for death. If to-day I avoid one sin, to-morrow comes another. We are obliged to fight without ceasing: the Kingdom of Christ admits all, provided only they fight and hold fast to the Head of the Kingdom, namely, [believe] that Christ is the Redeemer. But if we exalt works, then all is lost! … If we desire to attain to purity, this must not be done by works, but Christ must be born in us anew [by faith]. … Sin cannot harm (‘mordere’) us; the power of sin is at an end. We hold fast to Him who has conquered sin.” “ ‘Summa, summarum,’ works or no works, all is comprised under faith and true doctrine. … But do not let us sleep meanwhile and lull ourselves into security.”[375]
In 1523 Luther wrote on “the Devil’s chastity,” as he called it, an exposition of the 7th chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, which the Papists used, so he says, as a “fig-leaf” for celibacy and the monastic state. In it he deals with the inspiring, spiritual teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the chapter which commences with the words: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”[376]
This publication, which has been extolled as “the happy inauguration of a healthy love of the things of sense,”[377] was preceded in 1522 by his sermon “On conjugal life.” We must here call to mind a similar earlier publication of 1519. When, on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, he preached a “sermon on the conjugal state,” this was at once printed by some stranger from notes made. Many who read it were filled with astonishment at the unheard-of freedom of speech displayed. Very soon Luther’s friend, Christoph Scheurl, expressed his disapproval of the tone: “I have read many of Martin’s writings which appeal to his best friends more than his sermon on Matrimony, because they are pure, humble, modest, measured and earnest, as beseems a theologian.”[378] After this letter Luther declared that the sermon had been printed without his knowledge, and with many stupid mistakes, so that he was “ashamed” of it,[379] and that same year (1519) he had it reprinted in an amended form.[380] It has been proved, however, that another sermon, which had been taken down and printed at the same time as the first sermon on Matrimony, was reported quite correctly;[381] hence the first printed edition of the sermon on Matrimony was probably not as inexact as Luther afterwards pretended.
When we come to examine the teaching contained in the sermon “On conjugal life” of the year 1522, we find, regarding the marriage tie, notwithstanding the protestation that marriage was to be considered sacred and indissoluble, such sentences as the following: “If the wife is stubborn and refuses to fulfil her duty as a wife,” “it is time for the husband to say: If you refuse, another will comply; if the wife will not, then let the maid come.” She is however to be reprimanded first “before the Church,” and only then is the above counsel to be put in force: “If she refuses, dismiss her, seek an Esther and let Vasthi go. … The secular power must here either coerce the woman or make away with her. Where this is not done, the husband must act as though his wife had been carried off by brigands, or killed, and look out for another.” In short, the marriage is dissolved, and the husband is at liberty to marry the maid.[382] We must not, however, overlook the fact that in other passages of the same sermon Luther gives some quite excellent advice, whether