Puslapio vaizdai
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FROM THE PAINTING MADE FOR THE CENTURY BY GARI MELCHERS

The artist has introduced into the scene an element of antiquity by basing the picture on "the great cannon" of Albrecht Dürer. At the right of the gateway is the north end of the Ritterhaus, at the south end of which were the rooms occupied by Luther.

Early in December, while the movement was still in its incipiency, the exiled Luther made a hurried and secret visit to Wittenberg to see what was going on. He was not greatly troubled by the Zwickau prophets; they seemed to him a weakminded and harmless folk. Nor did the general situation give him serious concern. He regarded the whole thing as a mere temporary ebullition, which would soon calm itself. But he thought it worth while, upon his return to the Wartburg, to write a vigorous tract, warning his followers against uproar and violence. All changes in the existing system, he insisted, must be made in an orderly fashion and by the civil authorities, not by private individuals. Uproar, he claimed, is always bad, and out of evil only evil comes. The devil was trying to discredit the new movement by inciting its adherents to such conduct. As for himself, Luther declared, he would support the side attacked, however bad it might be, rather than those who attacked it, however good their cause. Only with the word was the work of reformation to be accomplished. As the evils of the old system were exposed, they would disappear of themselves. "Pay no more money," he exclaimed, "for bulls, candles, bells, pictures, churches, but declare that the Christian life consists in faith and love, and keep doing it for two years, and you will see what happens to pope, bishop, cardinal, priest, monk, nun, bells, steeples, masses, vigils, cowl, cap, shaven poll, rules, statutes, and the whole swarm and rabble of the pope's government. They will vanish like smoke."

growing difficulties, Luther wrote him as follows:

For many years your Electoral Highness has been collecting sacred relics in every land. Now God has heard your wish and has sent you without cost or labor a whole cross with nails, spears, and scourges. I congratulate you on your new relics. Do not be frightened. Stretch out your arms trustfully. Let the nails pierce deep, and be thankful and glad. It must be thus with those who would follow God's word. Not

Grant par Desrockers Paris, rue duroin pres la rue. 3. Jacques
From an old print
THOMAS MÜNZER

In February, 1522, learning of the perplexity and anxiety of the elector over the

Peter and the apostles! on the third day, when

only do Annas and Caiaphas rage, but Judas is among the apostles, and Satan among the children of God. May your Highness only be prudent and wise, and judge not according to the appearance of things. Be not faint-hearted. The matter has not yet reached the pass the devil desires. Though I am a fool, believe me a little. I understand such attacks of Satan. Therefore, I do not fear him, to his great sorrow. It is only the beginning. Let the world cry out and condemn. Let fall who may, even St. They will come back Christ rises again.

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Through one of his officials, the elector immediately replied, asking what Luther thought he ought to do in the circumstances, for he did not wish to attempt anything against the will of God and His holy word; but things were in the greatest confusion in Wittenberg, and nobody knew who was cook and who waiter. In the same connection he protested strongly against Luther's returning to Wittenberg, as he said he intended to do. Much as he would hate to deliver Luther over to the emperor, if he appeared openly in Wittenberg, while still under the ban of the em

pire, he could not possibly refuse to do so without bringing serious evils upon his land and people.

Despite his protest, the reformer started. for Wittenberg the day after receiving the elector's communication. On the way he replied to it in the following fashion:

Your Electoral Highness knows, or, if you do not, I now inform you, that I received the gospel not from men, but from Heaven alone, through our Lord Jesus Christ. I write thus that you may know I come to Wittenberg under the protection of a higher power than the elector, and I have no mind to seek shelter from your Highness. Indeed, I believe I can protect your Highness better than you can protect me. If I thought you could and would protect me, I would not come. No sword can help in this affair. God must act alone without man's care or aid. Therefore who believes most will be of most protection here. And since I suspect your Highness is still weak in faith, I can by no means regard you as the man who can protect or rescue me. Since your Highness desires to know what to do in this affair and fancies you have done too little, I answer respectfully that you have already done altogether too much, and should do nothing. For God will not and cannot endure either your care and effort or mine. He wishes it left to Him and to no one else. May your Highness act accordingly. If your Highness believes this, you will be secure and will have peace. If you do not, I do, and I must leave you to sorrow in your unbelief, as it becomes all unbelievers to suffer. Since I will not obey your Highness, you are excused in the sight of God if I am imprisoned or killed. Before men your Highness should conduct yourself as follows: as an elector you should be obedient to the higher powers and permit his Imperial Majesty to rule body and goods in your cities and lands in accordance with the law of the empire, and you should offer no opposition and interpose. no hindrance if he tries to arrest or slay me. For no one ought to withstand the authorities save he who has appointed them. Else is it uproar and against God. I hope, however, they will have the good sense to recognize that your Highness was born in too lofty a cradle to be yourself my executioner. If you leave the door open and see that they are unmolested if they come themselves, or

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send their messengers to fetch me, you will have been obedient enough. Herewith I commend your Highness to the grace of God. If necessary, we will very soon talk further. I have written this letter in haste that your Highness may not be distressed by the news of my arrival, for I must comfort everybody and harm nobody, if I would be a true Christian. It is another man than Duke George with whom I have to do. He knows me well, and I know him not ill. If your Highness believed, you would see the glory of God; but since you do not yet believe, you have as yet seen nothing. To God be love and honor forever. Amen!

The elector was obliged to content himself with a letter, written by Luther at his request, explaining the reasons for his return to Wittenberg and relieving Frederick from all responsibility. This he wished to show his fellow-princes in case he was blamed for his defiance of the Worms decree in allowing the condemned monk to go on with his work in Wittenberg. While desiring to protect Luther, it is interesting to see he preferred to pose as incompetent rather than to avow his sympathy openly. But however he might veil his attitude, the important fact is he continued to protect him. Annoyed though he must have been at Luther's defiant return, he permitted him to resume his work and take up his old position in church and university as if nothing had happened. He could easily have stopped him by putting him under arrest. An outlaw, as the reformer was, and under the ban of the empire, it was only by the elector's grace he remained free at all. Had his prince's favor been withdrawn, his career would speedily have come to an end. But it was never withdrawn, and despite papal bull and imperial ban the bold monk went on unmolested.

Arrived in Wittenberg on March 6, 1522, Luther at once took command, and speedily brought order out of chaos. Never was the power of the man more strikingly exhibited than at this critical juncture of his career. Hitherto he had been a radical iconoclast, striking right and left at existing principles and practices. Now he gave himself to the much more difficult task of controlling and moderating the forces he himself had set

in motion. In a time of wide-spread discontent it is comparatively easy to inflame the smoldering passions of men and to lead the populace in a more or less unreasoning assault upon existing institutions; but to control the tremendous forces thus let loose, and so to guide them that they do not merely spend themselves in impotent fury, but lend their strength to the building of a new and stable structure, is another matter altogether. And yet we should entirely misunderstand Luther if we imagined that at this great crisis of his career he turned his back upon his past and became another man. It is most illuminating to see how calmly and confidently he met the situation now confronting him. Though the radicals, as he declared, were doing his cause more harm than all his papal opponents, he was not dismayed or thrown off his balance. Nor did he repudiate the principles hitherto governing him, and seek refuge in other and safer ways. Moving straight ahead in the path he had long been traveling, he simply applied to the new situation the same gospel that had made him an iconoclast, showing how, by its very nature, it conserved as well as destroyed.

Beginning on the Sunday after his return, he preached in the city church on eight successive days, handling one question after another frankly, vigorously, and with the greatest common sense. Violence of every kind he strenuously opposed. By the word alone can superstition be overcome and the old system reformed. In one of the sermons he remarked:

Take me as an example. I only preached and wrote God's word and did nothing else. But this accomplished so much that while I slept and while I drank Wittenberg beer with Philipp and Amsdorf, the papacy grew weaker and suffered more damage than any prince or emperor ever inflicted. I did nothing; the word did it all.. If I had wished to make trouble, I could have plunged Germany into a sea of blood. Yes, I could have started such a game at Worms that the emperor himself would have been unsafe. But what would that have been? A fool's game.

He did not stop with the denunciation of physical violence. Christian liberty,

he reminded his followers, as he had clearly shown nearly two years before in his beautiful tract on the freedom of a Christian man, was not an end in itself, but only a means to a higher end-the service of one's fellows in self-forgetful love. Faith, he insisted, is nothing unless followed by love, and not our own rights, but our brother's good, should be always foremost in our thoughts. He acknowledged frankly his dislike for many of the ceremonies and customs of the past. Too often they had no warrant in Scripture, and served only to bind the conscience and obscure the gospel. At the same time he declared the Christian life consists neither in refraining from nor engaging in external religious practices, but in faith and love. Far better to retain indifferent things than to offend weak consciences and imperil the success of the cause by forcibly setting them aside. He had now, as always, a splendid disregard of externals and a magnificent insight into the real essentials. Mere uniformity he cared. nothing about. Because the monastic life, or private confession, or fasting, was good for one person was no reason to require it of all. Let those who found such things helpful, as he himself continued to find the confessional helpful, employ them freely; but let them not insist upon others doing the same. He believed when the gospel was everywhere accepted and understood, all things inconsistent therewith would fall of themselves. In the meantime he would have liberty for the old as well as for the new. But in the meantime, too, he would do all he could to instruct Christians in the truly important things, and thus wean them as rapidly as possible from trust in the formal and external.

Before Luther finished his sermons, the lawyer Jerome Schurf wrote the elector:

Dr. Martin's coming and preaching have given both learned and unlearned among us great joy and gladness. For we poor men who had been vexed and led astray have again been shown by him, with God's help, the way of truth. Daily he incontrovertibly exposes the errors into which we were miserably led by the preachers from abroad. It is evident that the Spirit of God is in him and works through him, and I am convinced he has returned to Wittenberg at

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