CHAPTER XI
Return to Wittemberg—Theses—Nature of Man—Rationalism—Demand at Erfurt—Eck—Urban Regius—Luther’s Modesty.
Luther zealously resumed his labours. He was preparing six or seven young theologians, who were forthwith to undergo an examination in order to obtain a licence to teach. And what most delighted him was, that their promotion was to be to Aristotle’s disgrace. “I should like,” said he, “to multiply his enemies as fast as possible.” With that view, he at this time published Theses, which deserve attention. The leading topic which he discussed was liberty. He had already glanced at it in the theses of Feldkirchen, but now went deeper into it. Ever since Christianity began, there has been a struggle, more or less keen, between the opposite doctrines of the freedom and the slavery of man. Some schoolmen had taught, like Pelagius and others, that man possessed in himself the liberty or power of loving God and doing good. Luther denied this liberty, not to deprive man of it, but, on the contrary, to make him obtain it. The struggle, then, in this great question, is not, as is usually said, between liberty and servitude; but between a liberty proceeding from man, and a liberty proceeding from God. Some who call themselves the advocates of liberty, say to man, “You have the power of doing good, and require a greater liberty.” Others, who have been called advocates of slavery, say to him, on the contrary, “You have no true liberty; but God offers it to you in the gospel.” The one party speaks of liberty, but a liberty which must end in slavery; while the other speaks of slavery, in order to give liberty. Such was the struggle in the time of St. Paul, in the time of Augustine, and in the time of Luther. Those who say “Change nothing!” are champions of slavery. Those who say “Let your fetters fall!” are champions of liberty.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the whole Reformation can be summed up in this particular question. It is one of the many doctrines which the Wittemberg doctor maintained—that is all. It would, above all, be a strange illusion to hold, that the Reformation was fatalism, or an opposition to liberty. It was a magnificent emancipation of the human mind. Bursting the numerous bands with which thought had been bound by the hierarchy, and reviving the ideas of liberty, right, and examination, it delivered its own age, and with it ours also, and the remotest posterity. And let it not be said that the Reformation, while it freed man from human despotism, enslaved him by proclaiming the sovereignty of grace. No doubt, it wished to bring back the human will to the Divine, to subordinate the one, and completely merge it in the other; but what philosopher knows not that entire conformity to the will of God alone constitutes sovereign, perfect freedom; and that man will never be truly free, until supreme righteousness and truth have sole dominion over him? The following are some of the Ninety-nine Propositions which Luther sent forth into the Church, in opposition to the Pelagian rationalism of scholastic theology.
“It is true that man, who is become a corrupt tree, can only will and do what is evil.
“It is not true that the will, when left to itself, can do good as well as evil; for it is not free but captive.
“It is not in the power of the will of man to choose or reject whatever is presented to it.
“Man cannot naturally wish God to be God. His wish is that he himself were God, and that God were no God.
“The excellent, infallible, and sole preparation for grace, is the eternal election and predestination of God.
“It is false to say that when man does all he can, he clears away the obstacles to grace.
“In one word, nature possesses neither a pure reason nor a good will.
“On the part of man, there is nothing which precedes grace, unless it be impotence and even rebellion.
“There is no moral virtue without pride or sullenness, that is to say, without sin.
“From the beginning to the end we are not the masters of our actions, but the slaves of them.
“We do not become righteous by doing what is righteous, but having become righteous we do what is righteous.
“He who says that a theologian who is not a logician is a heretic and an adventurer, maintains an adventurous and heretical proposition.
“There is no form of reasoning (syllogism) which accords with the things of God.
“If the form of the syllogism could be applied to divine things, we should know the article of the Holy Trinity, and should not believe it.
“In one word, Aristotle is to theology as darkness to light.
“Man is more hostile to the grace of God than he is to the law itself.
“He who is without the grace of God sins incessantly, even though he neither kills, nor steals, nor commits adultery.
“He sins, for he does not fulfil the law spiritually.
“Not to kill, and not to commit adultery, externally, and in regard to action, merely, is the righteousness of hypocrites.
“The law of God and the will of man are two adversaries, who, without the grace of God, can never agree.
“What the law wishes the will never wishes; only from fear it may make a show of wishing.
“The law is the hangman of the will, and is subject only to the Child who has been born unto us. (Isaiah, 9:6.) “The law makes sin abound; for it irritates and repulses the will.
“But the grace of God makes righteousness abound, through Jesus Christ, who makes us love the law.
“Every work of the law appears good externally, but internally is sin.
“The will, when it turns toward the law without the grace of God, does so only for its own interest.
“Cursed are those who do the works of the law.
“Blessed are all those who do the works of the grace of God.
“The law, which is good, and in which we have life, is the law of the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, (Romans 5:5)
“Grace is not given in order that works may be done more frequently and more easily, but because without grace there cannot be any work of love.
“To love God is to hate oneself, and know nothing out of God.” In this way Luther attributes to God all the good that man can do. The thing to be done is not to repair, or, so to speak, to patch up the will of man; an entirely new will must be given him. God alone could say this; for God alone could perform it. This is one of the greatest and most important truths that the will of man can acknowledge. But Luther, while proclaiming the impotence of man, did not fall into the opposite extreme. He says in the eighth thesis, “It follows not that the will is naturally bad, that is to say, that its nature is of the essence of evil, as the Manichees taught.” Originally the nature of man was essentially good; but it turned aside from goodness, that is, God, and is inclined to evil. Still its origin remains holy and glorious, and is capable, by the power of God, of regaining its original. The object of Christianity is to restore it. The gospel, it is true, exhibits man in a state of degradation and impotence, but as placed between two glories and two grandeurs,—a past glory, from which he has been precipitated, and a future glory, to which he is called. This is the truth, and man knows it to be the truth; and how little soever he thinks of it, he easily discovers that all which is told him of his actual purity, power, and glory, is only a lie, designed to cradle his pride and rock it asleep.
Luther, in his theses, attacked not only the pretended goodness of man’s will, but also the pretended light of his understanding in regard to divine things. In fact, scholasticism had exalted reason as well as the will. This theology, in the hands of some of its teachers, was, at bottom, only a species of rationalism. The propositions which we have enumerated indicate this; for they look as if directed against the rationalism of our own day. In the theses, which were the signal of the Reformation, Luther attacked the Church and the popular superstitions which to the gospel had added indulgences, purgatory, and numberless abuses. In those which we have just given he attacked the school and the rationalism which had robbed the gospel of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, his revelation and his grace. The Reformation attacked rationalism before it attacked superstition. It proclaimed the rights of God before lopping off the excrescences of man. It was positive before it was negative. This has not been sufficiently attended to, and yet, without attending to it, it is impossible duly to appreciate the character of this religious revolution. Be this as it may, the truths which Luther thus expressed with so much energy were quite new. To maintain these theses at Wittemberg had been an easy matter. There his influence was paramount, and it would have been said that he had chosen a field of battle where he knew no combatant could appear. In offering battle in another university he gave them a greater publicity; and it was by publicity that the Reformation was effected. He turned his eyes towards Erfurt, where the theologians had shown themselves so exasperated against him.
He, accordingly, sent his theses to John Lange, prior of Erfurt, and wrote him as follows: “My anxiety for the decision which you will give as to these theses is great, extreme, too great, perhaps, and keeps me on the rack. I much suspect that your theologians will consider as paradoxical and kakodoxical, what I must henceforth regard as most orthodox. Tell me how it is, and as soon as you possibly can. Have the goodness to make known to the Faculty of Theology, and to all, that I am ready to come and publicly maintain these propositions either in the university or the monastery.” It does not seem that Luther’s challenge was accepted. The monks of Erfurt contented themselves with intimating that his theses had incurred their high displeasure. But he was desirous to send them to some other part of Germany; and with that view bethought him of a man who plays an important part in the history of the Reformation, and with whom the reader must be made acquainted. A distinguished professor, named John Meyer, was then teaching in the university of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria. He was a native of Eck, a village in Swabia, and was commonly called Doctor Eck. He was a friend of Luther, who respected his talents and acquirements. Full of intellect, he had read much, and was possessed of a very retentive memory. To erudition he added eloquence. His voice and gesture bespoke the vivacity of his genius. In regard to talent, Eck was in the south of Germany what Luther was in the north. They were the two most distinguished theologians of the period, though of very different views. Ingolstadt was almost the rival of Wittemberg. The reputation of these two doctors attracted crowds of eager students from all quarters to the universities in which they taught; their personal qualities not less than their abilities endearing them to their pupils. The character of Doctor Eck has been assailed, but an anecdote in his history will show that at this period, at least, his heart was not closed against generous impressions.
Among the students whom his fame had attracted to Ingolstadt was a young man, named Urban Regius, from the banks of an Alpine lake. He had first studied at the university of Fribourg in Brisgau. On his arrival at Ingolstadt, to which he had been attracted by the fame of Doctor Eck, Urban engaged in his course of philosophy, and gained the favour of his master. Requiring to provide for his maintenance, he was under the necessity of taking charge of some young noblemen, and had not only to superintend their studies and their conduct, but also to purchase on his own account whatever books and clothes they required. The youths dressed in style, and kept a good able. Regius becoming embarrassed prayed the parents to recall their sons. “Never fear,” was the answer. His debts increased, his creditors became pressing, and he was at his wit’s end. The emperor was raising an army against the Turks, and a recruiting party having arrived at Ingolstadt, Urban in despair enlisted. Clothed in military attire, he appeared in the ranks at the time when the review took place, previous to their departure. Doctor Eck coming up at that instant with several of his colleagues, was greatly surprised to discover his student among the recruits. “Urban Regius!” said he, fixing his keen eye on him. “Here,” replied the recruit. “What, pray, is the cause of this?” The young man told his story. “I take the matter upon myself,” replied Eck, and setting his halberd aside, bought him off from the recruiting party. The parents, threatened by the Doctor with the displeasure of the prince, sent the necessary funds to defray the expences of their children, and Urban Regius was saved to become at a later period one of the pillars of the Reformation.
Doctor Eck occurred to Luther as the proper person to publish his theses on Pelagianism and scholastic rationalism in the south of the empire. He did not, however, send them to the professor of Ingolstadt directly, but employed a mutual friend, the excellent Christopher Scheurl, secretary to the town of Nuremberg, praying him to send them to Eck at Ingolstadt, which is at no great distance from Nuremberg. “I send you,” says he, “my paradoxical, and even kakistodoxical (
Ingolstadt, however, was not the field on which the battle was to be fought. The doctrines on which these theses turned were perhaps of greater importance than those which, two months after, set the Church in a blaze; and yet, notwithstanding of Luther’s challenges, they passed unnoticed. At most, they were read within the circle of the school, and produced no sensation beyond it. The reason was, because they were only university propositions and theological doctrines, whereas the subsequent theses related to an evil which had grown up in the midst of the people, and was then causing devastation in all parts of Germany. So long as Luther was contented with reviving forgotten doctrines, all was silence; but when he attacked abuses which were universally felt, every one turned to listen.
Nevertheless, all that Luther proposed in either case was to produce one of those theological discussions which were then so common in universities. To this circle his views were confined. He was humble, and his humility amounted even to distrust and anxiety. “Considering my ignorance,” said he, “all I deserve is to be hid in a corner, without being known by any one under the sun.” But a mighty hand drew him out of this corner in which he wished to remain unknown to the world. A circumstance, independent of Luther’s will, threw him into the field of battle, and the war commenced. This providential circumstance we are now called upon to relate.