CHAPTER XI

Thoughts of Departure—Adieus to the Church—Critical Moment—Deliverance—Luther’s Courage—Discontentment at Rome—Bull—Appeal to a Council.

Luther, thinking that he might soon be banished from Germany, employed himself in preparing the Acts of the Conference of Augsburg for publication. He wished these Acts to remain as evidence of the struggle which he had maintained with Rome. He saw the storm ready to burst, but feared it not. Day after day he expected the anathemas of Rome, and arranged and set every thing in order, that he might be ready when they arrived. “Having tucked up my coat, and girt my reins,” said he, “I am ready to depart like Abraham; not knowing whither I shall go, or rather knowing well, since God is every where.” He intended to leave a farewell letter behind him. “Have the boldness, then,” wrote he to Spalatin, “to read the letter of a man cursed and excommunicated.” His friends were in great fear and anxiety on his account, and begged him to enter himself prisoner in the hands of the Elector, in order that that prince might somewhere keep him in safe custody. His enemies could not understand what it was that gave him so much confidence. One day they were talking of him at the court of the Bishop of Brandenburg, and asking on what prop he could be leaning. “It must be in Erasmus,” said they, “or Capito, or some other of the learned, that he confides.” “No! no!” replied the bishop, “the pope would give himself very little trouble with such folks as these. His trust is in the university of Wittemberg and the Duke of Saxony.” Thus both were ignorant of the fortress in which the Reformer had taken refuge.

Thoughts of departure flitted across Luther’s mind. They arose not from fear, but from the foresight of continually recurring obstacles which the free profession of the truth must encounter in Germany. “If I remain here,” said he, “the liberty of speaking and writing will, as to many things, be wrested from me. If I depart, I will freely unbosom the thoughts of my heart, and offer my life to Jesus Christ.”

France was the country in which Luther hoped he would be able, untramelled, to announce the truth. The liberty which the doctors and university of Paris enjoyed seemed to him worthy of envy. He was, besides, agreed with them on many points. What would have happened had he been transported from Wittemberg to France? Would the Reformation have taken place there as it did in Germany? Would the power of Rome have been dethroned; and would France, which was destined to see the hierarchical principles of Rome, and the destructive principles of an infidel philosophy, long warring in its bosom, have become one great focus of gospel light? It is useless to indulge in vain conjectures on this subject; but perhaps Luther at Paris might have somewhat changed the destinies of Europe and France.

Luther’s soul was powerfully agitated. As he often preached at the town church in place of Simon Heyens Pontanus, pastor of Wittemberg, who was almost always sick, he thought it his duty, at all events, to take leave of a people to whom he had so often preached salvation. “I am,” said he one day in the pulpit, “I am a precarious and uncertain preacher. How often already have I set out suddenly without bidding you farewell.… In case the same thing should happen again, and I not return, here receive my adieus.” After adding a few words more, he thus meekly and modestly ended:—“I warn you, in fine, not to be alarmed though the papal censures let loose all their fury on me. Impute it not to the pope, and wish no ill either to him or any other mortal whatsoever, but commit the whole matter to God.” The moment seemed to have at length arrived. The prince gave Luther to understand he was desirous of his removal to a distance from Wittemberg; and the wishes of the Elector were too sacred for him not to hasten to comply with them. He accordingly made preparations for his departure, without well knowing whither he should direct his steps. He wished, however, to have a last meeting with his friends, and for this purpose invited them to a farewell repast. Seated at table with them, he was still enjoying their delightful conversation, their tender and anxious friendship. A letter is brought to him.… It comes from the court. He opens and reads, and his heart sinks; it is a new order to depart. The prince asks why he is so long of setting out. His soul was filled with sadness. Still, however, he took courage, and raising his head and looking around on his guests, said firmly and joyfully, “Father and mother forsake me, but the Lord will take me up.” There was nothing for it but to depart. His friends were deeply moved. What is to become of him? If Luther’s protector rejects him, who will receive him? And the gospel, and the truth, and this admirable work …; all doubtless must fall with their illustrious witness. The Reformation apparently is hanging by a thread; and at the moment when Luther quits the walls of Wittemberg, will not the thread break? Luther and his friends spoke little. Stunned with the blow which was directed against their brother, they melt into tears. But some moments after a second message arrives, and Luther opens the letter, not doubting he is to find a renewal of the summons to depart. But, O powerful hand of the Lord! for this time he is saved. The whole aspect is changed. “As the new envoy of the pope hopes that every thing may be arranged by means of a conference, remain still.”² So says the letter. How important an hour this was; and who can say what might have happened if Luther, who was always in haste to obey the will of his prince, had quitted Wittemberg immediately after the first message? Never were Luther and the work of the Reformation at a lower ebb than at this moment. Their destinies seemed to be decided; but an instant sufficed to change them. Arrived at the lowest point in his career, the doctor of Wittemberg rapidly reascended; and thenceforward his influence ceased not to increase. In the language of a prophet, “The Eternal commands, and his servants descend into the depths; again they mount up to heaven.”

Spalatin having, by order of Frederick, invited Luther to Lichtenberg to have an interview with him, they had a long conversation on the situation of affairs. “If the censures of Rome arrive,” said Luther, “I certainly will not remain at Wittemberg.” “Beware,” “of being too precipitate with your journey to France,” replied Spalatin, who, left telling him to wait till he heard from him. “Only recommend my soul to Christ,” said Luther to his friends. “I see that my adversaries are strong in their resolution to destroy me, but at the same time Christ strengthens me in my resolution not to yield to them.”⁴

Luther at this time published the “Acts of the Conference at Augsburg.” Spalatin, on the part of the Elector, had written him not to do it; but it was too late. After the publication had taken place the prince approved of it. “Great God!” said Luther in the preface, “what new, what astonishing crime, to seek light and truth! And more especially to seek them in the Church, in other words, in the kingdom of truth.” In a letter to Link he says, “I send you my Acts. They are more cutting, doubtless, than the legate expected; but my pen is ready to give birth to far greater things. I know not myself whence those thoughts come. In my opinion the affair is not even commenced; so far are the grandees of Rome from being entitled to hope it is ended. I will send you what I have written, in order that you may see whether I have divined well in thinking that the Antichrist of which the Apostle Paul speaks is now reigning in the court of Rome. I believe I am able to demonstrate that it is at this day worse than the very Turks.”

Ominous rumours reached Luther from all quarters. One of his friends wrote to him, that the new envoy of Rome had received orders to seize him, and deliver him up to the pope. Another told him, that in travelling he had fallen in with a courtier, and the conversation having turned on the affairs of Germany, the courtier declared that he had come under an obligation to deliver Luther into the hands of the sovereign pontiff. “But,” wrote the Reformer, “the more their fury and violence increase, the less I tremble.” At Rome there was great dissatisfaction with Cajetan. The chagrin which they felt at the failure of the affair at first turned upon him. The Roman courtiers thought themselves entitled to reproach him with a want of that prudence and finesse which, if they are to be believed, constitute the first quality of a legate, and with having failed on so important an occasion, to give pliancy to his scholastic theology. He is wholly to blame, said they. His lumbering pedantry has spoiled all. Of what use was it to irritate Luther by insults and menaces, instead of gaining him over by the promise of a good bishopric, or even of a Cardinal’s hat. These hirelings judged the Reformer by themselves. However, it was necessary to repair this blunder. On the one hand, Rome must give her decision, and, on the other, due court must be paid to the Elector, who might be of great use in the election of an emperor, an event which must shortly take place. As it was impossible for Roman ecclesiastics to suspect what constituted the strength and courage of Luther, they imagined that the Elector was much more implicated in the affair than he really was. The pope, therefore, resolved to follow another line of conduct. He caused his legate in Germany to publish a bull, confirming the doctrine of indulgences in the very points in which they were attacked, but without mentioning either the Elector or Luther. As the Reformer had always expressed his readiness to submit to the decision of the Roman Church, the pope thought that he must now either keep his word, or stand openly convicted as a disturber of the peace of the Church, and a contemner of the holy Apostolic See. In either case it seemed that the pope must gain. But nothing is gained by obstinately opposing the truth. In vain had the pope threatened to excommunicate every man who should teach otherwise than he ordered; the light was not arrested by such orders. The wise plan would have been to curb the pretensions of the venders of indulgences. This decree of Rome was therefore a new blunder. By legalising clamant errors, it irritated all the wise, and made it impossible for Luther to return. “It was thought,” says a Roman Catholic historian, a great enemy of the Reformation, “that this bull had been made solely for the interest of the pope and the mendicants, who began to find that nobody would give anything for their indulgences.” The Cardinal de Vio published the bull at Lintz, in Austria, on the 13th December, 1518, but Luther had already placed himself beyond its reach. On the 28th November, in the chapel of Corpus Christi at Wittemberg, he had appealed from the pope to a general council of the Church. He foresaw the storm which was gathering around him, and he knew that God alone could avert it. Still he did as duty called him. He must, no doubt, quit Wittemberg (were it only for the sake of the Elector) as soon as the Roman anathema should arrive; but he was unwilling to quit Saxony and Germany without a strong protestation. This he accordingly drew up; and, in order that it might be ready for circulation the moment the furies of Rome, as he expresses it, should reach him, he caused it to be printed, under the express condition that the bookseller should deposit all the copies in his custody. But the bookseller, in his eagerness for gain, sold almost the whole, while Luther was quietly waiting to receive them. He felt annoyed, but the thing was done. This bold protestation spread every where. In it Luther declared anew that he had no intention to say any thing against the Holy Church, or the authority of the Apostolic See, or the pope well advised. “But,” continues he, “considering that the pope, who is the vicar of God upon earth, may, like any other vicar, err, sin, or lie, and that the appeal to a general council is the only safeguard against unjust proceedings which it is impossible to resist, I feel myself obliged to have recourse to it.”

Here, then, we see the Reformation launched on a new course. It is no longer made to depend on the pope and his decisions, but on an universal council. Luther addresses the whole Church, and the voice which proceeds from the chapel of Corpus Christi, must reach the whole members of Christ’s flock. There is no want of courage in the Reformer, and here he gives a new proof of it. Will God fail him? The answer will be found in the different phases of the Reformation which are still to be exhibited to our view.