Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/87

Rh LUTHER 73 t mgsburg ef ore the . gate. wards been foisted upon the Christian world. There is scarcely any essential point in ancient ecclesiastical history bearing upon the question of the invocation of saints, of clerical priesthood, of episcopal and metropolitan preten sions, which his genius did not discern in its true light. Whatever Luther denounced as fraud or abuse, from its contradiction to spiritual worship, may be said to have been openly or tacitly admitted to be such. But what produced the greatest effect at the time were his short popular treatises, exegetical and practical his Interpretation of the Magnificat or the Canticle of the Virgin Mary, his Exposition of the Ten Commandments, and of the Lord s Prayer. The latter soon found its way into Italy, although without Luther s name, and has never been surpassed either in genuine Christian thought or in style. He resolved also to preach throughout Germany, and in 1518 appeared at a general meeting of his order at Heidelberg. There he held a public disputation on certain theses called by him paradoxes, in which he strove to make apparent the contrast between the external view of religion taught by the schoolmen and the spiritual view of gospel truth based upon justifying faith. He made many disciples on this occasion, of whom perhaps the most notable was Martin Bucer. On his return to Wittenberg in May 1518, Luther wrote and published an able and moderate exposition of the theses, and sent it to some of the German bishops. He proclaimed the need for a thorough reformation of the church, which he thought could only be effected, with the aid of God, by an earnest co-operation of the whole of Christendom. This energy awakened opponents. Conrad Wimpina at Frankfort, Hoogstraten at Cologne, Sylvester Trierias at Rome, and above all John Eck, an old fellow student, at Ingolstadt, attacked his theses, and discovered heresy in them. The result was that Luther was summoned to appear before the pope at Rome, but the elector of Saxony intervened, and got tho matter so arranged that Luther was cited to appear before the pope s legate at Augsburg. The pope was unwilling to quarrel with Germany, where the whole people seemed to be supporting Luther, and the cardinal legate James de Vio of Gaeta, commonly called Cajetan, was told to be conciliatory. Luther went to Augsburg on foot, and presented himself before the legate, but the interview was not a successful one. The cardinal began by brow-beating the monk, and ended by being somewhat afraid of him. &quot; I can dispute no longer with this beast,&quot; he said ; &quot; it has two wicked eyes and marvellous thoughts in its head.&quot; Luther could not respect either the learning or the judgment of Cajetan. He left Augsburg by stealth, afraid of capture, condemned, but appealing &quot;from the pope ill-informed to the pope to-be-better-informed.&quot; On his return to Wittenberg he found the elector in great anxiety of mind, in consequence of an imperious letter from the cardinal, and offered to leave Saxony for France. The elector, however, allowed him to remain, and the pope sent another legate to settle the affairs of Germany. This was Carl von Miltitz, a native of Saxony, a man of the world, and no great theologian. He resolved to meet Luther privately, and did so in the house of Spalatin, court preacher to the elector of Saxony. In his interview with Cajetan Luther had refused to retract two propositions that the treasury of indulgences is not filled with the merits of Christ, and that he who receives the sacrament must have faith in the grace offered to him. Miltitz made no such demands. He apparently gave up Tetzel and the indulgences, agreed with much of Luther s theology, but insisted that he had not been respectful to the pope, and that such conduct weakened the authority which rightly belonged to the church. He wished Luther to write to the pope and apologize. Luther consented. It was further arranged that both parties were to cease from writing or preaching on the controverted matters, and that the pope was to commission a body of learned theologians to investigate. Luther accordingly wrote to the pope, telling him that he &quot; freely confessed that the authority of the church was superior to everything, and that nothing in heaven or on earth can be preferred before it save only Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all.&quot; This was in March 1519. Mean while Luther had appealed from the pope to a general council to be held in Germany. In the end of 1518 a papal bull concerning indulgences had appeared ; confirming the old doctrine, without any reference to the late dispute. The years 1519, 1520, 1521 were a time of fierce but triumphant struggle with the hitherto irresistible Church of Rome, soon openly supported by the empire. The first of these years passed in public conferences and disputations. Luther had promised Miltitz to refrain from controversy, on the understanding that his adversaries did not attack him, and he kept his word. But his old antagonist John Leipsic Eck published thirteen theses attacking Luther, and Jis puto- challenged Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, a friend and tlon colleague of Luther, to a public disputation. Luther instantly replied to Eck s theses, and the disputation between Carlstadt and Eck was immediately followed by one between Eck and Luther. In this famous Leipsic disputation the controversy took a new shape. It was no longer a theological dispute ; it became a conflict between two opposing sets of principles affecting the whole round of church life. Luther and Eck began about indulgences and penance, but the debate soon turned on the authority of the Roman Church and of the pope. Eck maintained the superiority of the. Roman Church and of the pope as successor of St Peter and vicar-general of Christ. His argument was &quot; no pope no church.&quot; Luther denied the superiority of the Roman Church, and supported his denial by the testimony of eleven centuries, by the decrees of Nicaea, by the Holy Scriptures. He maintained that the Greek Church was part of the church of Christ, else Athanasius, Basil, and the Gregories were outside Christianity. The pope has more need of the church, he said, than the church has of the pope. Eck retorted that these had been the arguments of Wickliffe and of Huss, and that they had been condemned at the council of Constance. Luther refused to admit that the condemnation was right ; Eck refused to debate with an opponent who would not abide by the decision of oecumenical councils ; and so the disputation ended. But Luther immediately afterwards completed his argument and published it. He asserted that he did not mean to deny the bishop of Rome s primacy, provided the pope kept his own place as servant of the church, but that he did mean to deny that there could be no church apart from the pope. The church, he said, is the communion of the faithful, and consists of the elect, and so never can lack the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is not always with popes and councils. This church, he declared, is invisible, but real, and every layman who is in it and has Holy Scripture and holds by it is more to be believed than popes or councils, who do not. This Leipsic disputation had very important consequences. On the one hand, Eck and his associates felt that Luther must now be put down by force, and pressed for a papal bull to condemn him ; and Luther himself, on the other hand, felt for the first time what great consequences lay in his opposition to the indulgences. He saw that his Augustinian theology, with its recognition of the heinousness of sin, and of the need of the sovereign grace of God, was incompatible with the whole round of mediaeval ceremonial life, proved it to be impossible for men to live perfectly holy lives, and so made saints and saint worship and relics and pilgrimages XV. 10