Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/91

Rh L U T H E 11 77 it at their claims for support before him ; they said that they were inspired and could prove it, for they would tell him what then passed through his mind. Luther challenged them to the proof. &quot; You think in your own heart that my doctrine is true,&quot; said one of them impressively. &quot; Get thee behind me, Satan,&quot; exclaimed Luther, and dismissed them. &quot; They were quite right,&quot; he said to his friends afterwards ; &quot; that thought crossed my mind about some of their assertions. A spirit evidently was in them ; but what could it be but the evil one?&quot; ither When Charles V. had laid Luther under the ban of the d the empire, he had undoubtedly been greatly influenced by political considerations. Francis I. of France and Charles of Spain were rivals, and the whole of the European policy of the time turns on this rivalry. The opponents schemed to attract to themselves and to divert from their neighbour the two outside powers of England and the papacy, and in 1521 it was the policy of Charles to win alliance with the pope. The Germans saw that they were being sacrificed in this game of statecraft, and there was no great willingness even among Roman Catholics to put the edict of Worms in force. Luther at the Wartburg and at Wittenberg was protected by the national feeling of Germany from attack. The diet of the empire met in 1522 at Nuremberg, and the new imperial council, which ruled in the emperor s absence, and very fairly represented the popular feeling in Germany, was in no mood to yield to the papacy. Leo X. had died, and his successor Adrian VI., an orthodox Dominican and an advocate for reforma tion in the cloisters and in the lives of the clergy, proposed to begin reformation by crushing the German heresy. He instructed his nuncio to the diet to demand the execution of the edict of Worms, The imperial council refused until the grievances of Germany were heard and redressed. They spoke of concordats broken and papal pledges unful filled, and finally they demanded a free oecumenical council to be held in Germany within a year, which should settle abuses, and until it met they wished the creed to be an open question. The nuncio found that the pulpits of the free imperial city were filled with preachers, mostly monks, who were making the city resound with gospel preaching. He asked the diet at least to arrest the preachers ; the diet pleaded incompetence. He proposed to seize them himself in the pope s name ; the magistrates threatened to release them by force, and the nuncio had to desist. The diet then presented a hundred gravamina or subjects of complaint which the German nation had against the papacy, including in the list indulgences, dispensations bought for money, absentee bishops and other ecclesiastics, the use of bans and interdicts, pilgrimages, excessive demands for money, and the decisions of matrimonial cases in ecclesi astical courts. The complaint was an expansion of Luther s address to the German nobles. The nuncio could do nothing, and was forced to accept by way of compromise a decision from the diet that only the veritm, jmrum, sincerum, et sanctum evangelium was to be preached in Germany. Nuremberg reversed the edict of Worms. Next year the diet met again at Nuremberg, and the new pope, Clement VIE., sent the celebrated cardinal-legate Lorenzo Campeggio to demand the execution of the edict of Worms. The diet asked in return what had become of the hundred grievances of the German nation, to which Rome had never deigned to return an answer. Campeggio declared that at Rome the document had been considered merely as a private pamphlet ; on which the diet, in great indignation, insisted on the necessity of an oecumenical council, and proceeded to annul the edict of Worms, declaring, however, in their communication to the pope, that it should be conformed to as much as possible, which with respect to many cities and princes meant not at all. Finally it was resolved that a diet to be held at Spires was to decide upon the religious differences. But between Nuremberg and Spires an event occurred, the revolt of Sickingen and the knights, which was destined to work harm to the Reformation. The diet of Spires met, and, many of the members being inclined to connect Sickingen and Luther, there was a strong feeling against the Reformation, but the feeling was not strong enough to induce the diet to comply with the demands of the legate Campeggio and revoke the decisions of Nuremberg, and it refused to execute the edict of W 7 orms. Campeggio, how ever, was able to separate Germany into two parties, and this separation became apparent at the convention of Ratisbon, where Bavaria, Austria, and other South-German states resolved to come to separate terms with the papacy. The curia promised to stop a number of ecclesiastical extortions and indulgences, to make better appointments to benefices, and to hand over some of the ecclesiastical estates to the Austrian and Bavarian princes ; while the states promised to set aside the gravamina, and to permit no toleration of the new doctrines. On the other hand, many states which had kept aloof from the Reformation now joined it, and declared against the seven sacraments, the abuses of the mass, the worship of saints, and the supremacy of the pope. The emperor s brother and suc cessor Ferdinand was a bitter foe to the Reformation, and urged persecution. Four Augustinian monks at Antwerp were the first martyrs ; they were burnt on 1st July 1523. Ferdinand began the bloody work of persecution in the hereditary states of Austria immediately after the conven tion of Ratisbon. At Passau in Bavaria, and at Buda in Hungary, the faggots were lighted. The dukes of Bavaria followed the same impulse. Luther s literary activity during these years was unparal- leled. In 1522 he published, it is said, one hundred and thirty treatises, and eighty-three in the following year, among them the famous Contra Henricum regem Angliee, in which, after having dealt mercilessly with the royal controversialist, he exclaims, &quot; I cry Gospel ! Gospel ! Christ ! Christ ! and they cease not to answer Usages! Usages ! Ordinances ! Ordi nances ! Fathers ! Fathers ! The apostle St Paul annihilates with a thunderstorm from heaven all these fooleries of Henry.&quot; His principal work, however, during these years was the publication of certain short tracts upon worship and its reform, followed by various directories for public worship, which afterwards served as a model for the numerous Lutheran Church ordinances. In 1522, while Luther was still in the Wartburg, Carlstadt had published for the church at Wittenberg an ordinance for directing the government and worship of the church. It was very brief, but very revolutionary (cf. Richter s Evangel, Kirchen- ordnungen, vol. ii. p. 484). This was withdrawn after Luther s return ; but the Reformer felt that the time had come for a definite reform of public worship and for pub lishing his views upon the subject. Accordingly, after a series of tracts in 1522 upon religious and monastic vows. the abolition of private masses, the Lord s Supper under both forms, saint worship, the so-called spiritual estate. and the married life, he published in 1523 The Order of the Worship of God. He was, as usual, conservative, and made as few changes as possible in the form of service, caring only to give full place to prayer and the reading and preaching of the word. The order of worship was followed by the Formula Hfissee, published in Latin, but at once translated into German by Paul Speratus, in which the ancient form was as much preserved as is consistent with evangelical doctrine. Luther was of opinion that the more difficult introits should be removed from the order of the Eucharist, and simpler hymns put in their place, and he also was strongly in favour of the singing of hymns in the Luther s writings ,, er i ot i