Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/95

Rh and with an interdict, and he left the diet while the evangelical members were deliberating. In spite of these threats the protest was signed by John of Saxony, George of Brandenburg, Ernest of Liineburg, Philip of Hesse, and Wolfgang of Anhalt among the princes, and by the representatives of the free cities of Strasburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Costnitz (Constance), Lindau, Memmingen, Kempten, Nb rdlingen, Heilbroun, Reutlingen, Isny, St Gall, W 7 eissen- burg, and Windsheim. This celebrated protest of April 15, 1529, from which comes the name Protestant, is one of the noblest documents of Christian history. The protest ing princes and cities claimed as their right as Germans the sacred duty freely to preach the word of God and the message of salvation, that all who would hear it might join the community of believers. It was also an earnest of true evangelical union ; for it was well known that most of the cities were more inclined towards Zwingli s than towards Lather s view of the sacrament. If this great act be considered impartially, it is im possible not to see that neither Luther nor Melanchthon was the real leader of the time. Luther had no real com prehension of what had to be done in Germany to preserve the gospel from destruction. He had shown little sym pathy with the first attempt made in Hesse at the self- government of the church ; still less did he see the importance of the protest at Spires, and of the unity it give to the evangelical cause. It was evident that nothing but the inroad of the Turks had saved the Protestant princes after the diet, and that Charles was so far master of Germany as to make it impossible for Germany to become a Protestant nation. The Protestants were lost unless they strengthened the alliance which they had just founded at Spires. But Luther disliked such alliances; he dissuaded the elector from sending deputies to the meeting agreed to be held at Stnalkald, and when the Saxon depu ties prevented any business being done he was proud of the result. This apparent blindness and perversion of mind requires explanation. Luther lived under the shadow of the Middle Ages, and had been trained in scholastic law as well as in scholastic theology. To the mediaeval jurist the emperor was the impersonation of all social order and moral law ; he was the vicar of God. In the later Middle Ages the jurists had exaggerated this sacredness of the emperor, and had done so quite naturally in order to protect civil law from canon law, and to uphold the state against the church. Luther could throw off scholastic theology, but he could not throw off that scholastic jurisprudence that all his mediaeval heroes, Occam, Wickl.iffe, and Huss had found so useful in their attacks on the papacy, and that Luther himself had found so serviceable when he ap pealed from the church defined by the pope to the church defined by the empire. He could not bear to think of an alliance against the holy Roman empire. Luther too had been trained in the school of Tauler and the Theologia Germanica, and partook greatly of their quietism. &quot; Suffer God to do His work in you and about you &quot; was their motto. There was a theological scruple also at the bottom of Luther s opposition to a vigorous Protestant alliance and a national attitude. This betrayed itself, first, in an un easiness about Zwingli s rising influence in Germany, and, secondly, as a doctrinal idiosyncrasy respecting the sacra ment of the Eucharist. Philip of Hesse saw through this instantly, and said, &quot; I see they are against the alliance on account of these Zwinglians ; well, let us see whether we cannot make these theological differences disappear.&quot; When Luther was raised above himself by the great P ro ^ ern before him in that glorious period of action from 1518 to 1524, he had considered the sacrament as a part of the services of the church, and a secondary matter com- pared with the right view of faith or the inward Christianity 81 which implies necessarily an unselfish believing and thank ful mind. He was convinced that there was no virtue inherent in the elements apart from the communion, and it was a matter indifferent how the spirituality of the action and the real presence, even the transubstantiation, might be reconciled with faith. But the peasants war and Carl- stadt s mystical enthusiasm alarmed him. Where was this to lead to, he asked, and lie seems to have settled down into a great resolve to abide by the tradition of the church, and alter as little as possible provided room was found for the exercise of living faith. So when he felt called upon to form a theory of the doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist he went back to his scholasticism to find there some theory which should be traditional and yet afford room for the spiritual priesthood of all believers, and for the exercise of faith on the promises of God. He found it in the writings of that schoolman whom he more than once calls &quot;his dear master,&quot; the daring Englishman William of Occam. Transubstantiation, the Romish doctrine, offended Luther in his two essential requirements : it demanded a miracle which could be performed by a priest only, and this miraculous power so separated clergy from laity that it denied the spiritual priesthood of all believers: and, when the elements had been made by the priest s creating w ord the body and blood of the Lord, their supernatural efficacy, apart from the faith of the communicant, imparted grace. Occam had championed a theory which in some form or other had been in the church since the 10th century at least, and which openly rejected one of these stumbling blocks, and, as Luther saw, really did away with the other also. According to Occam s scholastic distinctions, matter can be present in two ways (1) when it occupies a distinct place by itself, excluding every other body, e.g., two stones mutually exclude each other, and (2) when it occupies the same space as another body at the same time. Every thing which is omnipresent or ubiquitous must be able to occupy the same space as other things, else it could not be ubiquitous. Christ s resurrection body, said Occam, had this power when, our Lord appeared among His disciples while they were in a room with the doors shut ; at a certain moment of time it and a portion of door or wall must have been in the same place at the same time ; and besides Christ s body is ubiquitous. It is therefore in the elements bread and wine, in, with, and under them. Luther took over this doctrine from Occam without altera tion. The very illustrations he uses in his Bekenntniss vom Abendmakl are taken almost verbatim from Occam, De Altaris Sacramento. From this it followed that con- substantiation involved no miracle. Christ s body was not brought into the elements by the priest; it was there natur ally. But its presence in these elements on sacramental occasions brought with it a blessing, and imparted grace, not because of the presence, but because God had promised that this particular presence of the everywhere present body of Christ would bring blessings to the faithful partaker. Occam s theory of consubstantiation fulfilled all Luther s wants, and above all it involved no explaining away of the plain meaning of the sentence, &quot; This is my body,&quot; such as had offended him in Carlstadt. It is easy to see therefore how Luther was alarmed at Zwingli. The Swiss Reformer seemed to attack everything that Luther prized. He did not care for tradition or church usage ; he seemed engaged in a rationalistic attack on the presence of Christ in the church, and on the word of God, and so he was guilty, in Luther s estimation, both of self-confidence and of a rationalism. On the other hand, Zwingli could not under stand what Luther meant; and yet he was anxious to unite with him, and was willing to leave this one difficulty an open question. It was in these circumstances suspicion on the part of Luther, blank amazement on the part cf XV. ii