LUTHER. 



585 



self desirous of reconciliation, declared his submis- 

 sion to the pope, and advised a reform in the church, 

 Luther burned the bull of excommunication, and the 

 decretals of the papal canon, at Wittemberg, Decem- 

 ber 10, 1520. By this act, he dissolved all con- 

 nexion with the pope and the Roman church. Fre- 

 deric, the elector of Saxony, seemed in a doubt 

 whether he should protect him. But the worthiest of 

 the German noblemen, Hutten, Sickingen, Schaum- 

 burg, whom he called upon to defend the new 

 opinions, hailed him as the champion of religious 

 liberty, and offered him their fortresses and their arms. 

 But Luther wished no protector but God. He refused 

 to listen to his anxious friends, who advised him not 

 to brave the Roman hierarchy ; a spirit within urged 

 him forward, and he could not resist. The people 

 received, with amazement, the words of a monk, who 

 defied at once the pope and the clergy, the emperor 

 and the princes. For this he did, when he presented 

 himself at the diet of Worms, April 4, 1521, accom- 

 panied by a few friends and the imperial herald, who 

 had summoned him. He was met by about 2000 

 persons on foot and on horseback, at the distance of 

 a league from Worms. Such was his conviction of 

 the justice of his cause, that when Spalatin sent a 

 messenger to warn him of his danger, he answered, 

 " If there were as many devils in Worms as there are 

 tiles upon the roofs of its houses, I would go on." 

 Before the emperor, the archduke Ferdinand, six 

 electors, twenty-four dukes, seven margraves, thirty 

 bishops and prelates, and many princes, counts, lords, 

 and ambassadors, Luther appeared, April 17, in the 

 imperial diet, acknowledged all his writings, and, on 

 the following day, made his defence before the assem- 

 bly. He concluded his speech of two hours in length 

 with these words : " Let me then be refuted and con- 

 vinced by the testimony of the Scriptures, or by the 

 clearest arguments ; otherwise I cannot and will not 

 recant ; for it is neither safe nor expedient to act 

 against conscience. Here I take my stand ; I can do 

 no otherwise, so help me God! Amen." He left 

 Worms, in fact, a conqueror ; but it was so manifest 

 that his enemies were determined upon his destruc- 

 tion, that Frederic the Wise conveyed him privately 

 to the Wartburg, to save his life. Neither the pro- 

 scription of the emperor, nor the excommunication 

 of the pope, could disturb him in his retirement, of 

 which he took advantage to translate the New Testa- 

 ment into German. But this retirement continued 

 only ten months. When informed of the disturbances 

 excited by Carlstadt, on the subject of images, he 

 could no longer endure restraint, notwithstanding 

 the new outlawry which the emperor had just issued 

 against him, at Nuremburg ; and, at the risk of pro- 

 voking the displeasure of the elector, he hastened to 

 Wittemberg, through the territory of George, duke of 

 Saxony, who was one of his most bitter enemies. 

 The letter to Frederic, in which he justified his 

 departure, proves, not less than his conduct before 

 the diet at Worms, his fearless courage and the great- 

 ness of his soul. The sermons which he delivered 

 for eight successive days after his return (in March, 

 1522), to quell the violence of the enraged insurgents 

 in Wittemberg, are patterns of moderation, and wis- 

 dom, and popular eloquence. They show, in a strik- 

 ing light, the error of those who consider Luther only 

 as a violent and rude fanatic. He was violent only 

 against malignity, or when he thought the great truths 

 of religion in danger. Such motives sufficiently 

 account for his caustic reply to Henry VIII., king of 

 England, and the bitterness of spirit manifested in 

 his controversies with Carlstadt and Erasmus. The 

 latter, not without reason, he charged with worldli- 

 ness and lukewarmness in a good cause. He viewed 

 the attack of Carlstadt on his doctrine of the sacra- 



ment as an open apostasy from the faith, and an act 

 of ambitious jealousy. 



Amidst these disputes and attacks, his plans for a 

 total reformation in the church, which was called for 

 by the voice of the nation, were matured. In 1523, 

 at Wittemberg, he began to purify the liturgy from its 

 empty forms, and, by laying aside his cowl, in 1524, 

 he gave the signal for the abolition of the monasteries, 

 and the better application of the goods of the church. 

 In 1525, he married Catharine von Bora, a nun, who 

 had left her convent. After overcoming numerous 

 difficulties, he took this important step at the age of 

 forty-two years, as much from principle as inclination, 

 with the design of restoring the preachers of the 

 gospel to their natural and social rights and duties. 

 Warm as was the zeal of Luther for a reform in the 

 church, he was desirous of avoiding disorder and vio- 

 lence. While he went hand in hand with the impe- 

 rial cities and foreign princes, both in words and 

 actions, he opposed, most decidedly, the violence of 

 the peasantry and of the Anabaptists. His enemies 

 have shown great injustice in implicating him as the 

 author of those outrages which arose from the enthu- 

 siasm of the ignorant, and were displeasing to his 

 noble and generous mind. Luther prepared, from 

 1526 to 1529, a new church service, corresponding 

 to the doctrines of the gospel, under the patronage 

 of the elector, and with the aid of Melanchthon and 

 other members of the Saxon church. His larger and 

 smaller catechisms, to be used in schools, were also 

 of great service. But every one must look with pain 

 upon the severity and intolerance which he manifested 

 towards the Swiss reformers, because their views dif- 

 fered from his own in regard to the Lord's supper. 

 (See Lord's Supper, and Sacrament.) He was thus 

 the chief cause of the separation which took place 

 between the Calvinists and the Lutherans. But, with- 

 out his inflexible firmness, in matters of faith, he 

 would have been unequal to a work against which 

 artifice and power had arrayed all their forces. 



The rapidity with which the reformation advanced 

 after the confession of Augsburg, in 1530, rendered 

 the papal bulls and the imperial edicts against Luther 

 inefficient. But he was obliged to be continually on 

 his guard against the cunning Papists, who strove to 

 make him give up some parts of his creed ; and it 

 required a firmness bordering on sternness and obsti- 

 nacy to maintain the victory which he had won. With 

 a spirit incident to such a state of things, Luther 

 wrote, in 1537, the Smalcaldic articles ; he gave a 

 refusal to the ambassadors of Brandenburg and An- 

 halt, who were sent, in 1541, by the diet of Ratisbon, 

 to make him more compliant towards the Catholics ; 

 and, in 1545, he refused any participation of his party 

 in the council of Trent. 



The severity which he used in the defence of his 

 faith, by no means diminishes the merit of his con- 

 stancy ; and an apology may easily be found for the 

 frequent rudeness of his expressions, in the prevailing 

 mode of speaking and thinking ; in the nature of his 

 undertaking, which required continual contest ; in 

 the provocations by which he was perpetually assailed; 

 in his frequent sickness ; and in his excitable imagi- 

 nation. The same excitability of temperament will 

 serve to explain those dreadful temptations of the 

 devil, which disquieted him oftener tftan would seem 

 compatible with his strength and vigour of mind; for 

 that age regarded the devil as a real personage, an 

 evil principle ever active; and, if any one devoted him- 

 self to the cause of God, he was constantly obliged to 

 reswt attacks of the evil one upon his virtue. He says 

 himself, " I was born to fight with devils and factions. 

 This is the reason that my books are so boisterous 

 and stormy. It is my business to remove obstructions, 

 to cut down thorns, to fill up quagmires, and to open 



