The Fatherland, the Reformer told the Germans, was being gnawed to the very bones. Annats, palliums, commendams, administrations, indulgences, reversions, incorporations, reserves – such were a few, and but a few, of the contrivances by which the priests managed to convey the wealth of Germany to Rome. Was it a wonder that princes, cathedrals, and people were poor? The wonder was, with such a cormorant swarm preying upon them, that anything was left. All went into the Roman sack which had no bottom. Here was robbery surpassing that of thieves and highwaymen, who expiated their offences on the gibbet. Here were the tyranny and destruction of the gates of hell, seeing it was the destruction of soul and body, the ruin of both Church and State. Talk of the devastation of the Turk, and of raising armies to resist him! there is no Turk in all the world like the Roman Turk.
The instant remedies which he urged were the same with those which his great predecessor, Wicliffe, a full hundred and fifty years before, had recommended to the English people, and happily had prevailed upon the Parliament to so far adopt. The Gospel alone, which he was laboring to restore, could go to the root of these evils, but they were of a kind to be corrected in part by the temporal power. Every prince and State, he said, should forbid their subjects giving annats to Rome. Kings and nobles ought to resist the Pontiff as the greatest foe of their own prerogatives, and the worst enemy of the independence and prosperity of their kingdoms.
Instead of enforcing the bulls of the Pope, they ought to throw his ban, seal, and briefs into the Rhine or the Elbe. Archbishops and bishops should be forbidden, by imperial decree, to receive their dignities from Rome. All causes should be tried within the kingdom, and all persons made amenable to the country's tribunals. Festivals should cease, as but affording occasions for idleness and all kinds of vicious indulgences, and the Sabbath should be the only day on which men ought to abstain from working. No more cloisters ought to be built for mendicant friars, whose begging expeditions had never turned to good, and never would; the law of clerical celibacy should be repealed, and liberty given to priests to marry like other men; and, in fine, the Pope, leaving kings and princes to govern their own realms, should confine himself to prayer and the preaching of the Word. "Hearest thou, O Pope, not all holy, but all sinful? Who gave thee power to lift thyself above God and break His laws? The wicked Satan lies through thy throat. – O my Lord Christ, hasten Thy last day, and destroy the devil's nest at Rome. There sits ' the man of sin,' of whom Paul speaks, 'the son of perdition.'"
Luther well understood what a great orator since has termed "the expulsive power of a new emotion." Truth he ever employed as the only effectual instrumentality for expelling error. Accordingly, underneath Rome's system of human merit and salvation by works, he placed the doctrine of man's inability and God's free grace. This it was that shook into ruin the Papal fabric of human merit. By the same method of attack did Luther demolish the Roman kingdom of bondage. He penetrated the fiction on which itwas reared. Rome takes a man, shaves his head, anoints him with oil, gives him the Sacrament of orders, and so infuses into him a mysterious virtue. The whole class of men so dealt with form a sacerdotal order, distinct from and higher than laymen, and are the divinely appointed rulers of the world.
This falsehood, with the grievous and ancient tyranny of which it was the corner-stone, Luther overthrew by proclaiming the antagonistic truth. All really Christian men, said he, are priests. Had not the Apostle Peter, addressing all believers, said, "Ye are a royal priesthood"? It is not the shearing of the head, or the wearing of a peculiar garment, that makes a man a priest. It is faith that makes men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and that gives them the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whereby they become filled with all holy grace and heavenly power. This inward anointing – this oil, better than any that ever came from the horn of bishop or Pope – gives them not the name only, bnt the nature, the purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received who are believers on Christ.
Thus did Luther not only dislodge the falsehood, he filled its place with a glorious truth, lest, if left vacant, the, error should creep back. The fictitious priesthood of Rome – a priesthood which lay in oils and vestments, and into which men were introduced by scissors and the arts of necromancy – departed, and the true priesthood came in its room. Men opened their eyes upon their glorious enfranchisement. They were no longer the vassals of a sacerdotal oligarchy, the bondsmen of shavelings; they saw themselves to be the members of an illustrious brotherhood, whose Divine Head was in heaven.
Never was there a grander oration. Patriots and orators have, on many great and memorable occasions, addressed their fellow-men, if haply they might rouse them to overthrow the tyrants who held them in bondage. They have plied them with every argument, and appealed to every motive. They have, dwelt by turns on the bitterness of servitude and the sweetness of liberty.
But never did patriot; or orator address his fellow-men on a geater occasion than this – rarely, if ever, on one so great. Never did orator or patriot combat so powerful an antagonist, or denounce so foul a slavery, or smite hypocrisy and falsehood with blows so terrible. And if orator never displayed more eloquence, orator never showed greater courage. This appeal was made in the face of a thousand perils. On these Luther did not bestow a single thought. He saw only his countrymen, and all the nations of Christendom, sunk in a most humiliating and ruinous thraldom, and with fearless intrepidity and Herculean force he hurled bolt on bolt, quick, rapid, and fiery, against that tyranny which was devouring the earth. The man, the cause, the moment, the audience, all were sublime.
And never was appeal more successful. Like a peal of thunder it rang from side to side of Germany. It sounded the knell of Roman domination in that land. The movement was no longer confined to Wittemberg; it was henceforward truly national. It was no longer conducted exclusively by theologians. Princes, nobles, burghers joined in it. It was seen to be no battle of creed merely; it was a struggle for liberty, religious and civil; for rights, spiritual and temporal; for the generation then living, for all the generations that were to live in the future; a struggle, in fine, for the manhood of the human race.
Luther's thoughts turned naturally to the new emperor. What part will this young potentate play in the movement? Presuming that it would be the just and magnanimous one that became so great a prince, Luther carried his appeal to the foot of the throne of Charles V. "The cause," he said, "was worthy to come before the throne of heaven, much more before an earthly potentate." Luther knew that his cause would triumph, whichever side Charles might espouse. But though neither Charles nor all the great ones of earth could stop it, or rob it of its triumph, they might delay it; they might cause the Reformation's path to be amid scaffolds and bloody fields, over armies vanquished and thrones cast down. Luther would much rather that its progress should be peaceful and its arrival at the goal speedy. Therefore he came before the throne of Charles as a suppliant; trembling, not for his cause, but for those who he foresaw would but destroy themselves by opposing it. What audience did the monk receive? Tho emperor never deigned the doctor of Wittemberg a reply.
CHAPTER 2
POPE LEO'S BULL
Eck at Rome – His Activity against Luther – Procures his Condemnation – The Bull – Authorship of the Bull – Its Terms – Its Two Bearers – The Bull crosses the Alps – Luther's "Babylonish Captivity " – The Sacrament – His Extraordinary Letter to Pope Leo – Bull arrives in Wittemberg – Luther enters a Notarial Protest against it – He Burns it – Astonishment and Rage of Rome – Luther's Address to the Students.
WE have almost lost sight of Dr. Eck. We saw him, after his disputation with Luther at Leipsic, set off for Rome. What was the object of his journey? He crossed the Alps to solicit the Pope's help against the man whom he boasted having vanquished. He was preceded by Cardinal Cajetan, another "conqueror" after the fashion of Eck, and who too was so little satisfied with the victory which he so loudly vaunted that, like Eck, he had gone
