1414 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
Nor must we forget Georg Spalatin, who did not belong to the university, but had great influence upon it as chaplain and secretary of the Elector Frederick, and acted as friendly mediator between him and Luther. The most effective aid the Reformer received, in 1518, in the person of Melanchthon.!
The working forces of the Reformation were thus fully prepared and ready for action. The scholastic philosophy and theology were undermined, and a biblical, evangelical theology ruled in Wittenberg. It was a significant coincidence, that the first edition of the Greek Testament was published by Erasmus in 1516, just a year before the Reformation.?
Luther had as yet no idea of reforming the Catholic church, and still less of separating from it. All the roots of his life and piety were in the historic church, and he considered himself a good Catholic even in 1517, and was so in fact. He still devoutly prayed to the Virgin Mary from the pulpit; he did not doubt the intercession of saints in heaven for the sinners on earth; he celebrated mass with full belief in the repetition of the sacrifice on the cross and the miracle of transubstantiation ; he regarded the Hussites as “ sinful heretics ” for breaking away from the unity of the church and the papacy which offered a bulwark against sectarian division.
But by the leading of Providence he became innocently and reluctantly a Reformer. A series of events carried him irresistibly from step to step, and forced him far beyond
1 On the early colleagues of Luther, see Jiirgens, II. 217-235.
2 Luther made good use of it for his translation, but was not pleased with the writings of Erasmus. As early as March 1, 1517, he wrote to John Lange: ‘‘I now read our Erasmus, but he pleases me less every day. It is well enough that he should constantly and learnedly refute the monks and priests, and charge them with a deep-rooted and sleepy ignorance. But I fear he does not sufficiently promote Christ and the grace of God, of which he knows very little. He thinks more of the human than the divine... . Not every one who is a good Greek and Hebrew, is also for this reason a good Christian. The blessed Jerome with his five tongues did not equal the one-tongued Augustin, although Erasmus thinks differently.’’ — Briefe, ed. De Wette, I. 52.
§ 30. THE INDULGENCES. 145
his original intentions. Had he foreseen the separation, he would have shrunk from it in horror. He was as much the child of his age as its father, and the times molded him before he molded the times. This is the case with all men of Providence: they are led by a divine hand while they are leading
their fellow-men. NOTES.
The works of Luther written before the 95 Theses (reprinted in the Weimar ed., I. 1-238, III., IV.) are as follows: Commentary on the Psalms; a number of sermons; Tractatus de his, qui ad ecclesias confugiunt (an investigation of the right of asylum; first printed 1517, anonymously, then under Luther’s name, 1520, at Landshut; but of doubtful genuineness); Sermo prescriptus preposito in Litzka, 1512 (a Latin sermon prepared for his friend, the Provost Georg Mascov of Leitzkau in Brandenburg); several Latin Sermons from 1514-1517; Questio de viribus et voluntate hominis sine gratia disputata, 1516; Preface to his first edition of ‘‘ German Theology,” 1516; The seven Penitential Psalms, 1517; Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, 1517. The last are 97 theses against the philosophy of Aristotle, of whom he said, that he would hold him to be a devil if he had not had flesh. These theses were published in September, 1517, and were followed in October by the 95 Theses against the traffic in Indulgences.
The earliest letters of Luther, from April 22, 1507, to Oct. 31, 1517, are addressed to Braun (vicar at Eisenach), Spalatin (chaplain of the Elector Frederick), Lohr (prior of the Augustinian Convent at Erfurt), John Lange, Scheurl, and others. They are printed in Latin in Loscher’s J */ormations-Acta, vol. I. 795-846; in De Wette’s edition of Luther’s Briefe, I. 1-64; German translation in Walch, vol. XXI. The last of these ante- Reformation letters is directed to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and dated from the day of the publication of the Theses, Oct. 31, 1517 (DeWette I. 67- 70). The letters begin with the name of ‘“‘ Jesus.’’