§ 86. LUTHER AND MILTITZ. JANUARY, 1610. 177
irreconcilable with his honest convictions and subsequent conduct. But we must remember the deep conflicts of his mind, the awful responsibility of his undertaking, the critical character of the situation. Well might he pause for a while, and shrink back from the idea of a separation from the church of his fathers, so intimately connected with his religious life as well as with the whole history of Christianity for fifteen hundred years. He had to break a new path which became so easy for others. We must all the more admire his conscientiousness.
In his letter to the Pope, dated March 3, 1519, he expressed the deepest personal humility, and denied that he ever intended to injure the Roman Church, which was over , every other power in heaven and on earth, save only Jesus | Christ the Lord over all. Yet he repudiated the idea of re- | tracting his conscientious convictions.
In his address to the people, he allowed the value of indulgences, but only as a recompense for the “satisfaction ” given by the sinner, and urged the duty of adhering, notwithstanding her faults and sins, to the holy Roman Church, where St. Peter and St. Paul,and many Popes and thousands of martyrs, had shed their blood.
At the same time, Luther continued the careful study of history, and could find no trace of popery and its extraordinary claims in the first centuries before the Council οὗ, Nicea. He discovered that the Papal Decretals, and the | Donation of Constantine, were a forgery. He wrote to Spala-|
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tin, March 18, 1519, “I know not whether the Pope is antichrist himself, or his apostle ; so wretchedly is Christ, that is the truth, corrupted and crucified by him in the Decretals.”’!
1 De Wette, I. 239.
178 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
ὃ 37. The Leipzig Disputation. June 27-July 15,1519.
I. LéscueER, III. 203-819. Luther’s Works, WALCH, XV. 954 sqq.; Weim. ed. II. 153-485 (see the literary notices of Knaake, p. 156). Luther’s letters to Spalatin and the Elector, in DE WETTE, I. 284-324.
11. Jou. K. SEIDEMANN: Die Leipziger Disputation im Jahre 1519. Dresden and Leipzig, 1843 (pp. 161). With important documents (pp. 93 sqq.) The best book on the subject. Monographs on Carlstadt by JAGER (Stuttgart, 1856), on Hck by WIEDEMANN (Regensburg, 1865), and the relevant sections in MARHEINEKE, KAHNIS (I. 251-285), K6st- LIN, KOLDE, and the general histories of the Reformation. The account by RANKE (I. 277-285) is very good. On the Roman side, see JANSSEN, II. 83-88 (incomplete).
The agreement between Miltitz and Luther was only a short truce. ‘The Reformation was too deeply rooted in the wants of the age to be suppressed by the diplomacy of ecclesiastical politicians. Even if the movement had been arrested in one place, it would have broken out in another; indeed, it had already begun independently in Switzerland. Luther was no more his own master, but the organ of a higher power. “Man proposes, God disposes.”
Before the controversy could be settled by a German
bishop, it was revived, not without a violation of promise on ,
both sides,! in the disputation held in the large hall of the Castle of Pleissenburg at- Leipzig, under the sanction of Duke George of Saxony, between Eck, Carlstadt, and Luther, on the doctrines of the papal primacy, free-will, good works, purgatory, and indulgences. It was one of the great intellectual battles; it lasted nearly three weeks, and excited universal attention in that deeply religious and theological age. The vital doctrines of salvation were at stake. The debate
1 Eck was the chief originator of the disputation, and not Luther (as Janssen endeavors to show). Seidemann, who gives a full and authentic account of the preliminary correspondence, says (p. 21): ‘‘ H's ist entschieden, dass Eck die Disputation antrug, und zwar zundchst nur mit Karlstadt. Aber auch Luther’s Absehen war auf eine Disputation gerichtet.”
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