224 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 τὸ 1530.
} turn it into an occasion of carnal license, and show their ~ freedom by their contempt of ceremonies, traditions, and human laws. St. Paul teaches us to walk in the middle path, condemning either extreme, and saying, “ Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth ” (Rom. 14: 3). We must resist the hardened and obstinate ceremonialists, as Paul resisted the Judaizers who would compel Titus to be circumcised; and we must spare the weak who are not yet able to apprehend the liberty of faith. We must fight against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. This Irenicon must meet with the approval of every true Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant. It breathes the spirit of a genuine disciple of St. Paul. It is full of heroie faith and childlike simplicity. It takes rank with the best books of Luther, and rises far above the angry controversies of his age, during which he composed it, in the full possession of the positive truth and peace of the religion of Christ.! Luther sent the book to Pope Leo X., who was too worldlyminded a man to appreciate it; and accompanied the same with a most singular and undiplomatic, yet powerful polemic letter, which, if the Pope ever read it, must have filled him with mingled feelings of indignation and disgust. In his first letter to the Pope (1518), Luther had thrown himself at his feet as an obedient son of the vicar of Christ; in his
1 Kostlin (Mart. Luth., vol. I. 395 sq.): ‘* Die Schrift von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen ist ein tief-religidser Traktat.... Sie ist ein ruhiges, positives Zeugnis der Wahrheit, vor welcher die Waffen und Bande der Finsternis von selbst zu nichte werden miissen. Sie zeigt uns den tiefsten Grund des christlichen Bewusstseins und Lebens in einer edlen, seligen Ruhe und Sicherheit, welche die uber ihm hingehenden Wogen und Sttirme des Kamp- Ses nicht zu erschittern vermégen. Sie zeigt zugleich, wie fest Luther selbst auf diesem.Grunde stand, indem er eben im Hohepunkt des Kampfgedranges sie zu verfassen fahig war.’’ It is perhaps characteristic that Janssen, who gives one-sided extracts from the two other reformatory works of Luther passes the tract on ‘‘ Christian Liberty ’’ in complete silence. Cardinal Hergenrother likewise ignores it.
§ 46. LUTHER'S LAST LETTER TO THE POPE. 225
second letter (1519), he still had addressed him as a humble subject, yet refusing to recant his conscientious convictions: in his third and last letter he addressed him as an equal, speaking to him with great respect for his personal character (even beyond his deserts), but denouncing in the severest terms the Roman See, and comparing him to a lamb among wolves, and to Daniel in the den of lions. The Popes, he says, are vicars of Christ because Christ is absent from Rome.! Miltitz and the Augustinian brethren, who urged him to write an apologetic letter to Leo, must have been sorely disappointed ; for it destroyed all prospects of reconciliation, if they had not been destroyed already.
After some complimentary words about Leo, and protesting that he had never spoken disrespectfully of his person, Luther goes on to say, —
‘The Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even Antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.
‘* Meanwhile you, Leo, are sitting like a lamb in the midst of wolves, like Daniel in the midst of lions, and, with Ezekiel, you dwell among scorpions. What opposition can you alone make to these monstrous evils? Take to yourself three or four of the most learned and best of the cardinals. What are these among so many? You would all perish by poison, before you could undertake to decide on a remedy. It is all over with the court of Rome: the wrath of God has come upon her to the uttermost. She hates councils, she dreads to be reformed, she cannot restrain the madness of her impiety; she fills up the sentence passed on her mother, of whom it is said, ‘We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed; let us forsake her.’ It had been your duty, and that of your cardinals, to apply a remedy to these evils; but this gout laughs at the physician’s hand, and the chariot does not obey the reins. Under the influence of these feelings I have always grieved that you, most excellent Leo, who were worthy of a better age, have been made pontiff in this. For the Roman court is not worthy of you and those like you, but of Satan himself, who in truth is more the ruler in that Babylon than you are.
“Oh, would that, having laid aside that glory which your most abandoned enemies declare to be yours, you were living rather in the office of a private
1 “ Hin Statthalter ist in Abwesenheit seines Herrn ein Statthalter.”