§ 105. LUTHER AND CARLSTADT. 617
their piety and discipline, in which they excelled the Germans.!
In his conviction of the real presence, he was greatly strengthened by the personal attacks and perverse exegesis of Carlstadt. Henceforth he advocated the point of agreement with the Catholics more strenuously than he had formerly opposed the points in which he differed from them. He changed the tone of moderation which he had shown in his address to the Bohemians, and treated his Protestant opponents with as great severity as the Papists. His peculiar view of the eucharist became the most, almost the only, serious doctrinal difference between the two wings of the Reformation, and has kept them apart ever since.
§ 105. Luther and Carlstadt.
The first outward impulse to the eucharistic controversy came from Holland in the summer of 1522, when Henry Rhodius brought from Utrecht a collection of the writings of John Wessel to Wittenberg, which he had received from a distinguished Dutch jurist, Cornelius Honius (Hen). Wessel, one of the chief forerunners of the Reformation (d. 1489), proposed, in a tract “ De Coena,” a figurative interpretation of the words of institution, which seems to have influenced the opinions of Erasmus, Carlstadt, and Zwingli on this subject.? ᾿
1 In Walch, XIX. 1593 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 389 sqq. He says in the beginning: ‘‘We Germans believe that Christ is verily with his flesh and blood in the sacrament, as he was born of Mary, and hung on the holy cross.”” He rejects the figurative interpretation because it might deprive other passages of their force.
2 Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation (1842), vol. II. 560-583. Melanchthon derived the controversy from Erasmus. ‘‘ Tota illa tragoedia περὶ δείπνου κυριακοῦ ab ipso [Erasmo] nata videri potest.’? Letter to Camerarius, July 26, 1529 (‘‘ Corpus Ref.,”’ I. 1083). He was informed by Zwingli in Marburg: ‘‘se ex Erasmi scriptis primum hausisse opinionem suam de cena Domini.”’ Letter to Acquila, Oct. 12, 1529 (IV. 970). Erasmus spoke very highly of the book of Gcolampadius on the Lord’s Supper, and would have accepted his view if it were not for the consensus of the church:
618 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1δ80.
But Luther was so much pleased with the agreement on other points that he overlooked the difference, and lauded Wessel as a theologian truly taught of God, and endowed with a high mind and wonderful gifts; yea, so fully in harmony with him, that the Papists might charge Luther with having derived all his doctrines from Wessel, had he known his writings before.1
The controversy was opened in earnest by Carlstadt, Luther’s older colleague and former friend, who gave him infinite trouble, and forced him into self-defense and into the development of the conservative and churchly elements in his theology.2, He smarted under the defeat he had suffered in 1522, and first silently, then openly, opposed Luther, regarding him henceforth as his enemy, and as the author of all his misfortunes. In this way he mixed, from the start, the gall of personal bitterness into the eucharistic controversy. Luther would probably have been more moderate if it had been free from those complications.
In 1524 Carlstadt came out with a new and absurd interpretation of the words of institution (Matt. 26: 26 and parallel passages); holding that the Greek word for “this” being neuter (τοῦτο), could not refer to the bread, which is masculine in Greek (dpros), but must refer to the body of Christ (τὸ σῶμα), to which the Saviour pointed, so as to say, “Take, eat! This here [this body] is my body [which will soon be] broken for you; this [blood] is my blood [which will be] shed for you.” This resolves the words into a
“ Mihi non displiceret Cicolampadii sententia, nisi obstaret consensus ecclesiew.”’ Letter to Pirkheimer, June 6, 1526.
1 Preface to ‘‘ Farrago rerum, theolog., Wesselo autore,”’? published at Wittenberg, 1521 or 1522. Op., VII. 493 sqq. See Ullmann, l.c. p. 564 sq. This edition, however, excludes the tract De cena, —a proof that Luther did not altogether like it.
2 See 88 66 and 68, pp. 378 sqq. and 887. Carlstadt is the real author of the eucharistic controversy, not Luther, as Hospinian and Hottinger assumed. But Luther and Zwingli were the chief actors in it. Carlstadt’s view passed out of sight, when the Swiss view was brought out.