ὃ 105. LUTHER AND CARLSTADT, 619
tautology and platitude. At the same time Carlstadt opposed infant-baptism, and traced his crude novelties to higher inspiration.1 After his expulsion from Saxony he propagated them, together with slanderous assaults upon Luther as ‘a double Papist,” in several publications which appeared in Basel and Strasburg.? He excited some interest among the Swiss Reformers, who sympathized with his misfortunes, and agreed with his opposition to the theory of a corporal presence and oral manducation, but dissented entirely from his exegesis, his mysticism, and radicalism. Capito and Bucer, the Reformers of Strassburg, leaned to the Swiss view, but regretted the controversy, and sent a deacon with Carlstadt’s tracts to Luther for advice.
Luther exhorted the Strassburgers, in a vigorous letter (Dec. 14, 1524), to hold fast to the evangelical doctrines, and warned them against the dangerous vagaries of Carlstadt. At the same time he issued an elaborate refutation of Carlstadt, in a book “ Against the Heavenly Prophets ” (December, 1524, and January, 1525, in two parts). It is written with great ability and great violence. “A new storm is arising,’ he begins. “ Dr. Andreas Carlstadt is fallen away from us, and has become our worst enemy.” He thought the poor man had committed the unpardonable sin.? He describes, in vivid colors, the wild and misty mysticism and false legalism of these self-styled prophets, and defends the real presence. He despised the objections of reason, which was the mistress of the Devil. It is characteristic, that, from this
1 This is the reason why Luther called Carlstadt and his sympathizers enthusiasts and fanatics. Schwarmgeister or Schwdrmer.
2 His eucharistic tracts in crude and unreadable German are printed in Walch, XX. 138-158, 378-409, 2852-2929. Comp., also, vol. XV. 2414— 2502. Carlstadt’s earlier eucharistic writings of 1521 strongly defend the corporal presence, and even the adoration of bread and wine, because they were the body and blood of Christ. Planck, l.c., II. 210 sqq., gives a full exposition of his earlier and later views. See, also, M. Gdbel on Carlstadt’s Abendmahlslehre in the ‘‘ Studien und Kritiken,’’ 1842.
8 Letter to Briesmann, Jan. 11, 1525, De Wette, II. 612.
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620 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
time on, he lowered his estimate of the value of reason in theology, although he used it very freely and effectually in this very book.}
δ 106. Luther and Zwingli.
But now two more formidable opponents appeared on the field, who, by independent study, had arrived at a far more sensible interpretation of the words of institution than that of Carlstadt, and supported it with strong exegetical and rational arguments. Zwingli, the Luther of Switzerland, and Cicolampadius, its Melanchthon, gave the controversy a new and more serious turn.
Zwingli received the first suggestion of a figurative interpretation (est = significat) from Erasmus and Wessel through Honius; as Luther derived his first idea of a corporal presence in the unchanged elements from Pierre d’Ailly.2— He communicated his view, in a confidential Latin letter, Nov. 16, 1524, to the Lutheran preacher, Matthaeus Alber in Reutlingen, an opponent of Carlstadt, and based it on Christ’s word, John 6: 68, as excluding a carnal or material manducation of his body and blood.’
1 Kostlin (M. Z., I. 726): Luther’s Widerwille gegen die menschliche Vernunft im Gebiete des Religidsen und Gottlichen wurde, seit er hier [in Carlstadt’s writings] sie auftreten sah, noch stadrker und heftiger als friiher. Friher stellte er hin und wieder noch unbefangen die Berufung auf Schriftbeweise und auf helle, evidente, verniinftige Griinde nebeneinander, indem er durch die einen oder anderen widerlegt zu werden begehrte: so ja auch noch beim Wormser Reichstag ; solchen Ausdriicken werden wir fortan nicht leicht mehr begegnen.’? On Luther’s views of the relation of reason to faith, see above, § 9, p. 29 sqq.
2 The assertion of some biographers of Zwingli, that he already at Glarus became acquainted with the writings of Ratramnus and Wiclif, is without proof. He first intimates his view in a letter to his teacher Wyttenbach, June 15, 1523, but as a secret. (Opera, VII., I. 297.) He published the letter of Honius, which explains the est to be equivalent to significat, at Ziirich in March, 1525, but had received it in 1521 from two learned visitors, Rhodius and Sagarus. See Gieseler, III. 1, 192 sq., note 27 (Germ. ed.); and especially Ullmann, l.c., 11. 569 sq.
8 Opera, III. 589. Walch gives a German translation, XVII. 1881. Planck (II. 261 sqq.) quotes all the important points of this letter.