§ 110. ETHICS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 665
as Luther; and the Reformed churches to this day are as pure, faithful, devoted, and active in Christian works as any, and less affected by rationalism than the Lutheran, in part for the very reason that they allow reason its legitimate influence in dogmatic questions. If Zwingli believed in the salvation of the pious heathen and unbaptized infants, it was not because he doubted the absolute necessity of the saving grace of Christ, which he very strongly asserted, but simply ᾿ because he extended this grace beyond the boundaries of the visible church, and the ordinary means of grace; and on this point, as on others, he anticipated modern ideas. He was inferior to Luther in genius, and depth of mind and heart, but his superior in tolerance, liberality, and courtesy ; and in these qualities also he was in advance of his age, and has the sympathies of the best modern culture.
Making every allowance for Luther’s profound religious conviction, and for the misunderstanding of his opponent, nothing can justify the spirit and style of Luther’s polemics, especially his last book against the sacramentarians. He drew his inspiration for it from the imprecatory Psalms, not from the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke the truth in hatred and wrath, not in love.
This betrays an organic defect in his reformation ; namely, the over-estimate of dogmatics over ethics, and a want of discipline and self-government. In the same year in which he wrote his fiercest book against the Sacramentarians, he seriously contemplated leaving Wittenberg as a veritable Sodom: so bad was the state of morals, according to his own testimony, in the very centre of his influence.’ It required a second reformation, and such men as Arnd, Andree, Spener, and Franke, to supplement the one-sided Lutheran orthodoxy
1 In July, 1545 (De Wette, V. 732 sq.), he wrote to his wife from Leipzig that he did not wish to return, and that she should sell house and home, and move ‘*‘ from this Sodoma”’ to Zulsdorf. He would rather beg his bread than torture his last days by the sight of the disorderly condition of Wittenberg.
00 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
by practical piety. Calvin, on the other hand, left at his death the church of Geneva in such a flourishing condition that John Knox pronounced it the best school of Christ since the days of the Apostles, and that sixty years later John Valentin Andrew, one of the noblest and purest Lutheran divines of the seventeenth century, from personal observation held it up to the Lutheran Church as a model for imitation.
Luther’s polemics had a bad effect on the Lutheran Church. He set in motion that theological fury which raged for several generations after his death, and persecuted some of the best men in it, from Melanchthon down to Spener. His blind followers, in their controversies among themselves and with the Reformed, imitated his faults, without his genius and originality; and in their zeal for what they regarded the pure doctrine, they forgot the common duties of courtesy and kindness which we owe even to an enemy.!
We may quote here a well-considered judgment of Dr. Dorner, one of the ablest and profoundest evangelical divines
1 These champions of Lutheran orthodoxy were not simply Lutherisch, but verluthert, durchluthert, and iberluthert. They fulfilled the prediction of the Reformer: “ Adorabunt stercora mea.”? Their mottoes were, —
* Gottes Wort und Luther’s Lehr Vergehet nun und nimmermehr ;”? and “ Gottes Wort und Luther's Schrift Sind des Papst’s und Calvini ΟἹ. They believed that Luther’s example gave them license to exhaust the vocabulary of abuse, and to violate every rule of courtesy and good taste. They called the Reformed Christians ‘‘ dogs,’’ and Calvin’s God “‘ a roaring bull (Brillochse), a blood-thirsty Moloch, and a hellish Behemoth.’”’ They charged them with teaching and worshiping the very Devil (den leibhaftigen Teufel), instead of the living God. One of them proved that ‘‘ the damned Calvinistic heretics hold six hundred and sixty-six tenets [the apocalyptic number!] in common with the Turks.’’ Another wrote a book to show that Zwinglians and Calvinists are no Christians at all, but baptized Jews and Mohammedans. O sancta simplicitas! On the intolerance of those champions of Lutheran orthodoxy, see the historical works of Arnold, Planck, Tholuck (Der Geist der lutherischen Theologen Wittenbergs im 17ten Jahrh., 1852, p. 279 sqq.), and the fifth volume of Janssen.