§ 110. ETHICS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 6067
of Germany, who says in a confidential letter to his lifelong friend, Bishop Martensen of Denmark, —
“1 am more and more convinced that the deepest defect of Lutheran churchism heretofore has been a lack of the full appreciation of the ethical element of Christianity. This becomes manifest so often in the manner of the Lutheran champions. There is lacking the tenderness of conscience and thorough moral culture which deals conscientiously with the opponent. Justification by faith is made to cover, in advance, all sins, even the future ones ; and this is only another form of indulgence. The Lutheran doctrine leads, if we look at the principle, to an establishment of ethics on the deepest foundation. But many treat justification, not only as the beginning, but also as the goal. Hence we see not seldom the justified and the old man side by side, and the old man is not a bit changed. Lutherans who show in their literary and social conduct the stamp of the old Adam would deal more strictly with themselves, and fear to fall from grace by such conduct, if they had a keener conscience, and could see the necessary requirements of the principle of justification; for then they would shrink from such conduct as a sin against conscience. But the doctrine of justification is often misused for lulling the conscience to sleep, instead of quickening it.’”’ 1
Zwingli’s conduct towards Luther, judged from the ethical point of view, is much more gentlemanly and Christian, though by no means perfect. He, too, misunderstood and misrepresented Luther when he charged him with teaching a local presence and a carnal eating of Christ’s body. He, too, ἡ knew how to be severe, and to use the rapier and the knife against the club and sledge-hammer of the Wittenberg Reformer. But he never forgot, even in the heat of controversy, the great services of Luther, and more than once paid him the tribute of sincere admiration.
1“ Die Rechtfertigungslehre wird vielfach zur Einschlaferung statt zur Scharfung des Gewissens missbraucht.’? See Dorner’s letter of May 14, 1871, in the Briefwechsel just quoted, vol. II. 114. Dorner and Martensen, both masters in Christian dogmatics and ethics, kept up a most instructive and interesting correspondence of friendship for more than forty years, on all theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day, even during the grave disturbances between Germany and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein controversy, which broke out at last in open war (1864). That correspondence is as remarkable in theology as the Schiller and Goethe correspondence is in poetry and art.
668 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
‘‘For a thousand years,” says Zwingli, “‘no mightier investigator of the Holy Scriptures has appeared than Luther. No one has equaled him in manly and immovable courage with which he attacked popery. But whose work is it? God’s, or Luther’s? Ask Luther himself, and he will say God’s. He traces his doctrine to God and his eternal Word. As faras I have read his writings (although I have often purposely abstained from doing so), I find them well founded in the Scriptures: his only weak point is, that he yields too much to the Romanists in the matter of the sacraments, and the confession to the priest, and in tolerating the images in the churches. If he is sharp and racy in speech, it comes from a pious, honest heart, and a flaming Jove for the truth. . . . Others have come to know the true religion, but no _ one has ventured to attack the Goliath with his formidable armor; but Luther alone, as a true David, anointed by God, hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so skillfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Therefore let us never cease to sing with joy: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’ (1 Sam. 18: 7). He was the Hercules who slew the Roman boar. . . . I have always been grateful to my teachers, how much more to that excellent man-whom I can never expect to equal in honor and merit ! With no men on earth would I rather be agreed than with the Wittenbergers. ... Many have found the true religion before Luther became famous; I have learnt the gospel from the same fountain of the Scriptures, and began to preach it in 1516 (at Einsiedeln), when I diligently studied and copied with mine own hand the Greek epistles of Paul,! before I heard the name of Luther. He preaches Christ, so do I, thanks to God. And I will be called by no other name than that of my Captain Christ, whose soldiers we are.’? 2
I may add here the impartial testimony of Dr. Késtlin, the best biographer of Luther, and himself a Lutheran : —
“‘Zwingli knew how to keep himself under control. Even where he is indignant, and intentionally sharp and pointed, he avoids the tone of passionate excitement, and uses the calm and urbane language of a gentleman of humanistic culture, and thereby proves his superiority over his opponent, without justifying the suspicion of Luther that he was uncertain in his own mind, and that the attitude he assumed was only a feint. His polemics forms thus the complete opposite to Luther’s book, ‘That the words of Christ,’ etc. Yet it presents also another aspect. Zwingli characterizes, with select words of disregard, the writers and contents of the Syngramma, to which
1 The neat manuscript is still preserved in the library of the Wasserkirche at Ziirich, where I examined it in August, 1886.
2 I have given the substance of several passages scattered through his polemical writings, and collected in the useful edition of Zwingli’s Sdmmtliche Schriften by Usteri and Vogelin, vol. 11., Part IL., p. 571 sqq.