V. THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY (1527-1560). [536]
Protestantism in its joyful enthusiasm for the freedom and all-sufficiency of the gospel was strongly tempted to antinomianism, but restrained by its moral force and the holy character of the gospel itself. [537] Luther, in opposition to Romish legalism, put the gospel and the law as wide apart as 'heaven and earth,' and said,' Moses is dead.' [538] Nevertheless he embodied in his Catechism an excellent exposition of the Decalogue before the Creed; and Melanchthon, as we have already seen, laid more and more stress on the moral element and good works in opposition to the abuses of solifidianism and carnal security.
The antinomian controversy has two stages. The first touches the office of the law under the gospel dispensation, and its relation to repentance; the second the necessity of good works, which was the point of dispute between Major and Amsdorf, and has already been discussed.
John Agricola, of Eisleben, misunderstood Luther, as Marcion, the antinomian Gnostic, misunderstood St. Paul. [539] He first uttered antinomian principles in 1527, in opposition to Melanchthon, who in his Articles of Visitation urged the preaching of the law unto repentance. [540] He was appeased in a conference with the Reformers at Torgau (December, 1527). But when Professor at Wittenberg, he renewed the controversy in 1537, in some arrogant theses, and was defeated by Luther in six public disputations (1538 and 1540). He made a severe attack on Luther, which involved him in a lawsuit, but he removed to Berlin, and sent from there a recantation, Dec. 6, 1540. Long afterwards (1562) he reasserted his views in a published sermon on Luke vii. 37. He was neither clear nor consistent.
Agricola taught with some truth that genuine repentance and remission of sin could only be secured under the gospel by the contemplation of Christ's love. In this Luther (and afterwards Calvin) agreed with him. But he went much further. The law in his opinion was superseded by the gospel, and has nothing to do with repentance and conversion. It works only wrath and death; it leads to unbelief and despair, not to the gospel. He thought the gospel was all-sufficient both for the office of terror and the office of comfort. Luther, on the contrary, maintained, in his disputations, that true repentance consists of two things--knowledge and sorrow of sin, and resolution to lead a better life. The first is produced by the law, the second by the gospel. The law alone would lead to despair and hatred of God; hence the gospel is added to appease and encourage the terrified conscience. The law can not justify, but must nevertheless be taught, that by it the impious may be led to a knowledge of their sin and be humbled, and that the pious may be admonished to crucify their flesh with its sinful lusts, and to guard against security.
The 'Form of Concord' teaches a threefold use of the law: (a) A political or civil use in maintaining outward discipline and order; (b) An elenchtic or pedagogic use in leading men to a knowledge of sin and the need of redemption; (c) A didactic or normative use in regulating the life of the regenerate. The Old and New Testaments are not exclusively related as law and gospel, but the Old contains gospel, and the New is law and gospel complete.
VI. THE CRYPTO-CALVINISTIC OR EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY (1549-1574). [541]
The eucharistic controversy between Luther and Zwingli, although it alienated the German and Swiss branches of the Reformation, did not destroy all intercourse, nor discourage new attempts at reconciliation. Calvin's theory, which took a middle course, retaining, on the basis of Zwingli's exegesis, the religious substance of Luther's faith, and giving it a more intellectual and spiritual form, triumphed in Switzerland, gained much favor in Germany, and opened a fair prospect for union. But the controversy of Westphal against Calvin, and the subsequent overthrow of Melanchthonianism, completed and consolidated the separation of the two Confessions.
Melanchthon's later view of the Lord's Supper, which essentially agreed with that of Calvin, was for a number of years entertained by the majority of Lutheran divines even at Wittenberg and Leipzig, and at the court of the Elector of Saxony. It was also in various ways officially recognized with the Augsburg Confession of 1540, which was long regarded as an improved rather than an altered edition.
But the Princes and the people held fast to the heroic name of Luther against any rival authority, and when the alternative was presented to choose between him and Melanchthon or Calvin, the issue could not be doubtful. Besides, the old traditional view of the mysterious power and magical efficacy of the sacraments had a firm hold upon the minds and hearts of German Christians, as it has to this day.
Joachim Westphal, a rigid Lutheran minister at Hamburg, renewed, in 1552, the sacramental war in several tracts against the 'Zurich Consensus' (issued 1549), and against Calvin and Peter Martyr; aiming indirectly against the Philippists, and treating all as sacramentarians and heretics who denied the corporeal presence, the oral manducation, and the literal eating of Christ's body even by unbelievers. He made no distinction between Calvin and Zwingli, spoke of their godless perversion of the Scriptures, and even their satanic blasphemies. About the same time John à Lasco, a Polish nobleman and minister of a foreign Reformed congregation in London, and one hundred and seventy-five Protestants, who were driven from England under the bloody Mary (1553), sought and were refused in cold winter a temporary refuge in Denmark, Rostock, Lübeck, and Hamburg (though they found it at last in East Friesland). Westphal denounced them as martyrs of the devil, enraged the people against them, and gloried in this cruelty as an act of faith. [542]
This intolerance roused the Swiss, who had kept silence for some time, to a defense of their doctrine. Calvin took up his sharp and racy pen, indignantly rebuking 'the no less rude and barbarous than sacrilegious insults' to persecuted members of Christ, and triumphantly vindicating, against misrepresentations and objections, his doctrine of the spiritual real presence of Christ, and the sealing communication of the life-giving virtue of his body in heaven to the believer through the power of the Holy Ghost. [543] He claimed to agree with the Augsburg Confession as understood and explained by its author, and appealed to him. Melanchthon, for reasons of prudence and timidity, declined to take an active part in the strife 'on bread-worship,' but never concealed his essential agreement with him. [544] His enemies re-published his former views. His followers were now stigmatized as 'Crypto-Calvinists.'
The controversy gradually spread over all Germany, and was conducted with an incredible amount of bigotry and superstition.
In Bremen, John Timann fought for the real presence, and insisted upon the ubiquity of Christ's body as a settled dogma (1555), while Albert Hardenberg opposed it, and was banished (1560); but a reaction took place afterwards in favor of the Reformed Confession.
In Heidelberg, Tilemann Heshusius, [545] General Superintendent since 1558, attacked the Melanchthonian Klebitz openly at the altar by trying to wrest from him the cup. The Elector Frederick III. dismissed both (1559), ordered the preparation of the Heidelberg Catechism, and introduced the Reformed Confession in the Palatinate (1563).
In Würtemberg the ubiquity doctrine triumphed (at a synod in Stuttgart, 1559), chiefly through the influence of Brentius, who had formerly agreed with Melanchthon, but now feared that 'the devil intended through Calvinism to smuggle heathenism, Talmudism, and Mohammedanism into the Church.' [546] A colloquy at Maulbronn (1564) between the Würtemberg and the Palatinate divines on ubiquity led to no result.
Ducal Saxony, under the lead of the Flacianist Professors of Jena, was violently arrayed against Electoral Saxony with the Crypto-Calvinist faculty at Wittenberg. The Elector Augustus, strongly prejudiced against Flacianism, deceived by the Consensus Dresdensis (1571), and controlled by his physician, Caspar Peucer, the active and influential lay-leader of the Crypto-Calvinists, unwittingly maintained for some time Calvinism under the disguise of sound Lutheranism. When he became Regent of the Thuringian Principalities (1573), he banished Heshusius and Wigand from Jena, and all the Flacianists of that district.
Thus Philippism triumphed in all Saxony, but it was only for a short season.
Elector Augustus was an enthusiastic admirer of Luther, and would not tolerate a drop of Calvinistic blood in his veins. When he found out the deceptive policy of the Crypto-Calvinists, he suppressed them by force, 1574. [547] The leaders were deposed, imprisoned, and exiled, among them four theological Professors at Wittenberg. [548] Peucer was confined in prison for twelve years, while his children were wandering about in misery. [549] Thanks were offered in all the churches of Saxony for the triumph of genuine Lutheranism. A memorial coin exhibits the Elector with the sword in one hand, and a balance in the other: one scale bearing the child Jesus; the other, high up, the four Wittenberg Philippists with the devil, and the title 'reason.'
After the death of Augustus (1586), Calvinism again raised its head under Christian I. and the lead of Chancellor Nicolas Crell, but after another change of ruler (1591) it was finally overthrown: the protesting Professors in Wittenberg and Leipzig were deposed and exiled; the leading ministers at Dresden (Salmuth and Pierius) were imprisoned; Crell, who had offended the nobility, after suffering for ten years in prison, was, without an investigation, beheaded as a traitor to his country (Oct. 9, 1601), solemnly protesting his innocence, but forgiving his enemies. [550] Since that time the name of a Calvinist became more hateful in Saxony than that of a Jew or a Mohammedan.
It is characteristic of the spirit of the age and the doctrine of consubstantiation that they gave rise to all sorts of idle, curious, and unwittingly irreverent speculations about the possible effect of the consecrated elements upon things for which they never were intended. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages, in the interest of transubstantiation, seriously disputed the question whether the eating of the eucharistic bread would kill or sanctify a mouse, or (as the wisest thought) have no effect at all, since the mouse did not receive it sacramentaliter, but only accidentaliter. Orthodox Lutherans of the sixteenth century went even further. Brentius decidedly favored the opinion that the consecrated bread, if eaten by a mouse, was fully as much the body of Christ as Christ was the Son of God in the mother's womb and on the back of an ass. The sacrament, he admitted, was not intended for animals, but neither was it intended for unbelievers, who nevertheless received the very body and blood of Christ. An eccentric minister in Rostock required the communicants to be shaved to prevent profanation. Licking the blood of Christ from the beard was supposed to be punished with instant death or a monstrous growth of the beard. Sarcerius caused the earth on which a drop of Christ's blood fell, instantly to be dug up and burned. At Hildesheim it was customary to cut off the beard or the piece of a garment which was profaned by a drop of wine; and the Superintendent, Kongius, was expelled from the city, simply because he had taken up from the earth a wafer and given it to a communicant, without first kneeling before it, kissing, and reconsecrating it, as his colleagues thought he should have done. The Lutherans in Ansbach disputed about the question whether the body of Christ were actually swallowed, like other food, and digested in the stomach. When the Rev. John Musculus, in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, inadvertently spilled a little wine at the communion, he was summoned before a Synod, and Elector John Joachim of Brandenburg declared that deposition, prison, and exile were too mild a punishment for such a crime, and that the offender, who had not spared the blood of Christ, must suffer bloody punishment, and have two or three fingers cut off. [551]
There was also a considerable dispute among Lutheran divines about the precise time and duration of the corporeal presence. John Saliger (Beatus) of Lübeck and his friend Fredeland (followers of Flacius, and of his doctrine on original sin) maintained that the bread becomes the body of Christ immediately after the consecration and before the use (ante usum), and called those who denied it sacramentarians; while they in turn were charged with the Romish error of transubstantiation. Deposed at Lübeck, Saliger renewed the controversy from the pulpit at Rostock (1568). Chytræus decided that this was a question of idle curiosity rather than piety, and that it was sufficient to attach the blessing of the sacrament to the transaction, without time-splitting distinctions (1569). The usual Lutheran doctrine confines the union of the bread with the body to the time of the use, and hence the term consubstantiation was rejected, if thereby be understood a durabilis inclusio, or permanent conjunction of the sacramental bread and body of Christ. [552]