RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Luther, Martin
been abolished, communicants were now required to declare their intention, and to seek consolation, under acknowledgment of their faith and longing for grace, in Christian confession. This new form, of service was set forth by Luther in his Formula missoe et communionis (1523), and in 1524 the first Wittenberg hymnal appeared with four of his own hymns. Since, however, his writings were forbidden by Duke George of Saxony, Luther declared, in his Ueber die weltliche Gewalt, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei, that the civil authority could enact no laws for the soul, herein denying to a Roman Catholic government what he permitted an Evangelical.
Luther watchfully followed the effect of his preaching, commending the town of Leisnig when it introduced a new agenda in 1523, honoring the memory of two martyrs in Brussels (1523) and of Henry of Zutphen (1524, see Moller), and counseling those of like views in Riga, Reval, Dorpat, and elsewhere. At this same period 12. Corre- he entered into correspondence with spondence the Bohemian Brethren, and in this with Other connection he wrote the Vom Anbeten Sectaries, des Sakraments (1523), in which he and Break maintained the natural presence and with actual physical participation. In 1522 Erasmus. Luther wrote the Bohemian Estates to continue firm against the pope, and in the following year he sent, through the Bohemian Gallus Cahera, his De instituendis ministris to Prague, /defending the right of a congregation to provide themselves with new ministers of the Word if their clergy withheld the Gospel from them, his argument being based upon the theory of the universal priesthood^/ Soon, however, the Bohemians, headed by Canera himself, sought reconciliation with the pope, and Luther is not known to have had further dealings with them. At the same time he answered the criticisms of Henry VIII. of England on his De captiiritate Babylonica in his Contra Henricum regem, a work of characteristic coarseness, for which he apologized in 1525 humbly, but in vain. The most important event in Luther's war with the Roman Catholic Church at this period was his break with*- Erasmus, who was followed by a large body of humanists in his return to the Church. Erasmus had long been offended by Luther's harshness and coarseness, while the latter charged his former friend with timidity and lack of recognition of the grace of God, which alone brought salvation. In 1524 Erasmus published his De libero arbitrio, to which Luther replied in 1525 with his De servo arbitrio. (Sere he identified foreknowledge and predestination, and distinguished between God as preached and God himself. Though the lost perish through the unconditioned will of God, this is right because God wills it, the reason, into which man may not inquire, being one of the mysteries of the divine majesty. Free will can, accordingly, be predicated only of God, never of man, whose duty it is simply to trust to the Word, accepting the inconceivable as such until the Son of Man shall reveal itA
fit now became Luther's task to war online spirit of false freedom which had arisen within his own
followers. Carlstadt denied the presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist, while, on the basis of the Old Testament, he forbade pictures, but permitted polygamy. Others, likewise
13. Polem- claiming the Old Testament as their ics against support, sought to secure the restora-
Carlstadt tion of the Mosaic year of jubilee; and while Munster, the leader of the Zwick- MUnster. au fanatics, who had become pastor at Allstedt in 1523, plotted a revolution to establish a kingdom of his " saintsj' Luther attacked the entire tendency in his Wider die himmlischen Propheten (1525), in which he declared that the Mosaic law had been abrogated by Christ, who was the end of the law, the only law of the Christian being that written in the heart of every man. Nevertheless, the revolution, really caused by the political, economic, and social conditions of the peasants, was still threatening, especially as they hoped to find in the new religious movement a confirmation of the rights and freedom which they claimed. Luther therefore sought to show them that Christian freedom might coexist with earthly bondage, and that they must not attack their temporal superiors. On the other hand, he sharply criticized the princes and nobles; but when the Peasants' War actually broke out, he urged its merciless suppression, though he advocated clemency after the victory had been won (cf. his Ermahnung zum Frieden; Wider die morderischen Rotten; Sendbrief von dem harten Biichlein; etc.). During this time of conflict, Luther, learning of attempts on his life and already feeling himself old and near death, married the ex-nun Katharina von Bora (q.v.) on June 13, 1525. His motive was not love; but defiance of his opponents, and at the same time to testify his esteem of the married state and, to obey his father's desire for posterity.
ILuther marked a further step in his revision of
the liturgy by his Deutsche Messe in 1526, making
provision for week-day services and for catechetical
instruction^ He strongly objected, however, to
making a new law of the forms, and
14. Trans- urged the retention of other good litformations urgies. The gradual transformation in Liturgy of the administration of baptism was
and Church accomplished in the Taufbilchlein Govern- (1523,. 1527); and in May, 1525, the ment first 'Evangelical ordination'took place at Wittenberg. Luther had long since rejected the Roman Catholic sacrament of ordination, and had 'replaced it by a simple calling to the service of preaching and the administration of the sacraments. The laying-on of hands with prayer in a solemn congregational service was considered a fitting human rite. Conditions now seemed to Luther to require the introduction of a higher official authority!* As early as 1525 he had complained of the state of affairs, andf he held that the secular authorities should take part in the administration of the Church, as in making appointments to ecclesiastical office and in directing visitations. Nevertheless, the discharge of these functions did not appertain to the secular authorities as such/ and Luther would gladly have vested them in an Evangelical episcopate, had he known of any persons
Luther, Martin