21. Establishment of Consistories and the Marriage of Philip of Hesse

The most important part in Church organization yet in store for Luther was the establishment of coneistories. These were especially needed for the regulation of marriage. Luther, pro ceding on his theory of the relation of the secular to the Mosaic law, and regarding marriage as a secular, though holy estate, relegated it to the State; and held that the clergy were con cerned with it in so far as, from its very nature, it led to questions of con science more than any other secular state (see Marriage, I., 16, II. 2, § 5). The first consistory was established at Wittenberg in 1539 with Luther's approval. The chief importance of the consiatory for the organization and life of the Church, however, came from the fact that the duty entrusted to it was discipline. This, it was thought, would lead to the introduction of the public ban, with its civic consequences, but when opposition was raised in Wittenberg in 1539 on the matter, Luther set forth very clearly the ban he would be willing to establish-one based on Matt. aviii. 15 sqq. There is no record, however, that such a plan, so eminently in accord with the Evangelical concept of the Church, was anywhere carried out; nor had Luther himself much hope of the consis tories' actual disciplinary powers. The end of Lu ther's life was now approaching, and he had already received warning in a sharp attack of calculus at Schmalkald in 1537. Beneath his external bra very, he felt himself aging, and while full of grati tude for the grace of the Gospel, he felt the world an alien to it in precept and practise, and looked forward to a time of distress and judgment for the Church. He was pained most of all by the attitude of the masses and of the nobility toward the Gospel, illustrated by the marital relations of Philip of Hesse. The latter, though married, was enamored of a girl of the nobility, and asserted that he was compelled by most urgent reasons of conscience to search for another wife. He conceived the idea of a double marriage, and as early as 1526 asked Luther's opinion on it, renewing his inquiries moat urgently through Butzer after 1539. Though Luther held that monogamy was the original institution of God, he nevertheless granted the possibility of cases in which a dispensation was admissible, even among Christians, especially as such a double marriage was preferable to an illegal divorce. This dispensation, however, could be given only as confessional advice, and could not alter the law, which recognized only a single wife; and it must, therefore, remain absolutely secret to avoid scandal. While sharply admonishing Philip of his sins and his duty, Luther and Melanchthon granted that his was a case for a dispensation, and~the wedding took place on Mar. 3, 1540. Luther insisted that the affair be kept secret, and that the new wife be represented to the emperor as a mistress, knowing that he could not justify his attitude to the world, though he thought he might to God.

The impossibility of peaceable relations with the Roman Catholic Church was felt still more keenly by Luther in these last years when new attempts at reconciliation were made. He was obliged to deliberate with his colleagues in Jan., 1540, with only the passing hope that the em zz. Re- peror might convene a national coun newed cil, for there was no remedy unless Eucharistic doctrines contrary to Scripture should Contro- first be openly renounced. He so- versies. cordingly felt little sympathy with the Regensburg Conference in 1541 (q.v.), headed by Melanehthon and Cruciger, condemning their attitude toward both the Eucharist and the doctrine of justification. When, however, the em peror sought to reopen negotiations in 1545, Luther subscribed to Melanchthon's proposal to reunite with the episcopate, but his diatribes against the Roman Catholic Church were even more bitter than ever, as is amply illustrated by his Wider das PapsG tum zu Rom, which appeared in the year before his death. He gave a very real ground of offense, moreover, to his opponents, when in 1542, despite the protests of the chapter, he made Nikolaus von Amsdorf bishop of Nuremberg, an act which he defended in his Exempel einen rechten christlichen Bischof zu weihen, wherein he sought to establish from the Evangelical point of view the validity of the consecration which he had performed. With the growth of dissension between the two Saxon houses after 1542 came a break in the unity of the Evangelicals. Luther had never ceased warning against the doctrines of Zwingli, and he now found his suspicions increased by the fact that Zurich refused to give up these tenets. He formally re nounced fellowship with the preachers of Zurich, but deemed that the heresy had entered Germany through the Cologne scheme of reformation drawn up' by Butzer and Melanchthon, who made reception of the Eucharist simply a heavenly work and a matter of faith. Aroused to fresh elucidations,

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finally, by Schwenekfeld (q.v.), he published, toward the end of 1544, his Kurze Bekenntnis des Sacraments, containing no new doctrinal development, but savage criticisms of those who disagreed with him, renewed in the following year in his attacks on the theologians of Louvain, where he declared "the Zwinglians and all blasphemers of the Sacrament" to be heretics and cut off from the Christian Church. He had likewise protested against the Eucharistic doctrine of the Bohemian Brethren in 1541, being auspicious of their views, but in the following year he received Augusta in friendly fashion in Wittenberg and gave him the hand of fellowship for his coreligionista. A still more striking proof of his recognition of unity of spirit despite difference of opinion is seen in his attitude toward Melanchthon, against whose synergistic passages in the later editions of his Loci Luther could never be persuaded to polemize. As early as 1537 Melanchthon was charged with Zwinglian views on the Eucharist, but Luther, though finding much suspicious in his writings, nevertheless desired "to share his heart with him." He also gave high tribute to the Loci and the entire theological activity of his colleague in the preface to the first volume of his Latin works (1545); but Melanchthon is said to have foretold in his illness (1537) that after his death there would be no peace among the theologians associated with himself.

More and more pronounced became Luther's conviction that bitter trials were to come on Germany,

whether from the Turks or from inz3. The ternecine strife. While the whole

Death of world seemed to him to be in the state Luther. it had been in before the flood or the

Babylonian exile or the destruction of Jerusalem, he was especially shocked by the immorality in Wittenberg, so that he threatened in 1545 that he would never revisit it. But he felt his death approaching. In 1544 he declined to prepare a church discipline on the plea of old age and exhaustion, and when, in 1545, he completed his lectures on Genesis, he expressed his longing to die. On Jan. 23, 1546, he went from Wittenberg to Eisleben to settle a mining dispute between the counts of Mansfeld, and was successful. But amid his preoccupations his health had been neglected; a fontanel which he had long had in his thigh had cicatrized; and he had caught a severe cold on his journey. On the evening of Feb. 17 he felt a heavy pressure on his chest, and on the following morning he died, still declaring his adherence to the faith he had preached. His corpse was solemnly buried in the castle church at Wittenberg, where it was rediscovered on the morning of Sunday, Feb. 14, 1892, by two men who had taken part in the restoration of the church ordered by William L, thus disposing of the story that during the Schmalkald War the corpse had been exhumed and buried in a neighboring field.

Surveying the entire course of Luther's life and activity, and especially the development of his theories and teachings, their important and positive content is seen clearly formulated when he entered upon his struggle in 151?; while their logical results, particularly as opposed to the Roman Catho-

RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Luther, martin

lie Church and the papal claims, were fully evolved at the time of his return from the Wartburg. The Peasants' War, often termed the great s¢. Sum- incentive to his subsequent career, was mare of really important only as accentuating Luther's his boldness in the practical task of Doctrinal reformation. After that, modifications Develop- in his doctrine entered only in so far meat. as he emphasized one or another factor, as circumstances required. His basal principle was ever "justification by faith in Christ," as set forth especially by Paul and experienced by himself. Curious as it may seem, however, he never understood the Pauline doctrine of justification as a declaration or assumption of righteousness in man; but he took it rather as an inward process, in the believer, of becoming justified. The first step is the forgiveness of sins by grace alone, after which justification and the imputation of righteousness proceed from the Spirit which is given to those thus forgiven. It is clear, moreover, from his controversy with Agricola, that from the first Luther held that the rousing of conscience by the mandatory and punitive word of God was a necessary preliminary to belief. A further characteristic of his views on the divine influence on faith and the divine part in those who were justified through faith was the realism with which he asserted the actual and full presence of God in the Holy Ghost. In regard to God, he held that be could never be known from human speculation or from a merely natural revelation, but that man may rise to him from his perfect self-manifestation in Christ, even while refraining, in trusting faith, from penetrating into what is here concealed. In his concept of the historic Christ, it is noteworthy that he insisted on the moat intimate identification of the divine and human, instead of contenting himself with a mere coexistence of the two natures.

Luther's doctrine of the Church, or congregation, of Christ and the means of grace conferred by it, was of the highest importance in his activity as a reformer. This was, in his opinion,

sg. Theory the congregation of the faithful, who of the become sanctified by the means of Church grace and must exercise them conand the tinually in the name of God. As reWorld. garda the moral statue of the Christian in this world, proceeding from faith and the Holy Ghost, Luther held that he already shared in heavenly blessings and was exalted above the world, serving God and himself in the temporal ordinances and estates ordered of God, and partaking thankfully of the earthly blessings vouchsafed him. While he took a warm interest in the problems of secular, civil, and social life, he was a reformer here only in so far as he urged that they be considered according to the importance God had given them and with the proper attitude of mind. If, finally, the inquiry be made whence Luther gained the entire basis of his belief and doctrine, the answer moat be that he ever defended the supreme authority of the Bible against the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. This faith is also based on the inner witness which the spirit of God bears to the believer in the right use of the

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Scriptures, not merely as regards its authority, but also its content, so that he considered himself permitted to distinguish the higher character and value of individual books included in the Bible, and to make a further distinction between statements referring to divine revelation and those alluding to secular affairs.