Читать книгу Luther Examined and Reexamined - W. H. T. Dau - Страница 3

But the Catholic version of Luther's birth is needed by their writers as a corollary to another "fact" which they have discovered about Luther's father Hans. Hans Luther, so their story runs, was a fugitive from justice at the time of his Martin's birth. In a fit of anger he had assaulted or slain a man in his native village of Moehra, and abandoning his small landholdings, he fled with his wife, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Color is lent to this story by the discovery that the Luthers at Moehra were generally violent folk. Research in the official court-dockets at Salzungen, the seat of the judicial district to which Moehra belonged, shows that brawls were frequent in that village, and some Luthers were involved in them. Now follows the Catholic deduction, plausible, reasonable, appealing, just like the "assumption" of Mary: "Out of the gnarly wood of this relationship, consisting mostly of powerful, pugnacious farmers, assertive of their rights, Luther's father grew."

This story was started in Luther's lifetime. George Wicel, who had fallen away from the evangelical faith, accused Luther of having a homicide for a father. In 1565, he published the story under a false name at Paris, but gave no details. In Moehra nothing was known of the matter until the first quarter of the twentieth century. This circumstance alone is damaging to the whole story. Luther was during his lifetime exposed to scrutiny of his most private affairs as no other man. If Wicel's tale could have been authenticated, we may rest assured that would have been done at the time.

In the eighteenth century a mining official in Thuringia by the name of Michaelis told the story of Hans Luther's homicide with the necessary detail to make it appear real. Observe, this was 220 years after the alleged event. It had been this way: Hans Luther had quarreled with a person who was plowing his field, and had accidentally slain the man with the bridle, or halter, of his horse. Several Protestant writers now began to express belief in the story. Travelers came to Moehra for the express purpose of investigating the matter, e.g., Mr. Mayhew of the London Punch. Behold, the story had assumed definite shape through being kept alive a hundred years: the accommodating citizens of Moehra were now able to point out to the inquiring Englishman the very meadow where the homicide had taken place. It takes an Englishman on the average two years and four months to see the point of a joke. By this time, we doubt not, it will be possible to exhibit to any confiding dunce the very horse-bridle with which Hans Luther committed manslaughter, also the actual hole which he knocked into the head of his victim, beautifully surrounded by a border of blue and green, which are the colors which the bruise assumed six hours after the infliction. The border may not be genuine, but we dare any Catholic investigator to disprove the genuineness of the hole.

Writers belonging to a church that is rich in legends of the saints and in relics ought to know how a tale like Wicel's can assume respectability and credibility in the course of time. It is not any more difficult to account for these tales about Hans Luther's homicide than for the existence in our late day of the rope with which Judas hanged himself, or the tears which Peter wept in the night of the betrayal, or the splinters from the cross of the Lord, or the feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel, and sundry other marvels which are exhibited in Catholic churches for the veneration of the faithful.

No historian that has a reputation as a scholar to lose to-day credits the story of Hans Luther's homicide. It is improbable on its face. The small landholdings of Hans at Moehra are not real, but irreal estate. Nobody has found the title for them. There is, however, a very good reason why Hans should want to leave Moehra. He was, according to all that is known of his father's family, the oldest son. According to the old Thuringian law the home place and appurtenances of a peasant freeholder passed to the youngest son. McGiffert regards the custom as "admirably careful of those most needing care." (p. 4.) Luther's father, on coming of age, was by this law compelled to go and seek his fortune elsewhere, because opportunity for rising to independence there was none for him at Moehra.

If Hans was a fugitive from justice, he was certainly unwise in not fleeing far enough. For at Eisenach, whither he went, he was still under the same Saxon jurisdiction as at Moehra. He seems to have had no fear of abiding under the sovereignty which he is claimed to have offended. This observation has led one of the most exact and painstaking of modern biographers of Luther, Koestlin, to say that the homicide story, if it rests on any basis of fact, must either refer to a different Luther, or if to Hans, the incident cannot have been a homicide. It should be remembered that there is no authentic record which in any way incriminates Hans Luther.

Lastly, this homicide Hans Luther, eight years after coming to Mansfeld, is elected by his fellow-townsmen one of the "Vierherren," or aldermen, of the town. Only most trusted and well-reputed persons were given such an office. A homicide would not have been allowed to settle at Mansfeld, much less to govern the town. Any rogue in the town that he had to discipline in his time of office would have thrown his bloody record up to him.

A Catholic writer says: "The wild passion of anger was an unextinguished and unmodified heritage transmitted congenitally to the whole Luther family, and this to such an extent that the Lutherzorn (Luther rage) has attained the currency of a German colloquialism." Mr. Mayhew thinks that "Martin was a veritable chip of the hard old block," the "high-mettled foal cast by a fiery blood-horse." Catholic writers cite Mr. Mayhew as a distinguished Protestant. If you have not heard of him before, look him up in Who is Who? most anywhere.

All this, however, is a desperate attempt to find proof against an assumed criminal by circumstantial evidence. No direct evidence has ever been available to implicate Luther's father in a village brawl. As to the Lutherzorn, Luther has in scores of places explained the real reason of it: Luther did not inherit, but Rome roused it. This Lutherzorn may arise in any person that is not remotely related to the Luthers after reading Catholic biographies of Martin Luther.

7. Luther's Great Mistake.

Catholic writers contend that Luther made a mistake when he became monk. Protestants share this view, but put the emphasis in the sentence: Luther became a monk, at a different place. In the Protestant view the mistake is this, that Luther became a monk, in the Catholic view, it is this, that Luther became a monk. Protestants regard monasticism largely as a perversion of the laws of nature and of Christian morals. In an institution of this kind Luther could not find the relief he sought. His mistake was that he sought it there. Catholics view monkery as the highest ideal of the Christian life, and blame Luther for entering this mode of life when he was altogether unfit for it. They regard Luther as guilty of sacrilege far seeking admission into the order of Augustinian friars. When he was permitted to turn monk, that which is holy was given unto a dog, and pearls were cast before a swine.

Catholics argue that Luther's cheerless boyhood, the poverty of his parents, the hard work and close economy that was the order in the home at Mansfeld, the harsh and cruel treatment which Luther received from parents that were given to "fits of uncontrollable rage" induced in Luther a morose, sullen spirit. He became brooding and stubborn when yet a child. He was a most unruly boy at school. His character was not improved when he was sent abroad for his education and had to sing for his bread or beg in the streets. His rebellious spirit found nourishment in these humiliations. Owing to his melancholy temperament and gloomy fits, he made no friends. He felt himself misunderstood everywhere. Even the little season of sunshine that came into his young life at the Cotta home in Eisenach did not cure him of the morbid feeling that nobody appreciated him. He began to loathe the studies which he was pursuing in accordance with the wish of his father. To certain occurrences, like the slaying of a fellow-student, an accident with which he met on a vacation trip, and a sudden thunderstorm, he gave an ominous interpretation which deepened his despondency. At last he determined, "inconsiderately and precipitately," to enter a cloister. His friends "instinctively felt he was not qualified or fitted for the sublime vocation to which he aspired, and they accordingly used all their powers to dissuade him from the course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, and from the gayety and frolic of the banquet" which he had given his fellow-students as a farewell party "he went to the monastery." He was so reckless that he took this step even without the consent of his parents. "He knew little about the ways of God, and was not well informed of the gravity and responsibilities of the step he was taking." "He was not called by God to conventual life; … he was driven by despair, rather than the love of higher perfection, into a religious career." Catholics feel so sure that they have a case against Luther that in all seriousness they ask Protestants the question: Did he act honestly when he knelt before the prior asking to be received into the order?

Luther has later in life given various reasons for entering the monastery. His case was not simple, but complex. One reason, however, which he has assigned is the severe bringing up which he had at his home. Hausrath is satisfied with this one reason, and many Catholic writers adopt his view. But this remark of Luther is evidently misapplied if it is made to mean that Luther sought ease, comfort, leniency in the cloister as a relief from the hard life which he had been leading. Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life. He willingly bowed to "the gentle yoke of Christ"—thus ran the monkish ritual—which the life of an eremite among eremites was to impose on him. His hard life in the days of his boyhood and youth had been an unconscious preparation for this life. He had been strictly trained to fear God and keep His commandments. The holy life of the saints had been held up to him as far back as he could remember as the marvel of Christian perfection. Home and Church had cooperated in deepening the impressions of the sanctity of the monkish life in him. When he saw the emaciated Duke of Anhalt in monk's garb with his beggar's wallet on his back tottering through the streets of Magdeburg, and everybody held his breath at this magnificent spectacle of advanced Christianity, and then broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the Carthusians at Eisenach, weary and wan with many a vigil, somber and taciturn, toiling up the rugged steps to a heaven beyond the common heaven; when he talked with the young priests at the towns where he studied, and all praised the life of a monk to this young seeker after perfect righteousness; when in cloister-ridden Erfurt he observed that the monks were outwardly, at least, treated with peculiar reverence, can any one wonder that in a mind longing for peace with God the resolve silently ripened into the act: I will be a monk?

We, too, would call this an act of despair. We would say with Luther: Despair makes monks. But the despair which we mean, and which Luther meant, is genuine spiritual despair. What Catholics call Luther's despair is really desperation, a reckless, dare-devil plunging of a criminal into a splendid Catholic sanctuary. That Luther's act decidedly was not. By Rome's own teaching Luther belonged in the cloister. That mode of life was originally designed to meet the needs of just such minds as his. His entering the monastery was the logical sequence of his previous Catholic tutelage. Rome has this monk on its conscience, and a good many more besides.

As piety went in those days, Luther had been raised a pious young man. He was morally clean. He was a consistent, yea, a scrupulous member of his Church, regular in his daily devotions, reverencing every ordinance of the Church. Also during his student years he kept himself unspotted from the moral contaminations of the academic life. He abhorred the students who were devoted to King Gambrinus and Knight Tannhaeuser. He loathed the taverns and brothels of Erfurt. The Cotta home was no Bierstube in his day. The banquet-hall where he met his friends the evening before he entered the cloister was no banquet-hall in the modern sense of the term. That he played the lute at this farewell party, and that there were some "honorable maidens" present, is nowadays related with a wink of the eye by Catholics. But there was nothing wrong in all the proceedings of that evening. It was indeed an honorable gathering. Luther was never a prudish man or fanatic. He loved the decent joys and pleasures of life. Luther gathered his friends about him to take a decent leave of them. He did not run away from them secretly, as many monks have done. He opened up his mind to them at this last meeting. The conversation that ensued was a test of the strength of the convictions he had formed. His was an introspective nature. He had wrestled daily with the sin that ever besets us. He knew that with all his conventional religiousness he could not pass muster before God. Over his wash-basin he was overheard moaning: "The more we wash, the more unclean we become." He felt like Paul when he groaned: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7, 24.) He was sorrowing for his poor soul. He was hungering and thirsting for righteousness. "When will I ever attain to that state of mind that I am sure God is pleased with me?" he mused distractedly. What he could not find while engaged in his secular pursuits, that, he was told, the cloister could give him. To obtain that he entered the monastery. If ever Rome had an honest applicant for monkery, Luther is that man.

Nor did he act precipitately. As shown, the thought of this act had been quietly forming in him for years. When he made his rash vow to St. Anna, he still allowed two weeks to pass before he put his resolution into action. Try and picture to yourself his state of mind during those fourteen days! Moving about in his customary surroundings, he was daily probing the correctness of his contemplated change of life. He fought a soul-battle in those days, and the remembrance of his father made that battle none the easier. From the Catholic standpoint Luther deserves an aureole for that struggle. After entering the cloister, he was still at liberty for a year and a half to retrace his fatal step. But his first impressions were favorable; monkery really seemed to bring him heart's ease and peace, and there was no one to disabuse his mind of the delusion. After nearly two years in the monastery, while sitting with his father at the cloister board on the event of his ordination to the priesthood, he declares to his father that he enjoys the quiet, contemplative life that he has chosen. Surely, he made a mistake by becoming monk, but Catholics cannot fault him for that mistake. If the life of monks and nuns is really what they claim that it is: the highest and most perfect form of Christianity, they should consistently give any person credit for making the effort to lead that life. In fact, they ought all to turn monks and nuns to honor their own principles.

8. Luther's Failure as a Monk.

Monasticism is a pagan shoot grafted on a Christian tree. At its base lies the heathenish notion that sin can be extirpated by severe onslaughts upon the body and the physical life. It has existed in Buddhism before some Christians adopted it. In the early days of Christianity it was proclaimed as superior wisdom by the Platonic philosophers. Like many a lie it has been decked out with Bible-texts to give it respectability, and to soothe disquieted consciences. The Scripture-sayings regarding fasting, sexual continence, chastity, crucifying the flesh, etc., are made to stand sponsor for this bastard offspring of the brain of Christian mystics.

With excellent discrimination Mosheim has traced the origin of monasticism to the early Christian fathers. The earliest impulses to monasticism are contained in such writings as the Epistle to Zenas, found among the writings of Justinus, the tracts of Clement of Alexandria on Calumny, Patience, Continence, and other virtues, the tracts of Tertullian on practical duties, such as Chastity, Flight from Persecution, Fasting, Theatrical Exhibitions, the Dress of Females, Prayer, etc. These writings "would be perused with greater profit, were it not for the gloomy and morose spirit which they everywhere breathe. … In what estimation they ought to be held, the learned are not agreed. Some hold them to be the very best guides to true piety and a holy life; others, on the contrary, think their precepts were the worst possible, and that the cause of practical religion could not be committed to worse hands. … To us it appears that their writings contain many things excellent, well considered, and well calculated to kindle pious emotions; but also many things unduly rigorous, and derived from the Stoic and Academic philosophy; many things vague and indeterminate; and many things positively false, and inconsistent with the precepts of Christ. If one deserves the title of a bad master in morals who has no just ideas of the proper boundaries and limitations of Christian duties, nor clear and distinct conceptions of the different virtues and vices, nor a perception of those general principles to which recurrence should be had in all discussions respecting Christian virtue, and therefore very often talks at random, and blunders in expounding the divine laws; though he may say many excellent things, and excite in us considerable emotion; then I can readily admit that in strict truth this title belongs to many of the Fathers. … They admitted, with good intentions no doubt, yet most inconsiderately, a great error in regard to morals, and pernicious to Christianity; an error which, through all succeeding ages to our times, has produced an infinity of mistakes and evils of various kinds. Jesus, our Savior, prescribed one and the same rule of life or duty to all His disciples. But the Christian doctors, either by too great a desire of imitating the nations among whom they lived, or from a natural propensity to austerity and gloom, (a disease that many labor under in Syria, Egypt, and other provinces of the East,) were induced to maintain that Christ had prescribed a twofold rule of holiness and virtue; the one ordinary, the other extraordinary; the one lower, the other higher; the one for men of business, the other for persons of leisure, and such as desired higher glory in the future world. They therefore early divided all that had been taught them either in books or by tradition, respecting a Christian life and morals, into Precepts and Counsels. They gave the name Precepts to those laws which were universally obligatory, or were enacted for all men of all descriptions; but the Counsels pertained solely to those who aspire after superior holiness and a closer union with God. There soon arose, therefore, a class of persons who professed to strive after that extraordinary and more eminent holiness, and who, of course, resolved to obey the Counsels of Christ, that they might have intimate communion with God in this life, and might, on leaving the body, rise without impediment or difficulty to the celestial world. They supposed many things were forbidden to them which were allowed to other Christians, such as wine, flesh, matrimony, and worldly business. They thought they must emaciate their bodies with watching, fasting, toil, and hunger. They considered it a blessed thing to retire to desert places, and by severe meditation to abstract their minds from all external objects, and whatever delights the senses. Both men and women imposed these severe restraints on themselves, with good intentions, I suppose, but setting a bad example, and greatly to the injury of the cause of Christianity. They were, of course, denominated Ascetics, Zealous Ones, Elect, and also Philosophers; and they were distinguished from other Christians, not only by a different appellation, but by peculiarities of dress and demeanor. Those who embraced this austere mode of life lived indeed only for themselves, but they did not withdraw themselves altogether from the society and converse of men. But in process of time, persons of this description at first retired into deserts, and afterwards formed themselves into associations, after the manner of the Essenes and Therapeutae.

"The causes of this institution are at hand. First, the Christians did not like to appear inferior to the Greeks, the Romans, and the other people among whom there were many philosophers and sages, who were distinguished from the vulgar by their dress and their whole mode of life, and who were held in high honor. Now among these philosophers (as is well known) none better pleased the Christians than the Platonists and Pythagoreans, who are known to have recommended two modes of living, the one for philosophers who wished to excel others in virtue, and the other for people engaged in the common affairs of life. The Platonists prescribed the following rule for philosophers: The mind of a wise man must be withdrawn, as far as possible, from the contagious influence of the body. And as the oppressive load of the body and social intercourse are most adverse to this design, therefore all sensual gratifications are to be avoided; the body is to be sustained, or rather mortified, with coarse and slender fare; solitude is to be sought for; and the mind is to be self-collected and absorbed in contemplation, so as to be detached as much as possible from the body. Whoever lives in this manner shall in the present life have converse with God, and, when freed from the load of the body, shall ascend without delay to the celestial mansions, and shall not need, like the souls of other men, to undergo a purgation. The grounds of this system lay in the peculiar sentiments entertained by this sect of philosophers and by their friends, respecting the soul, demons, matter, and the universe. And as these sentiments were embraced by the Christian philosophers, the necessary consequences of them were, of course, to be adopted also.

"What is here stated will excite less surprise if it be remembered that Egypt was the land where this mode of life had its origin. For that country, from some law of nature, has always produced a greater number of gloomy and hypochondriac or melancholy persons than any other; and it still does so. Here it was long before the Savior's birth, not only the Essenes and Therapeutae—those Jewish sects, composed of persons with a morbid melancholy, or rather partially deranged—had their chief residence; but many others also, that they might better please the gods, withdrew themselves as by the instinct of nature from commerce with men and with all pleasures of life. From Egypt this mode of life passed into Syria and the neighboring countries, which in like manner always abounded with unsociable and austere individuals: and from the East it was at last introduced among the nations of Europe. Hence the numerous maladies which still deform the Christian world; hence the celibacy of the clergy; hence the numerous herds of monks; hence the two species of life, the theoretical and mystical." (Eccles. Hist., I, 128 f.)

One may well feel pity for the original monks. Their zeal was heroic, but it was spent upon an issue that is in its very root and core a haughty presumption and a lie. Exhaust all the Scripture-texts which speak of indwelling sin, of the lust that rages in our members, of the duty to keep the body under by fasting and vigilance, and there will not be found enough Bible to cover the nakedness of the monastic principle. Its fundamental thought of a select type of piety to be attained by spectacular efforts at self-mortification flies in the face of the doctrine that we are rid of sin and sanctified by divine grace alone. Monkish holiness is a slander of the Redeemer's all-sufficient sacrifice for sin and of the work of the Holy Spirit. It started in paganism, and wants to drag Christianity back into paganism.

But monasticism in Luther's day was no longer of the sort which one may view with a pathetic interest. The old monastic ideals had been largely abandoned. Instead of crucifying the flesh, the monks were nursing and fondling carnal-mindedness. The cloisters had become cesspools of corruption. Because the reputation of monks was utterly bad, and monks were publicly scorned and derided, Luther's friends tried to dissuade him from entering the cloister. That was the reason, too, why Luther's father was so deeply shocked when he heard of what his Martin had done, and Luther had to assure his father that he had not gone into the herd of monks to seek what people believed men sought in that profligate company. For that reason, too, he had chosen the Augustinian order, because a strong reform movement had been started in that order, and its reputation was better than that of the other orders. Luther meant to be a monk of the original type.

Since the days of Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas the Roman Church teaches that there is in the Church a treasury of supererogatory works, that is, of good works which Christ and the saints have performed in excess of what is ordinarily demanded of every man in the way of upright living. We shall meet with this idea again in another connection. It flows from the monastic principles. Monks must have not only enough sanctity for their own needs, but to spare. Of this superfluous sanctity they may make an assignment in favor of others. Do not smile incredulously; monks actually make such assignments. Luther may not have thought of this when he entered the cloister, but he rejoiced in this scheme of substitutive sanctity later. He thought he had found in monkery a gold-mine of holiness that would be sufficient not only for himself, but also for his parents. While at Rome some years later, he was in a way sorry that his father and mother were not already in purgatory. He had such a fine chance there to accumulate supererogatory good works which he might have transferred to them to shorten their agonies, or release them entirely.

In order to make a successful monk, one must be either a Pharisee or an epicurean. The Pharisee takes an inventory of the works named in the Law of God, and sets out to perform these in an external, mechanical manner. He adds a few works of his own invention for good measure. Every work performed counts; it constitutes merit. On the basis of his two pecks and a half of merit the Pharisee now begins to drive a bargain with God: for so much merit he claims so much distinction and glory. He figures it all out to God, so that God shall not make a mistake at the time of the settlement: I have not been this, nor that, nor the other thing; I have done this, and that, and some more. Consequently … ! The epicurean is a jolly fatalist. Whatever is to happen will happen. Why worry? Go along at an even pace; eat, drink, be merry, but for Heaven's sake do not take a serious or tragical view of anything! Take things as they are; if you can improve them, well and good; if not, let it pass; forget it; eat a good meal and go to sleep.

Luther was never an epicurean. The seriousness of life had confronted him at a very early date. The sense of duty was highly developed in him from early youth. In all that he did he felt himself as a being that is responsible to his Maker and Judge. Easy-going indifference and ready self-pity were not in his character. For this Luther is now faulted by Catholics. It is said he extended the rigors of monasticism beyond the bounds of reasonableness. He was too severe with himself. He outraged human nature. Quite correct; but is not monasticism by itself an outrage upon human nature? Luther had endured the monastery for the very purpose of enduring hardness. He did not flinch when the battle into which he had gone commenced in earnest. Luther is said to have been tardy and neglectful in the observance of the rules of the order. Sometimes he would omit the canonical hours, that is, the stated prayers, or some form of prescribed devotion, and then he would endeavor to make up for the loss by redoubled effort, which overtaxed his physical strength. Quite true. It is not such a rare occurrence that a monk forgets the one or the other of the minutiae of the daily monkish routine. The regulations of his orders extended to such things as the posture which he must assume while standing, while sitting, while kneeling; the movement of his arms, of his hands; how to approach, how to move in front of the altar, how to leave it, etc. When his mind was engrossed with the study of the Bible or some commentary of a Church Father, it was easy for Luther to forget parts of the program which he was to carry out. Whenever this happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without a true perception of divine grace and the meaning of the Redeemer's work. However, this study did not at any time permanently affect his vigorous striving after holiness.

When Catholics explain Luther's failure as a monk by such assertions, they involve themselves in self-contradiction. By their own principles monkery is not a natural life; yet, when a monk fails in his monkery, they fault him for not being natural. First, they tell the applicant that he must not be what he is, and afterwards they blame him for wanting to be what they told him to be, and what he finds he cannot be. If this is not adding insult to injury, what is? Francis of Assisi became a great saint by that very inhuman treatment of himself for which Luther is censured. But then Francis of Assisi did not quit his order and did not attack the Pope.

The other reason why Luther failed is, because he could not make a Pharisee of himself, which is only another name for hypocrite. The Law of God had such a terrible meaning to him because he applied it as the Lawgiver wants it applied, to his whole inner life, to the heart, the soul, the mind, and all his powers of intellect and will. It is comparatively easy to make the members of the body go through certain external performances, but to make the mind obey is a different proposition. The discovery which disheartened Luther was, that while he was outwardly leading the life of a blameless monk, his inward life was not improved. Sin was ever present with him, as it is with every human being. He felt the terrible smitings of the accusing conscience because he was keenly alive to the real demands of God's Law. The holy Law of God wrought its will upon him to the fullest extent: it roused him to anger with the God who had given this Law to man; it led him into blasphemous thoughts, so that he recoiled with horror from himself. Does the true Law of God, when properly applied, ever have any other effect upon natural man? Paul says: "It worketh wrath" (Rom. 4, 15), namely, wrath in man against God. It drives man to despair. That is its legitimate function: No person has touched the essence of the Law who has not passed through these awful experiences. Nor did any man ever flee from the Law and run to Christ for shelter but for these unendurable terrors which the Law begets. That was Luther's whole trouble, and that is why he failed as a monk: he had started out to become a saint, and he did not even succeed in making a Pharisee of himself. If Rome has produced a monk that succeeded better than Luther, he ought to be exhibited and examined. He will be found either an angel or a brazen fraud. He will not be a true man.

9. Professor Luther, D. D.

Catholic writers greedily grab every opportunity to belittle Luther's scholarship. Incentives to study at home, they say, he received none. His common school education was wretched. During his high school studies he was favored with good teachers, but hampered by his home-bred roughness and uncouthness and his poverty. He applied himself diligently to his studies, but gave no sign of being a genius. At the University of Erfurt, too, he was studious, but he seems to have made no great impression on the University. "He paid little attention to grammatical details, and never attained to Ciceronian purity and elegance in speech and writing." When he made his A. B:, he ranked thirteenth in a class of fifty-seven. He did a little better in his effort for the title of A. M., when he came out second among seventeen candidates. But Melanchthon is declared entirely wrong when he relates that Luther was the wonder of the University. His theological studies preparatory to his entering the priesthood were very hasty and superficial. Still less prepared was he for the work of a professor. His duties in the cloister left him little time for learned studies. Yet he went to "bibulous Wittenberg," to a little five-year-old university, and lectured "as best he could." By the way, our Catholic friends seem to forget that "bibulous" Wittenberg was a good old Catholic town at the time. All things considered, Luther's advancement was all too rapid; it was not justified by his preparatory studies, which had been "anything but deep, solid, systematic." "The theological culture he received was not on a par with that required now by the average seminarian, let alone a Doctor of Divinity." He accepted the title of D. D. very reluctantly, being conscious that he did not deserve it. A feeling of the insufficiency of his education tormented him all through life. "It cannot be denied that he was industrious, self-reliant, ambitious, but withal, he was not a methodically trained man. At bottom, he was neither a philosopher nor a theologian, and at no time of his life, despite his efforts to acquire knowledge, did he show himself more than superficially equipped to grapple with serious and difficult philosophical and religious problems. His study never rose to brilliancy." Thus runs the Catholic account of Professor and Doctor Luther.

We have not quoted the worst Catholic estimates of Luther's scholarship. He has also been called a dunce, an ignoramus, a barbarian. Again it seems to escape the Catholics that this ill-trained, insufficient, half-baked Doctor of Divinity is a product of their own educational art. Whatever advancement he received in those days was actually forced upon him by Catholics. All his academic and ecclesiastical honors came from Catholic sources, came to him, moreover, as a good Catholic. Also that highest and noblest distinction which made him a duly called and accredited expounder of the Holy Scriptures. If there is fault to be found with anything in this matter, it lies with the Catholic method and process of making a young man within the space of ten years a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts, a priest, a professor, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology; it does not lie with the innocent subject to whom this presto! change! process was applied.

But does this estimate of Luther square with the facts in the case? For a dunce or a mediocre scholar Luther has been a fair success. His little ability and scanty preparation makes his achievements all the more remarkable. The most brilliant minds of the race, for whom the home, the Church and the State, religion, science and art, had done their best, have accomplished immeasurably less than this poor and mostly self-taught country boy. God give His Church many more such dunces!

The net results of Luther's learning are open to inspection by the world in his numerous works. Able scholars of most recent times have looked into Luther's writings with a view of determining how much learned knowledge he had actually acquired, even before he began his reformatory work, They have found that Luther was "very well versed in the favorite Latin authors of the day: Vergil, Terence, Ovid, Aesop, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Silius, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius, Sallust, Quintilian, Varro, Pomponius Mela, the two Plinies, and the Germania of Tacitus." He possessed a creditable amount of knowledge of General History and Church History. He had made a profound study of the leading philosophers and scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages: Thomas of Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Duns Scotus, Occam, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre d'Ailly, Gerson, and Biel. Two of these he knew almost by heart. He had studied the ancient Church Fathers: Irenaeus, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory of Nanzianzen, Jerome, and such later theologians as Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, and Anselm of Canterbury; Tauler, Lefevre, Erasmus, and Pico della Mirandola. "He was quite at home in the exegetical Middle Ages, in the Canon Law, in Aristotle and Porphyry." "He was one of the first German professors to learn Greek and Hebrew." Moreover, Luther possessed, besides knowledge, those indispensable requisites in a good professor: "the faculty of plain, clear, correct, and independent thought, resourcefulness, acumen" (Boehmer, p. 179 f.). He had the courage to tell the Church that it was a shame, that a heathen philosopher, Aristotle, should formulate the doctrines which Christians are to believe and their pastors are to teach. He threw this heathen, who had for ages dominated Christian teaching, out of his lecture-room, and took his students straight to the pure fountain of religious truth, the Word of God. He publicly burned the Canon Law by which the Roman Church had forged chains for the consciences of men, and which she upholds to this day. His lecture-room became crowded with eager and enthusiastic students, and the stripling university planted on the edge of civilization in the sands along the Elbe became for a while the religious and theological hub of the world. The students who gathered about Luther knew that they had a real professor in him. The world of his day came to this fledgling doctor with the weightiest questions, and received answers that satisfied. That part of the intelligent world of to-day which has read and studied Luther endorses the verdict of Luther's contemporaries as regards his ample learning and proficiency as a teacher.

More learned men, indeed, than Luther there have been. Some of these have also made attempts to introduce needed reforms in the corrupt Roman Church. Rome met their learned and labored arguments with the consummate skill of a past master in sophistry. Those learned efforts came to naught. Rome will never be reformed by human learning and scholarship. Scholars are rarely men of action. It is because Professor Luther taught and acted that Rome hates him. He would have been permitted to lecture in peace whatever he wished—others in the universities were doing that at the time—if he had only been careful not to do anything, at least not publicly, against the authority of the Church. That was the unpardonable blunder of Luther that he wanted to live as he believed, and that he taught others to do the same. For this reason he is a dullard, an ignoramus, a poor scholar, a poor writer, in a word, an inferior person from a literary and scholarly point of view.

In Numbers (chap. 22) there is a story told of the prophet Balaam, who went out on a wicked mission for which a great reward had been promised him. He rode along cheerfully, feasting his avaricious heart on the great hoard he would bring back, when suddenly the ass that bore him balked. The prophet began to beat the animal, but it did not budge an inch. All at once this dunce of an ass which had never been put through a spelling-book began to talk and remonstrated with the prophet: "Am I not thine ass? What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me?" To his amazement the prophet was able to understand the ass quite well. This dumb brute made its meaning plain to a learned man. It was an intolerable outrage that an ass should lecture a doctor, and balk him in his designs. Luther is that ass. Rome rode him, and he patiently bore his wicked master until the angel of the Lord stopped him and he would go no further. The only difference is that Balaam had his eyes opened, left off beating his ass, and felt sorry for what he had done. Rome's eyes have not been opened for four hundred years. It is still beating the poor ass. It does not see the Lord who has blocked her path and said, You shall go no further!

In 2 Kings, chap. 5, there is another story told of the Syrian captain Naaman, who came to be healed of his leprosy by the prophet Elijah. With his splendid suite the great statesman drove up in grand style to the prophet's cottage. He expected that the holy man would come out to meet him, and very deferentially engage to do the great lord's bidding. The prophet did not even come out of his hut, but sent Naaman word to go and wash seven times in Jordan and he would be cleansed. Now Naaman flew into a rage, because the prophet had, in the first place, not even deigned to speak to him, and, secondly, had ordered a ridiculously commonplace cure for him. He stormed that he would do no such thing as wash in that old Jordan River. He had better waters at home. Let the prophet keep his old Jordan for such as he was. And he rode off in great dudgeon. Rome is the leprous gentleman, and Luther is the man of God who told her how to become clean. The only difference is this: Naaman listened to wise counsel, and finally did what he had been told to do, and was cleansed. Rome disdains to this day to listen to the ill-bred son of a peasant, the theological upstart Luther, and remains as filthy as she has been.

10. Luther's "Discovery" of the Bible.

Since Luther's study of the Bible has been referred to several times in these pages, it is time that the righteousness of a certain indignation be examined which Catholic writers display. They pretend to be scandalized by the tale that in Luther's time the Bible was such a rare book that it was practically unknown. With the air of outraged innocence some of them rise to protest against the stupid myth that Luther "discovered" the Bible. They claim that their Church had been so eager to spread the Bible, and had published editions of the Bible in such rapid succession, that in Luther's age Christian Europe was full of Bibles. Moreover, that age, they tell us, was an age of intense Bible-study. Not only the theologians, but also the laymen, not only the wealthy and highly educated, but also the common people, had unhindered access to the Bible. The historical data for Rome's alleged zeal in behalf of the Bible these Catholic writers gather largely from Protestant authors. For greater effect they propose to buttress, with the fruits of the laborious research of Protestants, their charge that Luther's ignorance of the Bible was self-inflicted and really inexcusable.

What are the facts in the case? The whole account which we possess of Luther's "discovery" of the Bible is contained in Luther's Table Talk. (22, 897.) This is a book which Luther did not personally compose nor edit. It is a collection of sayings which his guests noted down while at meat with Luther, or afterwards from memory. From a casual remark during a meal Mathesius obtained the information which he published in his biography of Luther, viz., that, when twenty-two years old, Luther one day had found the Bible in a library at Erfurt.

Now, we do not wish to question the general credibility of the Table Talk, nor the authenticity of this particular remark of Luther about his stumbling upon the Bible by accident. But it is certainly germane to our subject to strip the incident of the dramatic features with which Catholic writers claim that most Protestants still surround the event. Did Luther say, and did Mathesius report, that up to the year 1505 he had not known of the Bible? Not at all. He merely stated that up to that time he had not seen a complete copy of the Bible. Luther himself has told scores of times that when a schoolboy at Mansfeld, and later at Magdeburg and Eisenach where he studied, he had heard portions of the Gospels and Epistles read during the regular service at church. Some passages he had learned by heart. Luther's guests would have laughed at him if he had claimed such a "discovery" of the Bible as Catholic writers—and some of their Protestant authorities—think that Mathesius has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with.

What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not be, an unusual occurrence in those days. "Even in the University of Paris, which was considered the mother and queen of all the rest, not a man could be found, when Luther arose, competent to dispute with him out of the Scriptures. This was not strange. Many of the doctors of theology in those times had never read the Bible. Carolostadt expressly tells us this was the case with himself. Whenever one freely read the Bible, he was cried out against, as one making innovations, as a heretic, and exposing Christianity to great danger by making the New Testament known. Many of the monks regarded the Bible as a book which abounded in numerous error." (Mosheim, III, 15.) The spiritual atmosphere in which Luther and all Christians of his time were brought up was unfavorable to real Bible-study.

But before we exhibit the true attitude of Rome toward the Bible, it will be necessary to examine the Catholic claim regarding the extensive dissemination and the intensive study of the Bible among the people in and before Luther's times. Before the age of printing one cannot speak, of course, of "editions" of the Bible. The earliest date for the publication of a printed edition of the Bible is probably 1460—twenty-three years before Luther's birth. That was an event fully as momentous as the opening of the transatlantic cable in our time. Before printing had been invented, the Bible was multiplied by being copied. That was a slow process. Even when a number of copyists wrote at the same time to dictation, it was a tedious process, requiring much time, and not very many would join in such a cooperative effort of Bible production. Besides, few men in those early ages were qualified for this work. A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an ignorant monk and others who were afflicted with the proverbial monks' malady—laziness. It is to the credit of the pious members of the Roman Church in that unhappy age that they manifested such a laudable interest in the Bible. The achievement of copying the entire Bible with one's own hand in that age is so great that it palliates some of the glaring evils of the inhuman system of monasticism. But if every monk in every cloister, every priest in every Catholic parish, every professor in every Catholic university, could have produced twenty copies of the Bible during his lifetime, how little would have been accomplished to make the Bible available for the millions of men then living!

Reading is the correlate of writing. The person who cannot write, as a rule, cannot read. For this reason the Bible must have remained a sealed book to many who had ample opportunity to become acquainted with it. The wide diffusion of Bible knowledge which Catholic writers would lead us to believe always existed in the Roman Church is subject to question. It is true that in the first centuries of the Christian era there was a great hunger and thirst for the Word of God. But that was before the Roman Church came into existence. For it is a reckless assumption that the papacy is an original institution in the Church of Christ, and that Roman Catholicism and Christianity are identical. It is also true that in the early days of the Reformation the people manifested a great desire for the Word of God. It was as new to them as it had been to Luther. They would crowd around a person who was able to read, and would listen for hours. At St. Paul's in London public reading of the Bible became a regular custom. But between the early days of Christianity and the beginning of the Reformation lies a period which. is known as the Dark Ages. No amount of oratory will turn that age into a Bright Age. "From the seventh to the eleventh century books were so scarce that often not one could be found in an entire city, and even rich monasteries possessed only a single text-book." (Universal Encycl., 2, 96.) These conditions were not greatly improved until printing was invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable destitution which I recently observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, know nothing at all of Christian doctrine; and many pastors are quite unfit and incompetent to teach. Yet all are called Christians, have been baptized, and enjoy the use of the Sacraments, although they know neither the Lord's Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten Commandments, and live like the poor brutes and irrational swine." (Preface to the Small Catechism.) Remember, these people lived in that age when Luther was born and grew up, which Catholic writers picture to us as a Bible-knowing and Bible-loving age.

The invention of printing wrought a mighty change in this respect. This glorious art became hallowed from the beginning by being harnessed for service to the Bible. But even this invention did not at once remove the prevailing ignorance. We must not transfer modern conditions to the fifteenth century. In 1906, one of the many Protestant Bible Societies reported that it had disposed in one year of nearly 80,000,000 Bibles and parts of the Bible in many languages. The Bible is perhaps the cheapest book of modern times. It was not so in the days of Gutenberg, Froschauer, Luft, and the Claxtons. Even after printing had been invented, Bibles sold at prices that would be considered prohibitive in our day. When the Duke of Anhalt ordered three copies of the Bible printed on parchment, he was told that for each copy he must furnish 340 calf-skins, and the expense would be sixty gulden. (Luther's Works, 21b, 2378.) But even the low-priced editions of the Bible, printed on common paper (which was not introduced into Europe until the thirteenth century), cost a sum of money which a poor man would consider a fortune, and which even the well-to-do would hesitate to spend in days when money was scarce and its purchasing power was considerably different from what it is to-day. At a period not so very remote from the present a Bible was considered a valuable chattel of which a person would dispose by a special codicil in his will. For generations Bibles would thus be handed down from father to son, not only because of the sacred memories that attached to them as heirlooms, but also because of their actual value in money.

Everything considered, then, we hold the argument that the Bible was a widely diffused book in the days before Luther to be historically untrue, because it implies physical impossibilities. With the magnificent printing and publishing facilities of our times, how many persons are still without the Bible? How many parishioners in all the Catholic churches of this country to-day own a Bible? The modern Bible societies are putting forth an energy in spreading the Bible that is unparalleled in history. Still their annual reports leave the impression that all they accomplish is as a drop in the bucket over and against the enormous Bible-need still unsupplied. Catholic writers paint the Bible-knowledge of the age before Luther in such exceedingly bright colors that one is led to believe that age surpassed ours. They overshoot their aim. Nobody finds fault with the Roman Church for not having invented the printing-press. All would rather be inclined to excuse her little achievement in spreading the Bible during the Middle Ages on the ground of the poor facilities at her command. Every intelligent and fair person will accord the Roman Church every moiety of credit for the amount of Bible-knowledge which she did convey to the people. We heartily join Luther in his belief that even in the darkest days of the papacy men were still saved in the Roman Church, because they clung in their dying hour to simple texts of the Scriptures which they had learned from their priests. (22, 577.) But no one must try and make us believe that the Roman Church before Luther performed marvels in spreading the Bible. She never exhausted even the poor facilities at her command.

Far from wondering, then, that Luther had not seen the complete Bible until his twenty-second year, we regard this as quite natural in view of his lowly extraction, and we consider the censure which superficial Protestant writers have applied to Luther because of his early ignorance of the Bible as uncommonly meretricious. When we bear in mind the known character of the Popes in Luther's days, we doubt whether even they had read the entire Bible. Luther's "discovery" of the Bible, however is not regarded by Protestants as a discovery such as Columbus made when he found the American continent. Luther knew of the existence of the Bible and could cite sayings of the Bible at the time when he found the bulky volume in the library that made such a profound impression upon him.

And yet his find was a true discovery. Luther discovered that his Church had not told him many important and beautiful things that are in the Bible. He became so absorbed with the novel contents of this wonderful book that the desire was wrung from his: heart: Oh, that I could possess this book! But this enthusiastic wish at once became clouded by another discovery which he made while poring over the precious revelation of the very heart of Jesus: his Church had told him things differently from what he found them stated in the Bible. He was shocked when he discovered that in his heart a new faith was springing up which had come to him out of the Bible—a faith which contradicted the avowed faith of the Roman Church. Poor Luther! He had for the first time come under the influence of that Word which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow (Hebr. 4, 12), and he did not know it. Some of the noblest minds in the ages before him have had to pass through the same experience. With the implicit trust which at that time lie reposed in the Roman Church, Luther suppressed his "heretical" thoughts. He said: "Perhaps I am in error. Dare I believe myself so smart as to know better than the Church?" (Hausrath, 1, 18.) Yes, Luther had really discovered the Bible, namely, the Bible which the Roman Church never has been, and never will be, willing to let the people see while she remains what she is to-day. This "discovery"-tale which so offends Catholic writers could be verified in our day. Let Catholic writers put into the hands of every Catholic of America the true, genuine, unadulterated Word of God, without any glosses and comment, and let them watch what is going to happen. There will be astonishing "discoveries" made by the readers, and those discoveries will be no fabrications.

11. Rome and the Bible.

Catholic writers claim for the Roman Church the distinction which at one time belonged to the Hebrews, that of being the keepers of the oracles of God. They claim that to the jealous vigilance of the Roman Church over the sacred writings of Christianity the world to-day owes the Bible. The pagan emperors of Rome would have destroyed the Bible in the persecutions which they set on foot against the early Christians, if the faithful martyrs had not refused to surrender their sacred writings. Again, the Roman Church is represented as the faithful custodian of the Bible during the political and social upheaval that wrecked the Roman Empire when the barbarian peoples of the North overran Rome and Greece. Only through the care of the Roman Church the Bible is said to have been saved from destruction in the general confusion.

The reasoning of Catholics on this matter is specious. In the first place, the early Christian martyrs were not Roman Catholics. The claim of the Roman Church that the papacy starts with Peter is a myth. In the second place, much patient labor has been expended in the last centuries to collate existing manuscripts of the Bible for the purpose of removing errors that had crept into the text and making the original text of the Bible as accurate as it is possible to make it. In these labors mostly Protestants were engaged. Fell, Mill, Kuster, Bengel, Wetzstein, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, have through three centuries of untiring research cooperated in placing before the world the authentic text of the Bible.

To-day we have not a single one of the autograph manuscripts of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. If the Roman Church existed in the days when Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, Jude, and James wrote, and if she exercised such scrupulous care over the Bible, why has she not preserved a single one of these invaluable documents? We suggest this thought only in view of the unfounded Catholic boast; we do not charge the Catholic Church with a crime for having permitted the autographs of our Bible to become lost, we only hold that the Catholic Church is not entitled to the eulogies which her writers bestow upon her.

Even the condition of the copies that were made from the autograph writings of the apostles does not speak well for the care which the Roman Church took of the Bible, assuming, of course, that she existed in those early centuries. "It is evident that the original purity (of the New Testament text) was early lost. … Irenaeus (in the second century) alludes to the differences between the copies. … Origen, early in the third century, expressly declares that matters were growing worse. … From the fourth century onward we have the manuscript text of each century, the writings of the Fathers, and the various Oriental and Occidental versions, all testifying to varieties of readings." (New Schaff-Herzog Encycl., II, 102.) Our sole purpose in calling attention to this fact, which every scholar to-day knows, is, to bring the fervor of Catholic admiration for the Bible-protecting and Bible-preserving Church of Rome somewhat within the bounds of reason. We do not charge the Roman Church with having corrupted the text, but if the claim of Catholics as to the age of their Church is correct, every corruption in the copies that were made from the original documents occurred while she was exercising her remarkable custodianship over the Bible. That officials of the Church, especially as we approach the Middle Ages, had something to do with corrupting the sacred text is the belief of the authority just quoted. "The early Church," he says, "did not know anything of that anxious clinging to the letter which characterizes the scientific rigor and the piety of modern times, and therefore was not bent upon preserving the exact words. Moreover, the first copies were made rather for private than for public use." Not a few were found in sarcophagi; they had been buried with their owners. "Copyists were careless, often wrote from dictation, and were liable to misunderstand. Attempted improvements of the text in grammar and style; efforts to harmonize the quotations in the New Testament with the Greek of the Septuagint, but especially to harmonize the Gospels; the writing out of abbreviations; incorporation of marginal notes in the text; the embellishing of the Gospel narratives with stories drawn from non-apostolic, though trustworthy, sources—it is to these that we must attribute the very numerous 'readings' or textual variations. It is true that the copyists were sometimes learned men; but their zeal in making corrections may have obscured the true text as much as the ignorance of the unlearned. The copies, indeed, came under the eye of an official reviser, but he may have sometimes exceeded his functions, and done more harm than good by his changes."

All this happened while the Roman Church, according to Catholic writers, was keeper of the Bible. The honor which these writers assert for their Church is spurious. If there is any class of men for whom the glory must be vindicated of having given to the world the pure Word of God in a reliable text, it is the band of textual, or lower, critics who have gathered and collated all existing manuscripts of the Bible. What an immense amount of painstaking labor this necessitated the reader can guess from the fact that for the New Testament alone about 3,000 manuscripts had to be examined word for word and letter for letter. The men who undertook this gigantic task, arid who are always on the watch for new finds, do not belong in the Roman fold, and did not receive the incentive for their work from the Roman Church. This work started soon after the Reformation, and the intense interest aroused in God's Word by that movement is the true cause of it. The Protestant Church, not the Church of Rome, has given back to the world the pure Word of God in more than one sense.

The official Bible of the Roman Church to-day is the Latin Vulgate. This Bible, which is a revision by Jerome and others of many variant Latin texts in use towards the end of the fourth century, has been elevated to the dignity of the inspired text. The original purpose was good: it was to remove the confusion of many conflicting texts and to establish uniformity in quoting the Bible. The errors of the Vulgate are many, but while it was understood that the Vulgate was merely a translation, the errors could be corrected from the original sources. Little, however, was done in this respect before the Reformation, and since then the Roman Church has become rigid and petrified in its adherence to this Latin Bible. In its fourth session (April 8, 1546) the Council of Trent decreed that "of all Latin editions the old and vulgate edition be held as authoritative in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions; and that no one is to dare or presume under any pretext to reject it." "The meaning of this decree," says Hodge, "is a matter of dispute among Romanists themselves. Some of the more modern and liberal of their theologians say that the council simply intended to determine which among several Latin versions was to be used in the service of the Church. They contend that it was not meant to forbid appeal to the original Scriptures, or to place the Vulgate on a par with them in authority. The earlier and stricter Romanists take the ground that the Synod did intend to forbid an appeal to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and to make the Vulgate the ultimate authority. The language of the council seems to favor this interpretation." We might add, the practise of Romanists, too. At the debate in Leipzig Eck contended that the Latin Vulgate was inspired by the Holy Ghost. (Koestlin, I, 455.)

Whatever knowledge of Scripture the people in the Middle Ages possessed was confined to those who could read Latin. Catholic writers claim this was at that time the universal language of Europe, but they wisely add: "among the educated." One of them says: "Those who could read Latin could read the Bible, and those who could not read Latin could not read anything." Exactly. And now, to prove the wide diffusion of Bible-knowledge in their Church before Luther, these Catholic writers should give us some exact data as to the extent of the Latin scholarship in that age. Fact is, the Latin tongue acted as a lock upon the Scriptures to the common people. Hence arose the desire to have the Bible translated into the vernacular of various European countries.

This desire Rome sought to suppress with brutal rigor. The bloody persecutions of the Waldensians in France, which almost resulted in the extirpation of these peaceful mountain people, of the followers of Wyclif in England, whose remains Rome had exhumed after his death and burned, of the Hussites in Bohemia, were all aimed at translations of the Bible into the languages which the common people understood.

In July, 1199, Pope Innocent III issued a breve, occasioned by the report that parts of the Bible were found in French translation in the diocese of Metz. The breve praises in a general way the zeal for Bible-study, but applies to all who are not officially appointed to engage in such study the prohibition in Ex. 19, 12. 13, not to touch the holy mountain of the Law.

During the reign of his successor, Honorius III, in 1220, laymen in

Germany were forbidden to read the Bible.

Under Gregory IX the same prohibition was issued, in 1229, to laymen in

Great Britain.

In the same year the crusades against the Albigenses were concluded, and the Council of Toulouse issued a severe order, making it a grave offense for a layman to possess a Bible.

In 1234, the Synod of Tarragona demanded the immediate surrender of all translations of the Bible for the purpose of having them burned.

In 1246, the Synod of Baziers issued a prohibition forbidding laymen to possess any theological books whatsoever, and even enjoining the clergy from owning any theological books written in the vernacular.

Eleven years after Luther's death, in 1557, Pope Paul IV published the Roman Index of Forbidden Books, and, with certain exceptions, prohibited laymen from reading the Bible.

Not until the reign of King Edward VI was the "Act inhibiting the reading of the Old and New Testament in English tongue, and the printing, selling, giving, or delivering of any such other books or writings as are therein mentioned and condemned" (namely, in 34 Hen. VIII. Cap. 1) abrogated.

The Council of Trent ordered all Catholic publishers to see to it that their editions have the approval of the respective bishop.

Not until February 28, 1759, did Pope Clement XIII give permission to translate the Bible into all the languages of the Catholic states.

Not until November 17, 1893, did Pope Leo XIII issue an encyclical enjoining upon Catholics the study of the Bible, always, however, in editions approved by the Roman Church. (Kurtz, Kirchengesch. II, 2, 94. 217; Univers. Encycl., under title "Bible"; Peter Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata I, 99; Denzinger, Enchiridion, 1429. 1439. 1567. 1607.)

Catholic writers seek to make a great impression in favor of their Church by enumerating, on the authority of Protestant scholars, the number of German translations of the Bible that are known to have been in existence before Luther. But they omit to inform the public that not a single one of those translations obtained the approbation of a bishop. One cannot view but with a pathetic interest these sacred relies of an age that was hungering for the Word of God. The origin of these early German Bibles has been traced by scholars to Wycliffite and Hussite influences, which Rome never stamped out, though her inquisitors tried their best to do so. The earliest of these Bibles do not state the place nor the year of publication. Can the reader guess why? They were not published at the seat of the German Archbishop, Mainz, but most of them at the free imperial city of Augsburg. Can the reader suggest a reason? Many of them are printed in abnormally small sizes, facilitating quick concealment. Can the reader imagine a cause for this phenomenon? In these old German Bibles particular texts are emphasized, for example, Rom. 8, 18; 1 Cor. 4, 9; 2 Cor. 4, 8 ; 11, 23; 1 Pet. 2, 19; 4, 16; 5, 9; Acts 5, 18. 41; 8, 1; 12, 4; 14, 19. If the reader will take the trouble to look up these texts, he will find that they warn Christians to be prepared to be persecuted for their faith. Has the reader ever heard of such an officer of the Roman Church as the inquisitor, one of whose duties it was to hunt for Bibles among the people? In places these old German Bibles contain significant marginal glosses, for example, at 1 Tim. 2, 5 one of them has this gloss: "Ain mitler Christus, ach merk!" that is: One mediator, Christ—note this well!

In 1486, Archbishop Berchtold of Mainz, Primate of Germany, issued an edict, full of impassioned malice against German translations of the Bible, and against laymen who sought edification from them. He says that "no prudent person will deny that there is need of many supplements and explanations from other writings" than the Bible, to the end, namely, that a person may construe from the German Bibles the true Catholic faith. Fact is, that faith is not in the Bible. This happened three years after the birth of Luther. (Kurtz, II, 2, 304.)

Instead of finding fault, then, with Luther's ignorance of the Bible prior to 1505, we feel surprised that the young man knew as much of the Bible as he did. He must in this respect have surpassed many in his age.

The Roman Church does not permit her laymen to read a Bible that she has not published with annotations. "Believing herself to be the divinely appointed custodian and interpreter of Holy Writ," says a writer in the Catholic Encyclopedia (II, 545), "she cannot, without turning traitor to herself, approve the distribution of Scripture 'without note or comment.'" For this reason the Roman Church has cursed the Bible societies which early in the eighteenth century began to be formed in Protestant Churches, and aimed at supplying the poor with cheap Bibles. In 1816, Pope Pius VII anathematized all Bible societies, declaring them "a pest of Christianity," and renewed the prohibition which his predecessors had issued against translations of the Bible. (Kurtz, II, 2, 94.) Leo XII, on May 5, 1824, in the encyclical Ubi Primum, said: "Ye are aware, venerable brethren, that a certain Bible society is impudently spreading throughout the world, which, despising the traditions of the holy Fathers and the decree of the Council of Trent, is endeavoring to translate, or rather to pervert, the Scriptures into the vernacular of all nations. … It is to be feared that by false interpretation the Gospel of Christ will become the gospel of men, or, still worse, the gospel of the devil." Pius IX, on November 9, 1846, in the encyclical Qui Pluribus, said: "These crafty Bible societies, which renew the ancient guile of heretics, cease not to thrust their Bible upon all men, even the unlearned—their Bibles, which have been translated against the laws of the Church and after certain false explanations of the text. Thus the divine traditions, the teaching of the fathers, and the authority of the Catholic Church are rejected, and every one in his own way interprets the words of the Lord, and distorts their meaning, thereby falling into miserable error." (Cath. Encycl. II, 545.) The writer whom we have just quoted says: "The fundamental fallacy of private interpretation of the Scriptures is presupposed by the Bible societies." These papal pronunciamentos arc directed chiefly against the Canstein Bibelgesellschaft and her later sisters, such as the Berliner Bibelgesellschaft, and against the British and American Bible Societies.

The face of the Roman Church is sternly set against the plain text of the Scriptures. To defeat the meaning of the original text, she not only mutilates the text and adds glosses which twist the meaning of the text into an altogether different meaning, but she declares that the Bible is not the only source from which men must obtain revealed truth. Alongside of the Bible she places an unwritten word of God, her so-called traditions. These, she claims, are divine revelations which were handed down orally from generation to generation. The early fathers and the councils of the Church referred to them in defining the true doctrine and prescribing the correct practise of the Church. Nobody has collected these traditions, and nobody will. But to what extent the Roman Church operates with them, is well known.

Speaking of learned Bible-study in the Middle Ages, Mosheim says: "Nearly all the theologians were Positivi and Sententiarii [that is, they taught what the Church ordered to be taught], who deemed it a great achievement, both in speculative and practical theology, either to overwhelm the subject with a torrent of quotations from the fathers, or to anatomize it according to the laws of dialectics [that is, the laws of reasoning, logic]. And whenever they had occasion to speak of the meaning of any text, they appealed invariably to what was called the Glossa Ordinaria [that is, the official explanation], and the phrase Glossa dicit (the Gloss says), was as common and decisive on their lips as anciently the phrase Ipse dixit (he, viz., the teacher, has said) in the Pythagorean school." (III, 15.)

In his controversies with the theologians of Rome, Luther found that they were constantly wriggling out of the plain text of the Bible and running for shelter to the traditions, to the fathers, to the decrees of councils of the Church.

At the Council of Trent some one rose to inquire whether all the traditions recognized as genuine by the Church could not be named; he was told that he was out of order. (Pallavivini, VI, 11, 9; 18, 7.) Hase has invited the Roman Church to say whether all the traditions are now known. He has not been answered. (Protest. Polem., p. 83.) If Romanists answer: Yes, the reasonable request will be made of them to publish those traditions once for all time, in order that men may know all that God is supposed to have really said to men that is not in the Bible. If they answer: No, the conclusion is inevitable that the Christian faith is an uncertain thing. Any tradition may bob up that upsets a part of the Creed.

Add to this the dogma of papal infallibility, promulgated July 18, 1870, which asserts for the Pope "the entire plenitude of supreme power" to determine the faith and morals of Christians, and we have reached a point where it becomes plain to any thoughtful person that the Bible is, from the Catholic view-point, not at all such a necessary book as men have believed. Nor can the faith of a Romanist be a fixed and stable quantity. Any papal deliverance may bring about a change, and the conscientious Catholic must study the news from the Vatican with the same vital interest as the merchant studies the market reports in his morning paper, and a very pertinent question that he may ask his wife over his coffee at the breakfast table would be, "Wife, what do we believe to-day?"

12. Luther's Visit at Rome.

Catholic writers ask the world not to believe Luther's tales about the city of Rome. Luther, they say, came to Rome as a callow rustic comes to a metropolis. To the wily Italians he was German Innocence Abroad; they hoaxed him by telling him absurd tales about the Popes, the priests, the wonders of the city, etc., and the credulous monk believed all they told him. He left Rome with his faith in the Church unimpaired. Later in life, after his "defection" from Rome, he told as true facts and as reminiscences of his visit at the Holy City many of the false stories which had been palmed off on him. This is said to have given rise to the prevailing Protestant view that during his visit at Rome Luther's eyes were opened to the corruption of the Roman Church and his resolution formed to overthrow that Church. Luther himself is said to be responsible for this false view. He fostered it by his tales of what he had seen and heard at Rome with disgust and horror. His horrid impressions are declared pure fiction, and simply serve to show how little the man can be trusted in anything he states.