16 Pastor Luther

13. Pastor Luther.

Luther’s famous protest against the sale of indulgences, published October 31, 1517, in the form of ninety-five theses, is represented by Catholic writers as an outburst of Luther’s violent temper and an assault upon the Catholic Church that he had long premeditated. By this time, it is said, Luther had become known to his colleagues as a quarrelsome man, loving disputations and jealous of victory in a debate. His methods of teaching at the university were novel, in defiance of the settled customs of the Church. His dangerous innovations caused the suspicion to spring up that he was plotting rebellion against the authority of the Church. The arrival of the indulgence-hawker Tetzel in the neighborhood of Wittenberg gave him the long-looked-for occasion to strike a blow at the sacred teachings of the Church which he had solemnly promised to support and defend against all heretics, and from whose teachings he had already apostatized in his heart. The fact is that Luther was so little conscious of an intention to stir up strife for his Church that he was probably the most surprised man in Germany when he observed the excitement which his Theses were causing. The method he had chosen for voicing his opinion had no revolutionary element in it. It was an invitation to the learned doctors to debate with him the doctrinal grounds for the sale of indulgences. Catholic writers point to the fact that Luther declared at a later time that he did not know what an indulgence was when he attacked Tetzel. They seek to prove from this remark of Luther that it was not conscientious scruples, but the desire to cause trouble in the Church that prompted Luther to his action. They do not see that this remark speaks volumes for Luther. By his Theses he meant to get at the truth of the teaching concerning indulgences. His Theses were written in Latin, not in the people’s language. Others translated them into German and scattered them broadcast throughout Germany. The Theses are no labored effort to set up, by skilful, logical argument and in carefully chosen terms, a new dogma in oppositon [tr. note: sic] to the teaching of the Church, but they are exceptions hurriedly thrown on paper, like the notes jotted down by a speaker to guide him in a discussion of his subject. Last, not least, the Theses, while contradicting the prevailing practise of selling indulgences, breathe loyalty to the Catholic Church. From our modern standpoint Luther appears in the Theses as half Protestant, or evangelical, half Roman Catholic. In his own view he was altogether Catholic. His Theses were merely a call: Let there be light! Let our consciences be duly instructed!

We still have a letter which Luther wrote to Pope Leo X about six months after he had published the Theses. This letter shows in what an orderly and quiet way Luther proceeded in his attack upon the traffic in indulgences, and how much he believed himself in accord with the Pope and the Church. We shall quote a few statements from this letter: "In these latter days a jubilee of papal indulgences began to be preached, and the preachers, thinking everything allowed them under the protection of your name, dared to teach impiety and heresy openly, to the grave scandal and mockery of ecclesiastical powers, totally disregarding the provisions of the Canon Law about the misconduct of officials. . . .They met with great success, the people were sucked dry on false pretenses, . . . but the oppressors lived on the fat and sweetness of the land. They avoided scandals only by the terror of your name, the threat of the stake, and the brand of heresy, . . . if, indeed, this can be called avoiding scandals and not rather exciting schisms and revolt by crass tyranny. . . .

"I privately warned some of the dignitaries of the Church. By some the admonition was well received, by others ridiculed, by others treated in various ways, for the terror of your name and the dread of censure are strong. At length, when I could do nothing else, I determined to stop their mad career if only for a moment; I resolved to call their assertions in question. So I published some propositions for debate, inviting only the more learned to discuss them with me, as ought to be plain to my opponents from the preface to my Theses. [This was, by the way, a common practise in those days among the learned professors at universities.] Yet this is the flame with which they seek to set the world on fire! . . ." (15, 401; transl. by Preserved Smith.)

Luther’s publication of the Theses was the act of a conscientious Christian pastor. Being a priest, Luther had to hear confession. Through the confessional he learned how the common people viewed the indulgences: they actually believed that by buying indulgences they were freed from all the guilt and punishment of their sins. Absolution became a plain business transaction: you pay your money and you take your goods. Luther wrote this to his archbishop the same day on which he published his Theses. "Papal indulgences," he says in the letter to Albert, Archbishop of Mayence and Primate of Germany, "for the building of St. Peter’s are hawked about under your illustrious sanction. I do not now accuse the sermons of the preachers who advertise them, for I have not seen the same, but I regret that the people have conceived about them the most erroneous ideas. Forsooth, these unhappy souls believe that, if they buy letters of pardon, they are sure of their salvation; likewise, that souls fly out of purgatory as soon as money is cast into the chest; in short, that the, grace conferred is so great that there is no sin whatever which cannot be absolved thereby, even if, as they say, taking an impossible example, a man should violate the mother of God. They also believe that indulgences free them from all penalty and guilt." (15, 391; transl. by Preserved Smith, p. 42.)

Luther had preached against the popular belief in indulgences, pilgrimages to shrines of the saints and their relics, for two years before he published his Theses. He was confident that the Church could not countenance this belief. Forgiveness of sins is to the penitent in heart who are sorry for their sins, and their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who atoned for them, and in whom we have the forgiveness of sin by the redemption through His blood. This is the Scriptural doctrine of penitence,--that sorrowful, contrite, and believing attitude of the heart which is the characteristic of true Christians throughout their lives. Through penitence we become absolved in the sight of God from all guilt and punishment of our sins, and the minister, by announcing this fact, is to convey to the penitent the assurance that his sins have been forgiven. Whatever penances or pious exercises the Church may impose an sinners who have confessed their sins can only be imposed as a wholesome disciplinary measure and as aids to the needed reformation of life. These penances, since they originate in the choice of the Church, may also be remitted by the Church, and for these penances the Church may accept a commutation in money, which payment, however, cannot supersede the paramount duty of the penitent to amend his sinful conduct. Such were Luther’s views in brief outline at the time he published his Theses. If we are to take modern Catholic critics of Luther seriously, that has also been the teaching of their Church on the subject of indulgences. They claim that the good intentions of the Popes were grossly misinterpreted and the system of indulgences was put to uses for which it was never intended. If that is the case, why do they attack Luther for his attempt to have the abuses corrected? According to their own presentation of the true teaching of the Church on the subject of indulgences, Luther was the most dutiful son of the Church in his day in what he did on All Souls’ Eve, 1517. But the Roman teaching on indulgences is not such an innocent affair as Catholics would have us believe. The practise of substituting for penances some good work or contribution to a pious purpose had arisen in the Church at a very early time. "This," says Preserved Smith, who has well condensed the history of indulgences, "was the seed of indulgence which would never have grown to its later enormous proportions had it not been for the crusades. Mohammed promised his followers paradise if they fell in battle against unbelievers, but Christian warriors were at first without this comforting assurance. Their faith was not long left in doubt, however, for as early as 855 Leo IV promised heaven to the Franks who died fighting against the Moslems. A quarter of a century later John VIII proclaimed absolution for all sins and remission of all penalties to soldiers in the holy war, and from this time on the ’crusade indulgence’ became a regular means of recruiting, used, for example, by Leo IX in 1052 and by Urban II in 1095. By this time the practise had grown up of regarding an indulgence as a remission not only of penance, but of the pains of purgatory. The means which had proved successful in getting soldiers for the crusade were first used in 1145 or 1146 to get money for the same end, pardon being assured to those who gave enough to fit out one soldier on the same terms as if they had gone themselves.

"When the crusades ceased, in the thirteenth century, indulgences did not fall into desuetude. At the jubilee of Pope Boniface VIII, in 1300, a plenary indulgence was granted to all who made a pilgrimage to Rome. The Pope reaped such an enormous harvest from the gifts of these pilgrims that he saw fit to employ similar means at frequent intervals, and soon extended the same privileges as were granted to pilgrims to all who contributed for some pious purpose at their own homes. Agents were sent out to sell these pardons, and were given power to confess and absolve, so that in 1393 Boniface IX was able to announce complete remission of both guilt and penalty to the purchasers of his letters.

"Having assumed the right to free living men from future punishment, it was but a step for the Popes to proclaim that they had the power to deliver the souls of the dead from purgatory. The existence of this power was an open question until decided by Calixtus III in 1457, but full use of the faculty was not made until twenty years later, after which it became of all branches of the indulgence trade the most profitable." The reader will note that the indulgence trade in its latest form had not become a general thing until about six years before Luther’s birth. It was a comparatively new thing that Luther attacked. In our remarks on monasticism in a previous chapter we alluded to the Roman teaching concerning the Treasure of the Merits of the Saints, or the Treasure of the Church. This teaching greatly fructified the theory of indulgences. It has never been shown, and never will be, how this Treasure originates. In the work of our Redeemer there was nothing superabundant that the Scriptures name. He fulfilled the entire Law for man, and His merits are of inestimable value. But they were all needed for the work of satisfying divine justice. Moreover, all these merits of Christ are freely given to each and every believer and cancel all his guilt, according to the statement of Paul: "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth." As regards the merits of the saints, which they accumulated by doing good works in excess of what they were required to do, this is a purely imaginary asset of the papal bank of Rome. Every man, with all that he is and has and is able to do, owes himself wholly to God. At the best he can only do his duty. There is no chance for doing good works in excess of duty. If he were really to do all, he would only do what it was his duty to do,Luke 17:1-37;Luke 10:1-42, and would be told to regard himself, even in that most favorable case, as an unprofitable servant. But supposing there were superabundant merits, supererogatory works of Christ and the saints, who has determined their quantity? Who takes the inventory of this stock of the papal bank of Rome? Is he the same party who determines the length of a person’s stay in purgatory and can tell how much he has been in arrears in the matter of goodness and virtuousness, and how much cash will purchase his release? How is this intelligence conveyed to purgatory that Mr. So-and-so is free to proceed to heaven? A multitude of such questions arising in all thinking minds that want to arrive at rock bottom facts in so serious a matter always baffle the theologians of Rome. They owe the world an answer on these questions for four hundred years. Is the world doing Rome an injustice when it regards the sale of indulgences a pure confidence game in holy disguise, the offer of a fictitious value for good cash, the boldest and baldest gold-bricking that mankind has heen [tr. note: sic] subjected to? The sale of indulgences which was started in Luther’s days was a particularly offensive enterprise. "It was not so much the theory of the Church that excited Luther’s indignation as it was the practises of some of her agents. They encouraged the common man to believe that the purchase of a papal pardon would assure him impunity without any real repentance on his part. Moreover, whatever the theoretical worth of indulgences, the motive of their sale was notoriously the greed of unscrupulous ecclesiastics. The ’holy trade’ as it was called had become so thoroughly commercialized by 1500 that a banking house, the Fuggers of Augsburg, were the direct agents of the Curia in Germany. In return for their services in forwarding the Pope’s bulls, and in hiring sellers of pardons, this wealthy house made a secret agreement in 1507 by which it received one-third of the total profits of the trade, and in 1514 formally took over the whole management of the business in return for the modest commission of one-half the net receipts. Naturally not a word was said by the preachers to the people as to the destination of so large a portion of their money, but enough was known to make many men regard indulgences as an open scandal.

"The history of the particular trade attacked by Luther is one of special infamy. Albert of Brandenburg, a prince of the enterprising house of Hohenzollern, was bred to the Church and rapidly rose by political influence to the highest ecclesiastical position in Germany. In 1513, he was elected, at the age of twenty-three, Archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of the bishopric of Halberstadt,--an uncanonical accumulation of sees confirmed by the Pope in return for a large payment. Hardly had Albert paid this before he was elected Archbishop and Elector of Mayence and Primate of Germany (March 9, 1514). As he was not yet of canonical age to possess even one bishopric, not to mention three of the greatest in the empire, the Pope refused to confirm his nomination except for an enormous sum. The Curia at first demanded twelve thousand ducats for the twelve apostles. Albert offered seven for the seven deadly sins. The average between apostles and sins was struck at ten thousand ducats, or fifty thousand dollars, a sum equal in purchasing power to near a million to-day. Albert borrowed this, too, from the Fuggers, and was accordingly confirmed on August 15, 1514.

"In order to allow the new prelate to recoup himself, Leo obligingly declared an indulgence for the benefit of St. Peter’s Church, to run eight years from March 31, 1515. By this transaction, one of the most disgraceful in the history of the papacy, as well as in that of the house of Brandenburg, the Curia made a vast sum. Albert did not come off so well. First, a number of princes, including the rulers of both Saxonies, forbade the trade in their dominions, and the profits of what remained were deeply cut by the unexpected attack of a young monk." (Preserved Smith, p. 86 ff.)

Luther had ample reason to dread the demoralizing effect of the indulgence-venders’ activity upon the common people. In the sermons of Tetzel the church where he happened to do business was raised to equal dignity with St. Peter’s at Rome. Instead of confessing to an ordinary priest, he told the masses they had now the rare privilege of confessing to an Apostolical Vicar, specially detailed for this work. With consummate skill he worked on the tender feelings of parents, of mothers, who were mourning the loss of children, or of children who had lost their parents. He impersonated the departed in their agonies in purgatory, he made the people hear the pitiful moaning of the victims in the purgatorial fires, and transmitted their heartrending appeals for speedy help to the living. He clinched the argument by playing on the people’s covetousness: for the fourth part of a gulden they could transfer a suffering soul safely to the home of the eternal paradise. Had they ever had a greater bargain offered to them? Never would they have this indispensable means of salvation brought within easier reach. Now was the time, now or never! "0 ye murderers, ye usurers, ye robbers, ye slaves of vice," he cried out, "now is the time for you to hear the voice of God, who does not desire the death of the sinner, but would have the sinner repent and live. Turn, then, O Jerusalem, to the Lord, thy God!" He declared that the red cross of the indulgence-venders, with the papal arms, raised in a church, possessed the same virtue as the cross of Christ. If Peter were present in person, he would not possess greater authority, nor could he dispense grace more effectually than he. Yea, he would not trade his glory as an indulgence-seller with Peter’s glory; for he had saved more souls by selling the indulgences than Peter by preaching. Every time a coin clinked in his money chest a liberated soul was soaring to heaven.

Catholic writers declare that the people were told that they must repent in order to obtain forgiveness. So they were, in the manner aforestated. Repenting meant buying a letter of pardon from the Pope. That is the reason why Luther worded the first two of his Ninety-five Theses as he did: "Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying: _Poenitentiam agite!_ meant that the whole life of the faithful should be repentance. And these words cannot refer to penance--that is, confession and satisfaction." The Latin phrase "poenitentiam agere" has a double meaning: it may mean "repent" and "do penance." Our Lord used the phrase in the first, the indulgence-sellers in the second sense. Since the people had been raised in the belief that the Church had the authority from God to impose church fines on them for their trespasses, by which they were to remove the temporal punishment of their sins, this was called "doing penance,"--they were actually led to believe that the were obeying a command of Christ in buying a letter of indulgence. And not only did the people believe that they were purchasing release from temporal punishment, but from the guilt of sin and all its effects. The common man from the fields and the streets did not make the fine distinction of the hair-splitting theologians: his bargain meant to him that hell was closed and heaven open for him.

Another favorite defense of modern Catholic writers is, that the money paid for an indulgence was not meant to purchase anything, but was to be viewed as a thank-offering which the grateful hearts of the pardoned prompted them to make to the Church who had brought them the pardon free, gratis, and for nothing. This is Cardinal Gibbons’s argument. He points triumphantly to the fact that the letters of indulgence were never handed the applicants at the same desk at which the "thank-offerings" were received. He does not say which desk the applicant approached first. But, supposing he obtained the letter first and then, with a heart bounding with joy and gratitude, hurried to the other desk, we have an interesting psychological problem confronting us. The two acts, the delivery of the letter of indulgence and the surrendering of the thank-offering, we are told, are independent the one of the other. Both are free acts, the one the free forgiveness of the Church, the other the free giving of the pardoned. The Church’s grant of pardon has nothing to do with the payment of indulgence-money, and the indulgence-money is not related to the letter of indulgence. Now, then, the purchaser of an indulgence performs this remarkable feat: when he stands at the desk where the letter is handed to him, he does not think of any cost that he incurs. He views the letter as a pure gift. Then, obeying a sudden impulse of gratitude, he turns to the other desk and hands the official some money. He manages to think that he is not paying for anything, that would be utterly improper. How could a person pay for a donation, especially such a donation of spiritual and heavenly treasures? One disturbing element, however, remains: the amount of the thank-offering was fixed beforehand for particular sins, probably to regulate the recipient’s gratitude and make it adequate. The writer has resolved to test the psychology of this process on himself the next time the Boston Symphony Company comes to town. He will try and think of the great singers as true benefactors of mankind, who go about the country bestowing favors on the public, and when he comes to the ticket-window he will merely make a thank-offering for the pleasure he is receiving. The scheme ought to work as well in this instance as in the other.