208 Luther and Zwingli [1529 sanguine hopes and with a predisposition to make every possible concession, in order to pave the way for the religious and political objects which he and the Landgrave cherished. But these objects were viewed with dislike and suspicion by the Lutheran delegates. Public controversy between Luther and Zwingli had already waxed fierce. Zwingli had first crossed Luther's mental horizon as the ally of Carlstadt, a sinister conjunction the effects of which were not allayed by Zwingli's later developments. The Swiss Reformer was a combination of the humanist, the theologian, and the radical; while Luther was a pure theologian. Zwingli's dogmas were softened alike by his classical sympathies and by his contact with practical government. Thus he would not deny the hope of salvation to moral teachers like Socrates; while Luther thought that the extension of the benefits of the Gospel to the heathen, who had never been taught it, deprived it of all its efficacy. The same broad humanity led Zwingli to limit the damning effects of original sin; he shrank from consigning the vast mass of mankind to eternal perdition, believed that God's grace might possibly work through more channels than the one selected by Luther, and was inclined to circumscribe that diabolic agency which played so large a part in Luther's theological system and personal experience. Zwingli was in fact the most modern in mind of all the Reformers, while Luther was the most medieval. Luther's conception of truth was theological, and not scientific; to him it was something simple and absolute, not complex and relative. A man either had or had not the Spirit of God; there was nothing between heaven and hell. One or the other of us, he wrote with regard to Zwingli, must be the devil's minister; and the idea that both parties might have perceived some different aspect of truth was beyond his comprehension. This dilemma was his favourite dialectical device; it reduced argument to anathema and excluded from the first all chance of agreement. He applied it to political as well as religious discussions, and his inability to grasp the conception of compromise determined his views on the question of non-resistance. If we resist the Emperor, he said, we must expel him and become Emperor ourselves; then the Emperor will resist, and there will be no end until one party is crushed. Tolerance was not in his nature, and concession in Church or in State was to him evidence of indifference or weakness. Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, were both absolute. The Papacy embodied abuses, therefore the Pope was Antichrist; Caesar's authority was recognised by Christ, therefore all resistance was sin. Between Luther's political doctrines and those of Zwingli there was as much antipathy as between their theology. Appropriately, the statue of Luther at Worms represents him armed only with a Bible, while that of Zwingli at Zurich bears a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. Zwingli had first been stirred to public protest by a secular evil, the corruption of his country by foreign gold; and political aims were 1529] Doctrine of the Eucharist 209 inextricably interwoven with religious objects throughout his career. He hoped for a union both spiritual and temporal between Zurich and Bern and the cities of South Germany, by means of which Emperor and Pope should alike be eliminated, and a democratic republic established; aristocracy, he declared, had always been the ruin of States. Under the influence of this idea a civic affiliation had been arranged between Constance and Zurich in 1527, and extended to St Gallen, Basel, Mülhausen in Elsass, and Biel in 1529; and it was partly to further this organisation and to counteract the alliance of Austria with the five Catholic cantons that Zwingli journeyed to Marburg. But the primary objects of the conference were theological, and it was on a dispute over the Eucharist that the differences between the two parties came to a head. On all other points Zwingli went to the limit of concession, but he could not accept the doctrine of consubstantiation. Luther chalked on the table round which they sat, the text "This is my Body," and nothing could move him from its literal interpretation. Zwingli, on the other hand, explained the phrase by referring to the sixth chapter of St John, and declared that "is" meant only "represents"; the bread and the wine represented the body and blood, as a portrait represents a real person. Christ was only figuratively "the door" and the "true vine"; and the Eucharist instead of being a miracle was, in his eyes, only a feast of commemoration. This doctrine was anathema to Luther; at the end of the debate Zwingli offered him his hand, but Luther rejected it, saying "Your spirit is not our spirit." As a final effort at compromise Luther was induced to draw up the fifteen Marburg Articles, of which the Zwinglians signed all but the one on the Eucharist; and it was agreed that each party should moderate the asperity of its language towards the other. But this did not prevent the Lutheran divines from denying that Zwinglians could be members of the Church of Christ, or Luther himself from writing a few days afterwards that they were "not only liars, but the very incarnation of lying, deceit, and hypocrisy, as Carlstadt and Zwingli show by their very deeds and words." The hand which had pulled down the Roman Church in Germany made the first rent in the Church which was beginning to grow up in its place. Zwingli went back to Zurich to meet his death two years later at Kappel, and the Lutherans returned home to ponder on the fate which the approach of Charles V had in store. Their stubborn determination to sacrifice everything on the altar of dogma was as fatal to plans for their internal defence as it had been to their alliance with Zwingli. A few weeks after the Marburg Conference a meeting was held at Schwabach to consider the basis of common action between the North German Princes and the South German cities. As a preparation for this attempt at concord Luther drew up another series of seventeen articles in which he emphasised the points at issue C. M. H. II. 14 210 Charles V in Germany. Diet of Augsburg [1530 between him and Zwingli, and persuaded the Lutheran Princes to admit no one to their alliance who would not subscribe to every single dogma in this formulary. As a natural result Strassburg and Ulm refused to sign the articles at Schwabach, and in this refusal they were joined by the other South German cities at a further conference held at Schmalkalden in December. Luther even managed to shake the defensive understanding between Hesse and Saxony by persuading the Elector of the unlawfulness of any resistance to the Emperor. The Reformer was fortified in this attitude by a child-like faith which Ferdinand was sagacious enough to encourage-in Charles' pacific designs, although the Emperor had denounced the Protest from Spain, was pledged by his treaty with the Pope to the extirpation of heresy, and arrested the Protestant envoys who appeared before him in Italy. So the far-reaching designs of Philip of Hesse and Zwingli for the defence of the Reformation were brought to naught at the moment when the horizon was clouding in every quarter. - In May, 1530, having in conjunction with Clement VII regulated the affairs of Italy and discussed schemes for regulating those of the world, Charles V crossed the Alps on his second visit to his German dominions. The auspices in 1530 were very different from those of 1521. Then he had left Spain in open rebellion, he was threatened with war by the most powerful State in Europe, and the attitude of the Papacy was still doubtful. Now Spain was reduced to obedience and the Pope to impotence; France had suffered the greatest defeat of the century; Italy lay at his feet; and Ferdinand had added two kingdoms to the family estate. Over every obstacle Charles seemed to have triumphed. But in Germany the universal agitation against Rome had resolved itself into two organised parties which threatened to plunge the nation into civil war. Here indeed was the scene of the last of Hercules' labours; would his good fortune or skill yield him a final triumph ? It is doubtful whether Charles had formed any clear idea of the policy he must adopt, and it is certain that his ignorance of German methods of thought and character and his incapacity to understand religious enthusiasm led him to underrate the stubbornness of the forces with which he had to deal. But his inveterate habit of silence stood him in good stead; Luther regarded with awe the monarch who said less in a year than he himself said in a day. Campeggi, who accompanied Charles on his march, daily instilled in his ear the counsels of prompt coercion; and the death of the politic Gattinara at Innsbruck was so opportune a removal of a restraining influence that Lutherans ascribed his end to Italian poison. It was, however, inconsistent with the Emperor's nature to resort to force before every method of accommodation had been tried and failed. In 1521 he refused to act on the papal Bull against Luther without a personal attempt at mediation; in 1530 he would not proceed against the Protestants by force of arms until he 1530] Confession of Augsburg 211 had tried the effect of moral suasion, and there is no need to regard the friendly terms in which he summoned the Lutheran Princes to the Diet of Augsburg as merely a cloak to conceal his hostile designs. The Diet opened on June 20, 1530, and was very fully attended. Luther, who was still under the ban of the Empire, could come no nearer than Coburg; his place as preceptor of the Protestant Princes was taken by Melanchthon; and the celebrated Confession of Augsburg, though it was based on Luther's Schwabach Articles, was exclusively Melanchthon's work. The attitude of the Lutheran divines is well expressed by the tone of this document; they were clearly on the defensive, and the truculent Luther himself, who had dictated terms to the Archbishop of Mainz, was now reduced to craving his favour. Melanchthon was almost prostrated by the fear of religious war; and he thought it could best be averted by an alliance between Catholics and Lutherans against the Zwinglians, whom he regarded as no better than Anabaptists. His object in framing the Confession was therefore twofold, to minimise the differences between Lutherans and Catholics, and to exaggerate those between Lutherans and Zwinglians; he hoped thus to heal the breach with the former and complete it with the latter. In form the Confession is an apologia, and not a creed; it does not assert expressly the truth of any dogma, but merely states the fact that such doctrines are taught in Lutheran churches, and justifies that teaching on the ground that it varies little if at all from that of the Church of Rome. It does not deny the divine right of the Papacy, the character indelebilis of the priesthood, or the existence of seven Sacraments; it does not assert the doctrine of predestination, which had brought Luther into conflict with Erasmus; and the doctrine of the Eucharist is so ambiguously expressed that the only fault the Catholics found was its failure to assert categorically the fact of transubstantiation. In view of the substantial agreement which it endeavoured to establish between Catholic and Lutheran dogma, it was represented as unjustifiable to exclude the Reformers from the Catholic Church; their only quarrel with their opponents was about traditions and abuses, and their object was not polemic or propaganda, but merely toleration for themselves. This Confession was to have been read at a public session of the Diet on June 24; but, apparently through Ferdinand's intervention, the plan was changed to a private recitation in the Emperor's apartments, and there it was read on the 25th by the Saxon Chancellor, Bayer. Philip of Hesse was loth to subscribe so mild a pronouncement, but eventually it was signed by all the original Protestant Princes, with the addition of the Elector's son, John Frederick, and by two cities, Nürnberg and Reutlingen. But the door was completely shut on the Zwinglians; in vain Bucer and Capito sought an arrangement with Melanchthon. He 212 Efforts to bring about unity [1530 would not even consent to see them lest he should be compromised, and Lutheran pulpits resounded with denunciations of the Sacramentarians, as Zwingli and his supporters now began to be called. Zwingli himself, so soon as he read the Confession, addressed to Charles a statement of his own belief, in which he threw prudence and fear to the winds. He retracted the concessions he had made to Lutheran views at Marburg, and asserted his differences from the Catholic Church in such plain terms that Melanchthon said he was mad. The cities of Upper Germany were not prepared for such extremities; but, cut off from the Lutheran communion, they were compelled to draw up a confession of their own, which was named the Tetrapolitana from the four cities, Strassburg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen, which signed it. It was mainly the work of Bucer, was completed on July 11, and, while Zwinglian in essence, made a serious attempt to approach the doctrines of Wittenberg. It appears to have been the hope of the Protestants, and probably of Charles also, that the Emperor would be able to make himself the mediator between the Lutherans and Catholics, and to effect an agreement by inducing each side to make concessions. But for the moment the Catholics distrusted Charles more than the Protestants did. They had secular as well as ecclesiastical grievances. They denounced the treaties concluded in Italy as wanting their concurrence; they were horrified at the example set by Charles in secularising the see of Utrecht, and they refused to confirm the Pope's grant of ecclesiastical revenues to Ferdinand; while the orthodox Wittelsbachs were moving heaven and earth to prevent the election of Charles' brother as King of the Romans. They were thus by no means disposed to place themselves in the Emperor's hands; they insisted rather that they should determine the Empire's policy, and that Charles should merely execute their decrees; and, lacking the Emperor's broader outlook, they were less inclined to make concessions to peace. It was the growing conviction that Charles was a helpless tool in the hands of their enemies which caused a revulsion of the Protestant feeling in his favour. Yet the Catholics were not all in favour of extreme courses, and either Melanchthon's moderation or the effect of twelve years' criticism produced some modification of Catholic dogma, as expressed in the Confutation of the Confession drawn up by Eck, Faber, Cochlaeus, and others, and presented on August 3. The doctrine of good works was so defined as to guard against the previous popular abuses of it; and in other respects there were signs of the process of purifying Catholic dogma which had commenced at the Congress of Ratisbon in 1524 and was completed at the Council of Trent. But these concessions were too slight to satisfy even Melanchthon; and the Protestant Princes were not frightened into submission by the threats of Charles that unless they returned to the Catholic fold he would proceed against them as became the protector and steward of the Church. |