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The movement had by this time lost the support of Erasmus and the older humanists, whilst retaining the adhesion of the younger votaries of the new learning like Melanchthon and Bucer. Up to the diet of Worms Erasmus had exerted his influence to shield Luther from the hostility of his scholastic opponents of Cologne, Louvain and other centres of the scholastic theology, who were also his own enemies. He used his influence with the German princes to secure him a fair hearing, and denounced the obscuran tism and intolerance of the heresy hunters. Luther who had a deep sense of the value of the new learning for the evangelical movement had cultivated his friendship, whilst disapproving of his theological standpoint. After the diet of Worms and the actual initiation of the Reformed Church, Erasmus, in his fear of revolution, became more critical, and at length, yielding to the solicitations of powerful patrons, entered the lists against his theological teaching in a controversial work on Free Will (De Libero Arbitrio, 1524). Luther replied with a counter attack in the Unfree Will (De Servo Arbitrio, 1525), and though both ob served a relative moderation of style in these writings, the breach between them in the theological sphere was henceforth irretrievable.
As an outlaw Luther was not present at the diet of Augsburg in 153o, at which the emperor appeared in person, and to which Melanchthon presented a con fession of the Lutheran faith (the Confession of Augsburg). But he energetically intervened by his letters to the elector John and to his pliant colleague who, in the course of the long negotia tions, was in danger of conceding more than he was prepared to approve. He thus stiffened their opposition to the final ultimatum of the emperor to agree to a material modification of its teaching in a Romanist sense. Thus strengthened, the elector left the diet in the face of the imperial demand for surrender to his Romanist policy; and Luther at last overcame his scruples on the score of active resistance to the imperial authority in defence of the evangelical cause. He not only consented to the defensive Protestant League of Schmalkald, which the elector and the land grave cemented, but published a manifesto asserting the right of such resistance to authority oppressively exercised over con science and the Gospel. (Warning to the Germans, October 153o, and Declaration of November 153o.) In consequence of this combination and the menace of a Turkish invasion by the sultan Solyman, Charles was fain to agree to an accommodation in the religious peace of Nuremberg (1532).
In further negotiations with Bucer and the South German theologians on the sacramental question, Luther relaxed some what in his exclusive dogmatism on the subject, and agreed to the Wittenberg Concord (1536). Though the agreement did not include the Zwinglians, he meantime maintained friendly rela tions with Bullinger, Zwingli's successor at Zurich, and was im pressed by the mediating view of Calvin, though he never came into direct contact with the Genevan reformer. Towards the anabaptist movement, on the other hand, he adopted an attitude of uncompromising antagonism. These sectaries, who took their rise at Zurich in 1525, and rapidly spread their views from Switz erland over the Empire, continued the more radical tendency of Miinzer, whose revolutionary teaching was adopted by the more extreme section and eventuated in the fantastic and fanatic at tempt to establish the reign of the saints at Miinster in West phalia. The more moderate section led by Hubmaier, Hetzer, and
Denck, all of them men of scholarly attainments, eschewed revo lutionary violence, and advocated adult baptism as the exclusive scriptural practice, and a more literal revival of primitive Chris tianity as they understood it. To Luther both sections were alike obnoxious as subverters of religious and social order, and he ulti mately belied his own principle of freedom of conscience by sup porting the persecution to which both sections were alike sub jected in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic territories, and in joining Melanchthon in pronouncing for the infliction of the death penalty for persistent profession of Anabaptist error (1536).
In spite of the increasing ill-health from which he suffered during the last ten years of his life, he continued to toil at the task of maintaining and vindicating the Reformation. Whilst compromising it by his secret, though reluctant sanction of the bigamous marriage of the landgrave, Philip (154o), which ere long leaked out and was not rendered less scandalous by his honest, but warped attempt to justify it, Luther continued the warfare against the papacy as anti-Christian in a closing series of controversial works. He staunchly opposed the policy of Paul III. to effect a reunion with Rome through a general council, which the pope at last agreed to convene. Such a reunion could only be achieved at the price of sacrificing the essential principles of the Reformation as a revival of the teaching and the institu tions of the New Testament and the early Church, which he claimed to have vindicated agairist the corrupt and secularized Roman distortion of them. He maintained a sceptical, though less uncompromising attitude towards the attempt of the em peror, for political reasons, to bring about a feasible accommoda tion (The Wittenberg Reformation, Jan. 1545). His more con structive contribution to the movement during these declining years is the revision, with the assistance of his colleagues, of his translation of the Old Testament, which he had completed between 1523 and 1532, as well as that of the New Testament. By the year of his death the number of editions of this Luther Bible, or parts of it, had risen to 377, exclusive of the Low German versions of it. Had he contributed nothing else besides this literary and religious treasure to the Reformation, he would amply deserve the title of the greatest religious benefactor of his people in modern times. He added to the value of this serv ice by his commentaries on the books of the Bible, which entitle him to a high place among biblical exegetes, and which were the fruit of his expositions of Holy Writ in the classroom. Next to the influence of his translation of the Bible, may be placed that of the hymns with which he enriched the reformed worship, and the two catechisms which he composed in 1529 for instruction in the distinctive doctrines of the Christian faith.