Reformation

The Credo of Charles.

Next day Charles read to the diet his own profession of faith ; he stressed the authority not of popes but of councils; and upon that he was firm; here is a single friar now setting up his private judgment against i,000 years of Catholicism, and "I have therefore resolved to stake upon this cause all my kingdoms and lordships, my friends, my body and my blood, my life and my soul." He called upon the diet to help him in this crusade; but "many turned paler than death." For the antagonism was here clearly stated ; Luther was ready to stake all upon his own personal convictions, and the emperor upon his own loyalty to tradition. Here, then, was the clear parting of the ways. Both sides relied, fundamentally, upon the Bible. St. Thomas Aquinas had been as convinced as any later Protestant theologian that the Bible was inerrant not only in its spiritual teaching but even on matters of historical fact.

Authority and Judgment.

The real question which had gradually grown up during the Christian centuries, and which had now come to a point, was not as to the infallibility of the Bible but as to the methods of interpretation : was the book sufficient in itself, with no light beyond God's grace and the earnest search er's conscience, or could it be rightly interpreted only in the light of ancient tradition, and by certain divinely-constituted teachers who, whenever they met in solemn conclave, were inerrant? Luther, in asserting that general councils had sometimes contra dicted the Bible, had thrown down the gauntlet ; at that point the emperor had naturally dissolved the assembly but only to take up the gauntlet solemnly next day; if the princes then turned pale, it was because they saw war imminent, and knew neither where it would end nor even (in most cases) on which side they must range themselves. To many, it seemed impossible to accept the existing constitution of Church and society as sacrosanct, to the extent of condemning all radical reform as sacrilegious, and all radical reformers as faggots for the stake.

Yet, on the other hand, they saw how intimately this treatment of nonconformity as heresy, this distrust of free discussion, and these methods of physical coercion, had grown into the whole social fabric, and therefore how great was the fear lest the edifice should collapse if once a friar were allowed to publish his own biblical interpretations against those of the councils, and to per suade the community that the burning of heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in the struggle that now fol lows, all other questions, however important in themselves, are subordinate to this one fundamental antithesis between authorit3 and private judgment. Did the princes desire a world in wind

the deposit of faith might safely be entrusted to the reason anc religious feeling and good sense of the majority, or must physica force be held over men's heads everywhere and always as menace, and be very frequently employed in fact? Were most men so firmly assured of the fundamentals that all contrary plea: of a small minority might be mainly left to work out their owr confusion (as in More's Utopia) or was orthodox assurance s( wavering that the centre of gravity might shift under the shod of a friar's contradictions, and the Church might turn upsid( down, and the State with it? The risk was plainly enormous; her was Luther, willing to take that risk for himself and for the world; but few of the politicians could have faced the crisis without serious misgivings.

The Wartburg.

No compromise between Luther and th( emperor was now possible; on the 26th, it was announced that hiE safe-conduct would expire in days. He left Worms; but he was seized by the advice and with the connivance of the elector of Saxony, and carried off to the elector's castle of the Wartburg near Eisenach. The emperor signed Luther's condemnation as pestilent heretic (May 26) ; but his secretary wrote to a friend in Spain: "I am persuaded this is not the end, but the begin ning. . . . Since [the Emperor's edict], Luther's books are sold with impunity at every step and corner of the streets and market places." Luther spent nearly ten months in hiding at the castle of the Wartburg, his "Patmos," as he afterwards called it. Here his pen was unceasingly busy with controversial pamphlets and his trans lation of the New Testament. But his body suffered from want of exercise, and his mind from natural doubts; could so many past generations and so many estimable contemporaries have been wrong, while he, the mere friar, was right as against them all? Might he not be dragging thousands down to hell with himself ? Yet his convictions constantly returned more strongly than ever; and, by a natural reaction, he felt increasing confidence in his divine commission; to doubt of this, or to remain treacherously silent, would be to incur damnation. The gulf between authority and private judgment was thenceforward too wide to be bridged; and Luther emerged from the Wartburg as a determined revolu tionary. Yet he was a conservative revolutionary; and this it was which brought him out of his retirement.