W. H. T. Dau

“ Luther, in their view, says to Melanchthon: Philip, you are a simpleton. Why scruple about a sin? You are still confined in the trammels of very narrow-minded moral views. You must get rid of them. Have the courage to be wicked, Make a hero of yourself by executing some bold piece of iniquity. Be an "Uebermensch." Sin with brazen unconcern; be a fornicator, a murderer, a liar, a thief, defy every moral statute, —only do not forget to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. His grace is intended, not for hesitating, craven sinners, but for audacious, spirited, high-minded criminals. ”

“ We might express a just surprise that Catholics should be offended at the doctrine that the righteousness of Christ is imputed, that is, reckoned or counted, to the sinner as his own. For, does not their system of indulgences rest on a theory of imputation? Do they not, by selling from the Treasure of the Church the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints to the sinner who has not a sufficient amount of them, make those merits the sinner's own by just such a process of imputation? They surely cannot infuse those merits into the sinner. ”

“ Peter, there was a time when you were merely Simon, Jonas's son. At that time you had thoughts and formed opinions about holy matters such as your flesh and blood, your natural reason, suggested to you. All that is changed now that you are a Peter, a firm believer in the revelation which the Father makes to men about Me. What you have confessed is the exact truth; cling to that against all odds; for upon this person whom you have confessed, as upon a rock, I will build My Church.—And now we may imagine that the Lord, while uttering the words, "upon this rock," pointed to Himself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Good God, who would want to join our religion, even though he were of a meek and submissive mind, when he sees how spitefully and cruelly he is treated; and that the treatment he can expect is not only unchristian, but worse than bestial? If hating Jews and heretics and Turks makes people Christians, we insane people would indeed be the best Christians. But if loving Christ makes Christians, we are beyond a doubt worse than Jews, heretics, and Turks, because no one loves Christ less than we. ”

“ Here is a mystery—a mystery of iniquity: the son of perdition in the temple of God! Proud, haughty Rome, wealthy, wicked and wanton, is filling up her measure of wrath against the day of retribution.—We are now so far removed from these scenes that they seem unreal; in Luther's days they were decidedly real. Rome's aggressiveness has been perceptibly checked during the last four centuries; in Luther's days papal pretensions were a more formidable proposition.
Human arrogance may be said to have reached its limit in the papacy. The Pope is practically a God on earth. ”

“ Luther would not have been a preacher of the genuine and full Gospel if he had not declared the impossibility of any sin or any number of sins depriving a believer of salvation.
But if the Catholics mean to say that Luther's evangelical declaration means that no believer can fall from grace by sinning, that he may sin and remain in a state of grace,—that is simply slander. Luther holds, indeed, that a person does not cease to be a Christian by every slip and fault, but he insists that no dereliction of duty, no deviation from the rule of godly living can be treated with indifference. ”

“ I beg, if you think rightly of the Gospel, do not imagine its cause can be accomplished without tumult, scandal, and sedition. Out of the sword you cannot make a feather, nor out of war, peace. The Word of God is a sword, war, ruin, destruction, poison, and, as Amos says, it meets the children of Ephraim like a bear in the way and a lioness in the woods.—I cannot deny that I have been more vehement than is seemly. ”

“ That is why a guilty priest is deprived of his priesthood before being given over to the secular arm; whereas this would not be right if the secular powers had not authority over him already by divine ordinance.-It is, indeed, past bearing that the spiritual law should esteem so highly the liberty, life, and property of the clergy, as if laymen were not as good spiritual Christians, or not equally members of the Church. Why should your body, life, goods, and honor be free, and not mine, seeing that we are equal as Christians, and have received alike baptism, faith, spirit, and all things? ”

“ Ought not this remark of the Landgrave caution Luther's Catholic critics to be very careful in what they say about the heinousness of Luther's offense in granting a dispensation from a moral precept? Have they really no such thing as a "dispensation" at Rome? Has not the married relationship come up for "dispensation" in the chancelleries of the Vatican innumerable times? Has not one of the canonized saints of Rome, St. Augustine, declared that bigamy might be permitted if a wife was sterile? Was not concubinage still recognized by law in the sixteenth century in Ireland? ”

“ Are Luther's Catholic, critics really so blind as not to see that man even in his ordinary affairs of common every-day life is subject to the inscrutable government of God? Our physical life in its most trivial aspects is entirely dependent not only on the laws of nature, which are nothing but the order which the Creator has appointed for the created universe, but also on extraordinary acts of God over which no man has control. ”

“ Out of the wreck of the imperial Rome of the Caesars has risen papal Rome. Once more, though through different agents, the City of the Seven Hills is ruling an orbis terrarum Romanus, a Roman world-empire. The rule extends through nearly a thousand years. How deftly do cunning priests manipulate every means at their command to increase their power! Learning, wealth, beauty, art, piety,—everything is used as an asset in the ambitious game for absolute supremacy which the mitered vicegerent of Christ is playing against the world. ”

“ Only a person who puts principles above policies could have acted as Luther did in those turbulent days. He wanted for his followers, not wanton rebels and frenzied enthusiasts, but men who respect the Word of Cod, discreet and gentle men whose weapons of warfare were not carnal. A man who is so cautious as not to approve the putting down of acknowledged evils because he is convinced that the attempt is premature and exceeds the limits of propriety, will not lend his hand to abolishing the divine norm of right, the holy commandments of God. ”

“ Luther has taught men to confess: "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him," but he taught them also to follow up this true confession with the other: "The Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith."
The Gospel is called in the Scriptures "the Word of Life," not only because it speaks of the life everlasting which God has prepared for His children, but also because it gives life. It approaches man, dead in trespasses and sins, and quickens him into new life. ”

“ Between the pleading of friends and the storming of enemies he had no choice but to act as he did. Luther often seems unconscious of the greatness of his acts: he speaks of them as "his poor way of doing things," and invites others to improve what he has attempted. We fear that many in our day fail to see the greatness of the achievement while they stricture the manner of achieving it.
Few men have so utterly lived for a cause, in a cause, and with a cause as Luther. It is the heart of an entire people that cries out through Luther ”

“ The reason why the Law makes no person righteous is not because it is not a sufficient rule or norm of good works by which men could earn eternal life, but because it does not furnish man any ability to achieve that righteousness which it demands. No law does that. The law only creates duties, and insists on their fulfilment under threat of punishment. It is not the function of the law to make doers of the law. Originally the Law was issued to men who were able to fulfil it, because they were created after the image of God, in perfect holiness and righteousness. ”

“ All through Luther's writings, and in his own acts as well, is to be read the right of the individual to think and believe in matters political, religious, and otherwise as he sees proper. His is the right to read the Bible, and any other book he may desire. He has the right to confer and counsel, with others, to express and declare his views pro and con, in speech and print, so long as he abides by, and remains within, the laws of the land. Luther firmly believed in the liberty of the individual as to conscience, speech, and press. The search for truth must be untrammeled. ”

“ To fabricate a dogma that is to be binding on the consciences of all Christians in such a way is daring impudence. The devout Catholic must close his eyes to all history if he is to believe that Christ really appointed a Pope. When he reads the history of the Popes, and comes to the period of the papal schism, when the Church had not only one, but two visible heads, one residing at Rome, the other at Avignon, yea, when he reads of three contestants for papal honors, and beholds the Church as a tricephalous monster, he must stop thinking. ”

“ He has voiced sound principles on the rights of the State and its limitations and the objects for which the State exists and does not exist, on the separation of Church and State, on the removal of bad rulers from authority, and especially on liberty. The power of the State he values because it secures to each individual citizen the highest degree of liberty possible in this life. Those who represent Luther as a defender of anarchy or tyranny either do not know what they are talking about, or they do it for a purpose, and deserve the contempt of all intelligent men. ”

“ But what about the answer of the Lord to the rich young man? What about the commandment to be perfect? Does not the doctrine of justification by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law, abolish the holy and good Law of God? ”

“ In this manner you must always do the contrary of what Satan forbids. When I drink my wine unmixed, prattle with the greatest unconcern, eat more frequently, do you think that I have any other reason for doing these things than to scorn and spite the devil who has attempted to spite and scorn me? Would God I could commit some real brave sin to ridicule the devil, that he might see that I acknowledge no sin and am not conscious of having committed any. ”

“ In his Theses against the sale of indulgences, especially in the first two, Luther had uttered a thought which led to a new conception of the Church. He had declared that Christian life does not consist in the performance of certain works of piety, such as going to confession, performing the penances imposed by priests, hearing Mass, etc.,—all of which are external, visible acts,—but in a continuous penitential relation of the heart to God. The Christian, conscious of his innate corruption and his daily sinning, faces God at all times in the attitude of a humble suitor for mercy. ”

“ When one recalls scenes like these, and remembers that Catholic teaching on justification attacks the very heart of Christianity, anything that Luther has said about the Popes appears mild. Such heaven-storming and God-defying arrogance deserves to be dragged through the mire—with apologies to the mire. ”

“ Luther used to divide the entire life of man into two hemispheres, the upper embracing man's relation to God, holy things, the interests of the soul here and hereafter, and the lower, embracing the purely human, temporal, and secular interests of man. It is only in the higher hemisphere that Luther denies the existence of free will. ”

“ The temporal lords should, in like manner, rule (externally) land and people; but they leave that. They can do nothing more than flay and shave the people, set one tax and one rent on another; there let loose a bear and here a wolf; respect no right, or faith, or truth, and conduct affairs so that robbers and knaves increase in number; and their temporal regime lies as far beneath as the regime of the spiritual tyrants. Faith is a matter concerning which each one is responsible for himself; for as little as one man can go to heaven or hell for me, so little can he believe or not believe for me ”

“ Whoever does not do such good works is void of faith; he gropes and mopes about, looking for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith nor what good works are, though he may prate and babble ever so much about faith and good works."
There has never been a time when the Gospel and the grace of God have not been wrested to wicked purposes by insincere men, hypocrites, and bold spirits. For this reason God has instructed Christians: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." ”

“ 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. ”

“ It strikes at the root of the faith that saves. It is a relapse into paganism and an affront offered to the Savior. It borrows the language of Scripture to express the most hideous error. By this teaching Rome does not drive men into purgatory,—which does not exist,—but into hell. It is only by a miracle of divine grace that sinners are saved where such teaching prevails: they must forget what is told them about the necessity of their own works and cling only to the Redeemer, and must thus practically repudiate the teaching of their Church. ”

“ Hardly a great man has lived in the last four hundred years but has gone on record as an admirer of Luther. Rome, accordingly, cries out that Luther is become the uncanonized saint of Protestantism, yea, the deified expounder of the evangelical faith.
Coming from a Church that venerates and adores and prays to—you must not say "worships"—as many saints as there are days in the calendar, this stricture is refreshing. Saints not only of questionable sanctity, but of doubtful existence have been worshiped—beg pardon! ”

“ 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. ”