Martin Luther

“ Luther is seen to have fully apprehended the force of all the objections that could be urged against his teachings, and with convincing ability he vindicates them from every charge. Throughout the volume we have ever before us the earnest, devout spirit of the Reformer, for the most part unfolding in the simplest manner the great doctrines of the Gospel, but occasionally indulging in volcanic outbursts of indignation against the hierarchical corruptions of his day, and pouring out upon them the lava-tides of withering rebuke. ”

“ Martin Luther will have it so and he says that a papist and an ass are the same thing." Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. (I will it, I command it; my will is reason enough) For we are not going to become students and followers of the papists. Rather we will become their judge and master. We, too, are going to be proud and brag with these blockheads; and just as St. Paul brags against his madly raving saints, I will brag over these asses of mine! They are doctors? Me too. They are scholars? I am as well. They are philosophers? ”

“ If the ditty sound but oddly, 'Twas a father, wise and godly, Sang it so long ago— Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang: "Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long!" ”

“ Martin Luther Martin Luther to All Faithful and Godly Pastors and Preachers: Grace, Mercy, and Peace in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form. Mercy! Good God! what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach. ”

“ The church-bells throughout the land proclaimed the return of peace, and all hearts shared in the general thanksgiving. But Luther sat in his cell, and mourned. He bowed his head, refusing food and drink—for every man's hand was against him. The Papists showered curses and imprecations upon his head: "Thou art the man whose blasphemous words concerning Christian liberty, broke the fetters of the peasants, and caused this bloodshed." The peasants in their turn cried out: "Thou hast deceived our hopes, hast betrayed and forsaken us!" ”

“ But Luther substituted for the authority of the pope and councils that of the written word, as amended and interpreted by himself. He never recognized the so-called right of private judgement, and never asserted the right of every man to interpret the written word for himself. The Bible as interpreted by himself, Martin Luther, was to be taken in all cases as the supreme and only authority, and he would tolerate no dissent from his interpretation. ”

“ Had Martin Luther stood all his life upon the door-sill of Roman Catholicism, looking out and yet not going out, his work would have been a total failure, and have shown a lack of that final courage which makes a successful revolution. ”

“ He sees very clearly that mortification is setting in. No poultice, no plaster, no fomentation will be of any avail now, nothing but the knife, nothing but cutting off the limb will save the man's life. What a foolish doctor he would be, who should refuse in such a case to take strong measures!
The great reformer, Martin Luther, looked around him, and what did he see? The whole civilized world a slave at the feet of one man, the Pope of Rome, obeying that man as if he were God; believing every word that came from his mouth, following carefully in his footsteps as he led them astray. ”

“ He spent the usual year as a novice, then took the vows, and was set to study theology. His text-books were the writings of Occam, Biel, and D'Ailly. His aptness for study, his vigour and precision in debate, his acumen, excited the admiration of his teachers. But Luther had not come to the convent to study theology; he had entered to save his soul. These studies were but pastime; his serious and dominating task was to win the sense of pardon of sin and to see his body a temple of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ In many respects Martin Luther was by far his inferior, but in zeal and activity he was a flaming and consuming fire; and by him, under God, was the mighty Reformation, from the corruptions of popery, effected. ”

“ The Luther he almost worships is the “pious man,” the “follower of the Lord and of the true Christian faith,” the “man enlightened by the Holy Spirit,” the man who had been done to death by the Pope and the priests of his day, as the Son of God had been murdered by the priests of Jerusalem. The one [pg 192] thing which fills the great painter's mind is the personal religious life of the man Martin Luther.131
Another source of Luther's power was that he had been led step by step, and that his countrymen could follow him deliberately without being startled by any too sudden changes. ”

“ Martin Luther (1483-1546) , Germany’s greatest man in this age of intellectual new-birth, demands a larger share of attention in a survey of literature than his religious and ecclesiastical activity would in itself justify, if only because the literary activity of the age cannot be regarded apart from him. From the Volkslied and the popular Schwank to satire and drama, literature turned exclusively round the Reformation which had been inaugurated on the 31st of October 1517 by Luther’s publication of the Theses against Indulgences in Wittenberg. ”

“ The following estimate by a recent Catholic writer is a fair sample of the sentiments cherished by official Rome for Luther: "From out the vast number whom the enemy of man raised up to invent heresies, which, St. Cyprian says, 'destroy faith and divide unity,' not one, or all together, ever equaled or surpassed Martin Luther in the wide range of his errors, the ferocity with which he promulgated them, and the harm he did in leading souls away from the Church, the fountain of everlasting truth. ”

“ Luther sat at the head; at his right Mistress Katharine with Aunt Lena and the children; at his left Peter and Jerome Weller, with Wolfgang and four other young men, who were regarded as members of the family; opposite them, the sisters Elsa and Lena Kaufman, and at the lower end the servants.
Luther began with his full, rich voice, all the other voices, deep and high, joining in, and reverently singing:
"In these our days so perilous, [1]
Lord, peace in mercy send us;
No God but Thee can fight for us,
No God but Thee defend us;
Thou, our only God and Saviour." ”

“ The leader of the movement, Martin Luther, was the son of a poor miner, and was born at Eisleben in 1483. He was an Augustinian monk, and had been made professor of theology, and preacher at Wittenberg, by the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise (1508) . Luther was a man of extraordinary intellectual powers, and a hard student, of a genial and joyous nature, yet not without a deep vein of reflection, tending even to melancholy. He had a strong will, and was vigorous and vehement in controversy. ”

“ At noon on All Saints' Day, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church. It was an academic proceeding. A doctor in theology offered to hold a disputation, such was the usual term, for the purpose of explaining the efficacy of the Indulgence. The explanation had ninety-five heads or propositions, all of which "Doctor Martin Luther, theologian," offered to make good against all comers. The subject, judged by the numberless books which had been written upon it, was eminently suitable for debate; the propositions offered were to be matters of discussion ”

“ It seems too small a matter, to descend from the heights of spiritual life to the beginnings of human development. Martin Luther was a scholar, before whose learning many an one, who thinks he has mastered much wisdom, must hide his head. ”

“ That individual was the heroic Luther, whose praise is in all the churches till the present day. No individual is so famous in the history of that eventful period as Martin Luther, for recovering the doctrine of justification by the righteousness of Christ, to the exclusion of all creature merit. This fundamental principle in the economy of man's salvation he justly denominated articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae—"the hinge of a standing or falling church." ”

“ Martin Luther, with his absolute denial of free-will, and with his double code of morality for princes and peasants—easy for one and harsh for the other—may be fairly left now with those who desire to vaunt his orthodoxy; here his name is used to illustrate the popular impetus given to nonconformity by his quarrel with the papal authorities. Luther protested against the Romish Church, but established by the very fact the right for some more advanced man than Doctor Martin Luther to protest in turn against the Lutheran Church. ”

“ Martin Luther rose from his knees, walked down the staircase, and left the place a free man so far as this superstition was concerned, and shortly afterwards became the most formidable foe that ever assailed the falsehood and corruption of the Romish Church. ”

“ Martin Luther was the man for his age, and whatever were his faults, he served humanity. Little did he anticipate the{257} terrible wars and the fierce religious persecution that followed upon his challenge to Leo X., and the burning of the bull of excommunication outside the walls of Wittenberg.
The memorials of the vast struggle arising from the resistance of Luther to be seen in the town are first the Schloss Kirche, and then the house of the reformer in the old buildings of the University. ”

“ Luther continued: "Every creature becomes, often unwittingly, an instrument in the hand of God, for the accomplishing of His holy Will. Those who plan to do evil, do good instead; and while they would fain destroy God's kingdom, they help to build it up. May our faith never grow weary, for the Lord has many ways and means, even where our short sight can see no remedy. Here the Infidel himself must needs help the Gospel, in despite of the Pope and the Emperor.—How mercifully the Lord has sustained his cause! Everywhere throughout the Empire there are many who follow the truth. ”

“ We find among sincere Christian people a deep resentment over the fact that the work of one as prominent as Martin Luther has been kept so scientifically and so deliberately away from the eyes of his millions of admirers. ”

“ Martin Luther is very dangerously ill; many of the professors and students are in great anxiety about him. He has so many friends; and no wonder! He is no cold friend himself, and all expect great honour to the University from his abilities. I scarcely dare to think what his loss would be to me. But this morning an aged priest who visited him inspired us with some hope. ”

“ For answer, dear friend, get thee back and search the Scriptures, and thou shalt find that so it hath gone with all the holy prophets even as it now fareth with Doctor Martin Luther, who is in truth a godly Christian and manly heart and only true Pope and Apostle, when he the true office of the Apostles publicly fulfilleth.... If the godly man Luther were pleasing to the world, that were indeed a true sign that his doctrine were not from God ”

“ Duke George of Saxony had received no good impression from a sermon Luther had delivered at Dresden, because he feared the consequences which Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone might have upon the morals of the masses. Under these circumstances it would not have been surprising if a member of the Electoral house should harbor like scruples, especially since the full comprehension of Luther's preaching on good works depended on an evangelical understanding of faith, as deep as was Luther's own. ”

“ Many Protestant ministers' libraries contain all classics except the Protestant classics. Let the whole world have the Greek and the Latin fathers as it has, but let Protestants awake and give the world theirs. Is it not a shame and a pity that while all the writings of the Greek and Latin fathers have been translated into many languages, yet the complete works of Luther, the first and chief of the Protestant fathers, have never been translated into any language, though his loyal disciples are numbered by the hundreds of thousands in different tongues, as the fruits of those writings? ”

“ The sturdy peasant adhered to his anti-clerical Christianity, and when his son told him that he had a clear call from God to the monastic life, the father suggested that it might have been a prompting from the devil. Once ordained, it was Luther's duty to say mass and to hear confessions, impose penance and pronounce absolution. He had no difficulties about the doctrines and usages of the Church; but he put his own meaning into the duties and position of a confessor. His own experience had taught him that man could never forgive sin ”

“ The Christian must therefore walk in the middle path, and set these two classes of men before his eyes. He may meet with hardened and obstinate ceremonialists, who, like deaf adders, refuse to listen to the truth of liberty, and cry up, enjoin, and urge on us their ceremonies, as if they could justify us without faith. Such were the Jews of old, who would not understand, that they might act well. These men we must resist, do just the contrary to what they do, and be bold to give them offence, lest by this impious notion of theirs they should deceive many along with themselves. ”

“ Pious parents, whether among the burghers or peasants, seem to have taught their children a simple evangelical faith. Martin Luther and thousands of children like him were trained at home to know the creed, the ten commandments, the Lord’s prayer, and such simple hymns as Ein Kindelein so lobelich, Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist and Crist ist erstanden; and they were taught to believe that God for Christ’s sake freely pardons sin. They learned that simple faith which Luther afterwards expounded in his Small Catechism and called the Kinderlehre. ”