Part 24

Yes; when Dr. Luther speaks he makes us feel we have to do with persons, not with things,--with the devil who hates us, with God who loves us, with the Saviour who died for us. It is not holiness only and justification, or sin and condemnation. It is we sinning and condemned, Christ suffering for us, and God justifying and loving us. It is all I and thou. He brings us face to face with God, not merely sitting serene on a distant imperial throne, frowning in terrible majesty, or even smiling in gracious pity, but coming down to us close, seeking us, and caring, caring unutterably much, that we, even we, should be saved.

I never knew, until Dr. Luther drove out of Wittemberg, and the car with the cloth curtains to protect him from the weather, which the town had provided, passed out of sight, and I saw the tears gently flowing down my mother's face, how much she loved and honoured him.

She seems almost as anxious about him as about Fritz; and she did not reprove me that night when she came in and found me weeping by my bed. She only drew me to her and smoothed down my hair, and said, "Poor little Thekla! God will teach us both how to have none other gods but himself. He will do it very tenderly; but neither thy mother nor thy Saviour can teach thee this lesson without many a bitter tear."

XIX.

Fritz's Story.

EBERNBURG, _April_ 2, 1526.

A chasm has opened between me and my monastic life. I have been in the prison, and in the prison have I received at last, in full, my emancipation. The ties I dreaded impatiently to break have been broken for me, and I am a monk no longer.

I could not but speak to my brethren in the convent of the glad tidings which had brought me such joy. It is as impossible for Christian life not to diffuse itself as that living water should not flow, or that flames should not rise. Gradually a little band of Christ's freedmen gathered around me. At first I did not speak to them much of Dr. Luther's writings. My purpose was to show them that Dr. Luther's doctrine was _not_ his own, but God's.

But the time came when Dr. Luther's name was on every lip. The bull of excommunication went forth against him from the Vatican. His name was branded as that of the vilest of heretics by every adherent of the Pope. In many churches, especially those of the Dominicans, the people were summoned by the great bells to a solemn service of anathema, where the whole of the priests, gathered at the altar in the darkened building, pronounced the terrible words of doom and then, flinging down their blazing torches extinguished them on the stone pavement, as hope, they said, was extinguished by the anathema for the soul of the accursed.

At one of these services I was accidentally present. And mine was not the only heart which glowed with burning indignation to hear that worthy name linked with those of apostates and heretics, and held up to universal execration. But, perhaps, in no heart there did it enkindle such a fire as in mine. Because I knew the source from which those curses came, how lightly, how carelessly those firebrands were flung; not fiercely, by the fanaticism of blinded consciences, but daintily and deliberately, by cruel, reckless hands, as a matter of diplomacy and policy, by those who cared themselves neither for God's curse nor his blessing. And I knew also the heart which they were meant to wound; how loyal, how tender, how true; how slowly, and with what pain Dr. Luther had learned to believe the idols of his youth a lie; with what a wrench, when the choice at last had to be made between the word of God and the voice of the Church, he had clung to the Bible, and let the hopes, and trust, and friendships of earlier days be torn from him; what anguish that separation still cost him; how willingly, as a humble little child, at the sacrifice of anything but truth and human souls, he would have flung himself again on the bosom of that Church to which, in his fervent youth, he had offered up all that makes life dear.

"_They curse, but bless Thou._"

The words came, unbidden into my heart, and almost unconsciously from my lips. Around me I heard more than one "Amen;" but at the same time I became aware that I was watched by malignant eyes.

After the publication of the excommunication, they publicly burned the writings of Dr. Luther in the great square. Mainz was the first city in Germany where this indignity was offered him.

Mournfully I returned to my convent. In the cloisters of our Order the opinions concerning Luther are much divided. The writings of St. Augustine have kept the truth alive in many hearts amongst us; and besides this, there is the natural bias to one of our own order, and the party opposition to the Dominicans, Tetzel and Eck, Dr. Luther's enemies. Probably there are few Augustinian convents in which there are not two opposite parties in reference to Dr. Luther.

In speaking of the great truths, of God freely justifying the sinner because Christ died, (the Judge acquitting because the Judge himself had suffered for the guilty), I had endeavoured to trace them, as I have said, beyond all human words to their divine authority. But now to confess Luther seemed to me to have become identical with confessing Christ. It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is to _confess_ we are called, not merely to _profess_. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-fields besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.

It seems to me also that, practically, the contest in every age of conflict ranges usually round the person of one Faithful, Godsent man, whom to follow loyally is fidelity to God. In the days of the first Judaizing assault on the early Church, that man was St. Paul. In the great Arian battle, this man was Athanasius--"_Athanasius contra mundum_." In our days, in our land, I believe it is Luther; and to deny Luther would be for me who learned the truth from his lips, to deny Christ. Luther, I believe, is the man whom God has given to his Church in Germany in this age. Luther, therefore, I will follow--not as a perfect example, but as a God-appointed leader. Men can never be neutral in great religious contests; and if, because of the little wrong in the right cause, or the little evil in the good man, we refuse to take the side of right, we are, by that very act, silently taking the side of wrong.

When I came back to the convent I found the storm gathering. I was asked if I possessed any of Dr. Luther's writings. I confessed that I did. It was demanded that they should be given up. I said they could be taken from me, but I would not willingly give them up to destruction, because I believed they contained the truth of God. Thus the matter ended until we had each retired to our cells for the night, when one of the older monks came to me and accused me of secretly spreading Lutheran heresy among the brethren.

I acknowledged I had diligently, but not secretly, done all I could to spread among the brethren the truths contained in Dr. Luther's books, although not in his words, but in St. Paul's. A warm debate ensued, which ended in the monk angrily leaving the cell, saying that means would be found to prevent the further diffusion of this poison.

The next day I was taken into the prison where John of Wesel died; the heavy bolts were drawn upon me, and I was left in solitude.

As they left me alone, the monk with whom I had the discussion of the previous night said. "In this chamber, not forty years since, a heretic such as Martin Luther died."

The words were intended to produce wholesome fear: they acted as a bracing tonic. The spirit of the conqueror who had seemed to be defeated there, but now stood with the victorious palm before the Lamb, seemed near me. The Spirit of the truth for which he suffered was with me; and in the solitude of that prison I learned lessons years might not have taught me elsewhere.

No one except those who have borne them knows how strong are the fetters which bind us to a false faith, learned at our mother's knee, and riveted on us by the sacrifices of years. Perhaps I should never have been able to break them. For me, as for thousands of others, they were rudely broken by hostile hands. But the blows which broke them were the accolade which smote me from a monk into a knight and soldier of my Lord.

Yes; there I learned that these vows which have bound me for so many years are bonds, not to God, but to a lying tyranny. The only true vows, as Dr. Luther says, are the vows of our baptism--to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, as soldiers of Christ. The only divine Order is the common order of Christianity. All other orders are disorder; not confederations within the Church, but conspiracies against it. If, in an army, the troops choose to abandon the commander's arrangement, and range themselves, by arbitrary rules, in peculiar uniforms, around self-elected leaders, they would not be soldiers--they would be mutineers.

God's order is, I think, the State to embrace all men, the Church to embrace all Christian men; and the kernel of the State and the type of the Church is the family.

He creates us to be infants, children--sons, daughters--husband, wife--father, mother. He says, Obey your parents, love your wife, reverence your husband, love your children. As children, let the Lord at Nazareth be your model; as married, let the Lord, who loved the Church better than life, be your type; as parents, let the heavenly Father be your guide. And if we, abandoning every holy name of family love he has sanctioned, and every lowly duty he has enjoined, choose to band ourselves anew into isolated conglomerations of men or women, connected only by a common name and dress, we are not only amiable enthusiasts--we are rebels against the Divine order of humanity.

God, indeed, may call some especially to forsake father and mother, and wife and children, and all things for his dearer love. But when he calls to such destinies, it is by the plain voice of Providence, or by the bitter call of persecution; and then the martyr's or the apostle's solitary path is as much the lowly, simple path of obedience as the mother's or the child's. The crown of the martyr is consecrated by the same holy oil which anoints the head of the bride, the mother, or the child,--the consecration of love and of obedience. There is none other. All that is not duty is sin; all that is not obedience is disobedience; all that is not of love is of self; and self crowned with thorns in a cloister is as selfish as self crowned with ivy at a revel.

Therefore I abandon cowl and cloister for ever. I am no more Brother Sebastian, of the order of the Eremites of St. Augustine. I am Friedrich Cotta, Margaret Cotta's son, Else and Thekla's brother Fritz. I am no more a monk. I am a Christian--I am no more a vowed Augustinian. I am a baptized Christian, dedicated to Christ from the arms of my mother, united to Him by the faith of my manhood. Henceforth I will order my life by no routine of ordinances imposed by the will of a dead man hundreds of years since. But day by day I will seek to yield myself, body, soul, and spirit to the living will of my almighty, loving God, saying to him morning by morning, "Give me this day my daily bread. Appoint to me this day my daily task." And He will never fail to hear, however often I may fail to ask.

I had abundance of time for those thoughts in my prison; for during the three weeks I lay there I had, with the exception of the bread and water which were silently laid inside the door every morning, but two visits. And these were from my friend the aged monk who had first told me about John of Wesel.

The first time he came (he said) to persuade me to recant. But whatever he intended, he said little about recantation--much more about his own weakness, which hindered him from confessing the same truth.

The second time he brought me a disguise, and told me he had provided the means for my escape that very night. When, therefore, I heard the echoes of the heavy bolts of the great doors die away through the long stone corridors, and listened till the last tramp of feet ceased, and door after door of the various cells was closed, and every sound was still throughout the building, I laid aside my monk's cowl and frock, and put on the burgher dress provided for me.

To me it was a glad and solemn ceremony, and, alone in my prison, I prostrated myself on the stone floor, and thanked Him who, by his redeeming death and the emancipating word of his free spirit, had made me a free man, nay, infinitely better, _his freedman_.

The bodily freedom to which I looked forward was to me a light boon indeed, in comparison with the liberty of heart already mine. The putting on this common garb of secular life was to me like a solemn investiture with the freedom of the city and the empire of God. Henceforth I was not to be a member of a narrow, separated class, but of the common family; no more to freeze alone on a height, but to tread the lowly path of common duty; to help my brethren, not as men at a sumptuous table throw crumbs to beggars and dogs, but to live amongst them--to share my bread of life with them; no longer as the forerunner in the wilderness, but, like the Master, in the streets, and highways, and homes of men; assuming no nobler name than man created in the image of God, born in the image of Adam; aiming at no loftier title than Christian, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and created anew, to be conformed to his glorious image. Yes, as the symbol of a freedman, as the uniform of a soldier, as the armour of a sworn knight, at once freeman and servant, was that lowly burgher's dress to me; and with a joyful heart, when the aged monk came to me again, I stepped after him, leaving my monk's frock lying in the corner of the cell, like the husk of that old lifeless life.

In vain did I endeavour to persuade my liberator to accompany me in my flight. "The world would be a prison to me, brother," he said with a sad smile. "All I loved in it are dead, and what could I do there, with the body of an old man and the helpless inexperience of a child? Fear not for me," he added; "I also shall, I trust, one day dwell in a home; but not on earth!"

And so we parted, he returning to the convent, and I taking my way, by river and forest, to this castle of the noble knight Franz von Sickingen, on a steep height at the angle formed by the junction of two rivers.

My silent weeks of imprisonment had been weeks of busy life in the world outside. When I reached this castle of Ebernburg, I found the whole of its inhabitants in a ferment about the summoning of Dr. Luther to Worms. His name, and my recent imprisonment for his faith, were a sufficient passport to the hospitality of the castle, and I was welcomed most cordially.

It was a great contrast to the monotonous routine of the convent and the stillness of the prison. All was life and stir; eager debates as to what it would be best to do for Dr. Luther; incessant coming and going of messengers on horse and foot between Ebernburg and Worms, where the Diet is already sitting, and where the good knight Franz spends much of his time in attendance on the Emperor.

Ulrich von Hutton is also here, from time to time, vehement in his condemnation of the fanaticism of monks and the lukewarmness of princes; and Dr. Bucer, a disciple of Dr. Luther's, set free from the bondage of Rome by his healthful words at the great conference of the Augustinians at Heidelberg.

_April_ 30, 1521.

The events of an age seem to have been crowded into the last month. A few days after I wrote last, it was decided to send a deputation to Dr. Luther, who was then rapidly approaching Worms, entreating him not to venture into the city, but to turn aside to Ebernburg. The Emperor's confessor, Glapio, had persuaded the knight von Sickingen and the chaplain Bucer, that all might easily be arranged, if Dr. Luther only avoided the fatal step of appearing at the Diet.

A deputation of horsemen was therefore sent to intercept the doctor on his way, and to conduct him, if he would consent, to Ebernburg, the "refuge and hostelry of righteousness," as it has been termed.

I accompanied the little band, of which Bucer was to be chief spokesman. I did not think Dr. Luther would come. Unlike the rest of the party, I had known him not only when he stepped on the great stage of the world as the antagonist of falsehood, but as the simple, straightforward, obscure monk. And I knew that the step which to others seemed so great, leading him from safe obscurity into perilous pre-eminence before the eyes of all Christendom, was to him no great momentary effort, but simply one little step in the path of obedience and lowly duty which he had been endeavouring to tread so many years. But I feared. I distrusted Glapio, and believed that all this earnestness on the part of the papal party to turn the doctor aside was not for his sake, but for their own.

I needed not, at least, have distrusted Dr. Luther. Bucer entreated him with the eloquence of affectionate solicitude; his faithful friends and fellow-travellers, Jonas, Amsdorf, and Schurff, wavered, but Dr. Luther did not hesitate an instant. He was in the path of obedience. The next step was as unquestionable and essential as all the rest, although, as he had once said, "it led through flames which extended from Worms to Wittemberg, and raged up to heaven." He did not, however, use any of these forcible illustrations now, natural as they were to him. He simply said,--

"I continue my journey. If the Emperor's confessor has anything to say to me, he can say it at Worms. _I will go to the place to which I have been summoned._"

And he went on, leaving the friendly deputation to return to Ebernburg.

I did not leave him. As we went on the way, some of those who had accompanied him told me through what fervent greetings and against what vain entreaties of fearful affection he had pursued his way thus far; how many had warned him that he was going to the stake, and had wept that they should see his face no more; how, through much bodily weakness and suffering, through acclamations and tears, he had passed on simply and steadfastly, blessing little children in the schools he visited, and telling them to search the Scriptures; comforting the timid and aged, stirring up the hearts of all to faith and prayer, and by his courage and trust more than once turning enemies into friends.

"Are you the man who is to overturn the popedom?" said a soldier, accosting him rather contemptuously at a halting-place; "how will you accomplish that?"

"I rely on Almighty God," he replied, "whose orders I have."

And the soldier replied reverently,--

"I serve the Emperor Charles; your Master is greater than mine."

One more assault awaited Dr. Luther before he reached his destination. It came through friendly lips. When he arrived near Worms, a messenger came riding towards us from his faithful friend Spalatin, the Elector's chaplain, and implored him on no account to think of entering the city.

The doctor's old fervour of expression returned at such a temptation meeting him so near the goal.

"Go tell your master," he said, "that if there were at Worms as many devils as there are tiles on the roofs, yet would I go in."

And he went in. A hundred cavaliers met him near the gates, and escorted him within the city. Two thousand people were eagerly awaiting him, and pressed to see him as he passed through the streets. Not all friends. Fanatical Spaniards were among them, who had torn his books in pieces from the book-stalls, and crossed themselves when they looked at him, as if he had been the devil; baffled partisans of the Pope: and on the other hand, timid Christians who hoped all from his courage; men who had waited long for this deliverence, had received life from his words, and had kept his portrait in their homes and hearts encircled like that of a canonized saint with a glory. And through the crowd he passed, the only man, perhaps, in it who did not see Dr. Luther through a mist of hatred or of glory, but felt himself a solitary, feeble, helpless man, leaning only, yet resting securely, on the arm of Almighty strength.

Those who knew him best perhaps wondered at him most during those days which followed. Not at his courage--that we had expected--but at his calmness and moderation. It was this which seemed to me most surely the seal of God on that fervent impetuous nature, stamping the work and the man as of God.

We none of us know how he would have answered before that august assembly. At his first appearance some of us feared he might have been too vehement. The Elector Frederick could not have been more moderate and calm. When asked whether he would retract his books, I think there were few among us who were not surprised at the noble self-restraint of his reply. He asked for time.

"Most gracious Emperor, gracious princes and lords," he said, "with regard to the first accusation, I acknowledge the books enumerated to have been from me. I cannot disown them. As regards the second, seeing that is a question of the faith and the salvation of souls, and of God's word, the most precious treasure in heaven or earth, I should act rashly were I to reply hastily. I might affirm less than the case requires, or more than truth demands, and thus offend against that word of Christ, 'Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.' Wherefore I beseech your imperial majesty, with all submission, to allow me time that I may reply without doing prejudice to the word of God."

He could afford to be thought for the time what many of his enemies tauntingly declared him, a coward, brave in the cell, but appalled when he came to face the world.

During the rest of that day he was full of joy; "like a child," said some, "who knows not what is before him;" "like a veteran," said others, "who has prepared everything for the battle;" like both, I thought, since the strength of the veteran in the battles of God is the strength of the child following his Father's eye, and trusting on his Father's arm.

A conflict awaited him afterwards in the course of the night, which one of us witnessed, and which made him who witnessed it feel no wonder that the imperial presence had no terrors for Luther on the morrow.

Alone that night our leader fought the fight to which all other combats were but as a holiday tournament. Prostrate on the ground, with sobs and bitter tears, he prayed,--

"Almighty, everlasting God, how terrible this world is! How it would open its jaws to devour me, and how weak is my trust in thee! The flesh is weak, and the devil is strong! O thou my God, help me against all the wisdom of this world. Do thou the work. It is for thee alone to do it; for the work is thine, not mine. I have nothing to bring me here. I have no controversy to maintain, not I, with the great ones of the earth. I too would that my days should glide along, happy and calm. But the cause is thine. It is righteous, it is eternal. O Lord, help me; thou that art faithful, thou that art unchangeable. It is not in any man I trust. That were vain indeed. All that is in man gives way; all that comes from man faileth. O God, my God, dost thou not hear me? Art thou dead? No; thou canst not die! Thou art but hiding thyself. Thou hast chosen me for this work. I know it. Oh, then, arise and work. Be thou on my side, for the sake of thy beloved Son Jesus Christ, who is my defence, my shield and my fortress.