The Augsburg Confession sought to obviate this evil, and hence enjoined, that no one should teach in public, who had not received a lawful vocation. An article which, in the Lutheran system, is utterly unintelligible, and to which, therefore, we can assign no place therein; but must merely rest satisfied with stating its existence, as well as the extraneous causes, to which it owed its origin. It is, too, a consequence of the accidental character of this article, that it merely asserts, that every teacher is to be called in a lawful manner, without at all determining in what this lawfulness consists.* Law served: "Should the people say, why had revolt been preached up to them, the answer is, why did they not let their preachers be tested before hand, and without advice suffer every loose fisherman to preach? Compare Bucholz: Geschichte der Regierung Ferd. I. (History of the Reign of Ferdinand I.) Vienna, 1831. vol. ii. p. 220. * Confess. August. Art. xiv. De ordine ecclesiastico docent, quod nemo debeat in ecclesiâ publice docere, nisi rite vocatus. Moreover, it was necessary not only to pass this ordinance, but to enjoin, that teachers should generally be procured, and be maintained. The Saxon nobility and peasants took Luther at his word; and since he had told them, that, by the interior unction, they were made acquainted with all things; and as men divinely illuminated, they stood in need of no human teachers, they were uncommonly flattered by this declaration, and seriously resolved to do away with the public ministry. Hence, they withheld from the curates their dues. Luther complains somewhere, "That if aid be not speedily brought, the Gospel, schools, and parish ministers, are all ruined in this land; the latter must go, for they possess nothing, and wander about, looking like haggard ghosts." Elsewhere he says: "The people will no longer give anything, and there is such thanklessness among them for the holy Word of God, that, if I could do it with a safe conscience, I should help to deprive them of pastors or preachers, and let them live like swine, as they already do." See Plank's History of the Protestant System of Doctrine. Vol. ii. p. 342. (In German). Had not the sovereign power interfered to set restraints on this gospel liberty, never, according to Luther's principles, could an ecclesiastical community have been formed. VOL. II. 7 fulness, according to the principles of the Reformers, consisted in this: that nothing external could be lawfully instituted, and that every one might undertake the office of teacher, who believed himself under the impulse of the Divine Spirit, and could find such singular hearers, as, firmly convinced, they already knew every thing, and needed no instruction, yet were, nevertheless, most desirous to learn. That, at a latter period, the Consistories reserved to themselves the right of deciding, on the qualifications of a candidate, for the office of preacher, and permitted the congregation to elect only such, as had enlisted the approval of the most higher functionaries, is a fact as well known, as the utter inconsistency of such an arrangement, with the fundamental doctrines of Luther, must be evident to every mind. At all events, it is a very remarkable fact, that the Lutherans, nay, Luther himself, in his maturer years, should have practically, at least, rejected his fundamental opinions, and thereby unequivocally demonstrated, that, perfectly adapted as those opinions might be, for the destruction of an existing Church, and the subversion of all established notions, yet were they utterly unserviceable, for the building up and consolidation of a new Church. To construct such a Church, they were forced to recur to the old Catholic method, which had been so violently assailed. In the examination of the doctrines of the Anabaptists, we shall first have occasion to furnish the most striking evidences of this retrograde movement. § XLVI.-Continuation. Invisible Church. By the analysis we have followed, we have obtained a tolerably complete insight, into the Lutheran theory of the Church. The believer, according to what has been stated, is, in the first place, instructed by God only, exclusively of all co-operation of human activity, whether it be his own, or that of other men. In the second place, he is on this account infallible, because, having been taught by God, without human concurrence, whereby error can alone arise, he is in himself absolutely inerrable. Thirdly, it cannot hence be discerned, why he should need the supplemental aid of a congregation, invested with authority, from whose centre the Word of God should be announced to him; for, by the assistance of the outward Divine Word, written in the depths of his heart, he hears his voice alone, and without an intermediate organ.* What, after all this, can the Church be other than an invisible community, since no rational object, in the visibility of the Church, can any longer be conceived? So, in fact, Luther defines its notion, when he says, "As we pray in faith, I believe in a Holy Ghost, in a communion of saints. This means the community, or congregation of all those, who live in the right faith, hope and charity; thus, the essence, life and nature of * We must here for once observe to our readers, that it is not our fault, if, in the words of the text, a contradiction should be apparent. For, the words, "God alone without any intermediate organ worketh in man ;" and those, "He worketh by the aid of the external, divine, and written Word," involve a contradiction. It is only in the second part of this work, this contradiction will be fully solved. christendom, consists not in a bodily assemblage, but in the assemblage of hearts in one faith." That this one faith will never fail, Luther had not the slightest cause to doubt, for God, whose agency is here represented as exclusive, will everywhere produce the same effects. But, we have already seen how Luther, although, according to him, believers are inwardly taught by God alone, yet all at once (and without its being possible to discover, in his system, any rational ground for such an assumption), admits the establishment of human teachers, and even the lawfulness of their calling. Hereby the Church becomes visible, recognizable, obvious to the eye, so that the ill-connected notions of God, the sole teacher, and of a human teacher declared competent, and who cannot yet be dispensed with, meet us again in such a way as to imply, that the invisible is still a visible Church also. In Luther's work against Ambrosius Catharinus, this singular combination of ideas is most decidedly expressed. Luther asks himself the question, which Catharinus had already proposed, "but those will say, if the Church be quite in the spirit, and of a nature thoroughly spiritual, how can we discern where on earth any part of it may be?" And he accordingly confesses, that it must be absolutely internal in its nature; only he replies, "the necessary mark, whereby we recognize it, and which we possess, * Luther "On the Papacy." Jena. German edition, vol. i. p. 266* Respons. ad librum Ambros. Cathar. anno 1521. Opp. tom. ii. fol. 376. In the work on the Papacy, Luther says, "Furthermore, because communion with the visible Church constitutes no communion with the invisible, and because many non-Christians are found in the visible Church, so no visible Church is at all necessary! is baptism and the Lord's Supper, and above all, the * Luther's Respons. ad libr. Ambros. Cathar. loc. cit. fol. 376-377. Dices autem, si ecclesia tota est in spiritu, et res omnino spiritualis, nemo ergo nosse poterit, ubi sit ulla ejus pars in toto orbe . . . . Quo ergo signo agnoscam ecclesiam? Respondeo; signum necessarium est, quod et habemus, Baptisma, ac panem et omnium potissimum Evangelium. † Confess. August. Art. vII. Item docent, quod una sancta ecclesia perpetuo mansura sit. Est autem ecclesia congregatio sanctorum, in quâ Evangelium recte docetur, et recte administrantur sacramenta. Et ad veram unitatem ecclesiæ satis est, consentire de doctrinâ Evangelii, et administratione sacramentorum. |