Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 36

I asked the monk who told me of this, what were the especial heresies for which John of Wesel was condemned.

"Heresies against the Church, I believe," he replied. "I have heard him in his sermons declare that the Church was becoming like what the Jewish nation was in the days of our Lord. He protested against the secular splendours of the priests and prelates--against the cold ceremonial into which he said the services had sunk, and the empty superst.i.tions which were subst.i.tuted for true piety of heart and life. He said that the salt had lost its savour; that many of the priests were thieves and robbers, and not shepherds; that the religion in fas.h.i.+on was little better than that of the Pharisees who put our Lord to death--a cloak for spiritual pride, and narrow, selfish bitterness. He declared that divine and ecclesiastical authority were of very different weight; that the outward professing Church was to be distinguished from the true living Church of Christ; that the power of absolution given to the priest was sacramental, and not judicial. In a sermon at Worms, I once heard him say he thought little of the Pope, the Church, or the Councils, as a foundation to build our faith upon. 'Christ alone,' he declared, 'I praise. May the word of Christ dwell in us richly!'"

"They were bold words," I remarked.

"More than that," replied the aged monk; "John of Wesel protested that what the Bible did not hold as sin, neither could he; and he is even reported to have said, 'Eat on fast days, if thou art hungry.'"

"That is a concession many of the monks scarcely need," I observed. "His life, then, was not condemned, but only his doctrine."

"I was sorry," the old monk resumed, "that it was necessary to condemn him; for from that time to this, I never have heard preaching that stirred the heart like his. When he ascended the pulpit, the church was thronged. The laity understood and listened to him as eagerly as the religious. It was a pity he was a heretic, for I do not ever expect to hear his like again."

"You have never heard Dr. Luther preach?" I said.

"Doctor Luther who wrote those theses they are talking so much of?" he asked. "Do the people throng to hear his sermons, and hang on his words as if they were words of life?"

"They do," I replied.

"Then," rejoined the old monk softly, "let Dr. Luther take care. That was the way with so many of the heretical preachers. With John of Goch at Mechlin, and John Wesel whom they expelled from Paris, I have heard it was just the same. But," he continued, "if Dr. Luther comes to Mainz, I will certainly try to hear him. I should like to have my cold, dry, old heart moved like that again. Often when I read the holy Gospels John of Wesel's words come back. Brother, it was like the breath of life."

The last man that ventured to say in the face of Germany that man's word is not to be placed on an equality with G.o.d's, and that the Bible is the only standard of truth, and the one rule of right and wrong--this is how he died!

How will it be with the next--with the man that is proclaiming this in the face of the world now?

The old monk turned back to me, after we had separated, and said, in a low voice--

"Tell Dr. Luther to take warning by John of Wesel. Holy men and great preachers may so easily become heretics without knowing it. And yet," he added, "to preach such sermons as John of Wesel, I am not sure it is not worth while to die in prison. I think I could be content to die, if I could _hear_ one such again! Tell Dr. Luther to take care; but nevertheless, if he comes to Mainz I will hear him."

The good, then, in John of Wesel's words, has not perished, in spite of the flames.

XVI.

Else's Story.

WITTEMBERG, _July_ 13, 1520.

Many events have happened since last I wrote, both in this little world and in the large world outside.

Our Gretchen has two little brothers, who are as ingenious in destruction, and seem to have as many designs against their own welfare, as their uncles had at their age, and seem likely to perplex Gretchen, dearly as she loves them, much as Christopher and Pollux did me.

Chriemhild is married, and has gone to her home in the Thuringian Forest. Atlantis is betrothed to Conrad Winkelried, a Swiss student.

Pollux is gone to Spain, on some mercantile affairs of the Eisenach house of Cotta, in which he is a partner; and Fritz has been among us once more. That is now about two years since. He was certainly much graver than of old. Indeed he often looked more than grave, as if some weight of sorrow rested on him. But with our mother and the children he was always cheerful.

Gretchen and Uncle Fritz formed the strongest mutual attachment, and to this day she often asks me when he will come back; and nothing delights her more than to sit on my knee before his picture, and hear me tell over and over again the stories of our old talks in the lumber-room at Eisenach, or of the long days we used to spend in the pine forests, gathering wood for the winter fires. She thinks no festival could be so delightful as that; and her favourite amus.e.m.e.nt is to gather little bundles of willow or oak twigs, by the river Elbe, or on the Duben Heath, and bring them home for household use. All the splendid puppets and toys her father brings her from Nuremberg, or has sent from Venice, do not give her half the pleasure that she finds in the heath, when he takes her there, and she returns with her little ap.r.o.n full of dry sticks, and her hands as brown and dirty as a little wood-cutter's, fancying she is doing what Uncle Fritz and I did when we were children, and being useful.

Last summer she was endowed with a special apple and pear tree of her own, and the fruit of these she stores with her little f.a.gots to give at Christmas to a poor old woman we know.

Gottfried and I want the children to learn early that pure joy of giving, and of doing kindnesses, which trans.m.u.tes wealth from dust into true gold, and prevents these possessions which are such good servants from becoming our masters, and reducing us, as they seem to do so many wealthy people, into the mere slaves and hired guardians of _things_.

I pray G.o.d often that the experience of poverty which I had for so many years may never be lost. It seems to me a gift G.o.d has given me, just as a course at the university is a gift. I have graduated in the school of poverty, and G.o.d grant I may never forget the secrets poverty taught me about the struggles and wants of the poor.

The room in which I write now, with its carpets, pictures, and carved furniture, is very different from the dear bare old lumber-room where I began my Chronicle; and the inlaid ebony and ivory cabinet on which my paper lies is a different desk from the piles of old books where I used to trace the first pages slowly in a childish hand. But the poor man's luxuries will always be the most precious to me. The warm sunbeams, s.h.i.+ning through the translucent vine-leaves at the open window, are fairer than all the jewel-like Venetian gla.s.s of the closed cas.e.m.e.nts which are now dying crimson the pages of Dr. Luther's Commentary, left open on the window-seat an hour since by Gottfried.

But how can I be writing so much about my own tiny world, when all the world around me is agitated by such great fears and hopes?

At this moment, through the open window, I see Dr. Luther and Dr. Philip Melancthon walking slowly up the street in close conversation. The hum of their voices reaches me here, although they are talking low. How different they look, and are; and yet what friends they have become!

Probably, in a great degree, because of the difference. The one looks like a veteran soldier, with his rock-like brow, his dark eyes, his vigorous form, and his firm step; the other, with his high, expanded forehead, his thin worn face, and his slight youthful frame, like a combination of a young student and an old philosopher.

Gottfried says G.o.d has given them to each other and to Germany, blessing the Church as he does the world by the union of opposites, rain and suns.h.i.+ne, heat and cold, sea and land, husband and wife.

How those two great men (for Gottfried says Dr. Melancthon is great, and I know that Dr. Luther is) love and reverence each other! Dr. Luther says he is but the forerunner, and Melancthon the true prophet; that he is but the wood-cutter clearing the forest with rough blows, that Dr.

Philip may sow the precious seed; and when he went to encounter the legate at Augsburg, he wrote, that if Philip lived it mattered little what became of him.

But _we_ do not think so, nor does Dr. Melancthon. "No one," he says, "comes near Dr. Luther, and indeed the heart of the whole nation hangs on him. Who stirs the heart of Germany--of n.o.bles, peasants, princes, women, children--as he does with his n.o.ble, faithful words?"

Twice during these last years we have been in the greatest anxiety about his safety,--once when he was summoned before the legate at Augsburg, and once when he went to the great disputation with Dr. Eck at Leipsic.

But how great the difference between his purpose when he went to Augsburg, and when he returned from Leipsic!

At Augsburg he would have conceded anything, but the truth about the free justification of every sinner who believes in Christ. He reverenced the Pope; he would not for the world become a heretic! No name of opprobrium was so terrible to him as that.

At Leipsic he had learned to disbelieve that the Pope had any authority to determine doctrine, and he boldly confessed that the Hussites (men till now abhorred in Saxony as natural enemies as well as deadly heretics) ought to be honoured for confessing sound truth. And from that time both Dr. Luther and Melancthon have stood forth openly as the champions of the Word of G.o.d against the Papacy.

Now, however, a worse danger threatens him, even the bull of excommunication which they say is now being forged at Rome, and which has never yet failed to crush where it has fallen. Dr. Luther has, indeed, taught us not to dread it as a spiritual weapon, but we fear its temporal effects, especially if followed by the ban of the empire.

Often, indeed, he talks of taking refuge in some other land; the good Elector, even himself, has at times advised it, fearing no longer to be able to protect him. But G.o.d preserve him to Germany!

_June_ 23, 1520.

This evening, as we were sitting in my father's house, Christopher brought us, damp from the press, a copy of Dr. Luther's Appeal to His Imperial Majesty, and to the Christian n.o.bility of the German Nation, on the Reformation of Christendom. Presenting it to our grandmother, he said,--

"Here, madam, is a weapon worthy of the bravest days of the Schonbergs, mighty to the pulling down of strongholds."

"Ah," sighed our mother, "always wars and fightings! It is a pity the good work cannot be done more quietly."

"Ah, grandmother," said my father, "only see how her burgher life has destroyed the heroic spirit of her crusading ancestors. She thinks that the Holy Places are to be won back from the infidels without a blow, only by begging their pardon and kissing the hem of their garments."

"You should hear Catherine Krapp, Dr. Melancthon's wife!" rejoined our mother; "she agrees with me that these are terrible times. She says she never sees the doctor go away without thinking he may be immured in some dreadful dungeon before they meet again."

"But remember, dear mother," I said, "your fears when first Dr. Luther a.s.sailed Tetzel and his indulgences three years ago! And who has gained the victory there? Dr. Martin is the admiration of all good men throughout Germany; and poor Tetzel, despised by his own party, rebuked by the legate, died, they say, of a broken heart just after the great Leipsic disputation."

"Poor Tetzel!" said my father, "his indulgences could not bind up a broken heart. I shall always love Dr. Luther for writing him a letter of comfort when he was dying, despised and forsaken even by his own party.

I trust that He who can pardon has had mercy on his soul."

"Read to us, Christopher," said our grandmother; "your mother would not shrink from any battle-field if there were wounds there which her hands could bind."