liance on numbers, he thus notices his own early history. "When at the beginning of my course I wrote against indulgences and other abuses, this gift was divinely bestowed upon me, that I was convinced I ought to take the cause, great and mighty as it was, upon myself alone, and support it by the divine help, without other dependence. If I had relied on the increasing numbers whom the goodness of the cause attached to it, and attempted any thing by their means, my end would have been like that of Munzer." 1 A. D. 1540. mianism. A work of Luther's against antinomianism On Antinoconnects with the history a person whose name has already appeared in this work, and from whom better things might have been hoped. This was John Agricola Islebius, that is Agricola of Agricola Eisleben, the same place of which Luther Islebius. was a native. This man was of humble origin, but, having obtained some previous education, he had studied at Wittemberg under Luther and Melancthon, whose tenets he professed to embrace. He afterwards became master of the school in his native town, and was admitted a preacher; in the discharge of which office he appears to have possessed a degree of popular talent. Hence he was taken by Albert count Mansfeld, in the train of the elector of Saxony, to the diet of Spires in 1526, and to that of Augsburg in 1530; and it is in the latter connexion that we have heard of him as one of the protestant preachers. 2 He appears to have been a vain and inconstant man, prone to innovation, but without firmness to adhere to his own dogmas: and we accordingly read of his repeatedly recanting them. Elated with his honours, Seck. iii. 301-306. Above, p. 23. CHAP. Uses of the law. he ventured to animadvert on Melancthon, for the form of ecclesiastical visitation which he had drawn up in 1527. He afterwards removed to Wittemberg, and was allowed to preach, and read lectures in the university. He broached opinions, however, which Luther felt himself called upon to refute, and which their author then abandoned. About the year 1538 he circulated, anonymously, some theses maintaining that the law is not to be preached for the purpose of bringing sinners to repentance, and condemning what Luther had advanced in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, concerning the use of the law in awakening the consciences of men. With these theses others were connected, whether written by Agricola or by some of his followers is uncertain, in which S. Peter was charged with not understanding Christian liberty, and his exhortation to Christians, to give "diligence to make their calling and election sure," was openly reprehended. Against these pernicious dogmas, Luther, without naming their author, maintained and published six academical disputations; in which he affirmed it to be the proper office of the law, as given to sinners, to discover to them the wrath of God against their offences, and thus to lead them to conviction and repentance of sin so that repentance, properly so called, may be said to take its beginning from the law: and he shews this to be the plan and doctrine of scripture, even according to the very texts which had been adduced on the other side. He particularly insists on S. Paul's method in the Epistle to the Romans, which begins with the 1 Opera. i. 400. Wittemb. "revelation of wrath ;" and it is "silly trifling," Concerning himself, Luther made an obser A. D. 1540. СНАР. VI. vation which has by no means met with the regard to which it was entitled; "That, if at any time he had taught that the law was not to be preached in the church, it was unjust to impute to him a sentiment long ago discarded, when he had since clearly and frequently laid down the contrary. He had taught many other things under the papacy with great sincerity; and indeed there was scarcely now to be found so miserable and burdened a papist as, from conscience and the fear of God, he had once been: no wonder then if he had need to grow in the knowledge of Christ." After this publication of Luther's, Agricola again professed to renounce his errors: but his conduct was very unsteady and inconsistent. He afterwards withdrew into the dominions of the elector of Brandenburg, and insinuated himself into his favour. Luther congratulated himself on his removal from Wittemberg, and complained bitterly of the trouble he suffered from such airy and conceited spirits, calling themselves his disciples. The account of this man may suggest useful admonition; and he gave occasion to discussions, the result of 1 Seck. iii. 306-310.-In some letters to Stratner, a pastor in Brandenburg, Luther is very lively, and not a little severe, upon Agricola. "Mr. Grickel" (so his name was facetiously contracted,) is not, nor ever will be, the man that he would be thought, or that the elector takes him to be. If you would know what vanity is, you will never find a truer image of it. You may see it depicted in his gestures, his voice, his laughter, in every movement of his body and mind. His vain glory is so excessive that he can never serve the cause of God, but may much injure it. You may believe what I say, though Mr. Grickel should be extolled to the skies by himself or his admirers.-He has so often deceived us, that I have no further hope of him."-Luth. Epist. Strobel. 184 and 185. which, even as here briefly exhibited, may not be unimportant. A. D. 1540. Luther also at this time addressed the pastors On Usury. of the church on the duty of preaching against the exaction of usury, which he seems in many cases, though not in all, to extend to the taking of interest for money. Probably he did not make all the distinctions required by the situation of a mercantile country, where money is, in various ways, so extensively borrowed for the purpose of making profit, and not merely for procuring the necessaries of life: but he wrote with honesty and zeal against an evil which he saw oppress his country, and manifest the grasping spirit of the people; and he avowedly referred it to the combined deliberation of statesmen and divines, to determine what exceptions or limitations his rules required. He wrote also a preface to an account, trans- Martyrdom lated from the English, of the martyrdom of of Barnes. Dr. Robert Barnes, who was burned at London, 30 July 1540.2 Barnes had been well known in Saxony, whither he had some time before come on an embassy from Henry VIII, and had then been a guest of Luther's. Luther blesses God that the examples of the primitive church were renewed, in men thus sacrificing their lives for their Saviour: " but who," he asks, "would ten years ago have expected this honour to be gained by Barnes," who in Germany had passed under an assumed name for fear of the papists ?3 In the next year he published expositions of On the the ninetieth Psalm, (the " prayer of Moses the 90th Psalm. man of God,") and of some of the minor pro 1 Opera, vii. 401. Alt. Seck. iii. 310-312. 3 Seck. iii. 261, 262. |