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 VERY sad and telling quote from Martin Luther...
...as he begin to see the effects of his revolt against the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
“Every thing is reversed, the world grows every day the worse for this teaching; and the misery of it is, that men are nowadays more covetous, more hard-hearted, more corrupt, more licentious, and more wicked, than of old under the Papacy… Our evangels are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of his menaces… Under the Papacy, men were charitable and gave freely; but now, under the gospel all almsgiving is at an end, everyone fleeces his neighbor, and each seeks to have all for himself. And the longer the gospel is preached, the deeper do men sink in avarice, pride, and ostention.” - Martin Luther Lutherans, we love you. Come home. You can read more: http://catholicism.org/the-devastati...nt-revolt.html |
Documentation
What appears to be a dismal ranting paragraph from Luther on the failures of the Reformation is actually a few quotes strewn together using a complicated web of secondary sources going back to the mid-1800's. This is the standard operating procedure for many of Rome's defenders.
The first place to begin the investigation is by following the "You can read more" link over to the article, Some Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Revolt (March 5, 2012) by Br. David Mary, M.I.C.M., Tert. The author states,
Before going on to describe the Revolt in the rest of Europe, let us hear Luther himself comment on the moral results of his “glorious” reform: “Every thing is reversed, the world grows every day the worse for this teaching; and the misery of it is, that men are nowadays more covetous, more hard-hearted, more corrupt, more licentious, and more wicked, than of old under the Papacy… Our evangels are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of his menaces… Under the Papacy, men were charitable and gave freely; but now, under the gospel all almsgiving is at an end, everyone fleeces his neighbor, and each seeks to have all for himself. And the longer the gospel is preached, the deeper do men sink in avarice, pride, and ostention.” 68 [68 Quoted by the German historian Döllinger from Luther’s writings near the end of his life. This extract can be seen in History of the Protestant Revolt , Vol. I, p. 260.]The source cited (endnote #68) appears to be referring to an extract from Döllinger's History of the Protestant Revolt , Vol. I, p. 260. I was not familiar with Döllinger having written such a volume. Upon further investigation, Br. Mary's other endnotes also refer to The History of the Protestant Revolt in England and Ireland by William Cobbett, and The History of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, and in England, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe , Vol. I, by M. J. Spalding. The quote in question appears to come from Pages 259 - 260 of the later volume, not Döllinger:
We here subjoin an analysis of the testimony furnished by the reformers themselves, according to the learned and accurate Döllinger, on the practical moral results of their teachings, as witnessed by themselves in their own times. If some of these testimonies are similar to those already given, the confirmation is still more forcible. As will be seen, the analysis is sufficiently thorough and searching, and its length will be pardoned to the great interest of the subject*
*We take this excellent summary from the Dublin Review for September, 1848, which gives also the proper references to Döllinger's German work.
THE MORAL RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. "Upon this head, few will be disposed to call in question the authority of our first evidence, the father of the Reformation himself With all his partiality for the child of his own labors, Luther is forced to admit, that it were no wonder if his beloved Germany 'were sunk in the earth, or utterly overthrown by the Turks and Tartars, by reason of the hellish and damnable forgetfulness and contempt of God's grace which the people manifest; nay, that the wonder is, that the earth does not refuse to bear them, and the sun to shine upon them any longer.' He doubts 'whether it should any longer be called a world, and not rather an abyss of all evils, wherewith those sodomites afflict his soul and his eyes both day and night' 'Every thing is reversed,' he laments, 'the world grows every day the worse for this teaching; and the misery of it is, that men are nowadays more covetous, more hard-hearted, more corrupt, more licentious, and more wicked, than of old under the Papacy.' 'Our evangelicals,' he avows, 'are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of his menaces.' 'Under the Papacy, men were charitable and gave freely; but now, under the gospel, all almsgiving is at an end, every one fleeces his neighbor, and each seeks to have all for himself. And the longer the gospel is preached, the deeper do men sink in avarice, pride, and ostentation.' So utterly, too, does he despair of the improvement of this generation of his disciples, that he 'often wishes that Oxese filthy swine-bellies were back again under the tyranny of the Pope, for it is impossible that a race so savage, such a "people of Gomorrha," could be ruled by the peaceful consolations of the gospel.'So, right off the bat, Rome's defender on the Catholic Answers forums cited a cut-and-paste from a web article that got the author and the title wrong of the book being cited. But it gets more complicated. The author of the book being cited (M.J. Spalding) actually didn't use one of Luther's writings, but rather took the information from the Dublin Review September, 1848 from their article, The Reformation as Described by the Reformers (the quote in question begins on page 216). The Dublin Review notes that it isn't one quote, but rather at least three from a German source (quotes they translated into English), Döllinger's Die Reformation: Ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen vol. 1 (The Reformation: It's Interior Development and Effects, 3 vols. 1846-1848). The Dublin Review provides three references to Döllinger's Die Reformation: pp. 297, 285, 327. Broken up, the quotes are said to refer to the following from Döllinger:
1. Every thing is reversed, the world grows every day the worse for this teaching; and the misery of it is, that men are nowadays more covetous, more hard-hearted, more corrupt, more licentious, and more wicked, than of old under the Papacy… (p. 297)
2. Our evangels are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of his menaces… (p.285)
3. Under the Papacy, men were charitable and gave freely; but now, under the gospel all almsgiving is at an end, everyone fleeces his neighbor, and each seeks to have all for himself. And the longer the gospel is preached, the deeper do men sink in avarice, pride, and ostention. (p.327)Now using the references from the Dublin Review to Döllinger, we can begin to try to find the actual contexts to from Luther's writings by seeing what Döllinger was citing. For the first quote from Döllinger's Die Reformation on page 297, the reference appears to be either to to Walch 2680 (in which Döllinger gave a rather loose translation of Luther's comments on Galatians 5:13) or, it could be to Hauspostille Walch XIII.19. If this is the reference, it would be Luther's sermon on Matthew 21:1-9. Or, the Dublin review may have used a mixture of both. The second quote from page 285 appears to be a reference to Walch III, 2727. The quote comes from Luther's comments on Deuteronomy 9:25. The third quote refers to Walsh hauspostil XIII 1572, 1584. These are references to Luther's House Postil sermon on Luke 16:19-31.
Conclusion
That's right: this one-paragraph quote from Luther is actually three quotes from three different sources, hence three different contexts.
This particular exercise of tedium took a number of hours to unravel. It always amazes me how one seemingly simple paragraph can be put together in such a haphazard "Frankenstein's monster" way. Rather than simply reading Luther, many of Rome's defenders would rather cut-and-paste snippets from research dating back centuries. And even visiting those old texts revealed that some of Rome's defenders were cutting and pasting way back when. The simple thing to remember is not to take anything Rome's defenders post at face value. More often than not when it comes to these Reformation related quotes, they've never actually done the work to actually read the original contexts of what they post. Perhaps it's laziness, or perhaps it's misguided zeal, or perhaps in some cases it's a little bit of both. The participant from Catholic Answers ends with, "Lutherans, we love you. Come home." Love is not demonstrated by posting propaganda, Wherever "home" is, it certainly isn't where this person from Catholic Answers thinks it is.
Addendum
I did leave a response at Catholic Answers, and of course, when at Catholic Answers, always save a copy of what you post:
Jan 14, '16, 3:44 pm
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| Re: VERY sad and telling quote from Martin Luther...
Quote:
The source cited by Br, David Mary appears to be Döllinger's History of the Protestant Revolt , Vol. I, p. 260. I was not familiar with Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger having written such a volume. What's usually cited by is Döllinger's A History of the Church series. Thinking that this was the source meant, I checked vol. 1 p. 260, but the quote was not there. A quick Google search though did come upon The History of the Protestant Reformation Vol. 1 by M.J. Spalding. Page 260 has the quote being cited. A surface reading of Br, David Mary's documentation appears he got the author wrong, but it's more likely his was a poorly worded footnote. He did though get the title of the book wrong, changing "Reformation" to "Revolt." The author of the book being cited (M.J. Spalding) admits he didn't get the quotes from Luther, but rather took the information from the Dublin Review for September, 1848. The Dublin review took the quotes from Döllinger. It appears there are at least three different quotes being put together to form the paragraph as it's being cited. This might sound like nitpicking, but those were the hoops I had to jump through to see where Luther said what he is purported to have said. Luther wasn't postmillennial. While he was discouraged that the world seemed to be getting worse, his eschatological expectation can be traced back even to the early days of his Reformation work. For Luther, it was the end of the world. Things were indeed going to get worse. For him, he felt the Gospel was going to be fought against by the Devil with all his might. The true church was a tiny flock in a battle against the world, the flesh, and the Devil. He hoped the people would improve with the preaching of the Gospel, he often admitted he knew things were going to get worse because of the Gospel. One of the recent volumes of Luther's works addresses this very issue (LW 58:xx-xxii). It is well worth tracking down. They say in part, "The Reformation, as Luther understands it at the end of his life, is neither an accomplished event nor a step along the progressive way to the full purification of the Church, but it is a continual struggle, carried out through the preaching of the Law and the Gospel, to be renewed from generation to generation until the Last Day." |
"The simple thing to remember is not to take anything Rome's defenders post at face value."
ReplyDeleteJames, your statement above looks better in boldface! And you have provided here in detail a perfect example (among numerous others in the past) of the kind of stuff the papists produce.
And with the upcoming quincentennial, you'll need your hipwaders in dealing with the onslaught of malquotations and vaporquotes attributed to Martin Luther and others of the Reformation.
Thanks for the encouragement. Going through the documentation provided by Rome's defenders is so much easier now. It amazing- that when Döllinger cites "Walch" I can now actually locate the volumes!
ReplyDeleteNice research. But does it really change anything as far as Luther's point?
ReplyDeleteYes it does, as will be demonstrated in future posts. What Rome's defenders claim in their interpretations is not accurate
ReplyDeleteThen we have this lamentable condition, but perhaps the veracity of the authors may be impugned as needed to maintain the cherished view by certain defenders:
ReplyDeleteCardinal Bellarmine,
"Some years before the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresy, according to the testimony of those who were then alive, there was almost an entire abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical judgments; in morals, no discipline; in sacred literature, no erudition; in divine things, no reverence; religion was almost extinct. (Concio XXVIII. Opp. Vi. 296- Colon 1617, in “A History of the Articles of Religion,” by Charles Hardwick, Cp. 1, p. 10,)
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,
"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution.
"It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)
..Sixtus IV was completely a worldling. He is best known perhaps for the chapel that he built which was later decorated by Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel. His successor Innocent VIII had an illegitimate family. Alexander VI, who was Spanish, was perhaps the worst of them all. He had many illegitimate children, but he was a good political candidate. But his reign as pope did more to weaken the moral prestige of the papacy than almost anything imaginable...
And if we go to the clergy, to what we can call the lower clergy or the ordinary priests, we can say that one vice that many of them had was immorality. Many of them had women that they kept in their rectories by whom they had children, so they had families to support. — Maurice W. Sheehan, O.F.M. Cap., Lecture 2: Prelude-Causes, Attempts at Reform to 1537; International Catholic University http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c01802.htm
Catholic historian Paul Johnson additionally described the existing social situation among the clergy during this period:
“Probably as many as half the men in orders had ‘wives’ and families. Behind all the New Learning and the theological debates, clerical celibacy was, in its own way, the biggest single issue at the Reformation. It was a great social problem and, other factors being equal, it tended to tip the balance in favour of reform. As a rule, the only hope for a child of a priest was to go into the Church himself, thus unwillingly or with no great enthusiasm, taking vows which he might subsequently regret: the evil tended to perpetuate itself.” (History of Christianity, pgs 269-270)