see below Pp. de
[15]. The Sacraments
I promised to speak of the Sacraments after having considered the Church.
« I heartily wish this word “saerament” had never been adopted by the Germans without being translated into German. For when they hear the word “sacrament” they think of something great and holy which by its own power can free the conscience from sin. Others again, seeing the error of this, have said it was the symbol of a sacred thing. This, indeed, I should not entirely disapprove, unless they also insisted that when you perform the sacrament outwardly a purification is certainly performed inwardly. > A third group has asserted that a sacrament is a sign which is given only when atonement has been made in the heart, but is given for the purpose of rendering the recipient sure that what is signified by the sacrament has now been accomplished. I do not like to differ from great men, especially at this time when they are so flourishing and are writing with such success that they seem to have clothed the world in a new guise and to have changed it from a rude to a very refined state. But I beg them to consider what I am here going to adduce in the same manner in which I always weigh their own writings. The one thing upon which 1 fix my attention in reading the writings of others is the spirit in which the author seems to have written; for all his purpose becomes plain in his very language. If I see that a thing was written from love of God and one’s neighbor, I overlook many errors, just as many persons, no doubt, considerately overlook mine. When, however, occasion offers, I fill in the gaps, reverse the order, unravel the knots, connect wandering thoughts, without, however, discourteous strictures on anybody by name, that peace may be preserved, which some are so bent upon disturbing. I make two exceptions, Emser and Eck, for they are pests to the teachings of Christ. Their own wanton recklessness has forced me to write pretty sharply against them and by name. For the former without any warning so arrogantly attacked me unawares that I should have been a renegade to Christ’s teach-
[Luther and his associates.]
ings (for it is His work, not mine, in which I am engaged), if I had retired before a man singing his song of victory before he had come into my sight. For he wrote against me in such a way (and published the book) that he tricked me into waiting for six months to see if he were going to send me a copy. The other laid a snare for my destruction, and sending most absurd and lying slanders to the assembly of the Swiss tried to get the start of me, so that, if his scheme succeeded, I might seem to have been rightly slain, and that he might sell himself for a high price to the Romans and the tyrants of Germany. When I disclosed his crime] (and it could not be denied), good gods, how he raved! So I beg all the readers of this Commentary to judge it with a free mind and without passion, and to remove what they see is foreign to the purest teachings of Christ, employing not decrees and condemnations of their own but the spear of the heavenly word drawn from the writings of both Testaments.
With your good permission, then, I will end my prefatory remarks, and tell what I have found as to the signification and force of this word.
“Sacrament” for Varro} is a pledge which litigants deposited at some altar; and the winner got back his pledge or money. Again, a “sacrament” is an oath, and this use of the word is still found among the populace of France and Italy.
Finally, there is also the so-called “military sacrament,” by which soldiers are bound to obey their general according to the rights or laws of war. For wars also have laws, but laws of their own, for the regular laws are silent in the midst of arms.
It does not appear that the word was used among the ancients to mean a sacred and secret thing. Hence I have given no space to this acceptation of the term, nor to the one which the Latin translation of the New Testament has, of
[The preface of Emser’s Defense of the Canon of the Mass against]
[Huldreich Zwingli was dated April 15, 1524. The preface of Zwingli’s]
[Reply was dated August 20, 1524. TIn the second half of 1524 Zwingli issued two pamphlets against Eck. iDe lingua Latina, V, 180. Cicero Pro Milone 11.]
“sacramentum” for mystery [cf. Eph. 5:32]. For the word does not express that, nor do I know any Latin word which really gives the meaning of μυστήριον, because “arcanum” [secret] has a wider application than μυστήριον; and “sacrum” [sacred] is of somewhat narrower scope.
So I am brought to see that a sacrament is nothing else than an initiatory ceremony or a pledging. For just as those who were about to enter upon litigation deposited a certain amount of money, which could not be taken away except by the winner, so those who are initiated by sacraments bind and pledge themselves, and, as it were, seal a contract not to draw back. I will not say here how disgracefully ignorant even as to the meaning of the word “initiation” the gentleman was who, in answer to a letter of mine in which I had said that baptism was an initiation, remarked: “Even if it is an initiation, it is not a perfecting or justifying.” He did not know that “initiation” is used here not for “beginning” or “commencement” merely, but also for the solemn and serious τελετή [perfecting] for some order or society or office, that is, a mystery or occult final sealing which is effected by a set form of words. When this has been accomplished, the person initiated is bound to perform for the office, order, or institution to which he has devoted himself what the institution or office demands. A sacrament, therefore, since it cannot be anything more than an initiation or public inauguration, cannot have any power to free the conscience. That can be freed by God alone; for it is known to Him alone, for He alone can penetrate to it, as has been abundantly shown in considering man and the gospel. How, therefore, could water, fire, oil, milk, salt, and such crude things make their way to the mind? Not having that power, how will they be able to cleanse it? In fact, what is the cleansing of the mind? Is it a sort of contact with some clean thing? But what can the mind touch, or what touch the mind? Since, therefore, no creature can know a man within to the core, but only God, it remains that no one can purge the conscience save God alone. Solomon, in II Chron. 6:30, is a witness: “For thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men.” Also the Pharisees, in Luke 5:21: “Who can forgive sins, but God
[Refutation of the Catholic conception.]
alone?” And lest anyone should wonder about this latter testimony, I will remark that testimony from an opponent is the strongest. They are wrong, therefore, by the whole width of heaven who think that sacraments have any cleansing power. The second group, seeing this, taught that sacraments are signs which when they are performed make a man sure about what is performed within him. But this was a vain invention; as if, forsooth, when a man is wet with the water something happens in him which he could not possibly have known unless water had been poured over him at the same time! They did not know, if they will allow me to say so, what faith is or how it is born in a man. I said some time back that faith is a matter of fact, not of knowledge or opinion or imagination. A man, therefore, feels faith within, in his heart; for it is born only when a man begins to despair of himself, and to see that he must trust in God alone. And it is perfected when a man wholly casts himself off and prostrates himself before the merey of God alone, but in such fashion as to have entire trust in it because of Christ who was given for us. What man of faith can be unaware of this? For then only are you free from sin when the mind trusts itself unwaveringly to the death of Christ and finds rest there. And if meanwhile you had been deluged with the whole Jordan and a sacred formula been repeated a thousand times, your mind would yet have had no feeling of being in a better state, except in so far as this trivial and fleeting notion that the sacraments purify, so persistently beaten into it, gave a false impression of having persuaded it. For they that have not faith gape with wonder at anything applied to them that is said to have any power, and fancy they have found, nay, actually felt, salvation, when they have not felt anything at all within, as is shown by their subsequent lives. For if we become new men, that is to say, if we love God and our neighbor, we shrink from sin, put on Christ and daily grow more and more into the perfect man, are changed by the action of the Holy Spirit. But who would not feel this change? If, however, pleasing ourselves for a time with the freedom from guilt we have acquired, we presently, when this hallucination has worn off, return to the old life, like a dog to
[The Lutherans.]
his vomit [ef. Prov. 26: 11], it is evident that we have not felt any change of heart, but only the awe of the water. Many are baptized, therefore, who during baptism feel nothing beyond awe of the water, and not also remission of sins, that is, the deliverance of the heart. And this was generally the case with those who were baptized by John and those who after the ascension of Christ at the preaching of the Apostles and disciples received baptism before they were sure of salvation through Christ or were fully taught in regard to it, as in Acts 19: 2-6 and 10:44. Cornelius and his house had received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized: they had, therefore, been sure of the grace of God before baptism. “Therefore this second view has no value, which supposes that the sacraments are signs of such a kind that, when they are applied to a man, the thing signified by the sacraments at once takes place within him. For in this way the liberty of the divine Spirit which distributes itself to individuals as it will, that is, to whom it will, when it will, where it will, would be bound. For if it were compelled to act within when we employ the signs externally, it would be absolutely bound by the signs, whereas we see that really the opposite takes place, as has been made clear by the testimony above. Consequently, in the third place, there came forward men who, seeing clearly that the sacraments cannot purify, nor the operation of the divine Spirit be such a slave to the sacraments that, when they are performed, it is compelled at the same time to operate within (for it is established that the Holy Spirit was sometimes given before baptism, sometimes afterwards, as in Acts 10: 44-48 and 19: 2-6), taught that the sacraments are signs which make a man sure of the thing that has been accomplished within him. Hence, for example, they refuse baptism to all who have not previously so well learned and confessed the faith that they can respond to all its articles. Their view is just as far from the truth as was the preceding. For those who have so learned and confessed the faith have been sure for some time already of salvation, as was made plain a little while ago in the refutation of the error of the second group. For if the heart already trusts, it cannot be unaware of its trust. What need, therefore, has he The Anabaptists.
of baptism who has already for some time been sure through his faith in God of the remission of his sins? The sacraments are, then, signs or ceremonials—let me say it with the good permission of all both of the new school and the old—by which a man proves to the Church that he either aims to be, or is, a soldier of Christ, and which inform the whole Church rather than yourself of your faith. For if your faith is not so perfect as not to need a ceremonial sign to confirm it, it is not faith. For faith is that by whieh we rely on the mercy of God unwaveringly, firmly, and singleheartedly, as Paul shows us in many passages.
So much for the meaning of the name. Christ left us two sacraments and no more, Baptism and The Lord’s Supper. By these we are initiated, giving the name with the one, and showing by the other that we are mindful of Christ’s victory and are members of His Church. In Baptism we receive a token that we are to fashion our lives according to the rule of Christ; by the Lord’s Supper we give proof that we trust in the death of Christ, glad and thankful to be in that company which gives thanks to the Lord for the blessing of redemption which He freely gave us by dying for us. The other sacra- ments are rather ceremonials, for they have no initiatory funetion in the Church of God. Hence it is not improper to exclude them; for they were not instituted by God to help us initiate anything in the Church. Ὁ
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