During the last months of 1525 Luther concluded a writing entitled
“Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts,” which was published in
1526, in which he speaks at length of the strange scheme which was
ever before his mind. Its reaction on his plans for Mass and Divine
worship may here be passed over.[487] What more nearly concerns us now
is the distinction he makes between those present at Divine worship.
If the new Mass, so he says, “is held publicly in the churches before
all the people” many are present “who as yet neither believe nor are
Christians.” In the popular Church, such as it yet is, “there is no
ordered or clearly cut assembly where the Christians can be ruled
in accordance with the Gospel”; to them worship is merely “a public
incentive to faith and Christianity.” It would be a different matter
if we had the true Christians assembled together, “with their names
registered and meeting together in some house or other,” where prayer,
reading, and the receiving of the Sacrament would be assiduously
practised, general almsgiving imposed and “penalties, correction,
expulsion or the ban made use of according to the law of Christ.” But
here again we find him complaining: “I have not yet the necessary
number of people for this, nor do I see many who are desirous of
trying it.” “Hence until Christians take the Word seriously, find
their own legs and persevere,” the carrying out of the plan must be
delayed. Nor did he wish, so he says, to set up “anything new in
Christendom.” As he put it in a previous sermon: “It is perfectly true
that I am certain I have and preach the Word, and am called; yet I
hesitate to lay down any rules.”[488]
This hesitation cannot be explained merely by the anxiety to which he
himself refers incidentally lest commands should arouse the spirit
of opposition and give rise to “factions,”[489] for the absence of
authority was evident; it must also have sprung from the author’s own
sense of the indefiniteness of the plan. His pious wish to establish an
organisation on the apostolic model was not conspicuous for practical
insight, however great the stress Luther laid on the passages he
regarded as authoritative (2 Cor. ix., 1 Cor. xiv., Mt. xviii. 2, and
Acts vi.). “This much is clear,” rightly remarks Drews, “that Luther
was uncertain and wavered in the details of his plan. He had but little
bent to sketch out organisations even in his head; to this he did not
feel himself called.”[490]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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