defies the world, the flesh, and the Devil. His feet are firmly planted on the ground, as if they could
not be moved. "Here I stand, I cannot otherwise." His voice was not strong, but clear and sonorous.
He was neat in his dress, modest and dignified in his deportment. He exchanged the monastic gown
in 1524 for a clerical robe, a gift of the Elector. He disliked the custom of the students to rise when
he entered into the lecture-room. "I wish," he said, "Philip would give up this old fashion. These
marks of honor always compel me to offer a few more prayers to keep me humble; and if I dared,
I would go away without reading my lecture."
The same humility made him protest against the use of his name by his followers, who
nevertheless persisted in it. "I pray you," he said, "leave my name alone, and do not call yourselves
Lutherans, but Christians. Who is Luther? My doctrine is not mine. I have not been crucified for
any one. St. Paul would not that any one should call themselves of Paul, nor of Peter, but of Christ.
How, then, does it befit me, a miserable bag of dust and ashes, to give my name to the children of
Christ? Cease, my dear friends, to cling to those party names and distinctions,—away with them
all! and let us call ourselves only Christians, after Him from whom our doctrine comes. It is quite
proper, that the Papists should bear the name of their party; because they are not content with the
name and doctrine of Jesus Christ, they will be Papists besides. Well, let them own the Pope, as he
is their master. For me, I neither am, nor wish to be, the master of any one. I and mine will contend
for the sole and whole doctrine of Christ, who is our sole master."
§ 79. Reflections on Clerical Family Life.
The Reformers present to us the first noted examples of clerical family life in the Christian
Church. This is a new and important chapter in the history of civilization.
They restored a natural right founded in the ordinance of God. The priests and high priests
of the Jewish theocracy down to the father of John the Baptist, as well as the patriarchs, Moses,
and some of the prophets, lived in wedlock. The prince of the apostles, whom Roman Catholics
regard as the first pope, was a married man, and carried his wife with him on his missionary
journeys.^603 Paul claimed the same right as "other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas,"
though he renounced it for personal reasons. From the pastoral Epistles we may infer that marriage
was the rule among the bishops and deacons of the apostolic age. It is therefore plainly a usurpation
to deprive the ministers of the gospel of this right of nature and nature’s God.
But from the second century the opinion came to prevail, and still prevails in the papal
communion, which is ruled by an unmarried priest, that marriage is inconsistent with the sacerdotal
office, and should be forbidden after ordination. This view was based on the distinction between
a lower and higher morality with corresponding merit and reward, the one for the laity or the
common people; the other for priests and monks, who form a spiritual nobility. All the church
fathers, Greek and Latin, even those who were themselves married (as Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa,
Synesius), are unanimous in praising celibacy above marriage; and the greatest of them are loudest
in this praise, especially St. Jerome. And yet the mothers of Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and
(^603) In spite of this fact attested by St. Paul, 1 Cor. 9:5, in the year 57, Dr. Spalding (in his Hist. of the Prot. Reformation, I. 177, 8th ed.
1875) asserts that Peter’s wife was "probably dead before he became an apostle."