We may quote here a well-considered judgment of Dr. Dorner, one of the ablest and
profoundest evangelical divines of Germany, who says in a confidential letter to his lifelong friend,
Bishop Martensen of Denmark, —
"I am more and more convinced that the deepest defect of Lutheran churchism heretofore
has been a lack of the full appreciation of the ethical element of Christianity. This becomes manifest
so often in the manner of the Lutheran champions. There is lacking the tenderness of conscience
and thorough moral culture which deals conscientiously with the opponent. Justification by faith
is made to cover, in advance, all sins, even the future ones; and this is only another form of
indulgence. The Lutheran doctrine leads, if we look at the principle, to an establishment of ethics
on the deepest foundation. But many treat justification, not only as the begin-ning, but also as the
goal. Hence we see not seldom the justified and the old man side by side, and the old man is not a
bit changed. Lutherans who show in their literary and social conduct the stamp of the old Adam
would deal more strictly with themselves, and fear to fall from grace by such conduct, if they had
a keener conscience, and could see the neces-sary requirements of the principle of justification; for
then they would shrink from such conduct as a sin against conscience. But the doctrine of justification
is often misused for lulling the conscience to sleep, instead of quickening it."^911
Zwingli’s conduct towards Luther, judged from the ethical point of view, is much more
gentlemanly and Christian, though by no means perfect. He, too, misunderstood and misrepresented
Luther when he charged him with teaching a local presence and a carnal eating of Christ’s body.
He, too, knew how to be severe, and to use the rapier and the knife against the club and
sledge-hammer of the Wittenberg Reformer. But he never forgot, even in the heat of controversy,
the great services of Luther, and more than once paid him the tribute of sincere admiration.
"For a thousand years," says Zwingli, "no mightier investigator of the Holy Scriptures has
appeared than Luther. No one has equaled him in manly and immovable courage with which he
attacked popery. But whose work is it? God’s, or Luther’s? Ask Luther himself, and he will say
God’s. He traces his doctrine to God and his eternal Word. As far as I have read his writings
(although I have often purposely abstained from doing so), I find them well founded in the Scriptures:
his only weak point is, that he yields too much to the Romanists in the matter of the sacraments,
and the confession to the priest, and in tolerating the images in the churches. If he is sharp and racy
in speech, it comes from a pious, honest heart, and a flaming love for the truth .... Others have come
to know the true religion, but no one has ventured to attack the Goliath with his formidable armor;
but Luther alone, as a true David, anointed by God, hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook
Sind des Papst’s und Calvini Gift."
They believed that Luther’s example gave them license to exhaust the vocabulary of abuse, and to violate every rule of courtesy and
good taste. They called the Reformed Christians "dogs," and Calvin’s God "a roaring bull (Brüllochse), a blood-thirsty Moloch, and a
hellish Behemoth." They charged them with teaching and worshiping the very Devil (den leibhaftigen Teufel), instead of the living God.
One of them proved that "the damned Calvinistic heretics hold six hundred and sixty-six tenets [the apocalyptic number!] in common
with the Turks." Another wrote a book to show that Zwinglians and Calvinists are no Christians at all, but baptized Jews and Mohammedans.
O sancta simplicitas! On the intolerance of those champions of Lutheran orthodoxy, see the historical works of Arnold, Planck, Tholuck
(Der Geist der lutherischen Theologen Wittenbergs im 17ten Jahrh., 1852, p. 279 sqq.), and the fifth volume of Janssen.(^911) Die Rechtfertigungslehre wird vielfach zur Einschläferung statt zur Schärfung des Gewissens missbraucht."See Dorner’s letter of
May 14, 1871, in the Briefwechsel just quoted, vol. II. 114. Dorner and Martensen, both masters in Christian dogmatics and ethics, kept
up a most instructive and interesting correspondence of friendship for more than forty years, on all theological and ecclesiastical questions
of the day, even during the grave disturbances between Germany and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein controversy, which broke out
at last in open war (1864). That correspondence is as remarkable in theology as the Schiller and Goethe correspondence is in poetry and
art.