of the most frequented feasts, and attracted professors, students, and people from all directions to
the church, which was filled with precious relics.^187
No one accepted the challenge, and no discussion took place. The professors and students
of Wittenberg were of one mind on the subject. But history itself undertook the disputation and
defence. The Theses were copied, translated, printed, and spread as on angels’ wings throughout
Germany and Europe in a few weeks.^188
The rapid circulation of the Reformation literature was promoted by the perfect freedom of
the press. There was, as yet, no censorship, no copyright, no ordinary book-trade in the modern
sense, and no newspapers; but colportors, students, and friends carried the books and tracts from
house to house. The mass of the people could not read, but they listened attentively to readers. The
questions of the Reformation were eminently practical, and interested all classes; and Luther handled
the highest themes in the most popular style.
The Theses bear the title, "Disputation to explain the Virtue of Indulgences." They sound
very strange to a modern ear, and are more Catholic than Protestant. They are no protest against
the Pope and the Roman Church, or any of her doctrines, not even against indulgences, but only
against their abuse. They expressly condemn those who speak against indulgences (Th. 71), and
assume that the Pope himself would rather see St. Peter’s Church in ashes than have it built with
the flesh and blood of his sheep (Th. 50). They imply belief in purgatory. They nowhere mention
Tetzel. They are silent about faith and justification, which already formed the marrow of Luther’s
theology and piety. He wished to be moderate, and had not the most distant idea of a separation
from the mother church. When the Theses were republished in his collected works (1545), he wrote
in the preface: "I allow them to stand, that by them it may appear how weak I was, and in what a
fluctuating state of mind, when I began this business. I was then a monk and a mad papist (papista
insanissimus), and so submersed in the dogmas of the Pope that I would have readily murdered
any person who denied obedience to the Pope."
But after all, they contain the living germs of a new theology. The form only is Romish,
the spirit and aim are Protestant. We must read between the lines, and supply the negations of the
Theses by the affirmations from his preceding and succeeding books, especially his Resolutiones,
in which he answers objections, and has much to say about faith and justification. The Theses
represent a state of transition from twilight to daylight. They reveal the mighty working of an earnest
(^187) The wooden doors of the Schlosskirche were burnt in 1760, and replaced in 1858 by metal doors, bearing, the original Latin text of
the Theses. The new doors are the gift of King Frederick William IV., who fully sympathized with the evangelical Reformation. Above
the doors, on a golden ground, is the Crucified, with Luther and Melanchthon at his feet, the work of Professor von Klöber. In the interior
of the church are the graves of Luther and Melanchthon, and of the Electors Frederick the Wise and John the Constant. The Schlosskirche
was in a very dilapidated condition, and undergoing thorough repair, when I last visited it in July, 1886. It must not be confounded with
the Stadtkirche of Wittenberg, where Luther preached so often, and where, in 1522, the communion was, for the first time, administered
in both kinds.
(^188) Knaake (Weim. ed. I. 230) conjectures that the Theses, as affixed, were written either by Luther himself or some other hand, and
that he had soon afterwards a few copies printed for his own use (for Agricola, who was in Wittenberg at that time, speaks of a copy
printed on a half-sheet of paper): but that irresponsible publishers soon seized and multiplied them against his will. Jürgens says (III. 480)
that two editions were printed in Wittenberg in 1517, on four quarto leaves, and that the Berlin Library possesses two copies of the second
edition. The Theses were written on two columns, in four divisions; the first three divisions consisted of twenty-five theses each, the
fourth of twenty. The German translation is from Justus Jonas. The Latin text is printed in all the editions of Luther’s works, in Löscher’s
Acts, and in Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte (6th ed., vol. VI. 83-89, literally copied from an original preserved in the Royal Library in
Berlin). The semi-authoritative German translation by Justus Jonas is given in Löscher, Walch (vol. XVIII.), and O. v. Gerlach (vol. I.),
and with a commentary by Jürgens (Luther, III. 484 sqq.). An English translation in Wace and Buchheim, Principles of the Reformation,
London, 1883, p. 6 sqq. I have compared this translation with the Latin original as given by Ranke, and in the Weimar edition, and added
it at the end of this section with some alterations, insertions, and notes.