THE CONFLICT OF CREEDS AND PARTIES IN GERMANY.

THE threats of the victorious Catholic majority at Speier and the diplomacy of Philip of Hesse had, despite the forebodings of Luther and the imprecations of Melanchthon, produced a temporary alliance between the Lutheran north and the Zwinglian south; and the summer and autumn of 1529 were spent in attempts to make the union permanent and to cement it by means of religious agreement. In the secret understanding concluded between Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Nürnberg, Ulm, and Strasburg at Speier on April 22, it was arranged that a conference should be held at Rodach, near Coburg, in the following June. But this coalition between Lutheran Princes and Zwinglian towns had been concealed from the divines, and as soon as it came to their ears they raised a vehement protest. Melanchthon lamented that his friends had not made even greater concessions at Speier; if they had only repudiated Zwingli and all his works, the Catholics, he thought, might not have hardened their hearts against Luther; and he did his best to dissuade his friends in Nürnberg from participating in the coming congress at Rodach. Luther not only denounced the idea of defending by force what Melanchthon described as "the godless opinions" of Zwingli, but denied the right of Lutherans to defend themselves. Resort to arms he considered both wicked and needless; "Be ye still", he quoted from Isaiah, "and ye shall be holpen"; and, while the conference at Rodach succumbed to his opposition, a vast army of Turks was swarming up the banks of the Danube and directing its march on Vienna. Solyman brandished the sword which Luther refused to grasp.

1529] Siege of Vienna. Conference of Marburg.

Hungary had failed to resist the Turks by herself; but the Austrian shield, under which she took shelter, afforded no better protection, and Ferdinand only escaped the fate of Louis II because he kept out of the way. Absorbed in the Lutheran conflict, he made no attempt to secure his conquests of 1527, and, when the Turkish invasion began, Zapolya descended from his stronghold in the Carpathians, defeated a handful of Ferdinand’s friends, and surrendered the crown of St Stephen on the scene of Mohacs to the Sultan. Unresisted, the Turkish forces swept over the plains of Hungary, crossed the imperial frontier, and on September 20 planted their standards before the walls of Vienna. But over these the Crescent was never destined to wave, and the brilliant defence of Vienna in 1529 stopped the first, as a still more famous defence a hundred and fifty years later foiled the last, Turkish onslaught on Germany. The valor of the citizens, the excellence of the artillery, with which the late Emperor Maximilian had furnished the city, and the early rigor of winter supplied the defects of the Habsburg power, and on October 15 Solyman raised the siege. Ferdinand failed to make adequate use of the Sultan’s retreat; lack of pay caused a mutiny of Landsknechte; and though Gran fell into his hands he could not recapture Buda, and the greater part of Hungary remained under the nominal rule of Zapolya, but real control of the Turk.

The relief of Vienna was received with mingled feelings in Germany. Luther, who had once denied the duty of Christians to fight the infidel as involving resistance to God’s ordinance, had been induced to recant by the imminence of danger and the pressure of popular feeling. In 1529 he exhorted his countrymen to withstand the Turk in language as vigorous as that in which he had urged them to crush the peasants; and the retreat of the Ottoman was generally hailed as a national deliverance. But the joy was not universal, even in Germany. Secular and religious foes of the Habsburgs had offered their aid to Zapolya; while Philip of Hesse lamented the Turkish failure and hoped for another attack. The Turk was in fact the ally of the Reformation, which might have been crushed without his assistance; and to a clear-sighted statesman like Philip no other issue than ruin seemed possible from the mutual enmity of the two Protestant Churches.

The abortive result of the meeting at Rodach in June and the abandonment of the adjourned congress at Schwabach in August only stirred the Landgrave to fresh efforts in the cause of Protestant union. On the last day in September he assembled the leading divines of the two communions at his castle of Marburg with a view to smoothing over the religious dissensions which had proved fatal to their political cooperation. The conference was not likely to fail for want of eminent disputants. The two heresiarchs themselves, Luther and Zwingli, were present, and their two chief supporters, Melanchthon and Oecolampadius. The Zwinglian cities of Germany were represented by Bucer and Hedio of Strasburg; the Lutherans by Justus Jonas and Caspar Cruciger from Wittenberg, Myconius from Gotha, Brenz from Hall, Osiander from Nürnberg, and Stephen Agricola from Augsburg. But they came in different frames of mind; Luther prophesied failure from the first, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Melanchthon could be induced even to discuss accommodation with such impious doctrines as Zwingli’s. On the other hand the Zurich Reformer started with sanguine hopes and with a predisposition to make every possible concession, in order to pave the way for the religious and political objects which he and the Landgrave cherished. But these objects were viewed with dislike and suspicion by the Lutheran delegates. Public controversy between Luther and Zwingli had already waxed fierce. Zwingli had first crossed Luther's mental horizon as the ally of Carlstadt, a sinister conjunction the effects of which were not allayed by Zwingli’s later developments. The Swiss Reformer was a combination of the humanist, the theologian, and the radical; while Luther was a pure theologian. Zwingli’s dogmas were softened alike by his classical sympathies and by his contact with practical government. Thus he would not deny the hope of salvation to moral teachers like Socrates; while Luther thought that the extension of the benefits of the Gospel to the heathen, who had never been taught it, deprived it of all its efficacy. The same broad humanity led Zwingli to limit the damning effects of original sin; he shrank from consigning the vast mass of mankind to eternal perdition, believed that God’s grace might possibly work through more channels than the one selected by Luther, and was inclined to circumscribe that diabolic agency which played so large a part in Luther’s theological system and personal experience.

Luther and Zwingli.