‘The account of what had passed at Wittemberg,’ he said, ‘had almost reduced him to a state of despair. Everything he had as yet suffered was comparatively mere jest and boys’ play. He could not lament enough, nor express his disapprobation of those tumultuous proceedings. The Gospel was in imminent danger of being disgraced from this cause.’
Carolstadt fled before him. He became a factious preacher at Orlamund; he was banished by the elector, and restored at length through the intercession of Luther; and he was reconciled to Luther, but without much cordiality. At length, Carolstadt retired into Switzerland, where he exercised his pastoral office in a communion that was more congenial with his own sentiments. He died in 1531. Such is the short of Carolstadt, one of Luther’s earliest defenders, who turned to be his rival and his enemy, and with whom he waged a sort of fratricidal war for some years after his return from Wartburg — in conferences, sermons and treatises. Of these treatises, his ‘Address to the Celestial Prophets and Carolstadt’ is the principal. Of his banishment, it is unquestionable that Luther was not the author, even though he thoroughly approved of it. Indeed, upon submitting himself, he took great pains to get Carolstadt restored. He could not succeed with Frederic; he did succeed with John.
Still, I have thought him repulsive, arbitrary, and ungenerously sarcastic in his resistance to this Carolstadt; even as I had thought him unwarrantably contemptuous and exclusive in his comments and conflicts with the Munzerites, and somewhat too confident in shifting off all influence of his doctrine from the rustic war. Hence my expression, ‘not without question.’ But on closer review, I find clear evidence that Carolstadt really was what Luther charged him with being — whimsical, extravagant, false and unsettled in doctrine; a preacher and a practiser of sedition — that he had moreover united himself to Munzer and his associates, and had thereby obtained a niche among the Celestial Prophets. I find clear evidence that Stubner, Stork, Cellery, Munzer and the rest were a nest of designing hypocrites; raging and railing, and making pretensions to divine favour, which they neither defined, nor defended.
His test of false prophecy and false profession, too, let it be remarked, is sound, efficacious, and practicable; though perhaps founded (I refer to his test of conversion) rather too positively and exclusively upon his own personal experience. Again, I find Luther’s doctrine so clear in marking the line of civil subordination, that it was impossible for the peasants, or those who made them their stalking-horse,37 to urge that Luther had taught them rebellion. Nor was it less than essential to sound doctrine, that he should disclaim and express his abhorrence of their error. With the exception of that part of the controversy, therefore, which respected his Sacramentarian error, Luther had right on his side. And on that subject, Carolstadt (though right in his conclusion) was so defective in his reasoning, so fickle, so versatile, and so disingenuous, that he defeated his own victory.
In the second of these controversies which, although broached by Carolstadt, soon fell into abler hands, and was at length settled by abler heads than his. 38 Luther was lamentably wrong — wrong in his doctrine, and wrong in the spirit with which he defended it — an affecting monument of what God-enlightened man is, who can literally and strictly see no farther than God gives him eyes to see with — and for whose good it is not, and therefore for God’s glory in whom it is not — that he should see everything as it really is. Rather, he should in some particulars be left to show, to remember, and to feel “the rock from which he was hewn, and the hole of the pit from which he was dug.” Isa 51.1 Is there any exception to this remark among human teachers and writers? Can we mention even one on whose writings this mark has not been impressed, so as to make it legible that we are reading a man’s book, and not God’s?
Luther held that ‘the real substance of the Lord’s body and blood was in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, together with that previous substance which was bread and wine only.’ This is a tenet involving all the absurdity of popish transubstantiation, together with an additional one, that the same substance is, at the same instant, of two dissimilar kinds.
Now, although the word of God requires us to receive many things as true which are beyond the testimony of sense, and above the deductions of right reason, it nowhere calls us to receive any thing contrary to these. In what page, or chapter, or verse of the Bible are we called to believe a palpable contradiction? This negative applies, by the way, not only to the abstruser articles of the faith — the coexistence of three coequal persons in the one divine essence, the God-manhood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the reality of divine and diabolical agency within the human soul — but also to those simpler verities which affirm what are called the moral attributes of God, and have been strangely marred and confounded by neglecting it. Luther, for instance, perplexed to reconcile what is commonly understood by these with his representations of truth, has gone the length of maintaining that we do not know what these are in God.
Whereas, if justice, faithfulness, purity, grace, mercy, truth etc., etc. are not essentially the same sort of principles in God as in his moral creatures, then we can know nothing, we can believe nothing, we can feel nothing rightly, concerning him. How these may consist with each other, and with his actings, is a distinct consideration: but it is a bungling, a false, and a pernicious expedient for solving difficulties, to deny first principles. And if our very ideas of moral qualities, even as respects their essential nature, are impugned and taken from us, then we cease to be moral beings.
The tenet of consubstantiation, then, is contradictory both to sense and reason. Four of our senses testify against it, while only one can claim to bear witness in its favour. If the disciples heard the Lord affirm it, and if we hear it from their writings, then our sight, our touch, our taste, our smell, assure us that it is bread, and nothing but bread, which we are pressing with our teeth. 39
The same body can only be extended in one place at the same instant: the Lord’s body, therefore, which is at the right hand of God, cannot be in any place where the sacrament is administered; much less in the various places in which it is administered at the same moment; any more than the bread which he held in his hand when he instituted the ordinance could occupy the same place as the hand itself. Luther talked much of ubiquity; but what is the ubiquity of the Lord’s body? Are we not expressly taught that it is extended, and remains for a season, in one place?
“So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God;” Mk 16.19
“Who has gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God.” 1Pe 3.22
“Who is even at the right hand of God.” Rom 8.34
“Sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Mat 22.44
“Whom the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things.” Act 3.21
Besides, what precludes all dispute is that, in reality, He now has no such body and blood to give.
“There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” 1Cor 15.44
“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” 1Cor 15.50
He did indeed turn his spiritual body into a natural one by miracle, for some moments, at sundry times, after his resurrection, in order that he might give competency to his witnesses, “even to those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” Act 10.41 But his abiding, ordinary subsistence, ever since, has been in a body which no teeth could chew, and no lips enclose.
All Luther’s stress was upon the words, ‘This is my body.’ He carried that sound and just principle of his, ‘Interpret Scripture literally, not tropically, where you can,’ to a false and even ridiculous extreme here — in opposition to his own admitted exception, ‘unless an evident context, and some absurdity which offends against one of the articles of our faith, in the plain meaning, constrain us to such interpretation.’ (See Part iv. Sect. iii. p. 239 of the following work.)
[long note]
Is this the only instance of such a form of speech? Circumcision, which elsewhere is called the token of the Abrahamic covenant, is called the covenant in some places; the two tablets of stone are called the covenant; the lamb is called the passover; the rock stricken in Horeb is called Christ. 1Cor 10.4 Besides, if the bread is consubstantiated into his body, then the cup should also be consubstantiated into a testament; “this cup is the new testament.” Luk 22.20 And when we have eaten this flesh, and drunk this blood (if such an act were possible) by carnal chewing and swallowing, what has it done for us? — as
