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Show 7-oo LUTHER'AND TETZEL. ', Why the GreatReformor Chose to to Pub'lic Debate. tin Luther fend Ills Work" in the March Century. Tho benefits of indulgences wore magnified beyond all warrant, and in the effort to attract purchasers, assurances were given which could not fall to work mischief and promote pro-mote moral callousness and indifference. indiffer-ence. That Luther should feel profoundly profound-ly outraged by the whole sorry business busi-ness was inevitable He was, above everything, downVlght and sincere instinctively hostile to all duplicity and pretense, while the indulgence tralllc, as appeared more clearly than, ever In Tetzel's campaign, was through a sham; on tho ono side, greed for, gain consciously masquerading masque-rading under the .form of regard for the people's good ou the other, tho insidious and subtle self-deception of Imagining 'that anything but reality counts in the. moral realm the effort ef-fort to salvo ono'H conscience by hollow hol-low acts of devotion and to escape by the payment of money 'the inevitable inevita-ble consequences of one's deeds. Clonr eyed and lutolorant of all sophistry, Luther hated It -with a growing ha-trfd; ha-trfd; and the pre'tended piety of the whole transaction tincensed him only tho more. Religion was to him the most sacred sa-cred of all affairs. For 'Its sake ho had long ago broken with his father and abandoned a careor of great worldly promise, and In his religious llfo he had passed through the most agonizing and oxalted experiences possible to a human soul. To make it a matter of buying and selling, to offer divine grace for gold, and to attempt to purchase the forgivenoss and favor of God all thlB was to befoul be-foul the holiest of all relationships; and like the prophets of old, his pious soul waxed hot within him. It would seem, in view of it nil. that ho must at once attack Totzel with his wonted energy and disregard disre-gard of consequences; but strangoly enough, he held hlg peace. Quick as ho had hitherto been to denounce any evil that confronted him, he now, In the face of tho worst and most crying abuse yet enoountored, took careful counsel with himself Tetzol soon left the neighborhood and pass-od pass-od on to other' places, but Luther1 contlnuod to doltbarato in silence. , For more than six months, though piled with questions from far and near as to his opinion of the trafllc, ho made no sign, but sot himself to study quietly tho whole subject of Indulgences. Ho saw clearly enough that the present campaign was far moro demoralizing than anything he had preached against In the castlo church, but it was carried on under the auspices of the prlmato of Ger- Mnany and of the pope himself, and it would not do to attack It recklessly reckless-ly and dlscrimlnatcly He must discover, dis-cover, If he could, tho right and wrong of the whole matter. But evon, whon his mind was made up and the die cast, he proceeded In a way that seomes at first sight as strange as his long delay. Instead of thundering against Tctzel from the pulpit or publishing a polemic pamphlet pamph-let such as no one but he could write, or Issuing an open letter to tho archbishop calling him sharply to account, ac-count, ns ho w,us qulto capable of doing, he Invited the theologians of Wittenberg and tho neighborhood to a disputation. That he chose to bring tho Indulgence- trafllc to public debate does not mean that he was afraid to speak his mind categorically or was still In doubt about the right or wrong of tho matter. On the contrary, he was quite clear upon all but a few minor and unimportant details. He desired a debate simply because he wished to give the demand for reform, already fully dotermlned upon, the support of a formal university decision. Reinforcement, Rein-forcement, rather than enlightenment, enlighten-ment, was what he sought. |