Luther set off on his last trip on January 17, 1546, to his birthplace Eisleben (only in

German). Although he was drawn with illness, he went to settle a dispute among the
Mansfeld Counts. The negotiations endedsuccessfully.
Luther did not have the energy to return to Wittenberg. He died on February 18, 1546 in
Eisleben. On his death bed, he prayed "Into your hands, I command my spirit. You have

saved me, Father, you faithful God."FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=Luthers
Totenmaske"

After the coffin was displayed for two days in Eisleben, Luther's body was transported
through Halle and Bitterfeld back to Wittenberg.
On February 22 Luther was laid to rest in the Castle Church in Wittenberg; Johannes
Bugenhagen held the funeral oration
Luther must be considered as a consummate theological politician. His ultimate concerns
were inner, yet he had to take political stands to protect the Reformation he desired.
Although not excusing them' political needs go far to explain his dubious moral stands on
this and other issues. Above all he was fearful for the future, and his siding with the
princes was a frank recognition that it was only in their support that the Reformation had
any chance of success. Social revolution, chaos, Anabaptism, and even Judaism were
threats to the cause that he was swift to denounce. His anti-Semitism was religiously
rather than racially determined, but here, as in other matters, he failed to rid himself of
the current prejudices of his place and time.

Happily, the dictates of political realism coincided with the ethical consequences of his
doctrines. Man was such that he needed the civil sword to contain him in order and
tranquility and to bind him in a tolerable state of social cohesion' His liberty was a purely
spiritual freedom from the duress of death. It was an inner grace that enabled man to
fulfill the law because he had been made righteous by the free gift of God. So Luther
preached absolute and unconditional obedience. He refused to condone even passive
resistance to the secular arm except by princes. He did nothing to alter the habit of the
authoritarian conscience. Indeed, he regarded wicked rulers as God-sent scourges.
Lutheranism exchanged obedience to the Pope for abject obedience to the State.

Luther's economic ethics were equally conservative, and in this shared the resentments of
his petty bourgeois background. He did not visualize money as a productive thing in itself
and therefore forbade all usury. This was to be more medieval than the schoolmen. Like
St. Thomas, he believed that each person had his proper place in society and should keep
it, and he used the word ''calling" to suggest that God wants a Christian to be dedicated to
his vocation.

If this was old-fashioned, his appeal to German nationalism was radical and modern,
foreshadowing the virulent German- consciousness of the 19th and 20th centuries. The
Imperial Knights bad early rallied to his standard, prepared to do battle for the
emancipation of Germany from the Roman yoke. Although this was one of Luther's
themes, his hopes were for peaceful reformation. But his vigorous German style and his
outcries against the exploitation of Germany by foreigners were calculated to raise
feelings of outraged patriotism.

It was Luther's periodic fury and what seemed to be his reckless rending of the unity of
Christendom that alienated the majority of humanists from him. Some, like Melanchthon,
were convinced, but most found his convictions hard to stomach because they were held
so passionately. The humanists temper was more urbane. A vast temperamental gulf
separated them from the ''true believer.'' Yet the root of the differences lay in their views
of the nature of man and of human destiny. lt was no less than the difference between the
Renaissance and the Reformation. Erasmus went to the heart of the problem in a tract On
the Freedom of the Will (1524). Initially he had sympathized with Luther. Had he not
also attacked the barren formalism and legalism of the Church, its manifest corruptions,
its archaic superstitions, like the veneration of relics? He had also disapproved of the
abuse of indulgences, and may be regarded as a forerunner of the Reformation.
Nevertheless Erasmus accepted the authority of the Church. He wanted to reform it
morally from within, and to trim off its impurities. He was not pressed by desperate
doubts to reach out for a new way to salvation. Morals were his concern as salvation was
Luther's. Their debate over free will must be taken in a spiritual sense' the free will was
not the mundane choosing of this or that during the day. The issue was whether a man
could help himself toward salvation by his own voluntary acts. Erasmus thought so,
without denying the cooperation of grace in bringing about good works. Luther thought
not.

Granted that a heathen could be upright and decent, but ho man, no matter how pure, was
worthy of justification because every human deed was tainted by selfishness and pride.
God alone had the freedom to justify whom He chose. One believed that man could, to
some extent, make his own destiny, and the other believed that all man could do was
throw himself on the love and mercy of God. The difference was insoluble.

In an age when such differences mattered more than life, it was inevitable that the Church
should encourage the Emperor to root out the Reformation with fire and the sword. Many
were burned and executed and, to his dying day, Luther expected to be arrested at any
time for trial as a heretic. When he died (1546) he was full of foreboding about the future.
Source: John New, The Renaissance and the Reformation: A Short History (