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Updated: June 8, 2025
He sought to keep on friendly and useful relations with other circles than those of Scholastic theology, such as with learned Humanists, and a short time before, with Luther himself and his colleague Carlstadt, to whom he had been introduced through a jurist of Nuremberg named Scheuerl. Luther, after the publication of his theses, had written a friendly letter to Eck.
Outside, however, among the people of Wittenberg, Carlstadt, who had shortly before restrained even his own partisans in regard to the question of the mass, and who was neither a regular preacher in the town nor in the possession of any other office, now pressed forward, by his sermons and writings, impetuously in the van, and made hasty strides towards the furtherance of his misty projects of reform.
Under the leadership of Carlstadt, a professor at the University, men broke into the churches and smashed images. Church ordinances of age-long standing were to be abrogated, the cloisters were to be thrown open, and a new order of things was to be inaugurated by violence.
Eck and Carlstadt contended for four days, from June 27 to July 8, on the question of free will and its relations to the operation of the grace of God.
While Luther was engaged in this work, a radical movement broke out at Wittenberg, of which Carlstadt, one of his supporters, was the principal leader. He was for carrying changes in worship to such an extreme, and for introducing them so abruptly, that the greatest disorder was threatened.
It was further insisted that, like as at ordinary meals, the elements should be given into the hand of each individual to partake of, and not put into his mouth by the priest. The sacrifice of the mass Zwilling would abolish altogether, but Carlstadt thought it necessary, in dealing with so important a feature of the old form of worship, to proceed with caution.
God, they said, has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes; the Spirit from above must enlighten a man. Carlstadt went to simple burghers in their houses, to have passages in the Bible explained to him. He and Zwilling won over to their side the master of the boys' school in the town, and the school was broken up.
He chose for this purpose a spot in front of the Elster Gate, to the east of the town, near the Augustinian convent. A multitude poured forth to the scene. With Luther appeared a number of other doctors and masters, and among them Melancthon and Carlstadt. After one of the masters of arts had built up a pile, Luther laid the decretals upon it, and the former applied the fire.
He felt that his presence was necessary to restrain Carlstadt and others, and, defying any danger to which he might still be exposed, he returned in 1522 to the old scene of his labors, rebuked the unruly spirits who had acquired power in his absence, and resumed with renewed energy his interrupted work.
There were many of the more zealous converts to the reformed doctrines, headed by Carlstadt, dean of the faculty of theology, who were not content with the progress which had been made, and who desired more sweeping and radical changes. Such a party ever exists in all reforms; for there are some persons who are always inclined to ultra and extravagant courses. Carlstadt was a type of such men.
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