In these events lies the secret of the difference of opinion between the Reformers on the Lord's Supper. In the beginning Luther had inclined to the symbolical explanation of the Supper, and even at this time was not decidedly against it. But now that Carlstadt preached it, and the fanatics pushed the symbolism to the length of despising the Supper entirely; and Carlstadt being in a measure, however slight, mixed up with them, Luther having to meet all this, rejected all idea of any symbolical meaning in the words, "This is my body," and adopted that view from which, to use his own words, he would not be moved by "reason, common sense, carnal argu ments," nor "mathematical proofs." (Ibid., book 13, chap. 7)
In the way in which the subject was brought prominently before him, it appeared to him that, to hold the view of the bread and wine being symbols was akin to fanaticism, if not fanaticism itself. And when Carlstadt, after being banished from Saxony, went to Switzerland, and was admitted as pastor and professor of divinity at Basel; and when before this Zwingli's writings, maintaining the same views, had reached Luther, the whole company was held by Luther to be oppo nents of the truth; and he being as strenuous against this as against anything else that he deemed error, and his opponents in this holding the truth, and necessarily defending it, it could not but be that the result must be division.
It is true that in this controversy Luther was stubborn; but in view of all the circumstances amidst which it arose, surely our charity will not be unduly taxed in excusing it. If he had been less strenuous in defending what he held to be true, the world would not have had the Reformation then. But however worthily our charity be bestowed in this instance, it fails to be so, when the scenes and the actors have all passed from the stage, when the Reformation has escaped the breakers and rides securely, and his successors stubbornly resist the truth for no other reason than that "Luther believed thus, and so do we;" and so cease to be reformers, and become rigid Lutherans.