The author is aware that, for non-German readers, and in
particular those of the English-speaking world, the path to an
understanding of Luther is beset by considerable difficulties. The
German idiom of his time is difficult to convey, and in translation
its peculiar charm--the intense force of expression, the colourful
image--is all too easily lost. Furthermore, the modern reader is
not helped by the fact that Luther's work is dispersed over a
countless number of writings which in the main are concerned
with specialised and specific questions of a character which can
be familiar only to the student of history; nor is a systematic
analysis of Luther's religious concepts available, of the type pro-
vided by Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Perhaps
the greatest barrier of all to an impartial historical appreciation
of the German Reformer lies in the centuries of ecclesiastical
argument upon the subject; nineteenth-century liberalism, in
dealing with these arguments, in its turn introduced new miscon-
ceptions concerning the character and significance of his
achievement in the world.

From earliest times both the Anglican Church and the Roman
Catholic have depicted Luther, not as a 'reformer,' but as a
revolutionary, a destroyer of ancient and hallowed traditions;
as a plebeian; as an enemy of all ecclesiastical hierarchy; as a
barbarous and immoderate quarrel-seeker. They have accused
him, because of his unrestrained accusations against the Old
Church, of destroying not only the world dominance of the
Roman Papacy but, simultaneously, of shaking the very
foundations of that wonderful edifice, a unity of culture in

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