Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Ein Sermon von dem heiligen hochwirdigen Sacrament der Tauffe
Leipzig, 1520
Folger Shelf Mark: 218391q

The unsteady course of reform is evident in the publication of Luther's sermon on baptism. The title page of this pamphlet, first printed in 1519, includes a recycled woodcut from the late fifteenth century. The image depicts the traditional seven sacraments—baptism, confirmation, penance, the Lord's Supper, ordination, matrimony, and extreme unction—with Christ's blood flowing freely into each. Martin Luther's sermon, however, did not reflect this traditional sacramental system. Rather, it was one of three prepared at a time his thinking on the sacraments was in flux. Each was concerned with a sacrament Luther then considered valid—baptism, penance, and the Eucharist. Luther endorsed baptism by immersion, befitting the roots of the word in the Latin mersio, to plunge. In De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium , also printed in 1520, he proposed to reduce the number of sacraments further to two—baptism and the Lord's Supper.

For more information, consult Martin Luther (1483–1546): A Jubilee Exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D.C., 1983); Gerhard Brendler, Martin Luther: Theology and Revolution, translated by Claude R. Foster, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Robert Herndon Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957). A translation of the sermon, edited by E. Theodore Bachmann, may be found in volume 35 of Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960).