Hartmann Grisar

LUTHER’S MODE OF CONTROVERSY A COUNTERPART OF HIS SOUL

1. Luther’s Anger. His Attitude towards the Jews, the Lawyers and the Princes

What above all strikes one in Luther’s mode of controversy is his utter unrestraint in his scolding and abuse. Particularly remarkable, especially in his later years, is the language which he has in readiness for two groups of foes, viz. for Jews and Lawyers; then, again, we have the invective which, throughout his career, he was fond of hurling at such Princes and scholars as did not submit to his teaching.

As, in what follows, and in studying the psychology of his anti-Papal abuse, we shall have again occasion to encounter unpleasant passages, we may well make our own the words of Sir Thomas More in his “Responsio ad convitia Lutheri,” where he trounces Luther for his handling of Henry VIII.: “The gentle reader must forgive me if much that occurs offends his feelings. Nothing has been more painful to me than to be compelled to pour such things into decent ears. The only other alternative would, however, have been to leave the unclean book untouched.”[936]

The Jews.

In his earlier days Luther had been more friendly towards the Jews, and had even cherished the childish hope that many of them would embrace the new Evangel and help him in his warfare against the Papal Antichrist. When this failed to come about Luther became more and more angered with their blasphemy against Christ, their art of seducing the faithful and their cunning literary attacks on Christian doctrine. He was also greatly vexed because his Elector, in spite of having, in 1536, ordered all Jews to leave the country, nevertheless, in 1538, granted them a conditional permit to travel through it; he was still more exasperated with Ferdinand the German King who had curtailed the disabilities of the Jews. Luther’s opinion was that the only thing to do was to break their pride; he now relinquished all hope of convincing any large number of them of the truth of Christianity; even the biblical statements, according to which the Jews were to be converted before the end of the world, appeared to him to have been shorn of their value.[937]

Hence Luther was, above all, desirous of proving to the faithful that the objections brought forward by the Jews against Christian doctrine and their interpretation of the Old Testament so as to exclude the Christian Messias were all wrong. This he did in three writings which followed each other at short intervals: “Von den JÜden und jren LÜgen,” “Vom Schem Hamphoras,” both dating from 1542, and “Von den letzten Worten Davids” (1543). Owing to his indignation these writings are no mere works of instruction, but in parts are crammed with libel and scurrilous abuse.[938]

In the first of these tracts, for instance, he voices as follows his opinion of the religious learning of the Hebrews: “This passage [the Ten Commandments] is far above the comprehension of the blind and hardened Jews, and to discourse to them on it would be as useless as preaching the Gospel to a pig. They cannot grasp the nature of God’s law, much less do they know how to keep it.” “Their boast of following the external Mosaic ordinances whilst disobeying the Ten Commandments, fits the Jews just as well as ornaments do an evil woman”; “yet clothes, adornments, garlands, jewels would serve far better to deck the sow that wallows in the mire than a strumpet.”[939]

One point which well illustrates his anti-Semitism is the Talmud-Bible he invents as best suited to them: “That Bible only should you explore which lies concealed beneath the sow’s tail; the letters that drop from it you are free to eat and drink; that is the best Bible for prophets who trample under foot and rend in so swinish a manner the Word of the Divine Majesty which ought to be listened to with all respect, with trembling and with joy.” “Do they fancy that we are clods and wooden blocks like themselves, the rude, ignorant donkeys?... Hence, gentle Christian, beware of the Jews, for this book will show you that God’s anger has delivered them over to the devil.”[940]

The figure of the sow’s tail pleased him so well that he again used it later in the same year in his “Vom Schem Hamphoras.” There he alludes to the piece of sculpture which had originally supplied him with the idea: “Here, at Wittenberg, outside our parish church there is a sow chiselled in the stone; under her are piglets and little Jews all sucking; behind the sow stands a Rabbi, who lifts, with his right hand the sow’s hind leg and with his left her tail, and is intently engaged poring over the Talmud under the sow’s tail, as though he wished to read and bring to light something especially clever. That is a real image of Schem Hamphoras.... For of the sham wise man we Germans say: Where did he read that? To speak coarsely, in the rear parts of a sow.”[941]

The “devil” also is drawn into the fray the better to enable Luther to vent his ire against the Jews. At the end of the passage just quoted he says: “For the devil has entered into the Jews and holds them captive so that perforce they do his will, as St. Paul says, mocking, defaming, abusing and cursing God and everything that is His.... The devil plays with them to their eternal damnation.”[942]—And elsewhere: “Verily a hopeless, wicked, venomous and devilish thing is the existence of these Jews, who for fourteen hundred years have been, and still are, our pest, torment and misfortune. In fine, they are just devils and nothing more, with no feeling of humanity for us heathen. This they learn from their Rabbis in those devils’ aeries which are their schools.”[943]—“They are a brood of vipers and the children of the devil, and are as kindly disposed to us as is the devil their father.”[944]—“The Turk and the other heathen do not suffer from them what we Christians do from these malignant snakes and imps.... Whoever would like to cherish such adders and puny devils—who are the worst enemies of Christ and of us all—to befriend them and do them honour simply in order to be cheated, plundered, robbed, disgraced and forced to howl and curse and suffer every kind of evil, to him I would commend these Jews. And if this be not enough let him tell the Jew to use his mouth as a privy, or else crawl into the Jew’s hind parts and there worship the holy thing, so as afterwards to be able to boast of having been merciful, and of having helped the devil and his progeny to blaspheme our dear Lord.”[945] The last clause would appear to have been aimed at the Counts of Mansfeld, who had allowed a large number of Jews to settle in Eisleben, Luther’s birthplace.

The temporal happiness which the Jews looked for under the reign of their Messias, Luther graphically compares to the felicity of a sow: “For the sow lies as it were on a feather-bed whether in the street or on the manure-heap; she rests secure, grunts contentedly, sleeps soundly, fears neither lord nor king, neither death nor hell, neither devil nor Divine anger.... She has no thought of death until it is upon her.... Of what use would the Jews’ Messias be to me if he could not help poor me against this great and horrible dread and misfortune [the fear of death], nor make my life a tenth part as happy as that of the sow? I would much rather say: Dear God Almighty, keep Your Messias for Yourself, or give him to those who want him; as for me, change me into a sow. For it is better to be a live pig than a man who is everlastingly dying.”[946]

Such passages as the above are frequently to be met with in Luther’s writings against the Jews. In them his object plainly was to confute the misinterpretation of the Bible and the scoffing objections to which Jewish scholars were given. Yet so utterly ungovernable was the author’s passion that it spoiled the execution of his noble task. He scarcely knew how to conduct a controversy without introducing sows, devils and such like.

Was it really to Luther’s credit that the sty should loom so large in his struggle with his foes?

Duke George he scolds as the “Dresden pig,” and Dr. Eck as “Pig-Eck”; the latter Luther promises to answer in such a way “that the sow’s belly shall not be too much inflated.”[947] The Bishops of the Council of Constance who burnt Hus are “boars”; the “bristles of their backs rise on end and they whet their snouts.”[948] Erasmus “carries within him a sow from the herd of Epicurus.”[949] The learned Catholics of the Universities are hogs and donkeys decked out in finery, whom God has sent to punish us; these “devils’ masks, the monks and learned spectres, from the Schools we have endowed with such huge wealth, many of the doctors, preachers, masters, priests and friars are big, coarse, corpulent donkeys, decked out with hoods red and brown, like the market sow in her glass beads and tinsel chains.”[950]

The same simile is, of course, employed even more frequently of the peasants. “To-day the peasants are the merest hogs, whilst the people of position, who once prided themselves on being bucks, are beginning to copy them.”[951]—The Papists have “stamped the married state under foot”; their clergy are “like pigs in the fattening-pen,” “they wallow in filth like the pig in his sty.”[952]—The Papists are fed up by their literary men, as befits such pigs as they. “Eat, piggies, eat! This is good for you.”[953]—We Germans are “hopeless pigs.”[954]

Henry of Brunswick is “as expert in Holy Writ as a sow is on the harp.” Let him and his Papists confess that they are “verily the devil’s whore-church.”[955] “You should not write a book,” Luther tells him, “until you have heard an old sow s——; then you should open your jaws and say: Thank you, lovely nightingale, now I have the text I want. Stick to it; it will look fine printed in a book against the Scripturists and the Elector; but have it done at WolfenbÜttel. Oh, how they will have to hold their noses!”[956]

Another favourite image, which usually accompanies the sow, is provided by the donkey. Of Clement VII. and one of his Bulls Luther says: “The donkey pitched his bray too high and thought the Germans would not notice it.”[957] Of Emser and the Catholic Professors he writes: “Were I ignorant of logic and philosophy you rude asses would be after setting yourselves up as logicians and philosophers, though you know as much about the business as a donkey does about music.”[958] Of Alveld the Franciscan he says: “The donkey does not understand music, he must rather be given thistles.”[959] The fanatics too, naturally, could not expect to escape. All that Luther says of heavenly things is wasted upon them. “They understand it as little as the donkey does the Psalter.”[960]

The devil, however, plays the chief part. Luther’s considered judgment on the Zwinglians, for instance, is, that they are “soul-cannibals and soul-assassins,” are “endeviled, devilish, yea, ultra-devilish and possessed of blasphemous hearts and lying lips.”[961]

The Lawyers.

Luther’s aversion for the “Jurists” grew yearly more intense. His chief complaint against them was that they kept to the Canon Law and put hindrances in his way. Their standpoint, however, as regards Canon Law was not without justification. “Any downright abrogation of Canon Law as a whole was out of the question. The law as then practised, not only in the ecclesiastical but even in the secular courts, was too much bound up with Canon Law; when it was discarded, for instance, in the matrimonial cases, dire legal complications threatened throughout the whole of the German Empire.”[962] To this Luther’s eyes were not sufficiently open.

His crusade against the validity of clandestine engagements which he entered upon in opposition to his friend and co-religionist, Hieronymus Schurf, his colleague in the faculty of jurisprudence at the University of Wittenberg, was merely one episode in his resistance to those who represented legalism as then established.

In another and wider sphere his relations with those lawyers, who were the advisers at the Court of his Elector and the other Princes, became more strained. This was as a result of their having a hand in the ordering of Church business. Here again his action was scarcely logical, for he himself, forced by circumstances, had handed over to the State the outward guidance of the Church; that the statesmen would intervene and settle matters according to their own ideas was but natural; and if their way of looking at things failed to agree with Luther’s, this was only what might have been foreseen all along.

In a conference with Melanchthon, Amsdorf and others in Dec., 1538, he complained bitterly of the lawyers and of the “misery of the theologians who were attacked on all sides, especially by the mighty.” To Melchior Kling, a lawyer who was present, he said: “You jurists have a finger in this and are playing us tricks; I advise you to cease and come to the assistance of the nobles. If the theologians fall, that will be the end of the jurists too.” “Do not worry us,” he repeated, “or you will be paid out.” “Had he ten sons, he would take mighty good care that not one was brought up to be a lawyer.” “You jurists stand as much in need of a Luther as the theologians did.” “The lawyer is a foe of Christ; he extols the righteousness of works. If there should be one amongst them who knows better, he is a wonder, is forced to beg his bread and is shunned by all the other men of law.”[963]

On questions affecting conscience he considered that he alone, as theologian and leader of the others, had a right to decide; yet countless cases which came before the courts touched upon matters of conscience. He exclaims, for instance, in 1531: Must not the lawyers come to me to learn what is really lawful? “I am the supreme judge of what is lawful in the domain of conscience.” “If there be a single lawyer in Germany, nay, in the whole world, who understands what is ‘lawful de jure’ and ‘lawful de facto’ then I am ... surprised.” The recorder adds: “When the Doctor swears thus he means it very seriously.” Luther proceeds: “In fine, if the jurists don’t crave forgiveness and crawl humbly to the Evangel, I shall give them such a doing that they will not know how to escape.”[964]

Thus we can understand how, in that same year (1531), when representatives of the secular law interfered in the ecclesiastical affairs at Zwickau against his wishes, he declared: “I will never have any more dealings with those Zwickau people, and I shall carry my resentment with me to the grave.” “If the lawyers touch the Canons they will fly in splinters.... I will fling the Catechism into their midst and so upset them that they won’t know where they are.”[965] If they are going to feed on the “filth of the Pope-Ass,” and “to put on their horns,” then he, too, will put on his and “toss them till the air resounds with their howls.” This from the pulpit on Feb. 23, 1539.[966]

The Princes.

With what scant respect Luther could treat the Princes is shown in his work “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt, wie weyt man yhr Gehorsam schuldig sey” (1523).[967]

Here he is not attacking individual Princes as was the case, for instance, in his writings against King Henry of England, Duke George of Saxony and Duke Henry of Brunswick, hence there was here no occasion for the abuse with which these polemical tracts are so brimful. Here Luther is dealing theologically with the relations which should obtain between Princes and subjects and, according to the title and the dedicatory note to Johann of Saxony, professes to discuss calmly and judicially the respective duties of both. Yet, carried away by vexation, because the Princes and the nobles had not complied with his request in his “An den christlichen Adel” that they should rise in a body against Rome, and reform the Church as he desired, he bitterly assails them as a class.

Even in the opening lines all the Princes who, like the Emperor, held fast to the olden faith and sought to preserve their subjects in it, were put on a par with “hair-brained fellows” and loose “rogues.” “Now that they want to fleece the poor man and wreak their wantonness on God’s Word, they call it obedience to the commands of the Emperor.... Because the ravings of such fools leads to the destruction of the Christian faith, the denial of God’s Word and blasphemy of the Divine Majesty, I neither can nor will any longer look on calmly at the doings of my ungracious Lords and fretful squires.”[968]

Of the Princes in general he says, that they ought “to rule the country and the people outwardly; this, however, they neglect. They do nothing but rend and fleece the people, heaping impost upon impost and tax upon tax; letting out, here, a bear, and there, a wolf; nor is there any law, fidelity or truth to be found in them, for they behave in such a fashion that to call them robbers and scoundrels would be to do them too great an honour.... So well are they earning the hatred of all that they are doomed to perish with the monks and parsons whose rascality they share.”[969]

It is here that Luther tells the people that, “from the beginning a wise Prince has been a rare find, and a pious Prince something rarer still. Usually they are the biggest fools or the most arrant knaves on earth; hence one must always expect the worst from them and little good, particularly in Divine things which pertain to the salvation of souls. For they are God’s lictors and hangmen.”[970] “The usual thing is for Isaias iii. 4 to be verified: ‘I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’”[971]

We have to look on while “secular Princes rule in spiritual matters and spiritual Princes in secular things.” In what else does the devil’s work on earth consist but in making fun of the world and turning it into a pantomime.

In conclusion he hints to the Princes plainly that the “mob and the common folk are beginning to see through it all.”[972]

A Protestant writer, in extenuation of such dangerous language against the rulers, recently remarked: “It never entered Luther’s head that such words might bring the Princes into contempt and thus, indirectly, promote rebellion.... If we are to draw a just conclusion from his blindness to the obvious psychological consequences of his words, it can only be, that Luther was no politician.”[973]

It may, indeed, be that he did not then sufficiently weigh the consequences. Nevertheless, in his scurrilous writings against individual Princes he was perfectly ready to brave every possible outcome of his vituperation. “What Luther wrote against the German Princes,” justly remarks DÖllinger, “against Albert, Elector of Mayence, against the Duke of Brunswick and Duke George of Saxony, puts into the shade all the libels and screeds of the more recent European literature.”[974]

One of the chief targets for his shafts was the Archbishop of Mayence.

Albert, Elector of Mayence, “is a plague to all Germany; the ghastly, yellow, earthen hue of his countenance—a mixture of mud and blood—exactly fits his character; ... he is deserving of death under the First Table” (viz. because of his transgression of the first commandments of the Decalogue by his utter godlessness).[975] It was, however, not so much on account of his moral shortcomings, notorious though they were, but more particularly because he did not take his side, that Luther regarded him as a “most perfidious rogue” (“nebulo perfidissimus”). “If thieves are hanged, then surely the Bishop of Mayence deserves to be hanged as one of the first, on a gallows seven times as high as the Giebenstein.... For he fears neither God nor man.”[976] When Simon Lemnius, the Humanist, praised Archbishop Albert in a few epigrams, Luther’s anger turned against the poet, whom he soundly rated for making “a saint out of a devil.” He issued a sort of mandate against Lemnius of which the conclusion was: “I beg our people, and particularly the poets or his [the Archbishop’s] sycophants, in future not publicly to praise the shameful merd-priest”; he threatens sharp measures should anyone at Wittenberg dare to praise “the self-condemned lost priest.”[977]

The satirical list of relics which, in 1542, he published with a preface and epilogue against the same Elector amounted practically to a libel, and was described by lawyers as a lying slander punishable at law. As a “libellus famosus” against a reigning Prince of the Empire it might have entailed serious consequences for its author.

In it Luther says: The Elector, as we learn, is offering “big pardons for many sins,” even for sins to be committed for the next ten years, to all who “help in decking out in new clothes the poor, naked bones”; the relics in question, during their translation from Halle to Mayence, had, so Luther tells us, been augmented by other “particles,” enriched by the Pope with Indulgences, amongst them, “(1) a fine piece of the left horn of Moses; (2) three flames from the bush of Moses on Mount Sinai; (3) two feathers and one egg of the Holy Ghost,” etc., in all, twelve articles, specially chosen to excite derision.

Justus Jonas appears to have been shocked at Luther’s ribaldry and to have given Luther an account of what the lawyers were saying. At any rate, we have Luther’s reply in his own handwriting, though the top part of the letter has been torn away. In the bottom fragment we read: “[Were it really a libel] which, however, it cannot be, yet I have the authority, right and power [to write such libels] against the Cardinal, Pope, devil and all their crew; and not to have the term ‘libellus famosus’ hurled at me. Or have the ‘asinists’—I beg your pardon, jurists—studied their jurisprudence in such a way as to be ignorant of what ‘subjectum’ and ‘finis’ mean in secular law? [the end in his eyes was a good one]. If I have to teach them, I shall exact smaller fees and teach them unwashed. How has the beautiful Moritzburgk [belonging to the see of Mayence] been turned into a donkey-stable! If they are ready to pipe, I am quite willing to dance, and, if I live, I hope to tread yet another measure with the bride of Mayence.”[978] Thus the revolting untruths to which his tactics led him to have recourse, the better to excite the minds of the people, seemed to him a fit subject for jest; in spite of the wounds which the religious warfare was inflicting on the German Church he still saw nothing unseemly in the figure of the dance and the bridal festivity.

An incident of his controversy with the Duke of Brunswick may serve to complete the picture. In 1540, during the hot summer, numerous fires broke out in North and Central Germany, causing widespread alarm; certain alleged incendiaries who were apprehended were reported to have confessed under torture that this was the doing of Duke Henry of Brunswick and the Pope. Before even investigations had commenced Luther had already jumped to the conclusion that the real author was his enemy, the Catholic Duke, backed up by the Pope and the monks; for had not the Duke (according to Luther) explained to the burghers of Goslar that he recognised no duties with regard to heretics?[979] The Franciscans had been expelled and were now in disguise everywhere “plotting vengeance”; they it was who had done it all with the assistance of the Duke of Brunswick and the Elector of Mayence, who, of course, remained behind the scenes.[980] “If this be proved, then there is nothing left for us but to take up arms against the monks and priests; and I too shall go, for miscreants must be slain like mad dogs.”[981] Hieronymus Schurf, as the cautious lawyer he was, expressed himself in Luther’s presence against the misuse of torture in the case of those accused and against their being condemned too hastily. Luther interrupted him: “This is no time for mercy but for rage!” According to St. Augustine many must suffer in order that many may be at peace; so is it also in the law courts, “now and again some must suffer injustice, so long as it is not done knowingly and intentionally by the judge. In troublous times excessive severity must be overlooked.”[982] He became little by little so convinced of the guilt of Henry the “incendiary” and his Papists, that, in October, 1540, he refers half-jestingly to the reputation he was acquiring as “prophet and apostle” by so correctly discerning in the Papists a mere band of criminals.[983] He also informed other Courts of the supposed truth of his surmise, viz. that “Harry of Brunswick has now been convicted as an arch-incendiary-assassin and the greatest scoundrel on whom the sun has ever shone. May God give the bloodhound and werewolf his reward. Amen.” Thus to Duke Albert of Prussia on April 20, 1541.[984]

Considerably before this, in a letter to the same princely patron, he expressly implicates in these absurd charges the Pope, the chief object of his hate: After telling Albert of the report, that the Duke of Brunswick “had sent out many hundred incendiaries against the Evangelical Estates” of whom more than 300 had been “brought to justice,” many of them making confessions implicating the Duke, the Bishop of Mayence and others, Luther goes on to say that the business must necessarily have been set on foot “by great people, for there is plenty of money.”

“The Pope is said to have given 80,000 ducats towards it. This is the sort of thing we are compelled to hear and endure; but God will repay them abundantly ... in hell, in the fire beneath our feet.”[985]

“The Doctor said,” we read in the Table-Talk, taken down by Mathesius in September (2-17), 1540: “The greatest wonder of our day is that the majesty of the Pope—who was a terror to all monarchs and against whom they dared not move a muscle, seeing that a glance from him or a movement of his finger sufficed to keep them all in a state of fear and obedience—that this god should have collapsed so utterly that even his defenders loathe him. Those who still take his part, without exception do this simply for money’s sake and their own advantage, otherwise they would treat him even worse than we do. His malice has now been thoroughly exposed, since it is certain that he sent eighteen thousand crowns for the hiring of incendiaries.”[986] The perfect seriousness with which he relates this in the circle of his friends furnishes an enigma.

His consciousness of all that he had accomplished against the Pope, combined with his hatred of Catholicism, seems often to cloud his mind.

2. Luther’s Excuse: “We MUST Curse the Pope and His Kingdom”[987]

In Luther’s polemics against the Pope and the Papists it is psychologically of importance to bear in mind the depth of the passion which underlies his furious and incessant abuse.

The further we see into Luther’s soul, thanks especially to his familiar utterances recorded in the Table-Talk, the more plainly does this overwhelming enmity stand revealed. In what he said privately to his friends we find his unvarnished thought and real feelings. Far from being in any sense artificial, the intense annoyance which rings throughout his abuse seems to rise spontaneously from the very bottom of his soul. That he should have pictured to himself the Papacy as a dragon may be termed a piece of folly, nevertheless it was thus that it ever hovered before his mind, by day and by night, whether in the cheery circle of his friends or in his solitary study, in the midst of ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-political business, when engaged in quiet correspondence with admirers and even when he sought in prayer help and comfort in his troubles.

In Lauterbach’s Diary we find Luther describing the Pope as the “Beast,”[988] the “Dragon of Hell” towards whom “one cannot be too hostile,”[989] as the “Dragon and Crocodile,” whose whole being “was, and still is, rascality through and through.”[990] “Even were the Pope St. Peter, he would still be godless.”[991] “Whoever wishes to glorify the Blood of Christ must needs rage against the Pope who blasphemes it.”[992] “The Pope has sold Christ’s Blood and the state of matrimony, hence the money-bag [of this Judas] is chock-full of the proceeds of robbery.... He has banned and branded me, and stuck me in the devil’s behind. Hence I am going to hang him on his own keys.”[993] This he said when a caricature was shown him representing the Pope strung up next to Judas, with the latter’s money-bag.

“I am the Pope’s devil,” so he declared to his companions, “hence it is that he hates and persecutes me.”[994]

And yet the chief crime of this execrated Papacy was its non-acceptance of Luther’s innovations. The legal measures taken against him agreeably with the olden law, whether of the State or of the Church, were no proof of “hatred,” however much they might lame his own pretensions.

In other notes of his conversations we read: “Formerly we looked at the Pope’s face, now we look only at his posterior, in which there is no majesty.”[995] “The city of Rome now lies mangled and the devil has discharged over it his filth, i.e. the Pope.”[996] It is a true saying, that, “if there be a hell, Rome is built upon it.”[997]

“Almost all the Romans are now sunk in Epicurism; they trouble themselves not at all about God or a good conscience. Alack for our times! I used to believe that the Epicurean doctrine was dead and buried, yet here it is still flourishing.”[998]

At the very commencement of the Diary of Cordatus, Luther is recorded as saying: “The Pope has lost his cunning. It is stupid of him still to seek to lead people astray under the pretence of religion, now that mankind has seen through the devil’s trickery. To maintain his kingdom by force is equally foolish because it is impracticable.”[999]—He proceeds in a similar strain: “The Papists, like the Jews, insist that everyone who wishes to be saved must observe their ceremonies, hence they will perish like the Jews.”[1000]—He maliciously quotes an old rhyme in connection with the Pope, who is both the “head of the world” and “the beast of the earth,” and, in support of this, adduces abundant quotations from the Apocalypse.[1001]—When Daniel declared that Antichrist would trouble neither about God nor about woman (xi. 37), this meant that “the Pope would recognise neither God nor lawful wives, that, in a word, he would despise religion and all domestic and social life, which all turned on womankind. Thus may we understand what was foretold, viz. that Antichrist would despise all laws, ordinances, statutes, rights and every good usage, contemn kings, princes, empires and everything that exists in heaven or on earth merely the better to extol his fond inventions.”[1002]—It is difficult to assume that all this was mere rhetoric, for, then, why was it persisted in? Intentionally hyperbolical utterances are as a rule brief. In these conversations, however, the tone never changes, but merely becomes at times even more emphatic.

On the same page in Cordatus we read: “Children are lucky in that they come into the world naked and penniless; for the Pope levies toll on everything there is on the earth, save only upon baptism, because he can’t help it.”[1003] And immediately after: “The Pope has ceased to be a teacher and has become, as his Decretals testify, a belly-server and speculator. In the Decretals he treats not at all of theological matters but merely pursues three self-seeking ends: First, he does everything to strengthen his domination; secondly, he does his best to set the kings and princes at loggerheads with each other whenever he wants to score off one of the great, in doing which he does not scruple to show openly his malice; thirdly, he plays the devil most cunningly, when, with a friendly air, he allays the dissensions he had previously stirred up among the sovereigns; this, however, he only does when his own ends have been achieved. He also perverts the truth of God’s Word [thus invading the theological field]. This, however, he does not do as Pope, but as Antichrist and God’s real enemy.”[1004]

The whole mountain of abuse expressed here and in what follows rests on this last assumption, viz. that the Pope perverts “the truth of God’s Word”; thanks to this the Wittenberg Professor fancied he could overthrow a Church which had fifteen centuries behind it. His hate is just as deeply rooted in his soul as his delusion concerning his special call.

According to the German Colloquies the Pope, like Mohammed, “began under the Emperor Phocas”: “The prophecy [of the Apocalypse] includes both, the Pope and the Turk.”[1005] Still, the Pope is the “best ruler” for the world, because he does know how to govern; “he is lord of our fields, meadows, money, houses and everything else, yea, of our very bodies”; for this “he repays the world in everlasting curses and maledictions; this is what the world wants and it duly returns thanks and kisses his feet.”[1006]—“He is rather the lawyers’ than the theologians’ god.”[1007]

He is determined to turn me “straightway into a slave of sin” and to force me to “blaspheme,” but instead of “denying God” I shall withstand the Pope; “otherwise we would willingly have borne and endured the Papal rule.”[1008]—“No words are bad enough to describe the Pope. We may call him miserly, godless and idolatrous, but all this falls far short of the mark. It is impossible to grasp and put into words his great infamies;”[1009] in short, as Christ says, “he is the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place.”[1010]

The Pope is indeed the “father of abominations and the poisoner of souls.” “After the devil the Pope is a real devil.”[1011] “After the devil there is no worse man than the Pope with his lies and his man-made ordinances”;[1012] in fact, he is a masked devil incarnate.[1013] No one can become Pope unless he be a finished and consummate knave and miscreant.[1014] The Pope is a “lion” in strength and a “dragon” in craft.[1015] He is “an out-and-out Jew who extols in Christ only what is material and temporal”;[1016] needless to say, he is “far worse than the Turk,”[1017] “a mere idolater and slave of Satan,”[1018] “a painted king but in reality a filthy pretence,”[1019] his kingdom is a “Carnival show,”[1020] and he himself “Rat-King of the monks and nuns.”[1021] Popery is full of murder;[1022] it serves Moloch,[1023] and is the kingdom of all who blaspheme God.

“For the Pope is, not the shepherd, but the devil of the Churches; this comforts me as often as I think of it.”[1024]

“Anno 1539, on May 9,” we read in these Colloquies, “Dr. Martin for three hours held a severe and earnest Disputation in the School at Wittenberg, against that horrid monster, the Pope, that real werewolf who excels in fury all the tyrants, who alone wishes to be above all law and to act as he pleases, and even to be worshipped, to the loss and damnation of many poor souls.... But he is a donkey-king [he said] ... I hope he has now done his worst [now that I have broken his power]; but neither are the Papists ever to be trusted, even though they agree to peace and bind themselves to it under seal and sign-manual.... Therefore let us watch and pray!”[1025]

The Disputation, of which all that is known was published by Paul Drews in 1895,[1026] dealt principally with the question, which had become a vital one, of armed resistance to the forces of the Empire then intent on vindicating the rights of the Pope. The Theses solve the question in the affirmative. “The Pope is no ‘authority’ ordained by God ... on the contrary he is a robber, a ‘Bearwolf’ who gulps down everything. And just as everybody rightly seeks to destroy this monster, so also it is everyone’s duty to suppress the Pope by force, indeed, penance must be done by those who neglect it. If anyone is killed in defending a wild beast it is his own fault. In the same way it is not wrong to offer resistance to those who defend the Pope, even should they be Princes or Emperors.”[1027]

A German version of the chief Theses (51-70) was at once printed.[1028]

Among the explanations given by Luther previous to the Disputation (“circulariter disputabimus”) the following are worthy of note: “We will not worship the Pope any longer as has been done heretofore.... Rather, we must fight against this Satan.”[1029] “The Pope is such a monstrous beast that no ruler or tyrant can equal him.... He requires us to worship his public blasphemy in defiance of the law; it is as though he said: I will and command that you adore the devil. It is not enough for him to strangle me, but he will have it that even the soul is damned at his word of command.... The Pope is the devil. Were I able to slay the devil, why should I not risk my life in doing so? Look not on the Pope as a man; his very worshippers declare that he is no mere man, but partly man and partly God. For ‘God’ here read ‘devil.’ Just as Christ is God-made-flesh, so the Pope is the devil incarnate.”[1030]—“Who would not lend a hand against this arch-pestilential monster? There is none other such in the whole world as he, who exalts himself far above God. Other wolves there are indeed, yet none so impudent and imperious as this wolf and monster.”[1031]

In this celebrated Disputation some of the objections are couched in scholastic language. Such is the following: According to the Bible, Antichrist is to be destroyed by the breath of God’s mouth and not by the sword; therefore armed resistance to the Pope and the Papists is not allowed. Luther replies: “That we concede, for what we say is that he will escape and remain with us till the end of the world. He is nevertheless to be resisted, and the Emperor too, and the Princes who defend him, not on the Emperor’s account, but for the sake of this monstrous beast.”[1032]—Another objection runs: “Christ forbade Peter to make use of his sword against those sent out by the Pharisees; therefore neither must we take up arms against the Pope.” The reply was: “Negabitur consequens,” and Luther goes on to explain: “The Pope is no authority as Caiphas and Pilate were. He is the devil’s servant, possessed of the devil, a wolf who tyrannically carries off souls without any right or mandate.” According to the report Luther suddenly relapsed into German: “If Peter went to Rome and slew him, he would be acting rightly, ‘quia papa non habet ordinationem,’” etc.[1033] Justus Jonas and Cruciger also took a part, bringing forward objections in order to exercise others in refuting them. This theological tournament, with its crazy ideas couched in learned terminology, might well cause the dispassionate historian to smile were it not for the sombre background and the vision of the religious wars for which ardent young students were being fitted and equipped.

What we have quoted from Luther’s familiar talks and from his disputations affords overwhelming proof, were such wanting, that the frenzied outbursts against the Pope we find even in his public writings, were, not merely assumed, but really sprang from the depths of his soul. It is true that at times they were regarded as rhetorical effusions or even as little more than jokes, but as a matter of fact they bear the clearest stamp of his glowing hate. They indicate a persistent and eminently suspicious frame of mind, which deserves to be considered seriously as a psychological, if not pathological, condition; what we must ask ourselves is, how far the mere hint of Popery sufficed to call forth in him a delirium of abuse.

In his tract of 1531 against Duke George he boasted, that people would in future say, that “his mouth was full of angry words, vituperation and curses on the Papists”; that “he intended to go down to his grave cursing and abusing the miscreants”;[1034] that as long as breath remained in him he would “pursue them to their grave with his thunders and lightnings”;[1035] again, he says he will take refuge in his maledictory prayer against the Papists in order to “kindle righteous hatred in his heart,” and even expounds and recommends this prayer in mockery to his opponent[1036]—in all this we detect an abnormal feature which characterises his life and temper. This abnormity is apparent not only in the intense seriousness with which he utters the most outrageous things, more befitting a madman than a reasonable being, but also at times in the very satires to which he has recourse. That the Papacy would have still more to suffer from him after he was dead, is a prophecy on which he is ever harping: “When I die,” he remarks, “I shall turn into a spirit that will so plague the bishops, parsons and godless monks, that one dead Luther will give them more trouble than a thousand living Luthers.”[1037]

No theological simile is too strange for him in this morbid state of mind and feeling. As in the case of those obsessed by a fixed idea the delusion is ever obtruding itself under every possible shape, so, in a similar way, every thought, all his studies, his practice, learning, theology and exegesis, even when its bearing seems most remote, leads up to this central and all-dominating conviction: “I believe that the Pope is a devil incarnate in disguise, for he is Endchrist. For as Christ is true God and true man, so also is Antichrist a devil incarnate.”[1038] And yet, in the past, so he adds with a deep sigh, “we worshipped all his lies and idolatry.”

He is very painstaking in his anatomy of the Pope-Antichrist.

“The head of Antichrist,” he said, “is both the Pope and the Turk; a living creature must have both body and soul; the Pope is Antichrist’s soul or spirit, but the Turk is his flesh or body; for the latter lays waste, destroys and persecutes the Church of God materially, just as the Pope does so spiritually.” Considering, however, that he had unduly exonerated the Pope, he corrects himself and adds: And materially also; “materially, viz. by laying waste with fire and sword, hanging, murdering, etc.” The Church, however, so he prophesies, will nevertheless “hold the field and resist the Pope’s hypocrisy and idolatry.” He then goes on to make a fanciful application of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the kingdoms of the world to the Pope’s downfall. “The text compels us” to take the prophecy (Apoc. xiii. 7) as also referring to the “Papal abomination.” “The Pope shall be broken without hands and perish and die of himself.”[1039]

That the Pope was spiritually destroying the Church he had already asserted as early as 1520 in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome”: “Of all that is of Divine appointment not one jot is now observed at Rome; indeed, if anyone thought of doing what is manifestly such, it would be derided as folly. They let the Gospel and the Christian faith perish everywhere and turn never a hair; moreover, every bad example of mischief, spiritual and secular, flows from Rome over the whole world as from an ocean of wickedness. All this the Romans laugh at, and whoever laments it is looked upon as a ‘bon Christian’ [’cristiano’], i.e. a fool.”[1040]

The strength of Luther’s delusion that the Pope was Antichrist and shared the diabolical nature furnishes the chief explanation of the hopelessly bitter way in which he deals with all those who ventured to defend the Papacy. On all such he heaps abuse and assails them with that worst of the weapons at his command, viz. with calumny, calling into question their good faith and denying to them the character of Christians.

In a more serious and tragic tone he points out, how many of his foes and opponents had been carried off suddenly by a Divine judgment. He even drafted a long list of such instances, supplied with hateful glosses of his own, which he alleged as a proof of the “visible action of God” in support of his cause.[1052] Johann Koss, the “preacher of blasphemy,” mentioned above, was given a place in this libellous catalogue after he had been seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the pulpit (Dec. 29, 1532). At the instance of Duke George he had been appointed assistant preacher under Hieronymus Dungersheim, that, by means of his elocutionary talent, he might defend the town of Leipzig against the inroads of the new teaching. What particularly incensed Luther was the use this preacher made of his Postils to refute him by his own words. The stroke came on him while he was vindicating the Catholic doctrine of good works. This circumstance, taken in conjunction with the “place, time and individual,” was for Luther an irrefutable proof of the intervention of “God’s anger.” “Christ,” he says, “struck down His enemy, the Leipzig shouter, in the very midst of his blasphemy.”[1053] The zealous preacher died about a month later.

“None are more pitiable,” Luther says elsewhere of this incident, “than the presumptuous, such as are all the Papists.”[1054] It was impossible for him to inveigh with sufficient severity against the presumption which threatened him on all sides, despite the excessive kindliness and moderation with which he occasionally credits himself; for were not those who confronted him “the devil and his hirelings”? He was forced to combat the frightful presumption of these men who acted as though they were “steeped in holiness”; for in reality they are “dirty pig-snouts”; as Papists they are “at the very least, murderers, thieves and persecutors”; hence let all rise up against the “servers of idols.”[1055]

“We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and abuse it, and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning, scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers.” “Yes, and so it must be.”[1056]

Elsewhere he hints which vilely vulgar terms of opprobrium were to be applied to the Pope, and, after instancing them, adds: “It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.” The Catholic Princes were also aimed at in this instruction which occurs in one of his sermons. This discourse, pronounced on Jan. 12, 1531, at a time when the intervention of the hostile secular powers was feared, was printed ten years later under the title “Ein trostlich Unterricht wie man sich gegen den Tyrannen, so Christum und sein Wort verfolgen halten soll.”[1057]

“Our mad and raving Princes,” he says, “are now raging and blustering and planning to root out this teaching. Whoever is desirous of devoting himself to Christ must daily be ready to suffer any peril to life and limb.” Amongst the grounds for encouragement he adduces is the fact that even his very foes admitted, “that we preach and teach God’s Word; the only thing amiss being, that it was not done at their bidding, but that we at Wittenberg started it all unknown to them.” He calls the angry Princes “great merd-pots,” who are “kings and rulers of the pig-sty of the earth where the belly, the universal cesspool, reigns supreme.” “But we will be of good cheer and put our fingers to our noses at them”; because we hold fast to Christ therefore we suffer persecution from the world. “Who is the Pope, that he should be angry?... A sickly, smelly scarecrow.” “The Pope says: I will excommunicate you, thrust you down to the abyss of hell. [I tell him] Stick your tongue in my——. I am holy, am baptised, have God’s Word and His Promises to proclaim, but you are a sickly, syphilitic sack of maggots. It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.”[1058]

3. The Psychology of Luther’s Abusive Language

Various Psychological Factors.

Psychologically to appreciate the phenomenon in question we must first of all take into account Luther’s temperament.

To every unprejudiced observer it must be clear, that, without the unusual excitability natural to him, many of his utterances would be quite inexplicable; even when we have given due weight to Luther’s ungovernable temper and all too powerful imagination they still present many difficult questions to the observer. Luther himself, as early as 1520, excuses to Spalatin his offensive language on the ground of his natural “hot-bloodedness”; as everybody knew what his temper was, his opponents ought not to annoy him as they did; yet these “monsters” only provoked him the more, and made him “overstep the bounds of modesty and decency.”[1059] It is perfectly true that some of his foes did provoke him by their mode of attack, yet on the other hand his own violence usually put theirs in the shade. (See below, xxvii., 4.)

In addition to his natural impetuosity which furnishes the chief basis of the phenomenon under consideration, several other factors must also be envisaged, depending on the objects or persons arousing his indignation.

It is clear that he was within his rights when he scourged the anti-Christian blasphemy and seductive wiles of the Jews, however much he may have been in the wrong in allowing himself to be carried away by fanaticism so far as to demand their actual persecution. The same holds good of many of the instances of his ungenerous and violent behaviour towards “heretics” in his own fold. As against the many and oftentimes very palpable defects of their position, he knew how to stand up for truth and logic, though his way of doing so was not always happy, nor his strictures untouched by his own theological errors.

Nor can it be denied that he was in the right when he assailed the real, and, alas, all too many abuses of the olden Church. The lively sense that, at least in this respect, he was in the right may quite possibly have fed the inward fire of his animosity to Catholics, all the more owing to his being in the wrong in those new doctrines which were his principal concern. To the assurance, and the offensive manner in which he insisted on a reform, his visit to Rome, a distorted recollection of which ever remained with him, no doubt contributed. His mind was ever reverting to the dismal picture—by no means an altogether imaginary one—of the immorality prevailing in even the highest ecclesiastical circles of Rome.

Rome’s unworthy treatment of the system of indulgences, which had afforded the occasion of his action in 1517, continued to supply new fuel for his indignation; to it he was fond of tracing back his whole undertaking. What increased his anger was the thought that it was this same Rome, whose ignoble practices both in the matter of indulgences and in other fields was notorious, who had called him to judgment. It is painful to the Catholic to have to confess that many of Luther’s complaints were by no means unfounded. He will, however, call to mind the better churchmen of those days, who, though indignant at the sad corruption then prevalent, never dreamt of apostasy, knowing as they did, that even far worse scandals could never justify a revolt against the institution appointed by Christ for the salvation of souls.

Even when voicing his real grievances Luther was seldom either prudent or moderate. He never seems to have quite taken to heart the scriptural injunction: “Let every man be slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” He expounds in his Postils the Epistle where the admonition in question occurs,[1060] but it is curious to note how cursorily he dismisses the words, with which, maybe, he felt somewhat out of sympathy, though here, as elsewhere, he refers to the evil consequences of any proneness to anger. On the other hand, he insists, that “our censures and rebukes” must be in accordance with the “right and true Word,” i.e. with theology as he understood it.[1061] He prefers to devote far the greater portion of the exposition to proving his favourite thesis, that, thanks to the Evangel now proclaimed, “we have a good and cheerful conscience, stronger than all fear, sin and temptation, and containing the sure hope of life everlasting”;[1062] “it is a Word that has power to save your souls; what more can you desire?”[1063] He seems averse to inculcating that meekness which the text requires.

One factor which frequently fanned the flames was jealousy, when, for instance, he had to deal with theological opponents who appeared to be making too small account of him. The new Evangel, he said, was endangered by none more than by the “fanatics and sacramentarians”; to defend his personal position against them had cost him the hardest struggle of his whole life; no wonder that against them he opened wide the sluice-gates of his eloquence. He was keenly sensitive to any slight. “Things are going all wrong in the world,” he sighed in 1532. “We are already looked upon with contempt, but let us gather up the fragments when they are cheapest, that is what I advise.”[1064] Of Carlstadt twelve years previous he had written: “If he has no respect for me, which of us then will he respect? And what is the good of admonishing him? I believe he reckons me one of the most learned men in Wittenberg, and yet he actually tells me to my very face that I am nobody.... He writes right and left just as he chooses and looks on poor Wittenberg as quite beneath his notice.”[1065] Luther’s vexation explains his language. A pity one of the Princes did not let him taste cold steel; if Carlstadt believed in a God in heaven, then might Christ never more be gracious to him (Luther); he was no man, but an incarnation of the evil spirit, etc.

Not merely his former friend Carlstadt but others too he accused of inordinate ambition because they wished to discredit his discoveries and his position. “It is the ‘gloria’ that does the mischief,” he said in 1540 in his Table-Talk, “Zwingli was greedy of honour, as we see from what he wrote, viz. that he had learnt nothing from me. I should indeed be sorry had he learnt from me, for he went astray. Œcolampadius thought himself too learned to listen to me or to learn from me; of course, he too, surpassed me. Carlstadt also declares: ‘I care nothing for you,’ and MÜnzer actually declaimed against two Popes, the new one [myself] and the old.[1066] All who shun us and attack us secretly have departed from the faith, like Jeckel and Grickel [Jakob Schenk and Johann Agricola]; they reached their understanding by their own efforts and learnt nothing from us! Just like Zwingli.” Yet twenty-five years before (i.e. previous to his great discovery in 1515) no one “knew anything,” and, twenty-one years before, he, all alone, under the Divine guidance had put the ball in motion. “Ah, ?e??d???a [vainglory], that’s the mischief.”[1067]

Jealousy played its part also, when, in 1525, he rounded so violently upon Zwingli and the Zwinglians at Strasburg. Zwingli’s crime in his eyes lay not merely in his having, like Œcolampadius, adopted a divergent doctrine on the Eucharist, but in his claim to have been before Luther in preaching the Gospel of Christ openly according to its true meaning.[1068] Both circumstances contributed to Luther’s ire, which, after finding vent in many angry words, culminated at last in the rudest abuse of Zwingli and his “devilish” crew. Already in 1525, he wrote in the instruction for the people of Strasburg which he gave to Gregory Casel, who had come to Wittenberg to negotiate:[1069] “One of the parties must be the tool of Satan, i.e. either they or we.”[1070] “Christ can have no part with Belial.” And, before this: “They [Zwingli and Œcolampadius] disturb our Church and weaken our repute. Hence we cannot remain silent. If they would be vexed to see their own reputation suffer, let them also think of ours.” “They ought to have held their tongues long ago [on the question of the Sacrament]; now silence comes too late.” He concludes with the assurance, that their error was refuted by “the Spirit,” and that it was impossible they could have any certainty concerning their doctrine, whereas he could justly boast, that he had the experience of the faith and the testimony of the Spirit (“experimentum fidei et spiritus testimonium”). “They will never win the day. It pains me that Zwingli and his followers take offence at my saying that ‘What I write must be true.’”

Apart from the doctrine on the Sacrament, the other thing which helped to annoy him stands revealed more plainly in the letter addressed on the same day to the Strasburg preachers: “We dare to boast that Christ was first made known by us, and now Zwingli actually comes and accuses us of denying Christ.”[1071] Bossuet was quite right in arguing that such petty jealousy on Luther’s part is scarcely to his credit.[1072] He quotes a criticism on Luther’s behaviour by George Calixt, the famous Lutheran professor of theology at HelmstÄdt: “The sweetness of vainglory is so seductive and human weakness so great, that even those who despise all things and risk their goods, yea life itself, may succumb to inordinate ambition.” Luther, too, had high aims; “we cannot be surprised that, even a man so large-minded as Luther, should have written such things to the people of Strasburg.”[1073]

Offended vanity played a part as great and even more obvious in Luther’s furious polemics against the literary defenders of the Church. One cannot help noticing how, especially when they had succeeded in making out a clear case against him, his answer was a torrent of most unsparing abuse.

The eloquence which he had at his command also constituted a temptation. He was well aware of the force with which his impassioned language carried others away. Very little was thus needed to induce him to take up this formidable weapon which at least ensured his success among the masses. He himself revelled in the unquenchable wealth of his vituperative vocabulary, and with it he caught the fancy of thousands who loved nothing more than a quarrel. If it be true that all popular orators are exposed to the temptation to exaggerate, to say things which are striking rather than correct, and, generally, to court the applause of the crowd, this danger was even greater in Luther’s case owing to the whole character of the controversy he had stirred up. In the midst of a stormy sea one does not speak softly. Luther’s abuse was, however, powerful enough to be heard above even the most furious tempest.

For his work Luther required an extraordinary stimulus. He would have succumbed under the countless and burdensome labours which devolved on him had he not constantly aroused himself anew by the exercise of a sort of violence. Vituperation thus became to him a real need. When he had succeeded thereby in working himself up into a passion his mind grew clearer and his imagination more vigorous, so that he found it all the easier to borrow from the lips of the mob that rude language of which he makes such fell use. He kindles his animation by dwelling on the “vermin and running sores of Popery.”

In the same way from time to time he found the need of unburdening himself of his ill-humour. The small success of his labours for the reform of morals and his other annoying experiences gave him many an unhappy hour. His bad humour found an outlet in abuse and vituperation, particularly against the enemies of the Evangel. He himself was unable to conceal the real grounds of the vexation which he vented on the Papacy, for, often enough, after storming against the Papists, he complains bitterly of his own followers’ contempt for the “Word” and of their evil lives.

Lastly, his outbursts against the Papacy served to cover his own anxiety of conscience.

We have just heard Luther promise to hold up the Pope’s abomination to the devil’s nose. This saying brings us to the principal explanation of the phenomenon under consideration.

Connection of Luther’s Abusiveness with his Mystic Persuasion of his Special Call.

Luther had brought himself to such a pitch as to see in the existing Church the devil’s kingdom, to overthrow which, with its Antichrist, was his own sublime mission. This theological, anti-diabolical motive for his anger and boundless invective, throws all others into the shade.

As compared with the interior force with which the idea of his mission inspired him, all his violence, particularly in his polemics with the Catholic theologians and statesmen, appeared to him far too weak. Thus his “Wider Hans Worst” against the Catholic Duke of Brunswick, though reeking of blood and hate, seemed to him to fall short of the mark and to be all too moderate, so at least he told Melanchthon, to all appearance quite seriously.[1083] His inability ever to exhaust his indignation goes back to the idea expressed by him in the same letter with such startling candour and conviction as to remind one of the ravings of a man possessed by a fixed delusion: “It is certain that it is God Who is fighting.” “Our cause is directed by the hand of God, not by our own wisdom. The Word makes its way and prayer glows ... hence we might well sleep in peace were we not mere flesh.” His hint at the near approach of the Last Judgment, the many signs of which could not escape notice, more than confirms the pseudo-mystic character both of his confidence and of his hate.[1084]

On other occasions traces of his pet superstitions are apparent, and, when we take them together, prove beyond a doubt the unhealthy state of the mind from which they sprang. For instance, Luther professes to know particulars of the approaching end of the world concerning which the Bible says nothing; he also has that curious list of opponents miraculously slain by the Divine hand, and even fancies he can increase it by praying for the death of those who, not sharing his opinions, stood in his way: “This year we must pray Duke Maurice to death; we must slay him by our prayers, for he is likely to prove a wicked man.” On the same occasion he also attributes to himself a sort of prophetic gift: “I am a prophet.”[1085] The foretelling of future events and the fulfilment in his own person of olden prophecies and visions, and again the many miracles and expulsions of the devil which accompany the spread of his teaching, confirm his Evangel and impress the stamp of Divine approbation on his hatred of Antichrist.[1086] Divine portents, which, however, no one but Luther would have recognised as such, were also exploited: the birth of the monstrous Monk-Calf; the Pope-Ass fished from the Tiber; signs in the heavens and on the earth. The Book of Daniel and St. John’s Apocalypse supplied him when necessary with the wished-for interpretation, though his far-fetched speculations would better become a mystic dreamer than a sober theologian and spiritual guide of thousands. All this was crowned by the diabolical manifestations which he himself experienced, though what he took for apparitions of the devil was merely the outcome of an overwrought mind.[1087]

This enables us to seize that second nature of his, made up of superhuman storming and vituperation, and to understand, how, in his hands, wild abuse of the Papacy became quite a system.

Nevertheless, at times he appears to have had some slight qualms. Yet after having described the Papists as “Pope-Asses, slaves of the Mass, blasphemers, miscreants and murderers of souls,”[1097] he continues: “Should anyone here say that I confine myself to flinging coarse epithets about me and can do nothing but slander and abuse, I would reply, firstly, that such abuse is nothing compared with the unspeakable wickedness. For what is it if I abuse the devil as a murderer, miscreant, traitor, blasphemer and liar? To him all this is but a gentle breeze! But what else are the Pope-Asses but devils incarnate, who know not penance, whose hearts are hardened and who knowingly defend their palpable blasphemy.... Hence my abuse is not abuse at all, but just the same as were I to call a turnip a turnip, an apple an apple, or a pear a pear.”[1098]

A psychological explanation of Luther’s mania for invective is also to be looked for in the admixture of vile ingredients which went to make up his abuse. So frequently had he recourse to such when in a state of excitement that they must be familiar to every observer of Luther’s development and general behaviour; it is, however, our duty here to incorporate this element, so characteristic of his polemics, in our sketch of the angry Luther.

The Unpleasant Seasoning of Luther’s Abuse.

The filthy expressions, to which Luther was so prone when angry, are psychologically interesting, throwing light as they do on the depth of his passion and on the all too earthly atmosphere which pervades his abuse. Had Luther’s one object, as writer and teacher, been to vindicate spiritual treasures he would surely have scorned to make use of such adjuncts as these in his teaching or his polemics. Even when desirous of speaking forcibly, as beseemed a man of his stamp, he would have done so without introducing these disreputable and often repulsive elements of speech. He was, however, carried away by an imagination only too familiar with such vulgar imagery, and a tongue and pen much too ready to speak or write of things of that sort. Unless he places pressure on himself a man’s writings give a true picture of his inner standards, and pressure was something which Luther’s genius could never endure.

Luther had, moreover, a special motive for drawing his creations from this polluted well. He wished to arouse the lower classes and to ingratiate himself with those who, the less capable they were of thinking for themselves or of forming a true judgment, were all the readier to welcome coarseness, banter and the tone of the gutter. Amidst their derisive laughter he flings his filth in the face of his opponents, of the Catholics throughout the world, the Pope, the hierarchy and the German past.

If at Rome they had to prove that the Keys had been given to St. Peter “the Pope’s nether garments would fare badly.”[1099] Of the Papal dispensation for the clergy to marry, which many confidently expected, Luther says, that it would be just the thing for the devil; “let him open his bowels over his dispensation and sling it about his neck.”[1100]—The Princes and nobles (those who were on the other side) “soiled their breeches so shamefully in the Peasant War that even now they can be smelt afar off.”[1101]—He declares of the head of the Church of Rome: “Among real Christians no one is more utterly despicable than the Pope ... he stinks like a hoopoe’s nest.”[1102] Of those generally who opposed the Divine Word he says: “No smell is worse than yours.”[1103]—“Good-bye, beloved Rome; let what stinks go on stinking.”[1104]

“It is stupid of the Papists to wear breeches. How if they were to get drunk and let slip a motion?”[1105] This concern we find expressed in Luther’s “Etliche SprÜche wider das Concilium Obstantiense” (1535). And it is quite in keeping with other utterances in the same writing. He there speaks of the “dragons’ heads that peep and spew out of the hind-quarters of the Pope-Ass,”[1106] and on the same page ventures to address our Saviour as follows: “Beloved Lord Jesus Christ, it is high time that Thou shouldst lay bare, back and front, the shame of the furious, bloodthirsty, purple-clad harridan and reveal it to the whole world in preparation for the dawn of Thy bright Coming.”

Naturally he is no less unrestrained in his attacks on all who defended Popery. Of Eck’s ideas on chastity he remarks: “Your he-goat to your nostrils smells like balsam.”[1107] Of Cardinal Albert of Mayence and his party he wrote, during the SchÖnitz controversy: These “knaves and liars” “bring out foul rags fit only for devils and men to use in the closet.”[1108] The epithet, merd-priest, merd-bishop, is several times applied by him to members of the Catholic hierarchy.[1109] “The poor merd-priest wanted to ease himself, but, alas, there was nothing in his bowels.”[1110]

The Jurists who still clung to Canon Law he declares “invade the churches with their Pope like so many swine; yet there is another place whither they might more seemingly betake themselves if they wish to wipe the fundament of their Pope.”[1111] The Italians think that “whatever a Cardinal gives vent to, however vile it be, is a new article of faith promulgated for the benefit of the Germans.”[1112] To the Papists who threaten him with a Council he says: “If they are angry let them ease themselves into their breeches and sling it round their neck; that will be real balsam and pax for such thin-skinned saints.”[1113]—The fanatics who opposed his teaching on the Sacrament were also twitted on the score that “they would surely ease themselves on it and make use of it in the privy.”[1114] The Princes and scoundrel nobles faithfully followed the devil’s lead, who cannot bear to listen to God’s Word “but shows it his backside.”[1115] How are we best to answer an opponent, even the Pope? As though he were a “despicable drunkard.” “Give them the fig” (i.e. make a certain obscene gesture with the fist).[1116]—Such is his own remedy in all hostility and every misfortune: “I give them the fig.”[1117] His usual counsel is, however, to turn one’s “posterior” on them.

The Pope is the “filth which the devil has dropped in the Church”; he is the “devil’s bishop and the devil himself.”[1118]—Commenting on the Papal formula “districte mandantes,” he adds: “Ja, in Ars.”[1119] They want “me to run to Rome and fetch forgiveness of sins. Yes, forsooth, an evacuation!”[1120]

Of the Pope’s Bull of excommunication he says “they ought to order his horrid ban to be taken to the back quarters where children of Adam go to stool; it might then be used as a pocket-handkerchief.”[1121]—We must seize hold of the “vices” of the Pope and his clergy and show them up as real lechers; thus should all those who hold the office of preacher “set their droppings under the very noses of the Pope and the bishops.”[1122] “The spirit of the Pope, the father of lies,” wishes to display his wisdom by so altering the Word of God, that it “reeks of his stale filth.”[1123]—These people, who, like the Pope, are so learned in the Scripture, are “clever sophists,” experts in equine anal functions.[1124] They have “taken it upon themselves to come to the assistance of the whole world with their chastity and good works,” but, in reality, they merely “stuff our mouths with horse-dung.”[1125]

Of the alleged Papal usurpations he exclaims: “Were such muck as this stirred up in a free Council, what a stench there would be!”[1126]—The same favourite figure of speech helps him against the Sacramentarians: “What useful purpose can be served by my raking up all the devil’s filth?”[1127]—This phrase was at least more in place when Luther, referring to Philip of Hesse’s bigamy, said, that he “was not going to stir up the filth under the public nose.”[1128]—After their defeat he refused to comply with the demand of the peasants, that he should support them in their lawlessness: They want us to lend them a hand in “stirring up thoroughly the filth that is so eager to stink, till their mouths and noses are choked with it.”[1129] But it is to the Pope and his followers that, by preference, he applies such imagery. “They have forsaken the stool of St. Peter and St. Paul and now parade their filth [concerning original sin]; to such a pass have they come that they no longer believe anything, whether concerning the Gospel, or Christ, or even their own teaching.”[1130]—“This is the filth they now purvey, viz. that we are saved by our works; this is the devil’s own poisonous tail.”[1131]—Of those who awaited the decision of a Council he writes: “Let the devil wait if he chooses.... The members of the body must not wait till the filth says and decrees whether the body is healthy or not. We are determined to learn this from the members themselves and not from the urine, excrement and filth. In the same way we shall not wait for the Pope and bishops in Council to say: This is right. For they are no part of the body, or clean and healthy members, but merely the filth of squiredom, merd spattered on the sleeve and veritable ordure, for they persecute the true Evangel, well knowing it to be the Word of God. Therefore we can see they are but filth, stench and limbs of Satan.”[1132]

At the time of the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, he informed the delegates of his party: “You are treating, not with men, but with the very gates of hell.... But they have fallen foul of the wisdom of God and [the final sentence of this Latin epistle is in German] soil themselves with their own filthy wisdom. Amen, Amen.”[1133]—The words “bescheissen” and “beschmeissen” (cp. popular French: “emmerder”) flow naturally from Luther’s pen. Neobulus, the Hessian defender of the bigamy, he describes as “a prince of darkness,” who “has ‘defiled’ himself with his wisdom”;[1134] the papal “Jackanapes” who “declare that the Lutherans have risen in revolt,” have likewise “‘defiled’ themselves with their sophistry.”[1135]

He asserts he can say “with a clear conscience that the Pope is a merd-ass and the foe of God.”[1136] “The Pope-Ass has emitted a great and horrible ordure here.... A wonder it did not tear his anus or burst his belly.” “There lies the Pope in his own dung.”[1137] “The Popes are so fond of lies and scurrilities that their paunch waxes fat on them”; they are waiting to see “whether the Pope’s motions will not ultimately scare the kings.... The Papal hypocrites—I had almost said the devil’s excrements—boast of being masters over the whole world.”[1138]

Amidst these unavoidable quotations from Luther’s unpleasant vocabulary of abuse the historian is confronted again and again with the question: What relation does this coarser side of Luther’s style bear to the manners of his times? We have already pointed out how great the distance is between him and all other writers, particularly such as treat of religious subjects in a popular or polemical vein; obviously it is with the latter category of writings that his should be compared, rather than with the isolated aberrations of certain writers of romance or the lascivious works produced by the Humanists.[1139] Various quotations from contemporaries of Luther’s, even from friends of the innovations, have shown that his language both astonished and shocked them.[1140] It was felt that none other could pretend to measure himself beside this giant of invective.

Duke George of Saxony on one occasion told Luther in no kindly way that he knew peasants who spoke just the same, “particularly when the worse for drink”; indeed they went one better and “knew how to use their fists”; among them Luther would be taken for a swine-herd.[1141]

“Their inexhaustible passion for abuse,” wrote a Catholic contemporary in 1526, “makes me not a little suspicious of the teaching of this sect. No one is accounted a good pupil of Luther’s who is not an adept in abusive language; Luther’s own abuse knows no bounds.... Who can put up with such vituperation the like of which has not been heard for ages?... Read all this man’s writings and you will hardly find a page that is not sullied with vile abuse.”[1142]

It is true that the lowest classes, particularly in Saxony, as it would appear, were addicted to the use of smutty language in which they couched their resentment or their wit; this, however, was among themselves. In the writings of the Wittenberg professor of theology, on the other hand, this native failing emerges unabashed into the light of day, and the foul sayings which Luther—in his anxiety to achieve popularity—gathered from the lips of the rabble swept like a flood over the whole of the German literary field. Foul language became habitual, and, during the polemics subsequent on Luther’s death, whether against the Catholics or among the members of the Protestant fold, was a favourite weapon of attack with those who admired Luther’s drastic ways.

As early as 1522 Thomas Blaurer, a youthful student at Wittenberg, wrote: “No abuse, however low and shameful,” must be spared until Popery is loathed by all.[1143] Thus the object in view was to besmirch the Papacy by pelting it with mire. When, in 1558, Tilman Hesshusen, an old Wittenberg student, became Professor of Theology and General Superintendent at Heidelberg and thundered with much invective against his opponents and in favour of the Confession of Augsburg, even his friends asked the question, “whether the thousand devils he was wont to purvey from the pulpit helped to promote the pure cause of the Lutheran Evangel?” At Bremen, preaching against Hardenberg, a follower of Melanchthon’s, he declared, that he had turned the Cathedral into a den of murderers.[1144] In 1593 Nigrinus incited the people to abuse the Papists with the words: “Up against them boldly and fan the flames so that things may be made right warm for them!” George Steinhausen remarks in this connection in his History of German Civilisation: “Luther became quite a pattern of violent abuse and set the tone for the anti-popish ranters, who, most of them, belonged to the lowest class. On their side the Catholics, for instance, Hans Salat of Lucern or the convert Johann Engerd, were also not behindhand in this respect.... The preachers, however, were always intent on egging them on to yet worse attacks.”[1145]

The manner in which Luther in his polemics treated his opponents, wrote DÖllinger in his “Sketch of Luther,” “is really quite unparalleled. He never displays any of that kindly charity, which, while hating the error, seeks to win over those who err; on the contrary, with him all is abuse and anger, defiance and contemptuous scorn voiced in a tempest of invective, often of a most personal and vulgar kind.... It is quite wrong to say that Luther in this respect merely followed in the wake of his contemporaries; this is clear enough to everyone familiar with the literature of that age and the one which preceded it; the virulence of Luther’s writings astonished everybody; those who did not owe him allegiance were not slow to express their amazement, to blame him and to emphasise the harmful effects of these outbursts of abuse, whilst his disciples and admirers were wont to appeal to Luther’s ‘heroic spirit’ which lifted him above the common herd and, as it were, dispensed him from the observance of the moral law and allowed him to say things that would have been immoral and criminal in others.”[1146]

Especially his obscene abuse of the Pope did those of Luther’s contemporaries who remained faithful to the Church brand as wicked, immoral and altogether unchristian. “What ears can listen to these words without being offended?” wrote Emser, “or who is the pious Christian who is not cut to the quick by this cruel insult and blasphemy offered to the vicar of Christ? Is this sort of thing Christian or Evangelical?”[1147]

Protestant Opinions Old and New.

Erasmus’s complaints concerning Luther’s abusiveness were re-echoed, though with bated breath, by those of the new faith whose passion had not entirely carried them away. The great scholar, speaking of Luther’s slanders on him and his faith, had even said that they were such as to compel a reasonable reader to come to the conclusion that he was either completely blinded by hate, or suffering from some mental malady, or else possessed by the devil.[1148] Many of Luther’s own party agreed with Erasmus, at any rate when he wrote: “This unbridled abuse showered upon all, poisons the reader’s mind, particularly in the case of the uneducated, and can promote only anger and dissension.”[1149]

Fresh light is thrown on the psychological side of Luther’s controversial methods when we bring together those utterances in which his sense of his own greatness finds expression. We must observe a little more closely Luther’s inner thoughts and feelings from the standpoint of his own ideal.

4. Luther on his own Greatness and Superiority to Criticism The art of “Rhetoric”

Characteristic utterances of Luther’s regarding his own gifts and excellencies, the wisdom and courage displayed in his undertaking and the important place he would occupy in history as the discoverer and proclaimer of the Evangelical truth, are to be met with in such plenty, both in his works and in the authentic notes of his conversations, that we have merely to select some of the most striking and bring them together. They form a link connecting his whole public career; he never ceased to regard all his labours from the point of view of his Divine mission, and what he says merely varies in tone and colour with the progress which took place in his work as time went on.

It is true that he knew perfectly well that it was impossible to figure a Divine mission without the pediment and shield of humility. How indeed could those words of profound humility, so frequent with St. Paul, have rung in Luther’s ears without finding some echo? Hence we find Luther, too, from time to time making such his own; and this he did, not out of mere hypocrisy, but from a real wish to identify his feelings with those of the Apostle; in almost every instance, however, his egotism destroys any good impulse and drives him in the opposite direction.

In order to know Luther as he really was we should observe him amongst his pupils at Wittenberg, for instance, as he left the Schlosskirche after one of his powerful sermons to the people, and familiarly addressed those who pressed about him on the steps of the church. There were the burghers and students whose faults he had just been scourging; the theologians of his circle crowding with pride around their master; the lawyers, privy councillors and Court officials in the background, probably grumbling under their breath at Luther’s peculiarities and harsh words. His friends wish him many years of health and strength that he may continue his great work in the pulpit and press; he, on the other hand, thinks only of death; he insists on speaking of his Last Will and Testament, of the chances of his cause, of his enemies and of the threatened Council which he so dreaded.[1157]

“Let me be,” Luther cries, turning to the lawyers, “even in my Last Will, the man I really am, one well known both in heaven and on earth, and not unknown in hell, standing in sufficient esteem and authority to be trusted and believed in more than any notary; for God, the Father of Mercies, has entrusted to me, poor, unworthy, wretched sinner that I am, the Gospel of His Dear Son and has made and hitherto kept me faithful and true to it, so that many in the world have accepted it through me, and consider me a teacher of the truth in spite of the Pope’s ban and the wrath of Emperors, Kings, Princes, priests and all the devils.... Dr. Martin Luther, God’s own notary and the witness of His Gospel.”[1158]

I am “Our Lord Jesus Christ’s unworthy evangelist.”[1159]

I am “the Prophet of the Germans, for such is the haughty title I must henceforth assume.”[1160]

“I am Ecclesiastes by the Grace of God”; “Evangelist by the Grace of God.”[1161]

“I must not deny the gifts of Jesus Christ, viz. that, however small be my acquaintance with Holy Scripture, I understand it a great deal better than the Pope and all his people.”[1162]

“I believe that we are the last trump that sounds before Christ’s coming.”[1163]

Many arise against me, but with “a breath of my mouth” I blow them over.—All their prints are mere “autumn leaves.”[1164]

“One only of my opponents, viz. Latomus, is worth his salt, he is the scribe who writes best against me. Latomus alone has really written against Luther, make a note of that! All the others, like Erasmus, were but frogs. Not one of them really meant it seriously. Yes indeed all, Erasmus included, were just croaking frogs.”[1165]

I have been tried in the school of temptations; “these are the exalted temptations which no Pope has ever understood,” I mean, “being tempted to blasphemy and to question God’s Judgments when we know nothing either of sin or of the remedy.”[1166]

Because I have destroyed the devil’s kingdom “many say I was the man foretold by the Prophet of Lichtenberg; for in their opinion I must be he. This was a prophecy of the devil, who well saw that the kingdom he had founded on lies must fall. Hence he beheld a monk, though he could not tell to which Order he belonged.”[1167]

“Be assured of this, that no one will give you a Doctor of Holy Scripture save only the Holy Ghost who is in heaven.... He indeed testified aforetimes against the prophet by the mouth of the she-ass on which the prophet rode. Would to God we were worthy to have such doctors sent us!”[1168]

“I have become a great Doctor, this I am justified in saying; I would not have thought this possible in the days of my temptations” when Staupitz comforted me with the assurance, “that God would make use of me as His assistant in mighty things.”[1169]

“St. John Hus” was not alone in prophesying of me that ... “they will perforce have to listen to the singing of a swan,” but likewise the prophet at Rome foretold “the coming hermit who would lay waste the Papacy.”[1170]

When I was a young monk and lay sick at Erfurt they said to me: “Be consoled, good bachelor ... our God will still make a great man of you. This has been fulfilled.”[1171]

“On one occasion when I was consoling a man on the loss of his son he, too, said to me: ‘You will see, Martin, you will become a great man!’ I often call this to mind, for such words have something of the omen or oracle about them.”[1172]

“Small and insignificant as they [Luther’s and the preachers’ reforms] are, they have done more good in the Churches than all the Popes and lawyers with all their decrees.”[1173]

“No one has expounded St. Paul better” than you, Philip (Melanchthon). “The commentaries of St. Jerome and Origen are the merest trash in comparison with your annotations” (on Romans and Corinthians). “Be humble if you like, but at least let me be proud of you.” “Be content that you come so near to St. Paul himself.”[1174]

“In Popery such darkness prevailed that they taught neither the Ten Commandments, nor the Creed, nor the Our Father; such knowledge was considered quite superfluous.”[1175]

“The blindness was excessive, and unless those days had been shortened we should all have grown into beasts! I fear, however, that after us it will be still worse, owing to the dreadful contempt for the Word.”[1176]

“Before my day nothing was known,” not even “what parents or children were, or what wife or maid.”[1177]

“Such was then the state of things: No one taught, or had heard or knew what secular authority was, whence it came, or what its office and task was, or how it must serve God.”—“But I wrote so usefully and splendidly concerning the secular authorities as no teacher has ever done since Apostolic times, save perhaps St. Augustine; of this I may boast with a good conscience, relying on the testimony of the whole world.”[1178]

Similarly, “we could prove before the whole world that we have preached much more grandly and powerfully of good works than those very people who abuse us.”[1179]

“Not one of the Fathers ever wrote anything remarkable or particularly good concerning matrimony.... In marriage they saw only evil luxury.... They fell into the ocean of sensuality and evil lusts.” “But [by my preaching] God with His Word and by His peculiar Grace has restored, before the Last Day, matrimony, secular authority and the preaching office to their rightful position, as He instituted and ordained them, in order that we might behold His own institutions in what hitherto had been but shams.”[1180]

The Papists “know nothing about Holy Scripture, or what God is ... or what Baptism or the Sacrament.”[1181] But thanks to me “we now have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it.”[1182]

“Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any bishop as He has on me; for it is our duty to extol God’s gifts.”[1183]

“God has appointed me for the whole of the German land,” Luther continues, “and I boldly vouch and declare that when you obey me in this [the founding of Evangelical schools] you are without a doubt obeying not me but Christ, and that, whoever obeys me not, despises, not me, but Christ [Luke xx. 16]. For I know well and am certain of what and whereto I speak and teach.”[1186]

“And now, dear Germans, I have told you enough; you have heard your prophet; God grant we may obey His words.”[1187]

As Germany does not obey “misery” must needs overtake it; “when I pray for my beloved Germany I feel that my prayer recoils on me and will not ascend upwards as it does when I pray for other things.... God grant that I be wrong and a false prophet in this matter.”[1188]

“Our Lord God had to summon Moses six times; me, too, He has led in the same way.... Others who lived before me attacked the wicked and scandalous life of the Pope; but I assailed his very doctrine and stormed in upon the monkery and the Mass, on which two pillars the whole Papacy rests. I could never have foreseen that these two pillars would fall, for it was almost like declaring war on God and all creation.”[1189]

“I picked the first fruits of the knowledge and faith of Christ, viz. that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works.”[1190]

“I am he to whom God first revealed it.”[1191]

“Show me a single passage on justification by faith in the Decrees, Decretals, Clementines, ‘Liber Sextus’ or ‘Extravagantes’” in any of the Summas, books of Sentences, monkish sermons, synodal definitions, collegial or monastic Rules, in any Postils, in any work of Jerome and Gregory, in any decisions of the Councils, in any disputations of the theologians, in any lectures of any University, in any Mass or Vigil of any Church, in any “CÆremoniale Episcoporum,” in the institutes of any monastery, in any manual of any confraternity or guild, in any pilgrims’ book anywhere, in the pious exercises of any Saint, in any Indulgence, Bull, anywhere in the Papal Chancery or the Roman Curia or in the Curia of any bishop. And yet it was there that the doctrine of faith should have been expressed in all its fulness.[1192]

“My Evangel,” that was what was wanting. “I have, praise be to God, achieved more reformation by my Evangel than they probably would have done even by five Councils.... Here comes our Evangel ... and works wonders, which they themselves accept and make use of, but which they could not have secured by any Councils.”[1193]

“I believe I have summoned such a Council and effected such a reformation as will make the ears of the Papists tingle and their heart burst with malice.... In brief: It is Luther’s own Reformation.”[1194]

“I, who am nothing, may say with truth that during the [twenty] years that I have served my dear Lord Christ in the preaching office, I have had more than twenty factions opposing me”; but now they are, some of them, extirpated, others, “like worms with their heads trodden off.”[1195]

“I have now become a wonderful monk, who, by God’s grace, has deposed the Roman devil, viz. the Pope; yet not I, but God through me, His poor, weak instrument; no emperor or potentate could have done that.”[1196]

In point of fact “the devil is not angry with me without good reason, for I have rent his kingdom asunder. What not one of the kings and princes was able to do, that God has effected, through me, a poor beggar and lonely monk.”[1197]

How poor are the ancient Fathers in comparison! “Chrysostom was a mere gossip. Jerome, the good Father, and lauder of nuns, understood precious little of Christianity. Ambrose has indeed some good sayings. If Peter Lombard had only happened upon the Bible he would have excelled all the Fathers.”[1198]

“See what darkness prevailed among the Fathers of the Church concerning faith! Once the article concerning justification was obscured it became impossible to stem the course of error. St. Jerome writes on Matthew, on Galatians and on Titus, but how paltry it all is! Ambrose wrote six books on Genesis, but what poor stuff they are! Augustine never writes powerfully on faith except when assailing the Pelagians.... They left not a single commentary on Romans and Galatians that is worth anything. Oh, how great, on the other hand, is our age in purity of doctrine, and yet, alas, we despise it! The holy Fathers taught better than they wrote; we, God be praised, write better than we live.” Had Gregory the Great at least refrained from spoiling what remained! “He broke in with his pestilent traditions, bound men down to observances concerning flesh-meat, cowls and Masses, and imposed on them his filthy, merdiferous law. And in the event this dreadful state of things grew from day to day worse.”[1199]

“On the other hand, it is plain that I may venture to boast in God, without arrogance or untruth, that, when it comes to the writing of books I am not far behind many of the Fathers.”[1200]

“In short the fault lay in this, that [before I came], even in the Universities the Bible was not read; when it was read at all it had to be interpreted in accordance with Aristotle. What blindness that was!”[1201]

But then my translation of Holy Scripture appeared. Whereas the Schoolmen never were acquainted with Scripture, indeed “never were at home even in the Catechism,”[1202] all admit my Bible scholarship. On one occasion “Carlstadt said to the Doctors at Wittenberg: My dear sirs, Dr. Martin is far too learned for us; he read the Bible ten years ago and now if we read it for ten years, he will then have read it for twenty; in any case, therefore, we are lost.” “Don’t start disputing with him.”[1203]

“Nevertheless I never should have attained to the great abundance of Divine gifts, which I am forced to confess and admit, unless Satan had tried me with temptations; without these temptations pride would have cast me into the abyss of hell.”[1204]

“The Papists are blind to the clear light of truth because it was revealed by a man. As though Elias, who wrought such great things against the servants of Baal, was not likewise a man and a beggar. As though John the Baptist, who so brilliantly put to flight the Pharisees, was not a man too. One’s being a man does not matter provided one be a man of God. For heroes are not merely men.”[1205]

Certain statements of contemporaries, both Catholics and Protestants, sound like interjections in the midst of Luther’s discourse. They point out how unheard-of was his demand that faith should be placed in him alone to the exclusion of all Christian authorities past and present. “What unexampled pride is this,” exclaims the learned Ulrich Zasius, who in earlier days had favoured Luther’s more moderate plans of reform, “when a man demands that his interpretation of the Bible should be given precedence over that of the Fathers of the Church herself, and of the whole of Christendom!”[1206] “He has stuck himself in the Pope’s place,” cries Thomas MÜnzer, and does the grand as though, forsooth, he had not come into the world in the ordinary way, but “had sprung from the brain.” “Make yourself cosy in the Papal chair,” is Valentine Ickelsamer’s comment, since you are determined to “listen only to your own song.”[1207]

Luther concludes his address to his followers by replying first of all to the frequent objection we have just heard Zasius bring forward:

“I, Dr. Martin Luther by name, have taken it upon me to prove for further instruction each and every article in a well-grounded work.... But first I must answer certain imputations made by some against me.” “They twit me with coming forward all alone and seeking to teach everybody. To this I reply that I have never put myself forward and would have been glad to creep into a corner; they it is who dragged me out by force and cunning.”[1208]

“But who knows whether God has not raised me up and called me to this, and whether they have not cause to fear that they are condemning God in me? Do we not read in the Old Testament that God, as a rule, raised up only one prophet at a time? Moses was alone when he led the people out of Egypt; Helias was alone in the time of King Achab; later on HelisÆus was also alone; Isaias was alone in Jerusalem, Oseas in Israel, Hieremias in Judea, Ezechiel in Babylon, and so on.”[1209]

“The dear Saints have always had to preach against and reprove the great ones, the kings, princes, priests and scholars.”[1210]

“I do not say that I am a prophet, but I do say that the Papists have the more reason to fear I am one, the more they despise me and esteem themselves. God is wonderful in His works and judgments.... If I am not a prophet yet I am certain within myself that the Word of God is with me and not with them; for I have Scripture on my side, but they, only their own doctrine.”[1211]

“There were plenty donkeys in the world in Balaam’s time, yet God did not speak through all of them, but only through Balaam’s ass.”[1212] “They also say that I bring forward new things, and that it is not to be supposed that all others were in the wrong for so long. To this reproof the ancient prophets also had to listen.... Christ’s teaching was different from what the Jews had heard for a thousand years. On the strength of this objection the heathen, too, might well have despised the Apostles, seeing that their ancestors had believed otherwise for more than three thousand years.”[1213]

“I say that all Christian truth had perished amongst those who ought to have been its upholders, viz. the bishops and learned men. Yet I do not doubt that the truth has survived in some hearts, even though only in those of babes in the cradle.”[1214]

“I do not reject them [all the Doctors of the Church] ... but I refuse to believe them except in so far as they prove their contentions from that Scripture which has never erred.... Necessity forces us to test every Doctor’s writings by the Bible and to judge and decide upon them. The standing as well as the number of my foes is to me a proof that I am in the right.”[1215]

“Were I opposed only by a few insignificant men I should know that what I wrote and taught was not from God.... Truth has ever caused disturbance, and false teachers have ever cried ‘Peace, peace.’”[1216]

“They say they don’t want to be reformed by such a beggar....” “Daniel has arisen in his place and is determined to perform what the angel Gabriel has pointed out to him; for the same prophet told us how he would rise up at the end of the world. That he is now doing.” “God has made Luther a Samson over them; He is God and His ways are wonderful.... Let good people say the best they can of me and let the Papists talk and lie to their hearts’ content.”[1217]

Neither councils nor reformations will help them. “They wish to reform and govern the Church according to their own lights and by human wisdom; but that is something that lies far above the counsel of men. When our Lord God wished to reform His Church He did so ‘divinitus,’ not by human methods; thus it was at the time of Josue, of the Judges, Samuel, the Apostles and also in my own time.”[1218]

Even should our work be frustrated, yet the “power of the Almighty could make a new Luther out of nothing.” In this wise “God raised up Noe when He was obliged to destroy the world by the deluge. And, in Abraham’s time, when the whole world was plunged in darkness and under the empire of Satan, Abraham and his seed came as a great light; and He drowned King Pharao and slew seven great nations in Canaan. And again when Caiphas crucified the Son of God ... He rose again from the dead and Caiphas was brought to nought.”[1219]

“Christ was not so greatly considered, nor had He ever such a number of hearers as the Apostles had and we now have; Christ Himself said to His disciples: ‘You will do greater works than I,’ and, truly enough, at the time of the Apostles, and now amongst us, the Gospel and the Divine Word is preached much more powerfully and is more widely spread than at the time of Christ.”[1220]

It is true that “my conviction is, that, for a thousand years, the world has never loathed anyone so much as me. I return its hatred.”[1221]

It “is probable that my name stinks in the nostrils of many who wish to belong to us, but you [Bugenhagen] will put things right without my troubling.” Formerly the decisions of the Councils ranked above God’s Word, “but now, thank God, this would not be believed among us even by ducks or geese, mice or lice.” “God has no liking for the ‘expectants’ [those who looked for a Council], for He will have His Word honoured above all angels, let alone men or Councils, and will have no waiting or expectancy. Our best plan will be to send them to the devil in the abyss of hell, to do their waiting there.”[1222]

“So the Council is going to be held at Trent. Tridentum, however, signifies in German, ‘divided, torn asunder, dissolved,’ for God will scatter it and its Legates. I believe they do not know what they are doing or what they mean to do. God has cursed them with blindness.”[1223] “Nay, under Satan’s rule they have all gone mad; they condemn us and then want our approval.”[1224] “The Council is worthy of its monsters. May misfortune fall upon them; the wrath of God is verily at their heels.”[1225] “They look upon us as donkeys, and yet do not realise their own dense stupidity and malice.”[1226]

“Should we fall, then Christ will fall with us, the ruler of the world. Granted, however, that He is to fall, I would rather fall with Christ than stand with the Emperor.” “Put your trust in your Emperor and we will put our trust in ours [in Christ], and wait and see who holds the field. Let them do their best, they have not yet got their way.” They shall perish. “I fear they wish to hear those words of Julius CÆsar: ‘They themselves have willed it!’”[1227]

Should I be carried to the grave, for instance, as a victim of the religious war, people will say at the sight of the Popish rout that will ensue: “Dr. Martin was escorted to his grave by a great procession. For he was a great Doctor, above all bishops, monks and parsons, therefore it was fitting that they should all follow him into the grave, and furnish a subject for talk and song. And to end up, we shall all make a little pilgrimage together; they, the Papists, to the bottomless pit to their god of lying and murder, whom they have served with lies and murders; I to my Lord, Jesus Christ, Whom I have served in truth and peace; ... they to hell in the name of all the devils, I to heaven in God’s name.”[1228]

No mortal ever spoke of himself as Luther did. He reveals himself as a man immeasurably different from that insipid portrait which depicts him as one who made no claim on people’s submission to his higher light and higher authority, but who humbly advanced what he fancied he had discovered, an ordinary human being, even though a great one, who was only at pains to convince others by the usual means in all wisdom and charity. Everyday psychology does not avail to explain the language Luther used, and we are faced by the graver question of the actual condition of such a mind, raised so far above the normal level. “We have,” says Adolf Harnack, “to choose between two alternatives: Either he suffered from the mania of greatness, or his self-reliance really corresponded with his task and achievements.”[1229]

Luther, at the very commencement of the tract which he published soon after leaving the Wartburg, and in which he describes himself as “Ecclesiastes by the grace of God,” says: “Should you, dear Sirs, look upon me as a fool for my assumption of so haughty a title,” I should not be in the least surprised; he adds, however: “I am convinced of this, that Christ Himself, Who is the Master of my teaching, calls me thus and regards me as such”; his “Word, office and work” had come to him “from God,” and his “judgment was God’s own” no less than his doctrine.[1230] The bishops of the Catholic world may well have raised their eyebrows at the tone of this work, couched in the form of a Bull and addressed to all the “Popish bishops”; the following year it was even reprinted in Latin at Wittenberg in order to make it known throughout the world. Bossuet’s words on the opening lines of the tract well render the feeling of apprehension they must have created: “Hence Luther’s is the same call as St. Paul’s, no less direct and no less extraordinary!... And on the strength of this Divine mission Luther proceeds to reform the Church!”[1231]—We should, however, note that Luther, in his extraordinary demands, goes far beyond any mere claim to a Divine call. A heavenly vocation might perfectly well have been present without any such haughty treading under foot of the past, without any such conceit as to his own and his fellow-workers’ achievements, and without all this boasting of prophecies, of victories over fanatics and devils, and of world-wide fame, rather, a true vocation would dread anything of the kind. Hence, in the whole series of statements we have quoted, commencing with the title of Ecclesiastes by the Grace of God, which he adopted soon after his Wartburg “baptism,” we find not only the consciousness of a mission conferred on him at the Wartburg, but also an altogether unique idea of his own greatness which no one who wishes to study Luther’s character must lose sight of. We shall have, later on, to ask ourselves whether those were in the right who looked upon this manifestation as a sign of disease.

Luther’s language would be even more puzzling were it not certain that much that he said was not really meant seriously. With him rhetoric plays a greater rÔle than is commonly admitted, and even some of his utterances regarding his own greatness are clearly flowers of rhetoric written half in jest.

Luther himself ingenuously called his art of abusing all opponents with the utmost vigour, “rhetorica mea.” This he did in those difficult days when it was a question of finding some means of escape in connection with the threatening Diet of Augsburg: “By my rhetoric I will show the Papists that they, who pretend to be the champions of the faith and the Gospel, have there [at Augsburg] made demands of us which are contrary to the Gospel; verily I shall fall upon them tooth and nail.... Come, Luther most certainly will, and with great pomp set free the eagle [the Evangel] now held caught in the snare (‘aquilam liberaturus magnifice’).”[1232] So much did he trust his rhetorical talent that on another occasion he told the lawyers: “If I have painted you white, then I can equally well paint you black again and make you look like regular devils.”[1233] Amidst the embarrassments subsequent on Landgrave Philip’s bigamy Luther’s one ray of hope was in his consciousness, that he could easily manage to “extricate” himself with the help of his pen; at the same time, when confiding this to the Landgrave, he also told him quite openly, that, should he, the Landgrave, “start a literary feud” with him, Luther would soon “leave him sticking in the mud.”[1234]

A particular quality of Luther’s “rhetoric” was its exaggeration. By his exaggeration his controversy becomes a strangely glaring picture of his mind; nor was it merely in controversy that his boundless exaggeration shows itself. Sometimes, apparently, without his being aware of it, but likewise even in the course of his literary labours and his preaching, things had a tendency to assume gigantic proportions and fantastic shapes in his eyes. Among his friends the aberrations into which his fondness for vigorous and far-fetched language led him were well known. It was certain of his own followers who dubbed him “Doctor Hyperbolicus” and declared that “he made a camel of a flea, and said a thousand when he meant less than five.” This is related by the Lutheran zealot, Cyriacus Spangenberg, who dutifully seeks to refute the “many, who, though disciples of his,” were in the habit of making such complaints.[1239]

His “rhetoric,” in spite of a literary style in many respects excellent, occasionally becomes grotesque and insipid owing to the utter want of taste he shows in his choice of expressions. This was particularly the case in his old age, when he no longer had at his command the figures of speech in which to clothe decently those all too vigorous words to which, as the years went by, he became more and more addicted. In the last year of his life, for instance, writing to his Elector and the Hessian Landgrave concerning the “Defensive league” of those who stood up for “the old religion,” he says: God Himself has intervened to oppose this league, not being unaware of its aims; “God and all His angels must indeed have had a terrible cold in the head not to have been able to smell, even until this 21st day of October, the savoury dish that goes by the name of Defensive league; but then He took some sneeze-wort and cleared His brain and gave them to understand pretty plainly that His catarrh was gone and that He now knew very well what Defensive league was.”[1240] Luther does not seem to feel how much out of place such buffoonery was in a theologian, let alone in the founder of a new religion. Even in some of his earlier writings and in those which he prized the most, e.g. in the Commentary on Galatians, a similar want of taste is noticeable. It is also unnecessary to repeat that even his “best” writings, among them the work on Galatians, are frequently rendered highly unpalatable by an excess of useless repetitions. Everybody can see that the monotony of Luther’s works is chiefly due to the haste and carelessness with which they were written and then rushed through the press.

In considering Luther’s “rhetoric,” however, our attention perforce wanders from the form to the matter, for Luther based his claim to originality on his art of bringing forward striking and effective thoughts and thus charming and captivating the reader. In his thoughts the same glaring, grotesque and contradictory element is apparent as in his literary style and outward conduct. Much is mere impressionism, useful indeed for his present purposes, but contradicted or modified by statements elsewhere. Whatever comes to his pen must needs be put on paper and worked for all it is worth. Thus in many instances his thoughts stray into the region of paradox. Thereby he seemed indeed to be rendering easier the task of opponents who wished to refute him, but as a matter of fact he only increased the difficulty of dealing with him owing to his elusiveness.

Even down to the present day the incautious reader or historian is all too frequently exposed to the temptation of taking Luther at his word in passages where in point of fact his thoughts are the plaything of his “rhetoric.” Anybody seeking to portray Luther’s train of thought is liable to be confronted with passages, whether from the same writing or from another composed under different influences, where statements to an entirely different effect occur. Hence, when attempting to describe his views, it is essential to lay stress only on statements that are clear, devoid of any hyperbolical vesture and frequently reiterated.

The strange controversial methods of his rhetoric give, however, a true picture of his soul.

All this inconstancy and self-contradiction, this restless upheaval of assertions, now rendered doubtful by their palpable exaggeration, now uncertain owing to the admixture of humour they contain, now questionable because already rejected elsewhere by their author, all this mirrors the unrest of his soul, the zigzag course of his thought, in short a mind unenlightened by the truth, which thrives only amidst the excitement of conflict and contradiction. Moderation in resolve and deed is as little to his taste as any consistent submission of his word to the yoke of reflection and truthfulness. He abandons his actions as well as his most powerful organ, his voice, to the impulse and the aims of the moment. He finds no difficulty, for instance, even in his early days, in soundly rating his fellow-monks even in the most insulting and haughty manner, and in assuring them in the same breath of his “peaceable heart” and his “perfect calm,” or in shifting the responsibility for his earlier outbursts of anger on God, Who so willed it and Whose action cannot be withstood. All this we find in his letter in 1514 to the Erfurt Augustinians, where his singular disposition already reveals itself.[1244] No less easy was it to him at the commencement of his struggle to protest most extravagant humility towards both Pope and Emperor, to liken himself to a “flea,” and yet to promise resistance to the uttermost. He was guilty of exaggeration in his championship of the downtrodden peasants before the war, and, when it was over, was again extravagant in his demand for their punishment. With an all too lavish hand he abandons Holy Scripture to each one’s private interpretation, even to the “miller’s maid,” and yet, as soon as anyone, without the support of “miracles,” attempted to bring forward some new doctrine differing from his own, he withdrew it with the utmost imperiousness as a treasure reserved.

As in style, so in deed, he was a chameleon. This he was in his inmost feelings, and not less in his theology.[1245]

In one matter only did he remain always the same, on one point only is his language always consistent and clear, viz. in his hatred and defiance of the Church of Rome. Some have praised his straightforwardness, and it must be admitted, that, in this particular, he certainly always shows his true character with entire unrestraint. This hate permeates all his thoughts, his prayer, all his exalted reflections, his good wishes for others, his sighs at the approach of death. Even in his serious illness in 1527 he was, at least according to the account of his friend Jonas, principally concerned that God should not magnify his enemies, the Papists, but exalt His name “against the enemies of His most holy Word”; he recalls to mind that John the Evangelist, too, “had written a good, strong book against the Pope” (the Apocalypse); as John did not die a martyr, he also would be content without martyrdom. Above all, he was not in the least contrite for what he had printed against the doctrines of the Pope, “even though some thought he had been too outspoken and bitter.”[1246] In his second dangerous illness, in 1537, Luther declared even more emphatically, that he had “done right” in “storming the Papacy,” and that if he could live longer he would undertake still “worse things against that beast.”[1247]

Luther’s over-estimation of himself was partly due to the seductive effect of the exaggerated praise and admiration of his friends, amongst whom Jonas must also be reckoned. They, like Jonas, could see in him nothing but the “inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”[1248] Luther’s responsibility must appear less to those who lay due stress on the surroundings amidst which he lived. He was good-natured enough to give credence to such eulogies. Just as, moved by sympathy, he was prone to lavish alms on the undeserving, so he was too apt to be influenced by the exaggerations of his admirers and the applause of the masses, though, occasionally, he did not fail to protest.

Not his admirers only, but even his literary opponents contributed, at least indirectly, to inflate his rhetoric and his assurance; his sense of his own superiority grew in the measure that he saw his foes lagging far behind him both in language and in vigour.

Amongst the Catholic theologians of Germany there were too few able to compete with him in point of literary dexterity. Luther stood on a pinnacle and carried away the multitude by the war-cry he hurled over the heads of the Catholic polemists and apologists who bore witness to the ancient truths, some well and creditably, others more humbly and awkwardly. The apparent disadvantage under which the Catholic writers laboured, was, that they were not so relentless in treading under foot considerations of charity and decency; unlike him, they could not address fiery appeals to the passions in order to enlist them as their allies, though traces far too many of the violence of the conflict are found even in their polemics. Amongst them were men of high culture and refinement, who stood far above the turmoils of the day and knew how to estimate them at their true worth. They felt themselves supported by the Catholics throughout the world, whose most sacred possessions were being so unjustly attacked.