Speaking of the end of the world he often says, that the fall of the Papacy involves it. “Assuredly,” he says, the end will shortly follow on account of the manifest wickedness of the Pope and the Papists. According to him, the Bible itself teaches that, “after the downfall of the Pope and the deliverance of the poor, no one on earth would ever again be a tyrant and inspire fear.” “This would not be possible,” so Luther thinks, “were the world to go on after the fall of the Pope, for the world cannot exist without tyrants. And thus the Prophet agrees with the Apostle, viz. that Christ, when He comes, will upset the Holy Roman Chair. God grant it may happen speedily. Amen!”[900]

In his fantastic interpretation of the Monk-Calf he declares in a similar way, that the near end of the world is certain in view of the abominations of the sinking Papacy and its monkish system, which last is symbolised in the wonderful calf: “My wish and hope are that it may mean the Last Day, since many signs have so far coincided, and the whole world is as it were in an uproar,”[901] the source of the whole to-do being his triumphant contest with Antichrist. In the same way his conviction of the magnitude and success of his mission against the foe of Christ gives the key to his curious reading of Daniel and the Epistle to the Thessalonians with regard to the time of Antichrist’s advent and the end of the world, which we find set forth quite seriously in his reply to Catharinus.[902] In short, “Antichrist will be revealed whatever the world may do; after this Christ must come with His Judgment Day.”[903]

The last temptation which shall assail the faithful, he says, will be “an undisciplined life”; then we shall “grow sick of the Word and disgusted with it.” “Not even the Word of God will they endure; ... the Gospel which they [his own people] once confessed, they now look upon as merely the word of man.” “Do you fancy you are out of the world, or that Satan, the Prince of this world, has died or been crucified in you?”[905] It is bitter experience that causes him to say: “The day will dawn when Christ shall come to free us from sin and death.”[906] “May the world go to rack and ruin and be utterly blotted out,” “the world which has shown me such gratitude during my own lifetime!”[907] “May the Lord call me away, for I have done, and seen, and suffered enough evil.”[908] “Would that the Lord would put an end to the great misery [that among us each one does as he pleases]! Oh that the day of our deliverance would come!”[909] “The people have waxed cold towards the Evangel.... May Christ mend all things and hasten the Day of His Coming.”[910]

“It is a wonder to me what the world does to-day,” he said, alluding to the turmoil in the newly acquired bishopric of Naumburg; he then goes on to complain in the words already given (p. 233), that a new world is growing up around him; no one will admit of having done wrong, of having lied or sinned; those only who meet with injustice are reputed unrighteous, liars and sinners. Verily it would soon rain filth. “The day of our redemption draweth nigh. Amen.” “The world will rage, but good-bye to it”![911]—“The world is indeed a contemptible thing,” he groans, after describing the morals of Wittenberg.[912]

The conduct of the great ones at the Saxon Court led him to surmise that “soon,” after but a few days, hell would be their portion.[913] For those who infringe the rights of his Church he has a similar sentence ready: “Hell will be your share. Come, Lord Jesus, come, listen to the groaning of Thy people, and hasten Thy coming!”—“Farewell and teach your people to pray for the day of the Lord; for of better times there is no longer any hope.”[914]

“During our lifetime,” he laments in 1545, “and under our very eyes, we see sects and dissensions arising, each one wishing to follow his own fancy. In short, contempt for the Word on our own side and blasphemy on the other seem to me to announce the times of which John the Baptist spoke to the people, saying: ‘The axe is laid to the root of the tree,’ etc. Accordingly, since the end at least of this happy age is imminent, there seems no call to bother much about setting up, or coming to an understanding regarding, those troublesome ceremonies.”[915]

“They all rage against God and His Messias.” “This is the work of those centaurs, the foes of the Church, kept in store for the latter days. They are more insatiable than hell itself. But Christ, Who will shortly come in His glory, will quiet them, not indeed with gold, but with brimstone and flames of hell, and with the wrath of God.”[918] It was his displeasure against some of the authorities which wrung from him the words: “But the end is close at hand,” the end which will also spell the end of “all this seizing—or rather thieving greed for Church property—of the Princes, nobles and magistrates, hateful and execrable that it is.”[919] Taking this in conjunction with the attitude of the Catholic rulers he could say with greater confidence than ever: “Nothing good is to be hoped for any more but this alone, that the day of the glory of our great God and our Redeemer may speedily break upon us.” “From so Satanic a world” he would fain be “quickly snatched,” longing as he does for the Day and for the “end of Satan’s raging.”[920]

To Melanchthon, who, with much concern, had drawn his attention to the lawlessness of the students, Luther poured out his soul, as we read in Lauterbach’s Diary: As the students were growing daily wilder he hoped that, “if God wills, the Last Day be not far off, the Day which shall put an end to all things.”[921] “The ingratitude and profanity of the world,” he also says, “makes me apprehend that this light [of the Evangel] will not last long.” “The refinement of malice, thanklessness and disrespect shown towards the Gospel now revealed” is so great “that the Last Day cannot be far off.”[922]

In his Table-Talk, where Luther is naturally more communicative than in his letters, we see even more plainly how deeply the idea of the approaching Day of Judgment had sunk into his mind and under how curious a shape it there abides. “Things will get so bad on this earth,” he says, for instance, “that men will cry out everywhere: O God, come with Thy Last Judgment.” He would not mind “eating the agate Paternoster” (a string of beads he wore round his neck) if only that would make the Day “come on the morrow.”[923] “The end is at the door,” he continues, “the world is on the lees; if anyone wants to begin something let him hurry up and make a start.”[924] “The next day he again spoke much of the end of the world, having had many evil dreams of the Last Judgment during the previous six months”; it was imminent, for Scripture said so; the present hangs like a ripe apple on the tree; the Roman Empire, “the last sweet-william” would also soon tumble to the ground.[925]

In 1530 Luther was disposed to regard the Roman Empire under Charles V with a rather more favourable eye. His impression then was that the Empire, “under our Emperor Carol, is beginning to look up and becoming more powerful than it was for many a year”; yet strange to say he knew how to bring even this fact into connection with the Judgment Day; for this strengthening of the Empire “seems to me,” so he goes on, “like a sort of last effort; for when a light or wisp of straw has burnt down and is about to go out it sends up a flame and seems just about to flare up bravely when suddenly it dies out; this is what Christendom is now doing thanks to the bright Evangel.”[926] Hence all he could see was the last flicker both of the Empire and of the new teaching before final extinction.

The noteworthy utterance about the last flicker of the Lutheran Evangel occurs also in the Table-Talk collected by Mathesius dating from the years 1542 and 1543. “I believe that the Last Day is not far off. The reason is that we now see the last effort of the Evangel; this resembles a light; when a light is about to expire it sends up at the last a sudden flame as though it were going to burn for quite a long while and thereupon goes out. And, though it appears now as though the Evangel were about to be spread abroad, I fear it will suddenly expire and the Last Day come. It is the same with a sick man; when at the point of death he seems quite cheerful and on the high road to recovery, and, then, suddenly, he is gone.”[927]

The Table-Talk from the Mathesius collection recently published by Kroker, among other curious utterances of Luther’s on the end of the world, contains also the following:

In view of the dissensions by which the new Evangel was torn the speaker says, in 1542-43: “If the world goes on for another fifty years things will become worse than ever, for sects will arise which still lie hidden in the hearts of men, so that we shall not know where we stand. Hence, dear Lord, come! Come and overwhelm them with Thy Judgment Day, for no improvement is any longer to be looked for.”[928]

Here too he repeatedly declares that he himself is tired of the world: “I have had enough of the world,” he says, and goes on to introduce the ugly comparison alluded to above.[929] He adds: “The world fancies that if only it were rid of me all would be well.” He is saddened to see that many of his followers make little account of him: “If the Princes and gentry won’t do it, then things will not last long.”[930] Of the want of respect shown to his preachers he says: “Where there is such contempt of the Divine Word and of the preachers, shall not God smite with His fist?” “But if we preachers were to meet and agree amongst ourselves, as has been done in the Papacy, there would be less need for this. The worst of it is that they are not at one even amongst themselves.” He finds a makeshift consolation for the divergency in teaching in the thought that “so it always was even from the beginning of the world, preachers always having disagreed amongst themselves.” “There is a bad time coming, look you to it”; things may go on for another fifty years now that the young have been brought up in his doctrine, but, after that, “let them look out. Hence, let no one fear the plague, but rather be glad to die.”[931] Not only did he look forward to his own death, but, as we know, to that of “all his children,” seeing that strange things would happen in the world.[932]

We have heard him say, that it was a mercy for the young, that, being thoughtless and without experience, they did not see the harm caused by the scandals, “else they could not endure to live.”[933] And, that the world could “not possibly last long.” Its hours are numbered, for, thanks to me, “everything has now been put straight. The Gospel has been revealed.”[934]

“Christ said, that, at His coming, faith would be hard to find on the earth (Luke xviii. 8). That is true, for the whole of Asia and Africa is without the Evangel, and even as regards Europe no Gospel is preached in Greece, Italy, Hungary, Spain, France, England or Poland. The one little bright spot, the house of Saxony, will not hinder the coming of the Last Day.”[935]

“Praise be to God Who has taught us to sigh after it and long for it! In Popery everybody dreads it.”[936]

“Amen, so be it, Amen!” so he sighed in 1543 in a letter to Amsdorf alluding to the end of the world. “The world was just like this before the Flood, before the Babylonian captivity, before the destruction of Jerusalem, before the devastation of Rome and before the misfortunes of Greece and Hungary; so it will be and so it is before the ruin of Germany too. They refuse to listen, so they must be made to feel. I should be glad to console ourselves both, by discussing this thought [of the contempt of the Papists for us] with you by word of mouth.” “We will leave them in the lurch” and cease from attempting their conversion. “Farewell in the Lord, Who is our Helper and Who will help us for ever and ever. Amen.”[937]

“Under the Pope,” we read in the Colloquies, “at least the name of Christ was retained, but our thanklessness and presumptuous sense of security will bring things to such a pass that Christ will be no longer even named, and so the words of the Master already quoted will be fulfilled according to which, at His coming, no faith will remain on the earth.”[938]

As to the circumstances which should accompany the end of the world, he still expected the catastrophe to take place most likely about Easter time, “early in the morning, after a thunderstorm of an hour or perhaps a little more.”[939]

Here he no longer gives the world “a bare hundred years more,” nor even something “not more than fifty years”;[940] he almost expects the end to come before the completion of his translation of the Bible into German.[941] The world will certainly not last until 1548, so he declared, “for this would run counter to Ezechiel.”[942] He is not quite sure whether the Golden Age begins in 1540 or not, though such was the contention of the mathematicians; but “we shall see the fulfilment of Scripture,”[943] or at any rate, as he prudently adds elsewhere, our descendants will. But before this can come the “great light” of faith would have to be dimmed still more.[944]

Luther concludes by saying that he is unable to suggest anything further; he had done all he could; God’s vengeance on the world was so great, he declares, that he could no longer give any advice; for “amongst us whom God has treated so mercifully and on whom He has bestowed all His Graces there is nothing left that is not corrupted and perverted.”[945] “On divine authority we began to amend the world, but it refuses to hearken; hence let it crumble to ruins, for such is its fate!”[946]

In the letter, which to say the least is very conciliatory, Melanchthon says that he will know how to keep silence on any ecclesiastical regulations, no matter how distasteful to him they may be: for he knew what it was “to endure even a truly ignominious bondage, Luther having frequently given the rein to his own natural disposition, which was not a little quarrelsome, instead of showing due consideration for his own position and the general welfare.” He goes on to explain the nature of the habit of silence he had so thoroughly mastered; it meant no sacrifice of his own doctrine and views (“non mutato genere doctrinÆ”). For twenty long years, so he complains, he had been obliged to bear the reproaches of the zealots of the party because he had toned down certain doctrines and had ventured to differ from Luther; they had called him ice and frost, accused him of being in league with the Papists, nay, of being ambitious to secure a Cardinal’s hat. Yet he had never had the slightest inclination to go over to the Catholics, for they “were guilty of cruel injustice.” He must, however, say that he, who by nature was a lover of peace and the quiet of the study, had only been drawn into the movement of which Luther was the leader because he, like many wise and learned contemporaries, thought he discerned in it a striving after that truth for which he thirsted and for which he lived. Luther it was true, had, from the very first, introduced a “rougher element into the cause”; he himself, however, had made it his aim to set up only what was true and essentially necessary; he had also done much in the way of reforms, and, to boot, had waged a war against the demagogues (“multa tribunitia plebs”) which, owing to the attacks of enemies at Court, had drawn down on him the displeasure of the sovereign and had even put his life in jeopardy.

Coming finally to speak of the concessions, speculative and practical, which he was prepared to make in addition to preserving silence, he mentions “the authority to be conceded to the bishops and the chief bishop in accordance with the Augsburg Confession.” He adds: “Mayhap I am by nature of a servile turn of mind” (“fortassis sum ingenio servili”), but, after all there is a real call to be humble and open to advances. He also refers to the defeat of the Evangelical Princes, but only to assure Carlowitz that he attributes this, “not to blind fate, but rather admit that we have drawn down the chastisement on ourselves by many and great misdeeds.”[949]

This is the oft-quoted declaration which Protestant writers as a whole regret more on Melanchthon’s than on Luther’s account. It was “an unhappy hour” in which Melanchthon wrote the letter “which gives us so profound an insight into his soul”;[950] he forgot that he was “a public character”; “in this letter not only what he says of Luther and of his relations with him, but even his account of the share he himself took in the Reformation,” “is scarcely to his credit.”[951]

Another Protestant holds, however, a different view. In this letter we have, as a matter of fact, “the expression of feelings which for long years Melanchthon had most carefully kept under restraint locked up in his heart.... From it we may judge how great was the vexation and bitterness Melanchthon had to endure.... In an unguarded moment what had been so long pent up broke out with elemental force.” The historian we are quoting then goes on to plead for a “milder sentence,” especially as “almost every statement which occurs in the letter can be confirmed from Melanchthon’s confidential correspondence of the previous twenty years.”[952]

In Aug., 1536, when Melanchthon paid a visit to his home and also to TÜbingen, he became more closely acquainted with the state of the Protestant Churches, both in the Palatinate and in Swabia. It was at that time that he wrote to his friend Myconius: “Had you travelled with us and seen the woeful devastation of the Churches in many localities you would undoubtedly long, with tears and groans, for the Princes and the learned to take steps for the welfare of the Churches. At Nuremberg the good attendance at public worship and the orderly arrangement of the ceremonies pleased me greatly; elsewhere, however, lack of order and general barbarism is wonderfully estranging the people [from religion; ‘[Greek: ataxia] et barbaries mirum in modum alienat animos’]. Oh, that the authorities would see to the remedying of this evil!”[956]

After he had reluctantly resumed the burden of his Wittenberg office he continued to fret about the dissensions in his own camp. “Look,” he wrote to Veit Dietrich in 1537, “how great is the danger to which the Churches are everywhere exposed and how difficult it is to govern them, when those in authority are at grips with one another and set up strife and confusion, whereas it is from them that we should look for help.... What we have to endure is worse than all the trials of Odysseus the sufferer.”[957]

In the following year he told the same friend the real evil was, that “we live like gipsies, no one being willing to obey another in any single thing.”[958]

In the name of Wittenberg University he wrote to Mohr, the Naumburg preacher, who was quarrelling with his brethren in the ministry, “What is to happen in future if, for so trivial a matter, such wild and angry broils break out amongst those who govern the Church?”[959]

The growing tendency to strife he describes in 1544 in these words: “There are at present many people whose quarrels are both countless and endless, and who everywhere find a pretext for them.”[960]

Many of his complaints concerning the morals of the time, as DÖllinger remarks, sound very much like those of a “sworn Catholic criticising the state of affairs brought about by the Reformation.” DÖllinger also calls attention to the saying of 1537: “The only glory remaining in this iron age is that of boldly breaking down the barriers of discipline (‘audacter dissipare vincula disciplinÆ’) and of propounding to the people new opinions neatly cut and coloured.”[961] A similar dictum dates from 1538. “Our age, as you can see, is full of malice and madness, and more addicted to intrigue than any previous one. The man who is most shameless in his abuse is regarded as the best orator. Oh, that God would change this!”[962] The growing evils made him more and more downhearted. “People have become barbarians,” he exclaims twelve years later to his friend Camerarius, “and, accustomed as they are to hatred and contempt of law and order, fear lest any restraint be put on their licentiousness (‘metuunt frenari licentiam’). These are the evils decreed for the last age of the world.”[963]

Over and over again we can see how the timorous man endeavours to clear the religious innovations of any responsibility for the prevalent lawlessness, which, as he says, deserved to be bewailed with floods of tears; after all, the true Church had been revived; this edifice, this temple of God, still remained amidst all the chaos; even in Noe’s day it had been exposed to damage.[964] At times, though less frequently than Luther, he lays all the blame on Satan; the latter, by means of the scandals, was seeking to scare people away from the true Evangel now brought to light, and to vex the preachers into holding their tongues.

Pessimistic consideration of the “last age of the world” was quite in his line; the dark though not altogether unfriendly shadow of the approaching end of all was discernible in the moral disorders, in the unbelief and anti-christian spirit of the foe. He would not dwell, so he once said, on the state of things among the people towards whom he was willing to be indulgent, but it could not be gainsaid that, “among the learned open contempt for religion was on the increase; they lean either towards the Epicureans or towards universal scepticism. Forgetfulness of God, the wickedness of the times, the senseless fury of the Princes, all unite in proving that the world lies in the pains of travail and that the joyous coming of Christ is nigh.”[965] It was his hopelessness and the great solace he derived from the approaching end of all things that called forth this frame of mind. It is also plain that he saw no prospect of improvement. “In these last days,” he says, even a zealous preacher can no longer hope for success, though this does not give him the right to quit his post.[966] The poetic reference to the frenzied old age of the world (“delira mundi senecta”) is several times met with in his letters.

The news of Luther’s death which took place at Eisleben on Feb. 14, 1546, was received by Melanchthon the very next day. In spite of all their differences it must have come as a shock to him, the more so that the responsibility for the direction of his friend’s work was now to devolve on him.

The panegyric on Luther which Melanchthon delivered at Wittenberg boldly places him on the same footing with Isaias, John the Baptist, the Apostle of the Gentiles, and Augustine of Hippo. In it the humanistic element and style is more noticeable than the common feeling of the friend. He hints discreetly at the “great vehemence” of the departed, but does not omit to mention that everyone who was acquainted with him must bear witness that he had always shown himself kind-hearted towards his friends, and never obstinate or quarrelsome.[985] Though this is undoubtedly at variance with what he says elsewhere, still such a thing was expected in those days in panegyrics on great men, nor would so smooth-tongued an orator have felt any scruple about it. In his previous announcement of Luther’s death to the students he had exclaimed: “The chariot of Israel and the driver thereof have been taken from us, the man who ruled the Church in these days of the world’s senile decay.”[986]

After Luther’s death Melanchthon had still to endure fourteen years of suffering, perhaps of even more bitter character than he had yet tasted. Whilst representing Lutheranism and taking the lead amongst his colleagues he did so with the deliberate intention of maintaining the new faith by accommodating himself indulgently to the varying conditions of the times. Our narrative may here be permitted to anticipate somewhat in order to give a clear and connected account of Melanchthon’s inner life and ultimate fate.[987]

His half-heartedness and love of compromise were a cause of many hardships to him, particularly at the time of the so-called Interims of Augsburg and Leipzig. It was a question of introducing the Augsburg Interim into the Saxon Electorate after the latter, owing to the War of Schmalkalden, had come under the rule of the new Elector Maurice. Melanchthon had at first opposed the provisions of this Interim, by means of which the Emperor hoped gradually to bring the Protestants back to the fold. In Dec., 1548, however, he, together with other theologians, formally accepted the Leipzig articles, which, owing to their similarity with the Augsburg Interim, were dubbed by his opponents the “Leipzig Interim,”[988] In this the “moot observances (Adiaphora), i.e. those which may be kept without any contravention of Divine Scripture,” were extended by Melanchthon so as to include the reintroduction of fasting, festivals, not excluding even Corpus Christi, images of the Saints in the churches, the Latin liturgy, the Canonical Hours in Latin and even a sort of hierarchy. Melanchthon also agreed to the demand for the recognition of the seven sacraments. By strongly emphasising his own doctrine of synergism, he brought the Wittenberg teaching on Justification much nearer to Catholic dogma; he even dealt a death-blow to the genuine doctrine of Luther by appending his signature to the following proposition: “God does not deal with man as with a block of wood, but so draws him that his will also co-operates.” In addition to this the true character of Luther’s sola fides, or assurance of salvation, was veiled by Melanchthon under the formula: “True faith accepts, together with other articles, that of the ‘Forgiveness of Sins.’”

Hence when Flacius Illyricus, Amsdorf, Gallus, Wigand, Westphal and others loudly protested against Melanchthon as though he had denied Luther’s doctrine, they were not so very far wrong. The result of their vigorous opposition and of the number of those who sided with them was that Melanchthon gradually ceased to be the head of the Lutheran Church, becoming merely the leader of a certain party.

Later on, in 1552, when the position of public affairs in Germany was more favourable to Protestantism, Melanchthon admitted that he had been wrong in his views concerning the Adiaphora, since, after all, they were not so unimportant as he had at first thought. In order to pacify his opponents he included the following proposition in his form of examination for new preachers: “We ought to profess, not the Papal errors, Interim, etc. ... but to remain faithful to the pure Divine teaching of the Gospel.”[989]

Opposition to the “Papal errors” was indeed the one thing to which he steadfastly adhered; this negative side of his attitude never varied, whatever changes may have taken place in his positive doctrines.

Nevertheless during the ensuing controversies he was regarded as a traitor by the stricter Lutherans and treated with a scorn that did much to embitter his last years. The attitude of his opponents was particularly noticeable at the conference of Worms in 1557. Even before this, they, particularly the Jena theologians, had planned an outspoken condemnation of all those who “had departed from the Augsburg Confession,” as Melanchthon had done. They now appeared at Worms with others of the same way of thinking. “I desire no fellowship with those who defile the purity of our doctrine,” wrote one of them; “we must shun them, according to the words of the Bible: ‘If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you.’”[990] The friends of Flacius Illyricus at the very first meeting made no secret of their unanimous demand, so that Melanchthon in his justificatory statement could well say: “I see plainly that all this is directed solely against me.” He opposed any condemnation of Zwingli or of Calvin on account of their doctrine on the Supper; this, he said, was the business of a synod.

At the very outset of the disputations with the Catholics it became evident anew that the divergency of the Protestants in the interpretation of Holy Scripture was too great to allow of the points under discussion being satisfactorily settled in conference; the abrogation of an ecclesiastical authority for the exposition of Scripture had resulted in an ever-growing want of unity in the interpretation of the Bible. Peter Canisius, the Catholic spokesman, pointed out emphatically what obstacles were presented by the contradictory opinions on doctrine amongst the Protestants; where every man traced his opinions back to Scripture, how was it possible to arrive at any decision?[991] It was from Canisius, “who during the course of the conference distinguished himself as the leader of the Catholic party and later repeatedly proved himself a sharp observer of the religious conditions in Germany,”[992] that the suggestion came, that the Protestants should define their position more clearly by repudiating certain divergent sects. This led the followers of Flacius to demand that all the Evangelicals should unite in condemning Zwinglianism, Osianderism, Adiaphorism and Majorism, and also Calvin’s doctrine on the Supper. To this Melanchthon and his friends absolutely refused to agree. The result was that the followers of Flacius departed greatly incensed, and the conference had to be broken off. “The contradictions in the very heart of Protestantism were thus revealed to the whole world.”[993]

“No greater disgrace befell the Reformation in the 16th century.”[994]

From that time Melanchthon was a broken man. His friend Languet wrote to Calvin, “Mr. Philip is so worn out with old age, toils, calumnies and intrigues that nothing is left of his former cheerfulness.”[995]

Melanchthon characterised the Book of Confutation published by the Duke of Saxony in 1558, and finally revised by Flacius, as a “congeries of sophisms” which he had perused with great pain, and as “venomous sophistry.” He therefore once more begged for his dismissal.[996]

His longing for death as a happy release from such bitter affliction we find expressed in many of his letters. To Sigismund Gelous of Eperies in Hungary he wrote, on May 20, 1559, that he was not averse to departing this life owing to the attacks on his person, and in order that he might behold “the light of the Heavenly Academy” and become partaker of its wisdom.[997] He looked forward, so he writes to another, to that light “where God is all in all and where there is no more sophistry or calumny.”[998] Only a few days before his death he solaced himself by drawing up some notes entitled: “Reasons why you should fear death less.” On the left of the sheet he wrote: “You will escape from sin, and will be delivered from all trouble and the fury of the theologians (‘liberaberis ab Ærumnis et a rabie theologorum’)”; and, on the right: “You will attain to the light, you will behold God, you will look on the Son of God, you will see into those wonderful mysteries which you have been unable to comprehend in this life, such as why we are created as we are, and how the two natures are united in Christ.”[999] He finally departed this life on April 19, 1560, from the results of a severe cold.

In this “Confession,” dating from the evening of his days, the “so-peaceful” Melanchthon bluntly describes the Pope and all his train (satellites) as “defenders of idols”; according to him they “withstand the known truth, and cruelly rage against the pious.”[1001] This book, with its superficial humanistic theology, justifies, like so many of his earlier works, the opinion of learned Catholic contemporaries who regretted that the word of a scholar devoid of any sound theological training should exercise so much influence over the most far-reaching religious questions of the day.

Writing to Cardinal Sadoleto, Johann Fabri, Bishop of Vienna, says, “Would that Melanchthon had pursued his studies on the lines indicated by his teacher Capnion [Reuchlin]! Would that he had but remained content with the rhetoric and grammar of the ancients instead of allowing his youthful ardour to carry him away, to turn the true religion into a tragedy! But alas ... when barely eighteen years of age he began to teach the simple, and, by his soft speeches, he has disturbed the whole Church beyond measure. And even after so many years he is still unable to see his error or to desist from the doctrines once imbibed and from furthering such lamentable disorders.”[1002] To this letter Fabri appended excerpts from various writings of Melanchthon’s as “specimens of what his godless pen had produced against the truth and the peace of the Church.”

Others, for instance Eck and CochlÆus, in their descriptions of Melanchthon dwell on the traits that displeased them in their personal intercourse with him.

Johann Eck compares the way in which Melanchthon twice outwitted Cardinal Campeggio to the false arts of Sinon the Greek, known to us from Virgil’s account of the introduction of the wooden horse into Troy.[1003] Johann CochlÆus, who had met him at Augsburg, calls him the “fox,” and once warns a friend: “Take care lest he cheat you with his deceitful cunning, for, like the Sirens, he gains a hearing by sweet and honeyed words; he makes a hypocritical use of lying; he is ever planning how he may win men’s hearts by all manner of wiles, and seduces them with dishonest words.”[1004] About the same time in a printed reply to Melanchthon’s “Apologia,” he drew an alarming picture of the latter’s trickery at the Diet of Augsburg. By worming himself into the confidence of the Princes and great men present, Melanchthon learned, so he says, things that were little to the credit of the Catholic Church; these he afterwards retailed to Luther, who at once, after duly embellishing them, flung the tales broadcast amongst the people by means of the press. Melanchthon made not the slightest attempt to correct his statements, as he was in duty bound to do, and his honeyed words merely fed the flames.[1005] “Most people,” he writes elsewhere, “if not all, have hitherto supposed Melanchthon to be much milder and more moderate than Luther”; such persons should, however, study his writings carefully, and then they would soon see how unspeakably bitter was his feeling against Catholics.[1006]

The latter assertion is only too fully confirmed by the extracts already put before the reader, particularly by those from his Schmalkalden tract on the Pope, from his Introduction to the new edition of Luther’s “Warnunge” and from the “Confession” just alluded to.[1007] Here there glows such deep hatred of the faith and practices of the Catholic Church that one seeks in vain for the common ground on which his professed love for union could thrive.

His conciliatory proposals were, however, in fact nothing more than the vague and barren cravings of a Humanist.

In Catholic literature, nevertheless, even down to the present day, we often find Melanchthon quoted as having said to his mother, speaking of the relative value of the old and the new religion: “HÆc plausibilior, illa securior; Lutheranism is the more popular, but Catholicism is the safer.”[1015]

This story concerning Melanchthon assumed various forms as time went on. We must dismiss the version circulated by Florimond de Raemond in 1605, to the effect that the words had been spoken by Melanchthon on his death-bed to his mother who had remained a Catholic, when the latter adjured him to tell her the truth;[1016] his mother, as a matter of fact, died at her home at Bretten in the Lower Palatinate long before her son, in 1529, slightly before July 24, being then in her fifty-third year.[1017]

Nor is there much to be said in favour of another version of the above story which has it that Melanchthon’s mother, after having been persuaded by him to come over, visited him in great distress of mind, and received from him the above reply.

Melanchthon called on her at Bretten in May, 1524, during his stay in his native place, and may have done so again in 1529 in the spring, when attending the Diet of Spires. A passage in his correspondence construed as referring to this visit is by no means clear,[1018] though the illness and death of his mother would seem to make such a flying visit likely. On a third occasion Melanchthon went to Bretten in the autumn of 1536.

We shall first see what Protestant writers have to say of the supposed conversation with the mother.

K. Ed. FÖrstemann, who, in 1830,[1019] dealt with the family records of the Schwarzerd family, says briefly of the matter: “Strobel was wrong in declaring this story to be utterly devoid of historical foundation.”[1020] C. G. Strobel, in his “Melanchthoniana” (1771), had expressed his disbelief in the tale under the then widespread form, according to which Melanchthon had spoken the words, when visiting his dying mother in 1529; he had been much shocked to hear it told in rhetorical style by M. A. J. Bose of Wittenberg in a panegyric on Melanchthon. Bose, whose leanings were towards the Broad School, had cited the story approvingly as an instance of Melanchthon’s large-mindedness in religion.[1021] Against the account Strobel alleges several a priori objections of no great value; his best argument really was that there was no authority for it.

FÖrstemann’s brief allusion was not without effect on the authors of the article on Melanchthon in the “RealenzyklopÄdie fÜr protestantische Theologie”; there we read: “The tale is at least not unlikely, though it cannot be proved with certainty”;[1022] even G. Ellinger, the latest of Melanchthon’s biographers, declares: “We may assume that Melanchthon treated the religious views of his mother, who continued till the end of her life faithful to the olden Church, with the same tender solicitude as he displayed towards her in the later conversation in 1529.”[1023]

It is first of all necessary to settle whether the conversation actually rests on reliable authority. FÖrstemann, like Strobel, mentions only Melchior Adam († 1622), whose “VitÆ theologorum” was first published in 1615 (see next page).

Adam, a Protestant writer, gives no authority for his statement. Ægidius Albertinus, a popular Catholic author, writing slightly earlier, also gives the story in his “Rekreation” (see next page), published in 1612 and 1613, likewise without indicating its source.

Earlier than either we have Florimond de Raemond, whose “Histoire,” etc. (above, p. 270, n. 3) contains the story even in the 1605 edition; he too gives no authority. So far no earlier mention of the story is known. It seems to have been a current tale in Catholic circles abroad and may have been printed. Strange to say the work of the zealous Catholic convert and polemic, de Raemond (completed and seen through the press by his son), contains the story under the least likely shape, the dying Melanchthon being made to address the words to his mother, who really had died long before.

It is quite likely that Ægidius Albertinus, the well-read priestly secretary to the Munich Council, who busied himself much with Italian, Spanish and Latin literature, was acquainted with this passage. He nevertheless altered the narrative, relating how Melanchthon’s “aged mother came to him” after he had “lived long in the world and seen many things, and caused many scandals by his life.” He translates as follows the Latin words supposed to have been uttered by Melanchthon: “The new religion is much pleasanter, but the old one is much safer.”[1024]

Next comes the Protestant Adam. The latter gives a plausible historical setting to the story by locating it during the time of Melanchthon’s stay at Spires, though without mentioning that the mother was then at death’s door. “When asked by her,” so runs his account, which is the commonest one, “what she was to believe of the controversies, he listened to the prayers [she was in the habit of reciting] and, finding nothing superstitious in them, told her to continue to believe and to pray as heretofore and not be disturbed by the discussions and controversies.”[1025] Here we do not meet the sentence HÆc plausibilior, illa securior. The fact that Adam, who as a rule is careful to give his authorities, omits to do so here, points to the story having been verbally transmitted; for it is hardly likely that he, as a Protestant, would have taken over the statements of the two Catholic authorities Albertinus and Raemond, which were so favourable to Catholicism and so unfavourable to Protestantism. Probably, besides the Catholic version there was also a Protestant one, which would explain here the absence of the sentence ending with “securior.” Both may have risen at the time of the Diet of Spires, where Catholics and Protestants alike attended, supposing that the visit to Bretten took place at that time.

All things considered we may well accept the statement of the “RealenzyklopÄdie,” that the story, as given by Adam, apart from the time it occurred, is “not unlikely, though it cannot be proved with certainty.” Taking into account the circumstances and the character of Melanchthon, neither the incident nor his words involve any improbability. He will have seen that his beloved mother—whether then at the point of death or not—was in perfect good faith; he had no wish to plunge her into inward struggles and disquiet and preferred to leave her happy in her convictions; the more so since, in her presence and amid the recollections of the past, his mind will probably have travelled to the days of his youth, when he was still a faithful son of the Church. He had never forgotten the exhortation given by his father, nine days before his death, to his family “never to quit the Church’s fold.”[1026] The exact date of the incident (1524 or 1529) must however remain doubtful. N. MÜller in his work on Melanchthon’s brother, Jakob Schwarzerd, says rightly: “Nothing obliges us to place the conversation between Melanchthon and his mother—assuming it to be historical—in 1529, for it may equally well have taken place in 1524.”[1027]

The information concerning Stadion is found only in the late, Protestant history of the Diet of Augsburg written by George Coelestinus and published in 1577 at Frankfurt; here moreover the story differs slightly, relating, that, during the negotiations on the Confession on Aug. 6, Stadion declared: “It was plain that those who inclined to the Lutheran views had, so far, not infringed or overthrown a single article of the faith by what they had put forward in defence of their views.”[1028] Any decisive advocacy of the Catholic cause was of course not to be expected from this bishop, in view of his general bearing. A good pupil of Erasmus, he had made the latter’s reforming ideas his own. He was in favour of priestly marriage, and was inclined to think that Christ had not instituted auricular confession. There is, however, no proof that he went so far in the direction of the innovations as actually to approve the Lutheran teaching. It is true that the words quoted, even if really his, do not assert this; it was one thing to say that no article of the faith had been infringed by the Confession or by what had been urged in vindication of Lutheranism, and quite another to say that the Confession was nothing but the pure, unvarnished truth. At any rate, in the one form this statement of Stadion’s is not vouched for by any other authority before Coelestinus and, in the other, lacks any proof whatever. F. W. Schirrmacher, who relates the incident in his “Briefen und Akten zur Geschichte des Reichstags zu Augsburg” on the authority of Coelestinus, admits that “its source is unknown.”[1029] Moreover an historian, who some years ago examined into Stadion’s attitude at Augsburg, pointed out, that, in view of the further circumstances related by Coelestinus, the story “sounds a little fabulous.”[1030] He tells us how on the same occasion the bishops of Salzburg and Augsburg fell foul of one another, the former, in his anger at Stadion’s behaviour, even going so far as to charge the latter before the whole assembly with immorality in his private life. All this, told at great length and without mention of any authority, far from impressing us as historically accurate, appears at best as an exaggerated hearsay account of some incident of which the truth is no longer known.

As for what Johann Eck is stated to have said, viz. that he could refute Melanchthon’s Confession from the Fathers but not from the Bible, no proof whatever of the statement is forthcoming. The oldest mention of it merely retails a piece of vague gossip, which may well have gone the rounds in Lutheran circles. It is met with in Spalatin’s Notes and runs: “It is said” that Eck, referring to the whole doctrine of Melanchthon and Luther, told Duke William: “I would not mind undertaking to refute it from the Fathers, but not from Scripture.”[1031] It is true these notes go back as far as the Diet of Augsburg, but they notoriously contain much that is false or uncertain, and often record mere unauthenticated rumours. Neither Melanchthon nor Luther ever dared to appeal to such an admission on the part of their opponent, though it would certainly have been of the utmost advantage to them to have done so.

Not only is no proof alleged in support of the saying, but it is in utter contradiction with Eck’s whole mode of procedure, which was always to attack the statements of his opponents, first with Scripture and then with the tradition of the Fathers. This is the case with the “Confutatio confessionis,” etc., aimed at Melanchthon’s Confession, in the preparation of which Eck had the largest share and which he presented at the Diet of Augsburg.

According to his own striking account of what happened at the religious conference of Ratisbon in 1541, it was to his habitual and triumphant use of biblical arguments against Melanchthon’s theses that Eck appealed in the words he addressed to Bucer his chief opponent: “Hearken, you apostate, does not Eck use the language of the Bible and the Fathers? Why don’t you reply to his writings on the primacy of Peter, on penance, on the Sacrifice of the Mass, and on Purgatory?” etc.[1032]

What also weighs strongly against the tale is the fact that a charge of a quite similar nature had been brought against Eck ten years before the Diet of Augsburg by an opponent, who assailed him with false and malicious accusations. What Protestant fable came wantonly to connect with Melanchthon’s “Confession” had already, in 1520, been charged against the Ingolstadt theologian by the author of “Eccius dedolatus.” There he is told, that, in his view, one had perforce (on account of the Bible) to agree with Luther secretly, though, publicly, he had to be opposed.[1033]

Theodore Wiedemann, who wrote a Life of Eck and who at least hints at the objection just made, was justified in concluding with the query: “Is it not high time to say good-bye to this historic lie?”[1034] When, as late as 1906, the story was once more burnished up by a writer of note, N. Paulus, writing in the “Historisches Jahrbuch,” could well say: “Eck’s alleged utterance was long ago proved to be quite unhistorical.”[1035]

For instance, he had carried off Pfeifer of MÜhlberg, not far from Erfurt, and also another man of the same name at Eisenach; indeed, the devil had fetched the latter away in spite of his being watched by the preacher Justus Menius and “many of his clergymen,” and though “doors and windows had been shut so as to prevent his being carried away”; the devil, however, broke away some tiles “round the stove” and thus got in; finally he slew his victim “not far from the town in a hazel thicket.”[1071] Needless to say it is a great crime to bargain with the devil.[1072] This Dr. Eck had done and likewise the Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg († 1535), who wanted to live another fifteen years; this, however, the devil did not allow.[1073] Amsdorf too was dragged into the diabolical affair; one night at an inn two dead men appeared to him, thanks to some “Satanic art,” and compelled him to draw up a document in writing and hand it over to Joachim. Two spirits assisted on the occasion, bearing candles.[1074]

During battles the devil is able to carry men off more easily, but then the angels also kill by Divine command, as the Old Testament bears witness, for there “one angel could cause the death of many persons.”[1075] In war the devil is at work and makes use of the newest weapons “which indeed are Satan’s own invention,” for these cannon “send men flying into the air” and that “is the end of all man’s strength.”[1076] It is also the devil who guides the sleep-walkers “so that they do everything as though wide awake,” “but still there is something wanting and some defect apparent.”[1077]

Elsewhere too Luther discerns the work of the devil; for instance, when Satan sends a number of strange caterpillars into his garden,[1078] pilfers things, hampers the cattle and damages the stalls[1079] and interferes with the preparation of the cheese and milk.[1080] “Every tree has its lurking demon.[1081] You can see how, to your damage, Satan knocks down walls and palings that already totter;[1082] he also throws you down the stairs so as to make a cripple of you.”[1083]

In cases of illness it is the devil who enables the Jews to be so successful in effecting cures, more particularly in the case of the “great and those of high standing”;[1084] on the other hand he is also able maliciously to hinder the good effect of any medicine, as Luther himself had experienced when he lay sick in 1537. He can alter every medicine or medicament in the boxes, so that what has served its purpose well once or twice no longer works at all; “so powerful is the devil.”[1085] Luther, as his pupils bear witness, had frequently maintained that many of his bodily ailments were inflicted on him solely by the devil’s hatred.

Satan is a great foe of marriage and the blessing of children. “This is why you find he has so many malicious tricks and ways of frightening women who are with child, and causes such misfortune, cunning, murder, etc.”[1086] “Satan bitterly hates matrimony,” he says in 1537,[1087] and, in 1540, “he has great power in matrimonial affairs, for unless God were to stand by us how could the children grow up?”[1088] In matrimonial disputes “the devil shows his finger”; the Pope gets along easily, “he simply dissolves all marriages”; but we, “on account of the contentions instigated by the devil,” must have “people who can give advice.”[1089]

Not him alone but many others had the devil affrighted by the “noisy spirits.”[1090] These noisy spirits were, however, far more numerous before the coming of the Evangel. They were looked upon, quite wrongly, as the souls of the dead, and Masses and prayers were said and good works done to lay them to rest;[1091] but now “you know very well who causes this; you know it is the devil; he must not be exorcised[1092], we must despise him and waken our holy faith against him;[1093] we must be willing to abide the ‘spooks and spirits’ calmly and with faith if God permits them to ‘exercise their wantonness on us’ and ‘to affright us.’”[1094] Nevertheless, as he adds with much truth, “we must not be too ready to give credence to everyone, for many people are given to inventing such things.”[1095]

At the present time the noisy spirits are not so noticeable; “among us they have thinned”;[1096] the chief reason is, that the devils now prefer the company of the heretics, anabaptists and fanatics;[1097] for Satan “enters into men, for instance into the heretics and fanatics, into MÜnzer and his ilk, also into the usurers and others”;[1098] “the fanatic spirits are greatly on the increase.”[1099] The false teachers prove by their devilish speech how greatly the devil, “clever and dangerous trickster that he is,” “can deceive the hearts and consciences of men and hold them captive in his craze.” “What is nothing but lies, idle error and gruesome darkness, that they take to be the pure, unvarnished truth!”[1100]

If the devil can thus deceive men’s minds, surely it is far easier for him to bewitch their bodily senses. “He can hoax and cheat all the senses,”[1101] so that a man thinks he sees something that he can’t see, or hears what isn’t, for instance, “thunder, pipes or bugle-calls.” Luther fancies he finds an allusion to something of the sort in the words of Paul to the Galatians iii. 1: “Who hath bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth [that you should not obey the truth]?”[1102] Children can be bewitched by the evil eye of one who is under a spell, and Jerome was wrong when he questioned whether the illness of children in a decline was really due to the evil eye.[1103] It is certain that “by his great power the devil is able to blind our eyes and our souls,” as he did in the case of the woman who thought she was wearing a crown, whereas it was simply “cow dung.”[1104] He tells how, in Thuringia, eight hares were trapped, which, during the night, were changed into horses’ heads, such as we find lying on the carrion heap.[1105] Had not St. Macarius by his prayers dispelled the Satanic delusion by which a girl had been changed into a cow in the presence of many persons, including her own parents? The distressed parents brought their daughter in the semblance of a cow to Macarius “in order that she might recover her human shape,” and “the Lord did in point of fact dissolve the spell whereby men’s senses had been misled.” Luther several times relates this incident, both in conversation and in writing.[1106]

First, as to his abode. In a sermon recently published, and dating from June 13, 1529, Luther says: “The devil inhabits the forests, the thickets, and the waters, and insinuates himself amongst us everywhere in order to destroy us; sleep he never does.” Preaching in the hot weather, he warns his hearers against the cool waters in which the devil lurks: “Be careful about bathing in the cold water.... Every year we hear of people being drowned [by the devil] through bathing in the Elbe.”[1109]

In another sermon incorporated in the Church-postils he explains how in countries like ours, “which are well watered,” the devils are fond of infesting the waters and the swamps; they sometimes drown those who venture there to bathe or even to walk. Item, in some places Naiades are to be met with who entice the children to the water’s edge, drag them in and drown them: all these are devils.[1110] Such devils can commit fornication with the maidens, and “are able to beget children which are simply devils”;[1111] for the devil will often drag a girl into the water, get her with child and keep her by him until she has borne her baby; he then lays these children in other people’s cradles, removing the real children and carrying them off.[1112]

Elsewhere the devils prefer “bare and desolate regions,” “woods and wildernesses.”[1113] “Some are to be found in the thick black clouds, these cause hailstorms, thunder and lightning, and poison the air, the pastures, etc.” Hence “philosophi” ought not to go on explaining these phenomena as though they were natural.[1114] Further, the devil has a favourite dwelling-place deep down in the earth, in the mines, where he “pesters and deceives people,” showing them for instance what appears to be “solid silver, whereas it is nothing of the kind.”[1115] “Satan hides himself in the apes and long-tailed monkeys,” who lie in wait for men and with whom it is wrong to play.[1116] That he inhabits these creatures, and also the parrots, is plain from their skill in imitating human beings.[1117]

In some countries many more devils are to be found than in others. “There are many evil spirits in Prussia and also in Pilappen [Lapland].” In Switzerland the devils make a “frightful to-do” in the “Pilatus tarn not far from Lucerne”; in Saxony, “in the Poltersberg tarn,” things are almost as bad, for if a stone be thrown in, it arouses a “great tempest.”[1118] “Damp and stuffy places” are however the devils’ favourite resort.[1119] He was firmly convinced that in the moist and swampy districts of Saxony all the devils “that Christ drove out of the swine in Jerusalem and JudÆa had congregated”; “so much thieving, sorcery and pilfering goes on that the Evil One must indeed be present in person.”[1120] The fact of so many devils inhabiting Saxony was perhaps the reason, so he adds quaintly enough, “why the Evangel had to be preached there, i.e. that they might be chased away.” It was for this reason, so he repeats, “that Christ came amongst the Wends [Prussians], the worst of all the nations, in order to destroy the work of Satan and to drive out the devils who there abide among the peasants and townspeople.”[1121] That he was disposed to believe that a number, by no means insignificant, of devils could assemble in one place is plain from several statements such as, that at the Wartburg he himself had been plagued by “a thousand devils,” that at Augsburg every bishop had brought as many devils with him to the Diet as a dog has fleas in hot weather, and, finally, that at Worms their number was probably not far short of the tiles on the roofs.

The forms the devil assumes when he appears to men are very varied; to this the accounts sufficiently bear witness.

He appeared as a goat,[1122] and often as a dog;[1123] he tormented a sick woman in the shape of a calf from which Luther set her free—at least for one night.[1124] He is fond of changing himself into cats and other animals, foxes, hares, etc., “without, however, assuming greater powers than are possessed by such animals.”[1125] The semblance of the serpent is naturally very dear to the devil. To a sick girl at Wittenberg with whom Luther happened to be, he appeared under the form of Christ, but afterwards transformed himself into a serpent and bit the girl’s ear till the blood came.[1126] The devil comes as Christ or as a good angel, so as to be the better able to tempt people. He has been seen and heard under the guise of a hermit, of a holy monk, and even, so the tale runs, of a preacher; the latter had “preached so earnestly that the whole church was reduced to tears”; whereupon he showed himself as the devil; but “whether this story be true or not, I leave you to decide.”[1127] The form of a satyr suits him better, what we now call a hobgoblin; in this shape he “frequently appeared to the heathen in order to strengthen them in their idolatry.”[1128] A prettier make under which he appears is that of the “brownie”; it was in this guise that he was wont to sit on a clean corner of the hearthstone beside a maid who had strangled her baby.[1129] From the behaviour of the devils we may infer that, “so far they are not undergoing any punishment though they have already been sentenced, for were they being punished they would not play so many roguish tricks.”[1130]

Amongst the different kinds of devils he enumerates, using names which recall the humorous ones common in the old folk-lore of Germany, are not merely the stupid, the playful, the malicious and the murderous fiends, but also the more sightly ones,[1131] viz. the familiar and friendly demons; then again there are the childish little devils who allure to unchastity and so forth though not to unbelief or despair like the more dangerous ones.[1132] He is familiar with angelic, shining, white and holy devils, i.e. who pretend to be such, also with black devils and the “supreme majestic devil.” The majestic devil wants to be worshipped like God, and, in this, being “so quick-witted,” he actually succeeded in the ages before Luther’s day, for “the Pope worshipped him.”[1133] The devil repaid the Pope by bewitching the world in his favour; he brought him a large following and wrought much harm by means “of lies and magic,” doing on a vast scale what the “witches” do in a smaller way.[1134]

There are further, as Luther jestingly explains, house-devils, Court-devils and church-devils; of these “the last are the worst.”[1135] “Boundless is the devils’ power,” he says elsewhere, “and countless their number; nor are they all childish little devils, but great national devils, devils of the sovereigns, devils of the Church, who, with their five thousand years’ experience, have grown very knowing ... in fact, far too cunning for us in these latter days.”[1136] “Satan knows his business and no one but Jesus Christ can cope with him.”[1137] Very dangerous indeed are the Court-devils, who “never rest,” but “busy themselves at Court, and work all the mischief in the councils of the kings and rulers, thwarting all that is good; for the devil has some fine rakehells at Court.”[1138] As for the noisy devils, they had troubled him even in his youth.[1139]

The Papists have their own devils who work supposed miracles on their behalf, for the wonders which occur amongst them at the places of pilgrimage or elsewhere in answer to their prayers are not real miracles but devil’s make-believe. In fact, Satan frequently makes a person appear ill, and, then, by releasing him from the spell, cures him again.[1140]

Paulus here touches upon a question which the Protestant historian, Walter KÖhler, had already raised, viz.: “Is it possible to explain the Reformers’ attachment to the belief in witchcraft simply on the score that they received it from the Middle Ages? How did they treat mediÆval tradition in other matters? Why then was their attitude different here?”[1142]

G. Steinhausen, in his “Geschichte der deutschen Kultur,” writes: “No one ever insisted more strongly than Luther on his role [the devil’s]; he was simply carried away by the idea.... Though in his words and the stories he tells of the devil he speaks the language of the populace, yet the way in which he weaves diabolical combats and temptations into man’s whole life is both new and unfortunate. Every misfortune, war and tempest, every sickness, plague, crime and deformity emanates from the Evil One.”[1143]

Some of what Luther borrowed from the beliefs of his own day goes back to pre-Christian times. The belief in witches comprised much heathen tradition too deeply rooted for the early missionaries to eradicate. Moreover, certain statements of olden ecclesiastical writers incautiously exploited enabled even the false notions of the ancient GrÆco-Roman world to become also current. Fear of hidden, dangerous forces, indiscriminating repetition of alleged incidents from the unseen, the ill-advised discussions of certain theologians and thoughtless sermons of popular orators, all these causes and others contributed to produce the crass belief in witches as it existed even before Luther’s day at the close of the Middle Ages, and such as we find it, for instance, in the sermons of Geiler von Kaysersberg.

The famous Strasburg preacher not only accepted it as an undoubted fact, that witches were able with the devil’s help to do all kinds of astounding deeds, but he also takes for granted the possibility of their making occasional aerial trips, though it is true he dismisses the nocturnal excursions of the women with Diana, Venus and Herodias as mere diabolical delusion. He himself never formally demanded the death-penalty for witches, but it may be inferred that he quite countenanced the severe treatment advocated in the “Witches’ Hammer.” In his remarks on witches he follows partly Martin Plantsch, the TÜbingen priest and University professor, partly, and still more closely, the “Formicarius” of the learned Dominican Johannes Nider (1380-1438).[1144]

It is in his commentary on the 1st Commandment that he gives us a first glimpse into the world of witches which later was to engross his attention even more.

He is anxious to bring home to the “weaklings” how one can sin against the 1st Commandment.[1147] He therefore enumerates all the darkest deeds of human superstition; of their reality he was firmly convinced, and only seldom does he speak merely of their “possibility,” or say, “it is believed” that this or that took place. He also divides into groups the people who sin against the virtue of Divine love, doing so according to their age, and somewhat on the lines of a Catechism, in order that “the facts may be more easily borne in mind.”

“The third group,” he says, “is that of the old women, etc.” “By their magic they are able to bring on blindness, cause sickness, kill, etc.”[1148] “Some of them have their fireside devil who comes several times a day.” “There are incubi and succubi amongst the devils,” who commit lewdness with witches and others. Devil-strumpetry and ordinary harlotry are amongst the sins of these women. Luther also speaks of magic potions, desecration of the sacrament in the devil’s honour, and secret incantations productive of the most marvellous effects.

His opinion he sums up as follows: “What the devil himself is unable to do, that he does by means of old hags”;[1149] “he is a powerful god of this world”;[1150] “the devil has great power through the sorceresses.”[1151] He prefers thus to make use of the female sex because, “it comes natural to them ever since the time of Mother Eve to let themselves be duped and fooled.”[1152] “It is as a rule a woman’s way to be timid and afraid of everything, hence they practise so much magic and superstition, the one teaching the other.”[1153] Even in Paradise, so he says, the devil approached the woman rather than the man, she being the weaker.[1154]

It is worthy of note that he does not merely base his belief in witchcraft on the traditions of the past but preferably on Scripture directly, and the power of Satan to which it bears witness.

In 1519 he had attempted to prove on St. Paul’s authority against the many who refused to believe in such things, that sorcery can cause harm, omitting, however, to make the necessary distinctions.[1155] In 1538 he declares: “The devil is a great and powerful enemy. Verily I believe, that, unless children were baptised at an early age no congregations could be formed; for adults, who know the power of Satan, would not submit to be baptised so as to avoid undertaking the baptismal vows by which they renounce Satan.”[1156]

In the Commentary on Galatians he not merely appeals anew to the apostolic authority in support of his doctrine concerning the devil, but also directly bases his belief in witchcraft on the principle, that it is plain that Satan “rules and governs the whole world,” that we are but guests in the world, of which the devil is prince and god and controls everything by which we live: food, drink, clothing, air, etc.[1157] By means of sorcery he is able to strangle and slay us; through the agency of his whores and sorceresses, the witches, he is able to hurt the little children, with palpitations, blindness, etc. “Nay, he is able to steal a child and lay himself in the cradle in its stead, for I myself have heard of such a child in Saxony whom five women were not able to supply with sufficient milk to quiet it; and there are many such instances to be met with.”[1158]

The numerous other instances of harm wrought by witches with which he is acquainted, such as the raising of storms, thefts of milk, eggs and butter,[1159] the laying of snares to entrap men, tears of blood that flow from the eyes, lizards cast up from the stomach,[1160] etc., all recede into the background in comparison with the harlotry, substitution of children, etc., which the devil carries out with the witches’ help. “It is quite possible that, as the story goes, the Evil Spirit can carnally know the sorceresses, get them with child and cause all manner of mischief.”[1161] Changeling children of the sort are nothing but a “lump of flesh without a soul”; the devil is the soul, as Luther says elsewhere,[1162] for which reason he declared, in 1541, such children should simply be drowned; he recalls how he had already given this advice in one such case at Dessau, viz. that such a child, then twelve years of age, should be smothered.[1163]

It sometimes happens, so he says, that animals, cats for instance, intent on doing harm, are wounded and that afterwards the witches are found to have wounds in the same part of the body. In such case the animals were all sham.[1164] A mouse trying to steal milk is hurt somewhere, and the next day the witch comes and begs for oil for the wound which she has in the very same place.[1165] If milk and butter are placed on coals the devil, he says, will be obliged to call up the witches who did the mischief.[1166] “It is also said that people who eat butter that has been bewitched, eat nothing but mud.”[1167]

In such metamorphoses into animals it was not, however, the witches who underwent the change, nor were the animals really hurt, but it was “the devil who transformed himself into the animal” which was only apparently wounded; afterwards, however, “he imprints the marks of the wounds on the women so as to make them believe they had taken part in the occurrence.”[1168] At any rate this is the curiously involved explanation he once gives of the difficult problem.

In some passages he, like others too, is reluctant to accept the theory that afterwards grew so prevalent, particularly during the witch persecutions in the 17th century, viz. that the witches were in the habit of flying through the air. In 1540 he says that this, like the changes mentioned above, was merely conjured up before the mind by the devil, and was thus a delusion of the senses and a Satanic deception.[1169] Yet in 1538 he assumes that it was in Satan’s power to carry those who had surrendered themselves to him bodily through the air;[1170] he had heard of one instance where even repentance and confession could not save such a man, when at the point of death, from being carried off by the devil. At an earlier date he had spoken without any hesitation of the witches who ride “on goats and broom-sticks and travel on mantles.”[1171]

The witches are the most credulous and docile tools of the devil; they are his hand and foot for the harm of mankind. They are “devil’s own whores who give themselves up to Satan and with whom he holds fleshly intercourse.”[1172]

In his last year (1546), having to travel to Eisleben, he fancies so many fiends must be assembled there on his account, i.e. to oppose him, “that hell and the whole world must for the nonce be empty of devils.”[1187] At Eisleben he even believed that he had a sight of the devil himself.[1188]

Three years before this he complains that no one is strong enough in belief in the devil; the “struggle between the devils and the angels” affrights him; for it is to be apprehended that “the angels whilst fighting for us often get the worst for a time.”[1189] His glance often surveys the great world-combat which the few who believe wage on Christ’s side against Satan, and which has lasted since the dawn of history; now, at the very end of the world, he sees the result more clearly. Christ is able to save His followers from the devil’s claws only by exerting all His strength; they, like Luther, suffer from weakness of faith, just as Christ Himself did in the Garden of Olives(!); they, like Luther, stumble, because Christ loves to show Himself weak in the struggle with the devil; mankind’s and God’s rights have come off second best during the age-long contest with the devil. In Jewry, for which Luther’s hatred increases with age, he sees men so entirely delivered over to the service of the devil that “all the heathen in a lump” are simply nothing in comparison with the Jews; but even the “fury of the Jews is mere jest and child’s play” compared with the devilish corruption of the Papacy.

“The devil is there; he has great claws and whosoever falls into them him he holds fast, as they find to their cost in Popery. Hence let us always pray and fear God.” This in 1543.[1190] But we must also fear the devil, and very much too, for, as he solemnly declares in 1542: “Our last end is that we fear the devil”; for the worst sins are “delusions of the devil.”[1191] “The whole age is Satanic,”[1192] and the “activity of the devil is now manifest”; the speaker longs for “God at length to mock at Satan.”[1193] “The devil is all-powerful at present, several foreign kings are his train-bearers.... God Himself must come in order to resist the proud spirit.... Shortly Christ will make an end of his lies and murders.”[1194]

The whole of his work, the struggle for the Evangel, seems to him at times as one long wrestling with the boundless might of Satan.[1195] All his life, so he said in his old age, he had forged ahead “tempestuously” and “hit out with sledge-hammer blows”; but it was all against Satan. “I rush in head foremost, but ... against the devil.”[1196] As early as 1518, however, he knew the “thoughts of Satan.”[1197]

“Satan has often had me by the throat.... He has frequently beset me so hard that I knew not whether I was dead or alive ... but with God’s Word I have withstood him.”[1202] He lies with me in my bed, so he says on one occasion; “he sleeps much more with me than my Katey.”[1203] His struggle with him degenerates into a hand-to-hand brawl, “I have to be at grips with him daily.”[1204] His pupils related, that on his own giving, when he was an old man “the devil had walked with him in the dormitory of the [former] monastery ... plaguing and tormenting him”; that “he had one or two such devils who were in the habit of lying in wait” for him, and, “that, when unable to get the better of his heart, they attacked and troubled his head.”[1205] Whether the narrators of these accounts are referring to actual apparitions or not does not much matter.

Later on, when dealing with his delusions, we shall have to speak of the diabolical apparitions Luther is supposed to have had. There is no doubt, however, that Luther’s first admirers took his statements concerning his experiences with the devil rather more seriously than he intended, as, for instance, when Cyriacus Spangenberg in his “Theander Lutherus”[1206] relates a disputation on the Winkle-Mass which he supposed Luther to have actually held with the devil, and even goes so far as to prove from the bruises which the devil in person inflicted on him that Luther was “really a holy martyr.”[1207] Even some of his opponents, like CochlÆus, fancied that because Luther said “in a sermon that he had eaten more than one mouthful of salt with the devil, he had therefore most probably been in direct communication with the devil himself, the more so since some persons were said to have seen the two hobnobbing together.”[1208] Here we shall merely point out generally that to Luther the power of Satan, his delusions and persecutions, were something that seemed very near,[1209] an uncanny feeling that increased as he grew older and as his physical strength gave out.

“The devil is now very powerful,” he says in 1540, “for he no longer deals with us through the agency of others, of Duke George, for instance, or the Englishman [Henry VIII], or of the Mayence fellow [Albert], but fights against us visibly. Against him we must pray diligently.”[1210] “Didn’t he even ride many grand and holy prophets. Was not David a great prophet? And yet even he was devil-ridden, and so was Saul and ‘Bileam’ too.”[1211]

“We must muster all our courage so as not to dread the devil.”[1217] We must “clasp the faith to our very bosom” and “cheerfully fling to the winds the apparitions of the spirits”; “they seek in vain to affright men.”[1218] Contempt of the devil and awakening of faith are, according to Luther, the best remedies against all assaults of the devil.[1219] A man who really has the faith may even set an example that others cannot imitate.[1220] Luther knows, for instance, of a doctor of medicine who with boundless faith stood up to Satan when the latter, horns and all, appeared to him; the brave man even succeeded in breaking off the horns; but, in a similar case, when another tried to do the same in a spirit of boasting, he was killed by Satan.[1221] Hence let us have faith, but let our faith be humble!

But, provided we have faith and rely on Christ, we may well show the devil our contempt for him, vex him and mock at his power and cunning. He himself, as he says, was given to breaking out into music and song, the better to show the devil that he despised him, for “our hymns are very galling to him”; on the contrary, he rejoices and has a laugh when we are upset and cry out “alas and alack!”[1222] To remain alone is not good. “This is what I do”; rather than be alone “I go to my swine-herd Johann or to see the pigs.”[1223]

In this connection Luther can tell some very coarse and vulgar jokes, both at his own and others’ expense, in illustration of the contempt which the devil deserves; they cannot here be passed over in silence.

Thus, on April 15, 1538, he relates the story of a woman of Magdeburg whom Satan vexed by running over her bed at night “like rats and mice. As he would not cease the woman put her a—— over the bedside, presented him with a f—— (if such language be permissible) and said: ‘There, devil, there’s a staff, take it in your hand and go pilgriming with it to Rome to the Pope your idol.’” Ever after the devil left her in peace, for “he is a proud spirit and cannot endure to be treated contemptuously.”[1224] According to Lauterbach, who gives the story in somewhat briefer form, Luther sapiently remarked: “Such examples do not always hold good, and are dangerous.”[1225]

He himself was nevertheless fond of expressing his contempt for the devil after a similar way when the latter assailed him with remorse of conscience.

“I can drive away the devil with a single f——.”[1226] “To shame him we may tell him: Kiss my a——”,[1227] or “Ease yourself into your shirt and tie it round your neck,” etc.[1228] On May 7, 1532, when troubled in mind and afraid lest “the thunder should strike him, he said: ‘Lick my a——, I want to sleep, not to hold a disputation.’”[1229] On another occasion he exclaims: “The devil shall lick my a—— even though I should have sinned.”[1230] When the devil teased him at night, “suggesting all sorts of strange thoughts to him,” he at last said to him: “Kiss me on the seat! God is not angry as you would have it.” Of course, seeing that the devil “‘fouls’ the knowledge of God,” he must expect to be “fouled” in his turn. Luther frequently said, so the Table-Talk relates, that he would end by sending “into his a—— where they belonged” those “twin devils” who were in the habit of prying on him and tormenting him mentally and bodily; for “they had brought him to such a pass that he was fit for nothing.”[1231] The Pope had once played him (Luther) the same trick: “He has stuck me into the devil’s behind”;[1232] “for I snap at the Pope’s ban and am his devil, therefore does he hate and persecute me.”[1233]

He relates, in May, 1532, according to Schlaginhaufen’s Notes, his method of dismissing the devil by the use of stronger and stronger hints: When the devil came to him at night in order to plague him, he first of all told him to let him sleep, because he must work during the day and needed all the rest he could get. Then, if Satan continued to upbraid him with his sins, he would answer mockingly that he had been guilty of a lot more sins which the devil had forgotten to mention, for instance, he had, etc. (there follows the choice simile of the shirt as given above); thirdly, “if he still goes on accusing me of sins I say to him contemptuously: ‘Sancte Satanas ora pro me; you have never done a wrong and you alone are holy; be off to God and get grace for yourself.’”[1234]

The way in which Bugenhagen or Pomeranus, the pastor of Wittenberg, with Luther’s fullest approval, drove the devil out of the butter churn (vol. iii., p. 229 f.) became famous at Wittenberg, and, thanks to the Table-Talk, elsewhere too. It may here be remarked that the incident was no mere joke. For when, in 1536, the question of the harm wrought by the witches was discussed amongst Luther’s guests, and Bartholomew Bernhardi, the Provost, complained that his cow had been bewitched for two years, so that he had been unable to get any milk from her, Luther related quite seriously what had taken place in Bugenhagen’s house. (“Then Pommer came to the rescue, scoffed at the devil and emptied his bowels into the churn,” etc.). According to Lauterbach’s “Diary” Luther returned to the incident in 1538 and stamped the whole proceeding with his approval: “Dr. Pommer’s plan is the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with muck and stir it well up, for then all their things begin to stink.”[1235] What is even more remarkable than the strange practice itself is the way in which Luther comes to speak of “Pommer’s plan.” It is his intention to show that the method of combating witches had made progress since Catholic times. For, in Lauterbach, the passage runs: “The village clergy and schoolmasters had a plan of their own [for counteracting spells] and plagued them [the witches] not a little, but Dr. Pommer’s plan, etc. (as above).”[1236] Hence not only did Luther sanction the superstition of earlier ages, but he even sought to improve on it by the invention of new practices of his own.

Luther is also addicted to the habit dear to the German Middle Ages of using the devil as a comic figure; as he advanced in age, however, he tended to drop this habit and also the kindred one of chasing the devil away by filthy abuse; the truth is that the devil had now assumed in his eyes a grimmer and more tragic aspect.

Formerly he had been fond of describing in his joking way how the devil, “though he had never actually taken his doctor’s degree,”[1237] proved himself an “able logician” in his suggestions and disputations; when he brought forward objections Luther would reply: “Devil, tell me something new; what you say I already know.”[1238] In his book on the “Winkle-Mass,” pretending to “make a little confession,” he tells how, “on one occasion, awakening at midnight,” the devil began a disputation against the Mass with the words: “Hearken, oh most learned Doctor, are you aware that for some fifteen years you said such Winkle-Masses nearly every day?”[1239] Whereupon he had “seized on the old weapons” which “in Popery he had learnt to put on and to use” and had sought an excuse. “To this the devil retorted: ‘Friend, tell me where this is written, etc.’”[1240] Formerly he had been fond of poking fun at the Papists by telling them how they “were beset merely by naughty little devils, legal rather than theological ones;[1241] that they were tempted only to homicide, adultery and fornication,” in short, to sins of the second table of the Law, by “puny fiendkins and little petty devils,” whereas we on the other hand have “by us the great devils who are doctores theologiÆ”; “these attack us as the leaders of the army, for they tempt us to the great sins against the first table,” to question the forgiveness of sins, to doubts against faith and to despair.[1242]

He was very inventive and quite indefatigable in devising new epithets with the help of the devil’s name; his adversaries were, according to him, “full of devils, on whose backs moreover lived other and worse devils”; it seems to him to fall all too short of the truth to say they are “endevilled,” “perdevilled,” or “superdevilled” and “the children of Satan.”[1243] The devil’s mother, grandmother and brothers and sisters are frequently alluded to by Luther, particularly when in a merry mood. In hours of gloom or emotion he could, however, curse people with such words as “may the devil take you,”[1244] “May the devil pay you out,” or “May he tread you under foot!”

The first of his German controversial works against a literary opponent was his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome wider dem hochberumpten Romanisten tzu Leiptzk”[1247] (the Franciscan Alveld or Alfeld), dating from May and June, 1520. Here he starts with a comical description of the “brave heroes in the market place at Leipzig, so well armed as we have never seen the like before. Their helmets they wear on their feet, their swords on their heads, their shields and breastplates hang down their back, and their lances they grip by the blade.... If Leipzig can produce such giants then that land must indeed be fertile.” On the last page of the same writing he puts the concluding touch to his work by telling Alveld, the “rude miller’s beast,” that he does “not yet know how to bray his hee-haw, hee-haw”; were I, says Luther, “to permit all the wantonness of these thick-heads even the very washerwomen would end by writing against me.” “What really helps it if a poor frog [like this fellow] blows himself out? Even were he to swell himself out to bursting-point he would never equal an ox.”

In his first German booklet against Emser, viz. his “An den Bock zu Leyptzck” (1521),[1248] he plays on the motto of Emser’s coat-of-arms “Beware of the goat.” There was really no call for Emser to inscribe these words on his note-paper, for from his whole behaviour there was no doubt that he was indeed a goat, and also that he could “do no more than butt.” Luther’s reply to all his threats would be: “Dear donkey, don’t lick! But God save the poor nanny-goats, whose horns are wrapped in silk, from such a he-goat; as for me, so God wills, there is no fear. Have you never heard the fable of the ass who tried to roar as loud as the lion? I myself might have been afraid of you had I not known you were an ass,” etc.

It is certainly not easy to believe his assertion, that it was only against his will that he had recourse to all this derision which he heaped on his adversaries in religious matters of such vital importance. He has it that his words, “though maybe biting and sarcastic,” are really “spoken from a heart that is breaking with grief and has been obliged to turn what is serious into abuse.”[1249] As a matter of fact the temptation to use just such weapons was too great, and the prospect of success too alluring for us to place much reliance in such an assurance. His “grief” was of quite another kind.

At a later date his humour, or rather his caustic and satirical manner of treating his opponents, looked to him so characteristic of his way of writing, that as he said, it would be quite easy to tell at a glance which were the polemical tracts due to his pen, even though they did not bear his name. This was his opinion of his “satirical list” of the relics of the Cardinal of Mayence.[1250] Writing of this work to his friend Jonas he says: “Whoever reads it and has ever been familiar with my ideas and my pen will say: Here is Luther; the Cardinal too will say: This is the work of that scamp Luther!... But never mind; if they pipe then I insist on dancing, and, if I survive, I hope one day to tread a measure with the bride of Mayence [the Cardinal].” He had still “some sweet tit-bits” which he would like “to lay on her red and rosy lips.”[1251] This last quotation may serve as a specimen of the rough humour found in his controversial letters.

The reader already knows how the Papacy had to bear the brunt of such jests and of an irony which often descends to the depths of vulgarity. (Above, vol. iii., p. 232-235; vol. iv., pp. 295 f., 304 f, 318 ff.)

In order to dispel the anxiety felt by Catherine Bora during her husband’s absence, he would send her letters full of affection and of humorous accounts of his doings. He tells her, for instance, how, in consequence of her excessive fears for him “which hindered her from sleeping,” everything about him had conspired to destroy him; how a fire “at our inn just next door to our room” had tried to burn him, how a heavy rock had fallen in order to kill him; “the rock really had a mind to justify your solicitude, but the holy angels prevented it.”[1252] In such cheerful guise does he relate little untoward incidents. “You try to take care of your God,” he writes to her in a letter already quoted, “just as though He were not Almighty and able to create ten Dr. Martins were the old one to be drowned in the Saale, suffocated in the coal-hole, or eaten up by the wolf.”[1253]

He was also joking, when, about the same time, i.e. during his stay with the Counts of Mansfeld, he used the words which recently were taken all too seriously by a Catholic polemist and made to constitute a charge against Luther’s morals: “At present, thank God, I am well, only that I am so beset by pretty women as once more to fear for my chastity.”[1254]

The irony with which he frequently speaks and writes of both himself and his friends is often not free from frivolity; we may recall, for instance, his ill-timed jest concerning his three wives;[1255] or his report to Catherine from Eisleben: “On the whole we have enough to gorge and swill, and should have a jolly time were this tiresome business to let us.”[1256] The last passage reminds us of his words elsewhere: I feed like a Bohemian and swill like a German.[1257] Among other jests at Catherine’s expense we find in the Table-Talk the threat that soon the time will come when “we men shall be allowed several wives,” words which perhaps are a humorous echo of the negotiations concerning the Hessian bigamy.[1258]

Now and again Luther, by means of his witticisms, tried to teach his wife some wholesome lessons. The titles by which he addresses her may have been intended as delicate hints that her management of the household was somewhat lordly and high-handed: My Lord Katey, Lord Moses, my Chain (Kette) (“catena mea”). To seek to infer from this that she was a “tyrant,” or to see in it an admission on his part that he was but her slave, would be as mistaken as to be shocked at his manner of addressing her elsewhere in his letters, e.g. “to the holy, careful lady, the most holy lady Doctor; to my beloved lady Doctor Self-martyr; to the deeply-learned Lady Catherine,” etc.

He exhorts Prince Joachim of Anhalt, who had much to suffer from the “Tempter” and from “melancholy,” to be always cheerful, since God has commanded us “to be glad in His presence.” “I, who have passed my life in sorrow and looking at the black side of things, now seek for joy, and find it whenever I can. We now have, praise be to God, so much knowledge [through the Evangel] that we can afford to be cheerful with a good conscience.” It was perfectly true—so he goes on in a strangely shamefaced manner, to tell the pious but faint-hearted Prince—that, at times, he himself still dreaded cheerfulness, as though it were a sin, just as the Prince was inclined to do; “but God-fearing, honourable, modest joy of good and pious people pleases God well, even though occasionally there be a word or merry tale too much.”[1272]

“Nothing does more harm than a sadness,” he declares in 1542. “It drieth up the bones, as we read in Prov. xvii.[22]. Therefore let a young man be cheerful, and for this reason I would inscribe over his table the words ‘Sadness hath killed many, etc.’” (Eccles. xxx. 25).[1273]—“Thoughts of fear,” he insists on another occasion, “are the sure weapons of death”; “Such thoughts have done me more harm than all my enemies and all my labours.” They were at times so insistent that my “efforts against them were in vain.” ... “So depraved is our nature that we are not then open to any consolation; still, they must be fought against by every means.”[1274]

For certain spells, particularly in earlier years, Luther nevertheless succeeded so well in assuming a cheerful air and in keeping it up for a considerable while, in spite of the oppression he felt within, that those who came into contact with him were easily deceived. Of this he once assures us himself; after referring to the great “spiritual temptations” he had undergone with “fear and trembling” he proceeds: “Many think that because I appear outwardly cheerful mine is a bed of roses, but God knows how it stands with me in my life.”[1275]

In a word, we frequently find Luther using jocularity as an antidote against depression. As he had come to look upon it as the best medicine against what he was wont to call his “temptations” and had habituated himself to its use, and as these “temptations” practically never ceased, so, too, he was loath to deprive himself of so welcome a remedy even in the dreariest days of his old age. In 1530, to all intents and purposes, he openly confesses that such was the case. In a letter to Spalatin, written from the Coburg at a time when he was greatly disturbed, he describes for his friend’s amusement the Diet which the birds were holding on the roof of the Castle. His remarks he brings to a conclusion with the words: “Enough of such jests, earnest and needful though they be for driving away the thoughts that worry me—if indeed they can be driven away.”[1276]

Still deeper is the glimpse we get into his inmost thoughts when, in his serious illness of 1527, he voiced his regret for his free and offensive way of talking, remarking that it was often due to his seeking “to drive away the sadness,” to which his “weak flesh” was liable.

One particular instance in which he resorted to jest as a remedy is related in the Table-Talk; “In 1541, on the Sunday after Michaelmas, Dr. Martin was very cheerful and jested with his good friends at table.... He said: Do not take it amiss of me, for I have received many bad tidings to-day and have just read a troublesome letter. Things are ever at their best,” so he concludes defiantly, “when the devil attacks us in this way.”[1277]—It is just the same sort of defiance, that, for all his fear of the devil, leads him to sum up all the worst that the devil can do to him, and then to pour scorn upon it. During the pressing anxieties of the Coburg days at the time of the Diet of Augsburg, it really seemed to him that the devil had “vowed to have his life.” He comforts himself with the words: “Well, if he eats me, he shall, please God, swallow such a purge as shall gripe his belly and make his anus seem all too small.”[1278]

The devil, according to this “historia ... which happened on Christmas Eve, 1534,” had appeared to a Lutheran pastor in the confessional, had blasphemed Christ and departed leaving behind a horrible stench. In the Preface Luther pretends to be making enquiries of Amsdorf, “the chief and true Bishop of Magdeburg,” as he calls him, as to the truth and the meaning of the apparition. He begs him “to paint and depict the pious penitent as he deserves,” though quite aware that Amsdorf, the Bishop, would refer back the matter to him as the Pope (“which indeed I am”). He had ready the proper absolution which Amsdorf was to give the devil: “I, by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the most holy Father Pope Luther the First, deny you the grace of God and life everlasting and herewith consign you to hell,” etc. Meanwhile he himself gives his view of the tale, which he assumes to be true, and, as so often elsewhere when he has to do with the devil, proceeds to mingle mockery of the coarsest sort with bitter earnest. When the Evil One ventures to approach so close to the Evangel, every nerve of Luther is strung to hatred against the devil and his Roman Pope, both of whom he overwhelms with a shower of the foulest abuse.

“The devil’s jests are for us Christians a very serious matter”; having a great multitude of kings, princes, bishops and clergy on his side he makes bold to mock at Christ; but let us pray that he may soil himself even as he soiled himself in Paradise; our joy, our consolation and our hope is, that the seed of the woman shall crush his head. Hence, so he exclaims, the above absolution sent to Amsdorf is amply justified. Like confession, like absolution; “as the prayer, so the incense,” with which words he turns to another diabolical apparition, which a drunken parson had in bed; he had meant to conclude the canonical hours by reciting Compline in bed, and, while doing so, “se concacavit,”[1280] whereupon the devil appeared to him and said: “As the prayer, so also is the incense.”[1281]

He applies the same “humorous” story to the Pope and his praying monks in his “An den Kurfursten zu Sachsen und Landgraven zu Hesse von dem gefangenen H. von Brunswig” (1545).[1282] “They neither can pray nor want to pray, nor do they know what it is to pray nor how one ought to pray, because they have not the Word and the faith”; moreover, their only aim is to make the “kings and lords” believe they are devout and holy.[1283] “On one occasion when a tipsy priest was saying Compline in bed, he heaved during the recital and gave vent to a big ‘bombart’; Ah, said the devil, that’s just right, as the prayer so also is the incense!” All the prayers of the Pope and “his colleges and convents” are not one whit better “than that drunken priest’s Compline and incense. Nay, if only they were as good there might still be some hope of the Pope growing sober, and of his saying Matins better than he did his stinking Compline. But enough of this.”[1284]