If at Rome they had to prove that the Keys had been given to St. Peter “the Pope’s nether garments would fare badly.”[1099] Of the Papal dispensation for the clergy to marry, which many confidently expected, Luther says, that it would be just the thing for the devil; “let him open his bowels over his dispensation and sling it about his neck.”[1100]—The Princes and nobles (those who were on the other side) “soiled their breeches so shamefully in the Peasant War that even now they can be smelt afar off.”[1101]—He declares of the head of the Church of Rome: “Among real Christians no one is more utterly despicable than the Pope ... he stinks like a hoopoe’s nest.”[1102] Of those generally who opposed the Divine Word he says: “No smell is worse than yours.”[1103]—“Good-bye, beloved Rome; let what stinks go on stinking.”[1104]
“It is stupid of the Papists to wear breeches. How if they were to get drunk and let slip a motion?”[1105] This concern we find expressed in Luther’s “Etliche Sprüche wider das Concilium Obstantiense” (1535). And it is quite in keeping with other utterances in the same writing. He there speaks of the “dragons’ heads that peep and spew out of the hind-quarters of the Pope-Ass,”[1106] and on the same page ventures to address our Saviour as follows: “Beloved Lord Jesus Christ, it is high time that Thou shouldst lay bare, back and front, the shame of the furious, bloodthirsty, purple-clad harridan and reveal it to the whole world in preparation for the dawn of Thy bright Coming.”
Naturally he is no less unrestrained in his attacks on all who defended Popery. Of Eck’s ideas on chastity he remarks: “Your he-goat to your nostrils smells like balsam.”[1107] Of Cardinal Albert of Mayence and his party he wrote, during the Schönitz controversy: These “knaves and liars” “bring out foul rags fit only for devils and men to use in the closet.”[1108] The epithet, merd-priest, merd-bishop, is several times applied by him to members of the Catholic hierarchy.[1109] “The poor merd-priest wanted to ease himself, but, alas, there was nothing in his bowels.”[1110]
The Jurists who still clung to Canon Law he declares “invade the churches with their Pope like so many swine; yet there is another place whither they might more seemingly betake themselves if they wish to wipe the fundament of their Pope.”[1111] The Italians think that “whatever a Cardinal gives vent to, however vile it be, is a new article of faith promulgated for the benefit of the Germans.”[1112] To the Papists who threaten him with a Council he says: “If they are angry let them ease themselves into their breeches and sling it round their neck; that will be real balsam and pax for such thin-skinned saints.”[1113]—The fanatics who opposed his teaching on the Sacrament were also twitted on the score that “they would surely ease themselves on it and make use of it in the privy.”[1114] The Princes and scoundrel nobles faithfully followed the devil’s lead, who cannot bear to listen to God’s Word “but shows it his backside.”[1115] How are we best to answer an opponent, even the Pope? As though he were a “despicable drunkard.” “Give them the fig” (i.e. make a certain obscene gesture with the fist).[1116]—Such is his own remedy in all hostility and every misfortune: “I give them the fig.”[1117] His usual counsel is, however, to turn one’s “posterior” on them.
The Pope is the “filth which the devil has dropped in the Church”; he is the “devil’s bishop and the devil himself.”[1118]—Commenting on the Papal formula “districte mandantes,” he adds: “Ja, in Ars.”[1119] They want “me to run to Rome and fetch forgiveness of sins. Yes, forsooth, an evacuation!”[1120]
Of the Pope’s Bull of excommunication he says “they ought to order his horrid ban to be taken to the back quarters where children of Adam go to stool; it might then be used as a pocket-handkerchief.”[1121]—We must seize hold of the “vices” of the Pope and his clergy and show them up as real lechers; thus should all those who hold the office of preacher “set their droppings under the very noses of the Pope and the bishops.”[1122] “The spirit of the Pope, the father of lies,” wishes to display his wisdom by so altering the Word of God, that it “reeks of his stale filth.”[1123]—These people, who, like the Pope, are so learned in the Scripture, are “clever sophists,” experts in equine anal functions.[1124] They have “taken it upon themselves to come to the assistance of the whole world with their chastity and good works,” but, in reality, they merely “stuff our mouths with horse-dung.”[1125]
Of the alleged Papal usurpations he exclaims: “Were such muck as this stirred up in a free Council, what a stench there would be!”[1126]—The same favourite figure of speech helps him against the Sacramentarians: “What useful purpose can be served by my raking up all the devil’s filth?”[1127]—This phrase was at least more in place when Luther, referring to Philip of Hesse’s bigamy, said, that he “was not going to stir up the filth under the public nose.”[1128]—After their defeat he refused to comply with the demand of the peasants, that he should support them in their lawlessness: They want us to lend them a hand in “stirring up thoroughly the filth that is so eager to stink, till their mouths and noses are choked with it.”[1129] But it is to the Pope and his followers that, by preference, he applies such imagery. “They have forsaken the stool of St. Peter and St. Paul and now parade their filth [concerning original sin]; to such a pass have they come that they no longer believe anything, whether concerning the Gospel, or Christ, or even their own teaching.”[1130]—“This is the filth they now purvey, viz. that we are saved by our works; this is the devil’s own poisonous tail.”[1131]—Of those who awaited the decision of a Council he writes: “Let the devil wait if he chooses.... The members of the body must not wait till the filth says and decrees whether the body is healthy or not. We are determined to learn this from the members themselves and not from the urine, excrement and filth. In the same way we shall not wait for the Pope and bishops in Council to say: This is right. For they are no part of the body, or clean and healthy members, but merely the filth of squiredom, merd spattered on the sleeve and veritable ordure, for they persecute the true Evangel, well knowing it to be the Word of God. Therefore we can see they are but filth, stench and limbs of Satan.”[1132]
At the time of the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, he informed the delegates of his party: “You are treating, not with men, but with the very gates of hell.... But they have fallen foul of the wisdom of God and [the final sentence of this Latin epistle is in German] soil themselves with their own filthy wisdom. Amen, Amen.”[1133]—The words “bescheissen” and “beschmeissen” (cp. popular French: “emmerder”) flow naturally from Luther’s pen. Neobulus, the Hessian defender of the bigamy, he describes as “a prince of darkness,” who “has ‘defiled’ himself with his wisdom”;[1134] the papal “Jackanapes” who “declare that the Lutherans have risen in revolt,” have likewise “‘defiled’ themselves with their sophistry.”[1135]
He asserts he can say “with a clear conscience that the Pope is a merd-ass and the foe of God.”[1136] “The Pope-Ass has emitted a great and horrible ordure here.... A wonder it did not tear his anus or burst his belly.” “There lies the Pope in his own dung.”[1137] “The Popes are so fond of lies and scurrilities that their paunch waxes fat on them”; they are waiting to see “whether the Pope’s motions will not ultimately scare the kings.... The Papal hypocrites—I had almost said the devil’s excrements—boast of being masters over the whole world.”[1138]
Amidst these unavoidable quotations from Luther’s unpleasant vocabulary of abuse the historian is confronted again and again with the question: What relation does this coarser side of Luther’s style bear to the manners of his times? We have already pointed out how great the distance is between him and all other writers, particularly such as treat of religious subjects in a popular or polemical vein; obviously it is with the latter category of writings that his should be compared, rather than with the isolated aberrations of certain writers of romance or the lascivious works produced by the Humanists.[1139] Various quotations from contemporaries of Luther’s, even from friends of the innovations, have shown that his language both astonished and shocked them.[1140] It was felt that none other could pretend to measure himself beside this giant of invective.
Duke George of Saxony on one occasion told Luther in no kindly way that he knew peasants who spoke just the same, “particularly when the worse for drink”; indeed they went one better and “knew how to use their fists”; among them Luther would be taken for a swine-herd.[1141]
“Their inexhaustible passion for abuse,” wrote a Catholic contemporary in 1526, “makes me not a little suspicious of the teaching of this sect. No one is accounted a good pupil of Luther’s who is not an adept in abusive language; Luther’s own abuse knows no bounds.... Who can put up with such vituperation the like of which has not been heard for ages?... Read all this man’s writings and you will hardly find a page that is not sullied with vile abuse.”[1142]
It is true that the lowest classes, particularly in Saxony, as it would appear, were addicted to the use of smutty language in which they couched their resentment or their wit; this, however, was among themselves. In the writings of the Wittenberg professor of theology, on the other hand, this native failing emerges unabashed into the light of day, and the foul sayings which Luther—in his anxiety to achieve popularity—gathered from the lips of the rabble swept like a flood over the whole of the German literary field. Foul language became habitual, and, during the polemics subsequent on Luther’s death, whether against the Catholics or among the members of the Protestant fold, was a favourite weapon of attack with those who admired Luther’s drastic ways.
As early as 1522 Thomas Blaurer, a youthful student at Wittenberg, wrote: “No abuse, however low and shameful,” must be spared until Popery is loathed by all.[1143] Thus the object in view was to besmirch the Papacy by pelting it with mire. When, in 1558, Tilman Hesshusen, an old Wittenberg student, became Professor of Theology and General Superintendent at Heidelberg and thundered with much invective against his opponents and in favour of the Confession of Augsburg, even his friends asked the question, “whether the thousand devils he was wont to purvey from the pulpit helped to promote the pure cause of the Lutheran Evangel?” At Bremen, preaching against Hardenberg, a follower of Melanchthon’s, he declared, that he had turned the Cathedral into a den of murderers.[1144] In 1593 Nigrinus incited the people to abuse the Papists with the words: “Up against them boldly and fan the flames so that things may be made right warm for them!” George Steinhausen remarks in this connection in his History of German Civilisation: “Luther became quite a pattern of violent abuse and set the tone for the anti-popish ranters, who, most of them, belonged to the lowest class. On their side the Catholics, for instance, Hans Salat of Lucern or the convert Johann Engerd, were also not behindhand in this respect.... The preachers, however, were always intent on egging them on to yet worse attacks.”[1145]
The manner in which Luther in his polemics treated his opponents, wrote Döllinger in his “Sketch of Luther,” “is really quite unparalleled. He never displays any of that kindly charity, which, while hating the error, seeks to win over those who err; on the contrary, with him all is abuse and anger, defiance and contemptuous scorn voiced in a tempest of invective, often of a most personal and vulgar kind.... It is quite wrong to say that Luther in this respect merely followed in the wake of his contemporaries; this is clear enough to everyone familiar with the literature of that age and the one which preceded it; the virulence of Luther’s writings astonished everybody; those who did not owe him allegiance were not slow to express their amazement, to blame him and to emphasise the harmful effects of these outbursts of abuse, whilst his disciples and admirers were wont to appeal to Luther’s ‘heroic spirit’ which lifted him above the common herd and, as it were, dispensed him from the observance of the moral law and allowed him to say things that would have been immoral and criminal in others.”[1146]
Especially his obscene abuse of the Pope did those of Luther’s contemporaries who remained faithful to the Church brand as wicked, immoral and altogether unchristian. “What ears can listen to these words without being offended?” wrote Emser, “or who is the pious Christian who is not cut to the quick by this cruel insult and blasphemy offered to the vicar of Christ? Is this sort of thing Christian or Evangelical?”[1147]
Erasmus’s complaints concerning Luther’s abusiveness were re-echoed, though with bated breath, by those of the new faith whose passion had not entirely carried them away. The great scholar, speaking of Luther’s slanders on him and his faith, had even said that they were such as to compel a reasonable reader to come to the conclusion that he was either completely blinded by hate, or suffering from some mental malady, or else possessed by the devil.[1148] Many of Luther’s own party agreed with Erasmus, at any rate when he wrote: “This unbridled abuse showered upon all, poisons the reader’s mind, particularly in the case of the uneducated, and can promote only anger and dissension.”[1149]
The Protestant theologians of Switzerland were much shocked by Luther’s ways. To the complaints already quoted from their letters and writings may be added the following utterances of Zwingli’s successor, Heinrich Bullinger, who likewise judged Luther’s offensive tone to be quite without parallel: Most of Luther’s books “are cast in such a mould as to give grievous scandal to many simple folk, so that they become suspicious of the Evangelical cause as a whole.... His writings are for the most part nothing but invective and abuse.... He sends to the devil all who do not at once side with him. Thus all his censure is imbued with hostility and contains little that is friendly or fatherly.” Seeing that the world already teems with abuse and curses, Bullinger thinks that it would better befit Luther “to be the salt” and to strive to mend matters, instead of which he only makes bad worse and incites his preachers to “abuse and blaspheme.” “For there are far too many preachers who have sought and found in Luther’s books a load of bad words.... From them we hear of nothing but of fanatics, rotters, Sacramentarians, foes of the Sacrament, blasphemers, scoundrels, hypocrites, rebels, devils, heretics and endless things of the like.... And this, too, is praised by many [who say]: Why, even Luther, the Prophet and Apostle of the Germans, does the same!”[1150]
Of Luther’s “Schem Hamphoras” Bullinger wrote: “Were it written, not by a famous pastor of souls, but by a swine-herd,” it would still be hard to excuse.[1151] In a writing to Bucer, Bullinger also protested against endangering the Evangel by such unexampled abuse and invective. If no one could stop Luther then the Papists were right when they said of him, and the preachers who followed in his footsteps, that they were no “Evangelists, but rather scolding, foul-mouthed buffoons.”[1152]
In answer to such complaints Martin Bucer wrote to Bullinger admitting the existence of grievous shortcomings, but setting against it Luther’s greatness as evinced in the admiration he called forth. The party interests of the Evangel and his hatred of the Papal Antichrist made him to regard as merely human in Luther, frailties which to others were a clear proof of his lack of a Divine mission. As Bucer puts it: “I am willing to admit what you say of Luther’s venomous discourses and writings. Oh, that I could only change his ways.... But the fellow allows himself to be carried away by the storm that rages within him so that no one can stop him. It is God, however, Who makes use of him to proclaim His Evangel and to overthrow Antichrist.... He has made Luther to be so greatly respected in so many Churches that no one thinks of opposing him, still less of removing him from his position. Most people are proud of him, even those whom he does not acknowledge as his followers; many admire and copy his faults rather than his virtues; but huge indeed is the multitude of faithful who revere him as the Apostle of Christ.... I too give him the first place in the sacred ministry. It is true there is much about him that is human, but who is there who displays nothing but what is Divine?” In spite of all he was a great tool of God (“admirandum organum Dei pro salute populi Dei”); such was the opinion of all pious and learned men who really knew him.[1153]
Yet Bucer had some strong things to say to Landgrave Philip of Hesse, regarding Luther’s addiction to abuse. To try and persuade him to deal courteously with his foes, particularly with the Zürichers after their “mistaken booklet,” so Bucer writes to the Prince, “would be like trying to put out a fire with oil. If Master Philip and I—who have kept rigidly and loyally to the Concord—succeed in turning away the man’s wrath from ourselves, then we shall esteem ourselves lucky.” The “foolhardiness” of the Zürichers has “so enraged him, that even Emperors, though they should be good Evangelicals, would find it hard to pacify him.” “No one has ever got the better of Dr. Luther in invective.”[1154]
Fresh light is thrown on the psychological side of Luther’s controversial methods when we bring together those utterances in which his sense of his own greatness finds expression. We must observe a little more closely Luther’s inner thoughts and feelings from the standpoint of his own ideal.
Characteristic utterances of Luther’s regarding his own gifts and excellencies, the wisdom and courage displayed in his undertaking and the important place he would occupy in history as the discoverer and proclaimer of the Evangelical truth, are to be met with in such plenty, both in his works and in the authentic notes of his conversations, that we have merely to select some of the most striking and bring them together. They form a link connecting his whole public career; he never ceased to regard all his labours from the point of view of his Divine mission, and what he says merely varies in tone and colour with the progress which took place in his work as time went on.
It is true that he knew perfectly well that it was impossible to figure a Divine mission without the pediment and shield of humility. How indeed could those words of profound humility, so frequent with St. Paul, have rung in Luther’s ears without finding some echo? Hence we find Luther, too, from time to time making such his own; and this he did, not out of mere hypocrisy, but from a real wish to identify his feelings with those of the Apostle; in almost every instance, however, his egotism destroys any good impulse and drives him in the opposite direction.
Luther’s confessions of his faults and general unworthiness are often quite impressive. We may notice that such were not unfrequently made to persons of influence, to Princes and exalted patrons on whom his success depended, and whom he hoped thereby to dispose favourably; others, however, are the natural, communicative outpourings of that “colossal frankness”—as it has been termed—which posterity has to thank for its knowledge of so many of Luther’s foibles. In his conversations we sometimes find him speaking slightingly of himself, for instance, when he says: “Philip is of a better brand than I. He fights and teaches; I am more of a rhetorician or gossip.”[1155]
A passage frequently quoted by Luther’s admirers in proof of his humility is that which occurs in his preface to the “Psalter” published by Eobanus Hessus. The Psalms, he says, had been his school from his youth upwards. “While unwilling to put my gifts before those of others, I may yet boast with a holy presumption, that I would not, as they say, for all the thrones and kingdoms of the world, forgo the benefits, that, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, I have derived from lingering and meditating on the Psalms.” He was not going to hide the gifts he had received from God, and in Him he would be proud, albeit in himself he found reasons enough to make him humble; he took less pleasure in his own German Psalter than in that of Eobanus, “but all to the honour and glory of God, to Whom be praise for ever and ever.”[1156]
In order to know Luther as he really was we should observe him amongst his pupils at Wittenberg, for instance, as he left the Schlosskirche after one of his powerful sermons to the people, and familiarly addressed those who pressed about him on the steps of the church. There were the burghers and students whose faults he had just been scourging; the theologians of his circle crowding with pride around their master; the lawyers, privy councillors and Court officials in the background, probably grumbling under their breath at Luther’s peculiarities and harsh words. His friends wish him many years of health and strength that he may continue his great work in the pulpit and press; he, on the other hand, thinks only of death; he insists on speaking of his Last Will and Testament, of the chances of his cause, of his enemies and of the threatened Council which he so dreaded.[1157]
“Let me be,” Luther cries, turning to the lawyers, “even in my Last Will, the man I really am, one well known both in heaven and on earth, and not unknown in hell, standing in sufficient esteem and authority to be trusted and believed in more than any notary; for God, the Father of Mercies, has entrusted to me, poor, unworthy, wretched sinner that I am, the Gospel of His Dear Son and has made and hitherto kept me faithful and true to it, so that many in the world have accepted it through me, and consider me a teacher of the truth in spite of the Pope’s ban and the wrath of Emperors, Kings, Princes, priests and all the devils.... Dr. Martin Luther, God’s own notary and the witness of His Gospel.”[1158]
I am “Our Lord Jesus Christ’s unworthy evangelist.”[1159]
I am “the Prophet of the Germans, for such is the haughty title I must henceforth assume.”[1160]
“I am Ecclesiastes by the Grace of God”; “Evangelist by the Grace of God.”[1161]
“I must not deny the gifts of Jesus Christ, viz. that, however small be my acquaintance with Holy Scripture, I understand it a great deal better than the Pope and all his people.”[1162]
“I believe that we are the last trump that sounds before Christ’s coming.”[1163]
Many arise against me, but with “a breath of my mouth” I blow them over.—All their prints are mere “autumn leaves.”[1164]
“One only of my opponents, viz. Latomus, is worth his salt, he is the scribe who writes best against me. Latomus alone has really written against Luther, make a note of that! All the others, like Erasmus, were but frogs. Not one of them really meant it seriously. Yes indeed all, Erasmus included, were just croaking frogs.”[1165]
I have been tried in the school of temptations; “these are the exalted temptations which no Pope has ever understood,” I mean, “being tempted to blasphemy and to question God’s Judgments when we know nothing either of sin or of the remedy.”[1166]
Because I have destroyed the devil’s kingdom “many say I was the man foretold by the Prophet of Lichtenberg; for in their opinion I must be he. This was a prophecy of the devil, who well saw that the kingdom he had founded on lies must fall. Hence he beheld a monk, though he could not tell to which Order he belonged.”[1167]
“Be assured of this, that no one will give you a Doctor of Holy Scripture save only the Holy Ghost who is in heaven.... He indeed testified aforetimes against the prophet by the mouth of the she-ass on which the prophet rode. Would to God we were worthy to have such doctors sent us!”[1168]
“I have become a great Doctor, this I am justified in saying; I would not have thought this possible in the days of my temptations” when Staupitz comforted me with the assurance, “that God would make use of me as His assistant in mighty things.”[1169]
“St. John Hus” was not alone in prophesying of me that ... “they will perforce have to listen to the singing of a swan,” but likewise the prophet at Rome foretold “the coming hermit who would lay waste the Papacy.”[1170]
When I was a young monk and lay sick at Erfurt they said to me: “Be consoled, good bachelor ... our God will still make a great man of you. This has been fulfilled.”[1171]
“On one occasion when I was consoling a man on the loss of his son he, too, said to me: ‘You will see, Martin, you will become a great man!’ I often call this to mind, for such words have something of the omen or oracle about them.”[1172]
“Small and insignificant as they [Luther’s and the preachers’ reforms] are, they have done more good in the Churches than all the Popes and lawyers with all their decrees.”[1173]
“No one has expounded St. Paul better” than you, Philip (Melanchthon). “The commentaries of St. Jerome and Origen are the merest trash in comparison with your annotations” (on Romans and Corinthians). “Be humble if you like, but at least let me be proud of you.” “Be content that you come so near to St. Paul himself.”[1174]
“In Popery such darkness prevailed that they taught neither the Ten Commandments, nor the Creed, nor the Our Father; such knowledge was considered quite superfluous.”[1175]
“The blindness was excessive, and unless those days had been shortened we should all have grown into beasts! I fear, however, that after us it will be still worse, owing to the dreadful contempt for the Word.”[1176]
“Before my day nothing was known,” not even “what parents or children were, or what wife or maid.”[1177]
“Such was then the state of things: No one taught, or had heard or knew what secular authority was, whence it came, or what its office and task was, or how it must serve God.”—“But I wrote so usefully and splendidly concerning the secular authorities as no teacher has ever done since Apostolic times, save perhaps St. Augustine; of this I may boast with a good conscience, relying on the testimony of the whole world.”[1178]
Similarly, “we could prove before the whole world that we have preached much more grandly and powerfully of good works than those very people who abuse us.”[1179]
“Not one of the Fathers ever wrote anything remarkable or particularly good concerning matrimony.... In marriage they saw only evil luxury.... They fell into the ocean of sensuality and evil lusts.” “But [by my preaching] God with His Word and by His peculiar Grace has restored, before the Last Day, matrimony, secular authority and the preaching office to their rightful position, as He instituted and ordained them, in order that we might behold His own institutions in what hitherto had been but shams.”[1180]
The Papists “know nothing about Holy Scripture, or what God is ... or what Baptism or the Sacrament.”[1181] But thanks to me “we now have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it.”[1182]
“Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any bishop as He has on me; for it is our duty to extol God’s gifts.”[1183]
It is easy to understand what an impression such assurances and such appeals to the heavenly origin of his gifts must have made on enthusiastic pupils. Before allowing the speaker to continue we may perhaps set on record what one of his defenders alleges in Luther’s favour.[1184] “An energetic character to whom all pretence is hateful may surely speak quite freely and openly of his own merits and capabilities.” “Why should such a thing seem strange? Because now, among well-bred people, conventions demand that, even should we be conscious of good deeds and qualities in ourselves, we should nevertheless speak as though unaware of them.” Luther, however, was “certain that he had found the centre of all truth, and that he possessed it as his very own; he knew that by his ‘faith’ he had become something, viz. that which every man ought to become according to the will of God. This explains that self-reliance whereby he felt himself raised above those who either continued to withstand the truth, or else had not yet discovered it.” By such utterances he “only wished to explain why he feared nothing for his cause.” “Arrogance and self-conceit are sinful, but he who by God’s grace really is something must feel proud and self-reliant.” “The only question is whether it is a proof of pride that he was not altogether oblivious of this, and that he himself occasionally spoke of it.” “Christ and Paul knew what they were and openly proclaimed it. Just as Christ found Himself accused of arrogance, so Paul, too, felt that his boasting would be misunderstood.” Besides, “Luther, because the title prophet [which he had applied to himself] was open to misconstruction, writes elsewhere: ‘I do not say that I am a prophet.’”[1185]
The comparison between Christ’s sayings and Luther’s had best be quietly dropped. As to the parallel with the Apostle of the Gentiles—his so-called boasting (2 Cor. xi. 16; xii. 1 ff.) and his frequent and humble admissions of frailty—St. Paul certainly has no need to fear comparison with Luther. He could have set before the world other proofs of his Divine mission, and yet he preferred to make the most humble confessions:
“But for myself I will glory in nothing but in my infirmities,” says Paul ... “gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may dwell in me; for which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak then am I powerful ... although I be nothing, yet the signs of my apostleship have been wrought in you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.” “For I am the least of the Apostles, who am not worthy to be called an Apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am and His grace hath not been void, but I have laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I but the grace of God with me.” “But we became little ones in the midst of you, as if a nurse should cherish her children: so desirous of you, we would gladly impart unto you not only the Gospel of God but also our own souls because you were become most dear to us.... You are our glory and joy” (2 Cor. xii. 5 ff.; 1 Cor. xv. 9; 1 Thess. ii. 7 ff.).
“God has appointed me for the whole of the German land,” Luther continues, “and I boldly vouch and declare that when you obey me in this [the founding of Evangelical schools] you are without a doubt obeying not me but Christ, and that, whoever obeys me not, despises, not me, but Christ [Luke xx. 16]. For I know well and am certain of what and whereto I speak and teach.”[1186]
“And now, dear Germans, I have told you enough; you have heard your prophet; God grant we may obey His words.”[1187]
As Germany does not obey “misery” must needs overtake it; “when I pray for my beloved Germany I feel that my prayer recoils on me and will not ascend upwards as it does when I pray for other things.... God grant that I be wrong and a false prophet in this matter.”[1188]
“Our Lord God had to summon Moses six times; me, too, He has led in the same way.... Others who lived before me attacked the wicked and scandalous life of the Pope; but I assailed his very doctrine and stormed in upon the monkery and the Mass, on which two pillars the whole Papacy rests. I could never have foreseen that these two pillars would fall, for it was almost like declaring war on God and all creation.”[1189]
“I picked the first fruits of the knowledge and faith of Christ, viz. that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works.”[1190]
“I am he to whom God first revealed it.”[1191]
“Show me a single passage on justification by faith in the Decrees, Decretals, Clementines, ‘Liber Sextus’ or ‘Extravagantes’” in any of the Summas, books of Sentences, monkish sermons, synodal definitions, collegial or monastic Rules, in any Postils, in any work of Jerome and Gregory, in any decisions of the Councils, in any disputations of the theologians, in any lectures of any University, in any Mass or Vigil of any Church, in any “Cæremoniale Episcoporum,” in the institutes of any monastery, in any manual of any confraternity or guild, in any pilgrims’ book anywhere, in the pious exercises of any Saint, in any Indulgence, Bull, anywhere in the Papal Chancery or the Roman Curia or in the Curia of any bishop. And yet it was there that the doctrine of faith should have been expressed in all its fulness.[1192]
“My Evangel,” that was what was wanting. “I have, praise be to God, achieved more reformation by my Evangel than they probably would have done even by five Councils.... Here comes our Evangel ... and works wonders, which they themselves accept and make use of, but which they could not have secured by any Councils.”[1193]
“I believe I have summoned such a Council and effected such a reformation as will make the ears of the Papists tingle and their heart burst with malice.... In brief: It is Luther’s own Reformation.”[1194]
“I, who am nothing, may say with truth that during the [twenty] years that I have served my dear Lord Christ in the preaching office, I have had more than twenty factions opposing me”; but now they are, some of them, extirpated, others, “like worms with their heads trodden off.”[1195]
“I have now become a wonderful monk, who, by God’s grace, has deposed the Roman devil, viz. the Pope; yet not I, but God through me, His poor, weak instrument; no emperor or potentate could have done that.”[1196]
In point of fact “the devil is not angry with me without good reason, for I have rent his kingdom asunder. What not one of the kings and princes was able to do, that God has effected, through me, a poor beggar and lonely monk.”[1197]
How poor are the ancient Fathers in comparison! “Chrysostom was a mere gossip. Jerome, the good Father, and lauder of nuns, understood precious little of Christianity. Ambrose has indeed some good sayings. If Peter Lombard had only happened upon the Bible he would have excelled all the Fathers.”[1198]
“See what darkness prevailed among the Fathers of the Church concerning faith! Once the article concerning justification was obscured it became impossible to stem the course of error. St. Jerome writes on Matthew, on Galatians and on Titus, but how paltry it all is! Ambrose wrote six books on Genesis, but what poor stuff they are! Augustine never writes powerfully on faith except when assailing the Pelagians.... They left not a single commentary on Romans and Galatians that is worth anything. Oh, how great, on the other hand, is our age in purity of doctrine, and yet, alas, we despise it! The holy Fathers taught better than they wrote; we, God be praised, write better than we live.” Had Gregory the Great at least refrained from spoiling what remained! “He broke in with his pestilent traditions, bound men down to observances concerning flesh-meat, cowls and Masses, and imposed on them his filthy, merdiferous law. And in the event this dreadful state of things grew from day to day worse.”[1199]
“On the other hand, it is plain that I may venture to boast in God, without arrogance or untruth, that, when it comes to the writing of books I am not far behind many of the Fathers.”[1200]
“In short the fault lay in this, that [before I came], even in the Universities the Bible was not read; when it was read at all it had to be interpreted in accordance with Aristotle. What blindness that was!”[1201]
But then my translation of Holy Scripture appeared. Whereas the Schoolmen never were acquainted with Scripture, indeed “never were at home even in the Catechism,”[1202] all admit my Bible scholarship. On one occasion “Carlstadt said to the Doctors at Wittenberg: My dear sirs, Dr. Martin is far too learned for us; he read the Bible ten years ago and now if we read it for ten years, he will then have read it for twenty; in any case, therefore, we are lost.” “Don’t start disputing with him.”[1203]
“Nevertheless I never should have attained to the great abundance of Divine gifts, which I am forced to confess and admit, unless Satan had tried me with temptations; without these temptations pride would have cast me into the abyss of hell.”[1204]
“The Papists are blind to the clear light of truth because it was revealed by a man. As though Elias, who wrought such great things against the servants of Baal, was not likewise a man and a beggar. As though John the Baptist, who so brilliantly put to flight the Pharisees, was not a man too. One’s being a man does not matter provided one be a man of God. For heroes are not merely men.”[1205]