Luther was the subject of gross misrepresentation and vile slander
during his lifetime: At first he used to correct erroneous reports about
himself, usually in his polemical writings, later he merely noted them
with a brief and scornful comment, and finally ignored them altogether.
He relates that he had treated many slanderous publications of Eck,
Faber, Emser, Cochlaeus, and many others with silent contempt. (18,
1991; 14, 331.) It was a physical impossibility for him to reply to all
the misleading and vicious reports that were being circulated about him.
He was convinced that he must use his time and strength for more
necessary matters. His friends in many instances relieved him of the
unpleasant task. Moreover, after he had answered those who had first
assailed him in the beginning of his public activity, he could afford to
disregard many slanders, because they were mere repetitions.
Luther was aware that he was probably the worst-hated man of his times.
He declares his belief that in the last hundred years there has not
lived a man to whom the world was more hostile than to himself. (22,
1660.) Persons praising him, he says, are regarded as having committed
a more grievous sin than any idolater, blasphemer, perjurer, fornicator,
adulterer, murderer, or thief. (9, 553.) Anything that Luther has said,
he observes, is denounced as coming from the devil; what Duke George
(one of his fiercest enemies), Faber, or Bucer say or do is highly
approved, (4, 1606.) Like Elijah, he was charged with having disturbed
Israel: before he began preaching there was peace and quiet, now all is
confusion. (9, 587.) He is held responsible for the Peasants' Revolt and
the rise of the Sacramentarian sects. (22, 1602.) A laborer whom his
wife had hired became drunk and committed murder; at once the rumor was
spread that Luther kept a murderer as his servant. (21b, 2225.) What he
writes is represented as having been inspired by envy, pride,
bitterness, yea, by Satan himself; those, however, who write against him
are regarded as being inspired by the Holy Ghost. (18, 2005.) He
observes that beggars become rich, obtain favors from princes and kings,
remunerative positions, honors, and bishoprics by turning against him.
(18, 2005.) Some attribute the election of Adrian VI as Pope to Luther
(this Pope was believed to favor reforms: he did not last long); and
Luther expects that he is helping Dr. Schmid to become a cardinal
because he is opposing him. (19, 1347.) Dunces become doctors, knaves
become saints, and the most besotted characters are glorified when they
try their vile mouths and pens against Luther. (19, 1347.) The easiest
way for any man to become a canonized saint even during his lifetime,
though he were a person of the stripe of a Nero or Caligula, is by
hating Luther. (18, 2005.) On the cover of the pamphlet containing his
Sermon on the Sacrament Luther ordered a picture consisting of two
monstrances printed; this was promptly explained to mean that he had
adopted the Bohemian errors, for Hus had administered the Lord's Supper
in both kinds. (19, 457.) Some pretended that they could see two geese
in this picture; the meaning was plain: one of them signified Hus (Hus
in Bohemian means goose), the other, Luther. (19, 458.)
Luther would not have been human if incidents like these had not caused
him pain. Occasionally he would give vent to his grief, but his manly
courage, too, would soon assert itself, and he would expose the
hollowness, insincerity, and futility of the lying tales that were
spread about him. At a public meeting in Campo Flore he was cursed,
sentenced to death, and burned in effigy. (21a, 174.) He has read
offensive reports about himself, and puts them down with the calm
declaration: There is not a man that writes against Luther without
having to resort to horrible and manifest lies. (19, 583.) He is sure
that he has not had an opponent who in an argument would stick to the
point; they all had to evade the issue. (22, 658.) Shameful falsehoods
are canvassed about him at the court of King Ferdinand (15, 2623);
Luther comforts himself with the reflection that others have suffered
the same vilification before him, for instance, Wyclif, Hus, and others
(5, 308). Besides, he is able to understand that the real reason why
the papists regard him as such a perverse and untractable person is
because they are utterly perverse themselves. (4, 1499.)
But his sweetest comfort is in reflecting that it is his preaching which
has brought his manifold afflictions upon him. Poor Luther is always
wrong: the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists hate him worse than they hate
the Pope, and the Pope hates him worse than he hates other heretics,
because they all fight against the Gospel which Luther preaches. (22,
1015.) If I were to keep silent, he says, or preach as I used to do,
concerning indulgences, pilgrimages, adoration of the saints, purgatory,
the carnival of the Mass, I could easily keep the favor and friendship
of the great. (8, 569.) But for the sake of the true doctrine and those
who profess it,--whom his opponents wish to suppress, Luther is willing
to suffer hatred, persecution, calumnies, and everything else that his
enemies may devise against him. (5, 587.) What have I done, he exclaims,
to deserve the enmity of the Pope and his rabble, except that I have
preached Christ? (8, 569.) He is convinced from the papists' own
confession that he is being persecuted for no other reason than because
he is preaching the Gospel. (8, 399.}
Knowing the reason why he is hated, Luther glories in his tribulations.
Duke George, he says, calls me a desperate, low-bred, perjured knave: I
shall consider those ugly names my emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. (19,
457.) He would fear that there must be something wrong about his
teaching if the people whom he knows would not fight against him: if
these people do not condemn his doctrine, his doctrine cannot be
acceptable to God. (10, 351.) He prefers to have them rage against him.
Their violence shall not disturb him greatly, because he has championed
the Lord's cause, and that, in all sincerity, without malice toward any
person. (21a, 301.) . Let the papists exhaust themselves in slanders
against him: he knows he has the Scriptures on his side, and they have
the Scriptures against them. (5, 310.) They intend to grind Luther to
pieces, not a hair of him is to remain; he knows that they will not be
able to harm a hair on his head. (8, 119.)
Thus Luther thought and spoke of his detractors and defamers. Such was
his comfort and his courage in the face of base calumnies and undeserved
hatred. Those who know him best will continue to love him, and admire
him the more for the enemies he has made.
--
If the reader of this book has had the sensation of a traveler in a
storm-tossed vessel, he has experienced mentally what Luther faced in
dread reality during almost the whole of his agitated life. He had to
weather many a squall, and storm, and hurricane. Outwardly his life
seems a continuous hurly-burly. Yet there is in this man's heart a great
and holy calm. The tumult of his life is all on the surface. He reminds
one of the lines in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Hymn":
When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean,
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
'T is said, far down beneath the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.
Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
We have had glimpses of the hidden depths in Luther's mind: his thought
reaches down to the lowest depths of human misery, and then goes deeper
still towards the limits of God's rescuing love and conquering grace
which human mind has never reached. For these divine profundities no
plummet will ever sound. He who could surrender himself wholly to the
study of the greatness and beauty of Luther's constructive thought would
enjoy a spiritual luxury and be drawn into that sublime and solemn peace
of God which passes all understanding. He would behold this strenuous
man; who has been shown mostly in his working-clothes in these pages, in
his holiday-attire, with that Sabbath in his heart which occurs wherever
Christ is the loved and adored object of the thinker's contemplation.