A LIFE FULL OF STRUGGLES OF CONSCIENCE
1. On Luther’s “Temptations” in General
AN account given by Luther himself in 1537 and taken down by his pupils
from his own lips is the best introduction to the subject now to be
considered.
“He spoke of his spiritual sickness (‘_morbus spiritualis_’). For a
fortnight he had tasted neither food nor drink and had had no sleep.
‘During this time,’ so he said, ‘I wrestled frequently with God and
impatiently upbraided Him with His promises.’” While in this state he
had been forced to complain, with the sick and troubled Job, that God
was killing him and hiding His countenance from him; like Job, however,
he had learnt to wait for His assistance, for here too his case was
like that of the “man crushed, and delivered over to the gates of
death” and on whom the devil had poured forth his wrath. How many, he
adds, have to wrestle like he and Job until they are able to say “I
know, O God, that Thou art gracious.”[1287]
Other statements of Luther’s at a later period supply us with further
information. Lauterbach notes, on Oct. 7, 1538, the complaint
already quoted: “I have my mortal combats daily. We have to struggle
and wrangle with the devil who has very hard bones, till we learn
how to crack them. Paul and Christ had hard work enough with the
devil.”[1288] On Aug. 16 of the same year Lauterbach takes down the
statement: “Had anyone else had to undergo such temptations as I,
he would long since have expired. I should not of my own have been
able to endure the blows of Satan, just as Paul could not endure the
all-too-great temptations of Christ. In short, sadness is a death in
itself.”[1289]
With the spiritual sickness above mentioned was combined, as has been
already pointed out (above, p. 226 f.), a growing state of depression:
“I have lived long enough,” he said in 1542; “the devil is weary of
my life and I am sick of hating the devil.”[1290] Terrible thoughts
of the “Judgment of God” repeatedly rose up before him and caused him
great fear.[1291]
Before this, according to other notes, he had said to his table
companions, that he was daily “at grips with Satan”;[1292] that during
the attacks of the devil he had often not known whether he were “dead
or alive.”[1293] “The devil,” so he assures them, “brought me to such
a pitch of despair that I did not even know if there was a God.”[1294]
“When the devil finds me idle, unmindful of God’s Word, and thus
unarmed, he assails my conscience with the thought that I have taught
what is false, that I have rent asunder the churches which were so
peaceful and content under the Papacy, and caused many scandals,
dissensions and factions by my teaching, etc. Well, I can’t deny that
I am often anxious and uneasy about this, but, as soon as I lay hold
on the Word, I again get the best.”[1295]
To the people he said, in a sermon in 1531: “The devil is closer to
us than we dream. I myself often feel the devil raging within me.
Sometimes I believe and sometimes I don’t, sometimes I am cheerful
and sometimes sad.”[1296]—A year later he describes in a sermon how
the devil, who “attacks the pious,” had often made him “sweat much
and his heart to beat,” before he could withstand him with the right
weapon, viz. with God’s Word, namely, the office committed to him
and the service he had rendered to the world, “which it was not his
to belie!”[1297] Some ten years before this he had spoken still more
plainly to his hearers at Wittenberg, telling them, strange to say,
of his experience in early days of the good effects of confession:
“I would not for all the treasures of the world give up private
confession, for I know what strength and comfort it has been to me.
No one knows what it can do unless he has fought often and much with
the devil. Indeed, the devil would long ago have done for me, had
not confession saved me.” In fact whoever tells his troubles to his
brother, receives from him, as from God, comfort “for his simple
conscience and faint heart”; seldom indeed did one find a “strong,
firm faith” which did not stand in need of this; hardly anyone could
boast of possessing it. “You do not know yet,” he concludes, “what
labour and trouble it costs to fight with and conquer the devil. But I
know it well, for I have eaten a mouthful or two of salt with him. I
know him well, and so does he know me.”[1298]
After all these remarkably frank admissions there can remain no doubt
that a heavy mist of doubts and anxieties overshadowed Luther’s inner
life.
A closer examination of this darker side of his soul seems to promise
further information concerning his inner life. Here, too, it is
advisable to sum up the phenomena, retracing them back to their very
starting-point. Though much of what is to be said has already been
mentioned, still, it is only now, towards the end of his life, that the
various traits can in any sense be combined so as to form something
as near a complete picture as possible. We have to thank Luther’s
communicativeness, talkativeness and general openness to his friends,
that a tragic side of his inner life has been to some extent revealed,
which otherwise might for ever have been buried in oblivion.
It is true that, to forestall what follows, few nowadays will be
disposed to follow Luther and to look on the devil as the originator
of his doubts and qualms of conscience. His fantastic ideas of the
“diabolical combats” he had to wage, form, as we shall see (below, p.
329 ff.), part of his devil-mania. Nevertheless his many references
to his ordinary, nay, almost daily, inward combats or “temptations,”
as he is accustomed to style them, are not mere fabrications, but
really seem to come from a profoundly troubled soul. In what follows
many such utterances will be quoted, because only thus can one reach
a faithful picture of his changing moods which otherwise would seem
barely credible. These utterances, though usually much alike, at times
strike a different note and thus depict his inner life from a new and
sometimes surprising side.
2. The Subject-matter of the “Temptations”
The spiritual warfare Luther had to wage concerned primarily his
calling and his work as a whole.
“You have preached the Evangel,” so the inner voice, which he
describes as the devil’s tempting, says to him; “But who commanded you
to do so, ‘_quis iussit_?’ Who called upon you to do things such as no
man ever did before? How if this were displeasing to God and you had to
answer for all the souls that perish?”[1299]
“Satan has often said to me: How if your own doctrine were false which
charges the Pope, monks and Mass-priests with such errors? Often he so
overwhelmed me that the sweat has poured off me, until I said to him,
go and carry your complaints to my God Who has commanded me to obey
this Christ.”[1300]—“The devil would often have laid me low with his
argument: ‘Thou art not called,’ had I not been a Doctor.”[1301]—“I
have had no greater temptation,” he said after dinner on Dec. 14,
1531, “and none more grievous than that about my preaching; for I
have said to myself: You alone are at the bottom of this; if it’s
all wrong you have to answer for all the many souls which it brings
down to hell. In this temptation I have often myself descended into
hell till God recalled me and strengthened me, telling me that it was
indeed the Word of God and true doctrine; but it costs much until
one reaches this comfort.”[1302]—“Now the devil troubles me with
other thoughts [than in the Papacy], for he accuses me thus: Oh, what
a vast multitude have you led astray by your teaching! Sometimes
amidst such temptation one single word consoles me and gives me fresh
courage.”[1303]
Not merely does he say this in the Table-Talk but even writes it in
his Bible Commentaries. In his exposition of Psalm xlv. he speaks of
an “argumentation and objection” which the devil urges against him:
“Lo, you stand all alone and are seeking to overthrow the good order
[of the Church] established with so much wisdom. For even though the
Papacy be not without its sins and errors, what about _you_? Are _you_
infallible? Are _you_ without sin? Why raise the standard of revolt
against the house of the Lord when you yourself can only teach them
what you yourself are full of, viz. error and sin? These thoughts,” he
continues, “upset one very much.... Hence we must learn that all our
strength lies in hearing God’s Word and laying hold on it, in seeing
God’s works and believing in them. Whoever does not do this will be
taken captive by the devil and overthrown.” He is fully cognisant of
the strength of the objection which dogs his footsteps: Though sins
and faults are to be met with in individual members of the hierarchy,
still we must honour their “office and authority.”[1304]
Among Luther’s peculiar doctrines the principal ones which became the
butt of “temptations” were his fundamental theses on Justification, on
the Law and on good works.
With regard to his doctrine of Justification, on Dec. 14, 1531, he
gave his pupil Schlaginhaufen, who also failed to find comfort in it,
some advice as to how he was to help himself. The devil was wont “to
come to him” [Luther] with righteousness and to “insist on our being
actively righteous,” and since none of us are, “no one can venture
to stand up to him”; what one should do was, however, resolutely to
fall back on passive righteousness and to say to Satan: Not by my own
righteousness am I justified, but by the righteousness of the man
Christ. “Do you know Him?” In this way we vanquish him by “the Word.”
Another method, also a favourite one of his,[1305] so he instructs
his anxious pupil, was to rid oneself of such ideas by “thinking of
dancing, or of a pretty girl; that also is good, eating and drinking
are likewise helpful; for one who is tempted, fasting is a hundred
times worse than eating and drinking.”[1306]—“This is the great
art,” he repeats at the beginning of the following year, looking back
upon his own bitter experiences, “to pass from my sin to Christ’s
righteousness to know that Christ’s righteousness is mine as surely as
I know that this body is mine.... What astonishes me is that I cannot
learn this doctrine, and yet all my pupils believe they have it at
their finger-tips.”[1307]
The doctrine of the Law in its relation to the Gospel, a point which
he was never able to make quite clear to himself, constituted in his
case an obstacle to peace of mind.[1308] In consequence of his own
experience he warns others from the outset against giving way to any
anxious thoughts about this: “Whoever, Law in hand, begins to dispute
with the devil is already a beaten man and a prisoner.... Hence let
no one dare to dispute with him about the Law, or about sin, but let
him rather desist in good time.”[1309] “When Satan reproaches me and
says: ‘The Law is also the Word of God,’ I reply: ‘God’s Word is only
the promise of God whereby He says: Let me be Thy God. In addition to
this, however, He also gives the Law, but for another purpose, not
that we may be saved thereby.”[1310]
But God, as Luther was well aware, will, as He threatens, judge people
by their fulfilment of the Law and only grant salvation to those who
keep it.
The stern and clear exhortations of Scripture on fidelity to the Law
and on penance for its transgression often filled his soul with the
utmost terror, and so did the text: “Unless you do penance, you shall
all likewise perish” (Luke xiii. 3). Even in one of his sermons he
confessed to the people in this connection, that he was acquainted
from experience “with the cunning of the devil and his malicious
tricks, how he is wont to upbraid us with the Law ... to make a real
hell for us so that the wide world seems all too narrow to hold us”;
the devil depicts Christ “as though He were angry with sinners”; “he
grabs a text of Holy Scripture, or one of Christ’s warnings, and
suddenly stabs us so hard in the heart ... that we actually believe
it, nay, our conscience would swear to it a thousand times,” that “it
was indeed Christ Who inspired such thoughts, whereas all the while
it was the devil himself.” “Of what I say I have had some experience
myself.”[1311] He then goes on to quote the above exhortation to
penance as an instance of the sort of warning on which the devil
seizes, though these words have ever been regarded by God-fearing
Christians as a powerful incentive to religion and not at all as
productive of excessive fear, at least in those who put their trust
in grace. Luther, however, thinks it right to add: “By fear the devil
fouls and poisons with his venom the pure and true knowledge of
Christ.”
Hence it is useless, or at best but a temporary expedient, to refrain
from disputing with Satan on the Law. Nor is Luther’s invitation much
better: “When a man is tempted, or is with those who are tempted,
let him slay Moses and throw every stone at him on which he can lay
hands.”[1312]
* * * * *
His doctrine of good works was no less a source of disquietude to
Luther. He declared that Satan was sure of an “easy victory” “once
he gets a man to think of what he has done or left undone.” What one
had to do was to retort to the devil, strong in one’s fiducial faith:
“Though I may not have done this or that good work, still I am saved
by the forgiveness of sins, as baptised and redeemed by the flesh and
blood of Christ”; beyond this he should not go: “Faith ranks above
deeds”; still, so he adds, before a man reaches this point, all may
be over for him. “It is hard in the time of temptation to get so far;
even Christ found it difficult”; “it is hard to escape from the idea
of works,” i.e. from believing that they as much as faith are required
for salvation and that they are meritorious.[1313]
The “devil” also frequently twitted Luther, so he declares, with the
consequences of his doctrines.
“Often he tormented me,” he says, “with words such as these: ‘Look at
the cloisters; formerly they enjoyed a delightful peace, of which you
have made an end; who told you to do such a thing?’” On one occasion,
when making some such admissions concerning the effect of his teaching
on the religious vows, one interrupted him and tried to show that he
had merely insisted that God was not to be worshipped by the doctrines
and commandments of men (Mt. xv. 9), and that the dissolution of the
monasteries was not so much his work as a consequence ordained by God;
Luther replied frankly: “My friend, before such a thought would have
occurred to me during such temptations I should indeed have been in a
fine sweat.”[1314]
“When Satan finds me idle and not armed with the Word,” so we read
in the notes made of one of his sermons,[1315] “he puts it into my
conscience that I am a disturber of the public order, a preacher of
false doctrines and a herald of revolt. This he often does. But as
soon as I make use of the Word as a weapon I get the best, for I
answer him.... It is written you must hear this man [the Son of God]
or everything falls. God heeds not the world, even were there ten
rebellious worlds. It was thus that Paul, too, had to console himself
when accused of preaching sedition against God and the Emperor.”[1316]
In this wise does Luther seek to fall back on Christ and on his divine
commission.
He frequently, indeed usually, appeals to this source of consolation,
and it is therefore due to him to quote a few more such statements. He
struggles, in spite of all his fears, not to relinquish his peculiar
trust in Christ.
Yet, as he often complains in this connection, “the devil knows well
how to get me away.”[1317]
“He says to me: See how much evil arises from your doctrine. To which
I reply: Much good has also come of it. Oh, says he, that is a mere
nothing! He is a fine talker and can make a great beam of a little
splinter, and destroy what is good and dissolve it into thin air. He
has never been so angry in his life.... I must hold fast to Christ and
to the Evangel. He frequently begins to dispute with me about this,
and well knows how to get me away. He is very wroth, I feel it and
understand it well.”[1318]—The moral consequences of the religious
innovations, and the disunion so rife undoubtedly weighed heavily on
Luther. “We, who boast of being Evangelical,” so he is impelled to
exclaim in 1538, “fling the most holy Gospel to the winds as though it
were but a quotation from Terence.” “Alas, Good God, how bitter the
devil must be against us, to incite the very ministers of the Word
against each other and to inspire them with mutual hatred!”[1319]
Misgivings as to his own salvation also constituted a source of
profound anxiety for Luther.
So repeatedly did he hear in fancy the devil announcing to him in a
voice of thunder his eternal damnation, that he was, as he confesses,
almost reduced to despair and to blasphemy.
“When we are thus tempted to blasphemy on account of God’s judgment,”
so he said on June 18, 1540, “we fail to see either that it is a sin,
or how to avoid it,” “such abominable thoughts does the prince of this
world suggest to the mind: Hatred of God, blasphemy, despair; these are
the devil’s own fiery darts; St. Paul understood them to some extent
when he felt the sting of the devil in his flesh [2 Cor. xii. 7].
These are the high temptations [which, as he explains elsewhere, were
reserved for himself and for his preachers]. No Pope has known them.
These stupid donkeys were familiar with no other temptations than those
of carnal passion.... To such they capitulated, and so did ‘Jeronimus.’
Yet such temptations are easily to be remedied while virgins and women
remain with us.”[1320]—But in that other sort of temptation it is hard
to “keep cheerful” and to tell the devil boldly: “God is not angry as
you say.”[1321]
On one occasion Melanchthon watched him during such a struggle, when he
was battling against despair and the appalling thought that he had been
delivered over to the “wrath of God and the punishment of sin.” Luther,
he says, was in “such sore terror that he almost lost consciousness,”
and sighed much as he wrestled with a text of Paul on unbelief and
grace.[1322]
Several incidents and many utterances noted down from Luther’s own
lips give us an even better insight into the varying character of his
“temptations” and into their nature as a whole.
3. An Episode. Terrors of Conscience become Temptations of the Devil
_Schlaginhaufen and Luther_
Johann Schlaginhaufen, the pupil of Luther whom we have had so frequent
occasion to mention, complained to his master in the winter of 1531
of the deep anxiety from which he could not shake himself free, which
led him to fear for the salvation of his soul. Luther sought in vain to
comfort the troubled man by pointing to his own case.[1323] The fact
that the master attributed the whole matter to the devil only added
to the confusion of his unfortunate pupil. So much was Schlaginhaufen
upset, that on one occasion, on New Year’s Eve, 1531, he actually
swooned whilst on a visit to Luther’s house. Luther, nothing abashed,
promptly exorcised the devil who had brought on the fainting-fit, using
thereto the Bible words: “The Lord rebuke thee, Satan” (Zach. iii. 2:
“_Increpet te Dominus_”); he added: “He [the devil], who should be an
angel of life, is an angel of death. He tries us with lying and with
murder.”
Schlaginhaufen, after having been put to bed, began to come to,
whereupon Luther consoled him thus: “David suffered such temptations;
I too have often experienced similar ones, though to-day I have
been free from them and have had nothing to complain of save only a
natural weakness of the head. Let the godless, Cochlæus, Faber and the
Margrave [Joachim I of Brandenburg] be afraid and tremble. This is a
temptation of the spirit; it is not meant for us, for we are ministers
and vicars of God.” Here Schlaginhaufen groaned: “Oh, my sins!” Luther
now tried to make him understand that he must turn to the thought
of grace and forget all about the Law. “Oh, my God,” replied the
young man, echoing his master’s own thoughts, “the tiniest devil is
stronger than the whole world!” But Luther pointed out that there were
even stronger good angels present for the Christian’s protection. He
went on, “Satan is as hostile as can be to us. Were we only to agree
to worship the Pope, we should be his dear children, enjoy perfect
peace and probably become cardinals. It is not you alone who endure
such temptations; I am inured to them, and Peter too and Paul were
acquainted with them.... We must not be afraid of the miscreant.” When
Schlaginhaufen had sufficiently recovered to return to his lodgings
close by, Luther paternally admonished him to mix more freely with
others and, for the rest, to trust entirely in his teacher. His
own waverings did not prevent him from giving the latter piece of
advice.[1324]
Of the temptations by which he himself was visited, “to despair, and
to dread the wrath of God,” he had already said to Schlaginhaufen,
on Dec. 14, 1531: Had it not been for them he would never have been
able to do so much harm to the devil, or to preserve his own humility;
now, however, he knew to his shame that “when the temptation comes I
am unable to get the better of a single venial sin. Thanks to these
temptations I have attained to such knowledge and to such gifts, that,
with the help of God, I won that glorious victory (‘_illam præclaram
victoriam_’), vanquishing my monkish state, the vows, the Mass and all
those abominations.” “After that I had peace,” he says, speaking of
those earlier years, “so that I even took a wife, such good days had
I.”[1325]—Yet his own contemporary statements show that inward peace
was not his at the time when he took a wife.[1326]
An incident related of Luther by Schlaginhaufen shows how a single
text of Scripture, and the train of ideas it awakened, could reduce
him, and Bugenhagen too, to a state verging on distraction. “The devil
on one occasion,” so Luther said to him, “tormented and almost slew
me with Paul’s words to Timothy [1 Tim. v. 11-12], so that my heart
melted in my bosom; the reason was the abandoning by so many monks and
nuns of the religious state in which they had vowed to God to live.”
(Paul, in the passage cited, has strong things to say of widows who
prove unfaithful to the widowhood in which they had promised to live.)
“The devil,” he continues concerning his attitude towards the devil at
that time, “hid from my sight the doctrine of Justification so that I
never even thought of it, and obtruded on me the text; he led me away
from the doctrine of grace to dispute on the Law, and then he had me
at his mercy. Bugenhagen happened to be near at the time. I submitted
it to him and went with him into the corridor. But he too began to
doubt, for he did not know that I was so hard put about it. Thereupon
I was at first much upset and passed the night with a heavy heart.
Next day Bugenhagen came to me. ‘I am downright angry,’ he said, ‘I
have now looked into that text more closely, and, right enough, the
argument is ridiculous!’ Thus he [the devil] is always on the watch
for us. But nevertheless we have Christ!”[1327]—We are not told why
the argument from this Bible-passage, which insists so solemnly on the
sacred character of vows, was regarded as “ridiculous.”
The last incident reminds us of the scene between Luther and Bugenhagen
on June, 1540, narrated in the Table-Talk; there Luther declares: “No
sooner am I assailed by temptation than the flesh begins to rebel even
though I understand the spirit.... Gladly would I be formally just,
but I do not find it in me.” And Bugenhagen chimed in: “Herr Doctor,
neither do I.”[1328]
_From Remorse of Conscience to Onslaughts of the Devil_
The actual cause of Luther’s anxiety, as is plain from the above, was
a certain quite intelligible disquiet of conscience. Yet, he chose to
regard all reproaches from within as merely the sting of the Evil One.
As time went on this became more and more his habit; it is always the
evil spirit who is at his heels, at whose person and doings, Luther,
following his bent, pokes his jokes.
Hieronymus Weller, another pupil tormented with inner pangs, once,
without any beating about the bush, put down all his sadness to his
conscience; he declared in Luther’s presence in the spring of 1532:
“Rather than endure such troubles of conscience I would willingly go
through the worst illnesses.”[1329] Luther tried his best to pacify him
with the assurance that the devil was “a murderer,” and that “God’s
Mercy endureth for ever and ever.”
Yet Luther himself had admitted to his friend Wenceslaus Link, that
“it is extremely difficult thoroughly to convince oneself that such
thoughts of hopelessness emanate from Satan and are not our very own,
but the best help is to be found in this conviction. One must by a
supreme effort contrive to turn one’s mind to other things and chase
such thoughts away.” “But you can guess how hard it is,” he continues,
“when the thoughts refer to God and to our eternal salvation; they are
of such a nature that our conscience can neither tear itself away from
them nor yet despise them.”[1330] Simply to tear itself away from such
disquieting thoughts was certainly not possible for a conscience in so
luckless a position as Luther’s, oppressed as it was with the weight of
a world catastrophe.
Luther once, in 1532, says quite outspokenly and not without a certain
reference to himself: “The spirit of sadness is conscience itself”;
here, however, he probably only means that we are always conscious
within ourselves of a painful antagonism to the Law, for he at once
goes on: “This we must ever endure,” we must necessarily be ever in
a state of woe because in this life we “lie amidst the throes of
childbirth that precede the Last Day;” but the devil who condemns us
inwardly “has not yet condemned” Christ. Those who are thus tempted
“do not feel those carnal temptations, which are so petty compared with
the spiritual.”[1331]
At any rate, so he will have it, there was a call to struggle most
earnestly against all the inward voices that make themselves heard
against the new teaching and the apostasy, just as though they came
from the devil.[1332]
He was helped in this, on the one hand, by his terrible energy, and, on
the other, by a theological fallacy: “God has commanded that we should
look to Christ for forgiveness of our sins; hence whoever does not do
so makes God a liar; I must therefore say to the devil: Even though I
be a scamp, yet Christ is just.”[1333]
Thus we find him declaring, for instance, in July, 1528: “to yield to
such disquiet of conscience is to be overcome by Satan, nay, to set
Satan on the throne!” “Such thoughts may appear to be quite heavenly
and called for, but they are nevertheless Satanic and cannot but be
so.” When they refuse to depart, even though spurned by us, and we
endure them patiently, then do we indeed “present a sublime spectacle
to God and the angels.”[1334]—“Away with the devil’s sadness!” so, at
a later date, in 1544, he exhorts his old friend Spalatin; “conscience
stands in the cruel service of the devil; a man must learn to find
consolation even against his own conscience.”[1335]
4. Progress of his Mental Sufferings until their Flood-tide in 1527-1528
If we glance at the history of Luther’s so-called “temptations”
throughout the whole course of his career, we shall find that they
were very marked at the beginning of his enterprise. Before 1525 they
had fallen off, but they became again more frequent during the terrors
of the Peasant War and then reasserted themselves with great violence
in 1527. After abating somewhat for the next two years they again
assumed alarming proportions in 1530 in the solitude of the Coburg
and thus continue, with occasional breaks, until 1538. From that time
until the end of his life he seemed to enjoy greater peace, at least
from doubts regarding his own salvation, though, on the other hand,
gloomy depression undoubtedly darkened the twilight of his days, and
he complains more than ever of the weakness of his own faith; we miss,
however, those vivid accounts of his struggles of conscience which he
had been wont to give.
_The Period Previous to 1527_
Let us listen first of all to Luther’s self-reproach in the early days
of his public labours; we may recall those words of 1521 where he
confesses, that, before he had grown so bold and confident, “his heart
had often quaked with fear,” when he thought of the words of his foes:
“Are you alone wise and are all others mistaken? Is it likely that so
many centuries were all in the wrong? Supposing, on the contrary, you
were in the wrong and were leading so many others with you into error
and to eternal perdition!”[1336] He admits similarly that he had still
to fight with his conscience even after having passed through the storm
in which, “amidst excitement and confusion of conscience,” he had
discovered the true doctrine of salvation.[1337] That discovery did
not bring him into a haven of rest even though we have his word that,
for a while, he was quite overcome with joy. “Oh, what great trouble
and labour did it cost me, even though grounded on Holy Scripture, to
convince my conscience that I had a right to stand up all alone against
the Pope, and denounce him as Antichrist, the Bishops as his Apostles
and the Universities as his brothels.”[1338]
The days he spent in the Wartburg and the opportunity they afforded
him to look back on his past, awakened anew these self-reproaches;
whilst in the solitude, we hear him complaining, that his “distress
of soul still persisted and that his former weakness of spirit and
of faith had not yet left him.”[1339] Later on he remembered having
had to battle with every kind of despair (“_omnibus desperationibus_”)
for three long years.[1340] At a much later date, in 1541, he reminds
his friends of the many inward struggles (“_tot agones_”) the first
proclamation of the Evangel and his crusade against the word of man had
cost him.[1341]
About 1521 he must have arrived at a pitch of “despair and temptation
regarding the wrath of God” such as he never before had tasted; for he
told one of his pupils, on Dec. 14, 1532, that it was “about ten years
since he had felt this struggle so severely; after that better days had
dawned, but later the difficulties began anew.”[1342]
But, as he often admits, he was all too addicted to thoughts of
despair, thanks to the devil who was ever lying in wait for him; as for
the “better days” they might easily be counted. “When these thoughts
come upon me I forget everything about Christ and God, and even begin
to look upon God as a miscreant”; the “_Laudate_” stops, so he says,
and the “_Blasphemate_” begins as soon as we begin to think of the fate
to which from all eternity we are predestined.[1343]
Subsequent to 1525 his new state of life with its domestic cares
and distractions, added to his satisfaction with the growing damage
inflicted on the Papacy, appear to have contributed to diminish his
trouble of mind.
Later, however, in 1527, it “began anew.”
Atrocious suffering of mind and bitter anxiety concerning the abuses
in the new Church—“a vinegar sourer than all other vinegars, as he
calls it,”—immediately preceded his illness which began about July
7, 1527.[1344] Mental uneasiness and self-reproaches accompanied the
fainting-fits which at that time seemed to threaten his life. His
inward struggles were so severe that Bugenhagen, who tried to comfort
him, compares them with the darkness of the soul “so frequently
mentioned in the Psalms as illustrative of the spiritual pangs of
hell.” “Dr. Martin,” writes the latter, who was pastor at Wittenberg
and Luther’s “confessor,” “had in all likelihood been through other
such temptations, but none had ever been so severe; this he admitted
on the following day to Dr. Jonas, to Dr. Christian [Schurf] and to
me. He said they were worse and more dangerous than the bodily ailment
which befell him on that same Saturday evening about five o’clock
and which was so serious that we feared he would succumb under it.”
Luther himself, in those critical days, declared “that he would not
retract his doctrine,” and, after making his confession to Bugenhagen
as the latter relates, “spoke at considerable length of the spiritual
temptation he had been through the same morning, with such fear and
trembling as could not be described in words.”[1345] It was then that
the curious complaint was involuntarily wrung from him that those who
saw his outward behaviour fancied he “lay on a bed of roses, though
God knew how it stood with him.” Bugenhagen and Jonas have embellished
their accounts of this illness of their friend with many pious
utterances supposed to have been spoken by him then.[1346]
_The Height of the Storm, 1527-28_
The worst struggles, lasting over many months, followed upon Luther’s
illness of 1527.
Hardly had he recovered his normal health than we find his letters
full of sad allusions to his abiding state of despair and to his fears
concerning the faith, probably the most melancholy outpourings of his
whole life.
“For more than a week I have been tossed about between death and
hell,” he writes to Melanchthon, “so that I still tremble in
every limb and feel utterly broken. Waves and storms of despair
and blasphemy against God broke over me and I lost Christ almost
entirely. But, at the intercession of the saints [his friends] God has
begun to take pity on me and has delivered my soul from the lowest
hell.”[1347]—“This struggle,” he writes to Justus Menius, “goes
beyond my strength.... I am tried not only in body but still more, and
worst of all, in soul. God allows Satan and his angels thus to torment
me.”[1348]
In a letter of Aug. 21, addressed to Johann Agricola, then still his
friend, he informed him that the fight was not yet at an end. “Satan
rages against me with all his might. Like another Job (Job xvi.
12), God has set me up as a mark, and He tempts me with intolerable
weakness of spirit. The prayers of holy men indeed save me from
remaining in his hands, but the wounds I have received in my heart
will be hard to heal. I trust that my strivings will turn to the
salvation of many.” He concludes by saying that those in power (the
Catholics) were unable to get at him, but that so much the more was he
plagued in spirit “by the Prince of this world.”[1349] He writes in
much the same vein on Aug. 26 to Nicholas Hausmann.
Truly, so he again wrote to Johann Agricola, on Aug. 31, “neither
world nor reason can understand how hard it is to realise that Christ
is our righteousness, so deeply rooted in us is the doctrine of works,
which has grown up with us and become part of us. That Christ may
strengthen me I commend myself to your prayers.”[1350] Hence it was
his chief dogma, the very rock of his Evangel, that “Satan” was then
tampering with. The call for good works was, as he felt, beyond even
his power to deny.
“For wellnigh three months I have been feeling wretched,” he wrote
on Oct. 8, “not so much in body as in soul, so that I have written
little or nothing, so greatly has Satan tossed me in the sieve [Luke
xxii. 31]”[1351]—“God has not yet completely restored me to health,”
he announces on Oct. 19, “but in His wisdom leaves me a prey to
Satan who assails me and buffets me; but God also sends help and
protection.”[1352]
He speaks of himself, on Oct. 27, as “a wretched and abject worm,
harassed by the spirit of sadness,” “I seek and thirst for nought else
than for a gracious God, for as such He reveals Himself even to His
enemies and contemners.”[1353] Luther had claimed, that, through his
new doctrine and through flinging aside his monkish frock he had found
“a gracious God,” and proclaimed Him to men for their reconciliation;
this has been extolled as the greatest gain achieved by the Lutheran
schism; yet here we have his word for it that the solace of a Gracious
God was still withheld from him.—“I have always been in the habit of
comforting others,” he says in a letter to Amsdorf on Nov. 1; “and now
I myself stand in desperate need of such consolation; only one thing,
however, do I wish, viz. never to be the foe of Christ, although I
have offended Him by many and great sins. Satan tries to make a Job
of me; he would like to sift me like Peter and his brethren. Oh, that
God would say to him: ‘Yet spare his life’ [Job ii. 6], and to me:
‘I am thy salvation’ [Ps. xxxiv. 3]. Even now I still hope that His
anger at my sins will not last for ever.... Meanwhile fighting goes on
outside and fears reign within, yea, very bitter ones indeed.”[1354]
Thus in spite of everything he tries to buoy himself up with hope.
Yet his lamentations continue. “Hardly can I breathe for storms
and faintheartedness.... My Katey, however, is strong in faith and
in good health.... As for me, my body is whole but I am tempted”
(Nov. 4).[1355]—“From several sides at once fears rush in on me. My
temptations torment me ... for months storms and faintness of spirit
have never left me; pray that my faith may not fail” (Nov. 7).—“I
have surely troubles enough already, please do not add to them by
crucifying me with your dissensions” (Nov. 9).—“Erasmus and the
Sacramentarians are now come to stamp me under foot, to persecute a
man already utterly worn out in spirit!”[1356]—“I endure God’s wrath
because I have sinned against Him. My sins, death, and Satan with his
angels all rage against me without a break; and now Pope and Emperor,
Princes, Bishops and the whole world too storms in upon me, making
common cause with the crew who vex me”; everything would be endurable
provided only Christ—for Whose sake he, the “most abject of all
sinners,” was hated—did not desert one “whom God has smitten”[1357]
and whom they persecute (Nov. 10).—“I believe that it is no mere
fiend from the ranks of the devil’s hosts who fights with me, but the
Prince of the demons himself; so powerful is he and so armed to the
teeth with Bible-texts that my knowledge of the Bible is left stranded
and I am obliged to have recourse to the words of others; from this
you may get some idea of the devil’s height, as they say” (Nov. 17).
“I am well in body, but as to how it stands with me in spirit I am
not certain.... I seek only for a gracious Christ.... Satan wants to
prevent me from writing and to drag me down with him to hell. May
Christ tread him under foot, Amen!” (Nov. 22).[1358]
His work and his doctrine must, according to him, be pleasing to
heaven; the difficulties and the attacks from without and from within,
all these he attributes to Satan’s raging and sees in them proofs
“that our word is the Word of God; this alone it is that makes him so
furious against us” (Dec. 30).—It has been said that Luther held fast
to this with a “bold faith”; it would, however, be more correct to say
that he catches at such thoughts as a drowning man does at a straw, a
phenomenon which of itself throws a lurid light on his delusions and
the misty trend of his thoughts. He is determined to be sure of his
cause—and at this very time, with the help of the State, he has a
Coburg Zwinglian put to silence, because the latter “neither is nor
can be sure of his cause.”[1359]
“I myself am weak and in wretchedness,” he again confesses. “If only
Christ does not forsake me.... Satan expends his fury on me because I
have attacked him by deed, and word, and writing; but I feel consoled
when I boldly believe (‘_fortiter credo_’) that what I did was
pleasing to the Lord and to His Christ. I am tossed about between the
two warring princes [Christ and Satan] till all my bones are sore.
Many works of Satan have I done and still do, nevertheless I hope to
please my Christ Who is merciful and inclined to forgive; but from
Satan I desire no forgiveness for what I have done against him and
for Christ. He is a murderer and the father of lies.... I feel in the
depths of my soul how, with unbelievable wrath, he plots against me,
assuming even the guise of Christ, to say nothing of that of the angel
of light” (Nov. 27, 1527).—The “guise of Christ” and of the “angel
of light,” to which he here alludes, are sufficient to show those who
look below the surface that what was troubling him was something not
very different from the inner voice of conscience.
How far he could go in deluding himself the better to appease his
conscience is plain from what he says in his letter “to the Christians
at Erfurt”: During the whole time he had spent at Erfurt in his
Catholic days he had longed in vain to hear “a Gospel or even a little
Psalm”; there, as was everywhere the case in Popery, Holy Scripture
lay buried deep, and “no one had even thought of preaching a really
Christian sermon.”[1360]
No less vain than this consolation from the past was that which he
sought in the future. He clung wildly to his delusion that the end of
all was at hand; “Satan,” he cries, “has but a short respite before
being completely overthrown, therefore does he make such furious and
incredible efforts” (Dec. 31).
“Now that the Word is preached Satan plainly comes off second best;
hence he persecutes me secretly; he is unchained, and, with all his
engines he seeks to tear Christ from me.” Thus (on Nov. 28).—“I am
the wretched ‘off-scourings of Christ’” (Nov. 29).—“I am to all
intents and purposes dead, as the Apostle calls it, yet still I live”
(Dec. 10).
The long and terrible year was drawing to a close. He had almost grown
accustomed to his inward troubles. “I have not yet shaken off my
temptation, nor do I desire to be free if it is to God’s glory. The
devil rages against me simply because Christ has vanquished him through
me, his most wretched of vessels” (Dec. 14).—“Well in body, in soul I
am as Christ wills, to Whom I am now bound only by a slender thread.
The devil on the other hand is moored to me with mighty cords, nay,
real cables; he drags me down into the depths, but the weak Christ has
still the upper hand owing to your prayers, or at least He puts up a
brave fight” (Dec. 29).
_The Trouble Continues_
Even his lectures on the 1st Epistle of St. John testify to Luther’s
inward excitement during that unhappy year (1527). The Preface to the
commentary as preserved in the Vatican MS. (Palat., 1825) is dated Aug.
19, and begins: “You know that we are so placed by God in this life as
to be exposed to all the darts of Satan. And not Satan alone storms
against us, but also the world, and our heart, and our flesh. Hence
we must despair of peace so long as we remain here below. Against all
these evils God has given us no other weapon than His Word which He
commands us to preach, who live in the midst of wolves.... Thus, since
we are exposed to all these dangers, to death, sin, heretics and the
whole might of Satan, I have undertaken to expound this Epistle.”
Amidst all this inward woe there was a cheerier side of things to look
at. A little daughter had been born to him at the end of 1527. He and
his family had happily been spared by the plague. He had succeeded
in imposing silence on most of his opponents among the preachers
of the new faith. His sovereign too was more than ever resolved to
support him in his work. In the German lands, and even beyond, the
Evangel was daily gaining new ground. Hence there was every reason for
self-gratulation. In spite of all this what he says to his friends
retains a tone of bitterness and apprehension: “Help me in my agony!”
“At times indeed the temptation becomes less severe, but then again it
overwhelms me more relentlessly than before” (Dec. 30).—“We are all
well excepting Luther himself, who, though he feels well in body, is
tormented outwardly by the whole world and inwardly by the devil and
all his angels.” “Satan gnashes his teeth furiously all around us”
(Dec. 31).—“I have been well acquainted with such temptations from my
youth upwards, but that they could assume such dimensions I had never
dreamed. Christ holds His own with the utmost difficulty, yet so far
He has been victorious. I commend myself to your prayers and those of
your brethren. I have saved others and cannot save myself. Praised
be my Christ,” he adds, convinced in spite of all that he was in the
right, “praised be He in the midst of despair, death and blasphemy....
It is our glory to have lived in the world agreeably with the will of
Christ, forgetful of our former very evil life. Let it suffice that
Christ is our life and our righteousness, though this is indeed a hard
truth and one which the flesh knows not. It is a bitter chalice that I
must drink as the end of the world draws nigh” (Jan. 1, 1528).
After this sad New Year’s letter Luther’s complaints of his pains
of soul cease for a while, though, not long after, they reappear at
intervals in an even more startling form.
That bodily sickness was not entirely responsible is clear from his
frequent allusions to his good state of health even during such spells
of stress; in the end, too, he got the better of these fears, not as
the result of any improvement in bodily health, but thanks to the
defiant spirit with which he clung to what he deemed was his Divine
mission. Everybody knows how much a forceful will is able to do, even
in the profoundest depths of the soul. Nevertheless the unhappy victory
he ultimately succeeded in gaining over his own self has a right to be
accounted something quite out of the common, something of which few in
his position would have been capable. Hardly ever has a man had such
Titanic forces at his disposal as Luther. He neither could nor would
go back, the gap was already too wide; the inward voices spoke in vain
which urged him to put away the “hard truth” of the doctrine he had
discovered, and to return to the Church which he had spurned.
On the contrary, quite in his own fashion, he declared, on Jan. 27,
1528, that “he was determined still further to provoke Satan, who was
raging against him with the utmost fury,” and thus make an end once
for all of his struggles and fears. “But after I am dead,” so he begs
his friends, “then do you who survive me avenge me on Satan and his
apostles” (Jan. 6).
In the same year, on the strength of his own experience, he gave his
friend Wenceslaus Link detailed directions for those followers of
the Evangel who are “tempted in faith and hope.” They are to make the
“greatest efforts” against the devil who is so plainly to be discerned;
they are to build blindly on the certainty that all thoughts to the
contrary are mere devil’s treason. Further, they are to cling to the
Word of a good man as to a voice from God in Heaven, just as he himself
had often found strength by revolving in mind Bugenhagen’s simple
words: “You must not despise our consolation.”[1361] Luther seems to
have sent Link several such letters on the means of escaping from
“despair.”[1362] He knew only too well the fears which many underwent
in the new Evangel.[1363]
“Our conscience tells us,” so he says in one of his sermons, “I am a
sinner, it goes ill with me, and this I have richly deserved. Then the
conscience begins to quake and says: It will not be well with me when I
die. Such is fear of death.”[1364]
* * * * *
The return of his friends to Wittenberg in 1528 and social intercourse
with his own circle gradually changed his frame of mind. He was very
susceptible to the influence of cheerful conversation and to the
exhilarating effects of drink. The new and important tasks which
confronted him also tended to take his mind from the trouble that
reigned within him.
“My Satan,” he was able to write on Feb. 25, 1528, “is now rather more
bearable; your prayers are taking effect.”[1365]
But, in the following year (1529), it became apparent that the storm
was not yet over. As early as Feb. 12 he again asks his friend Amsdorf
for the help of his prayers that he may not “be delivered into Satan’s
hand.”[1366]—Curiously enough, on the very day that the famous
Protest of Spires was made (April 19, 1529), Luther was again passing
through one of the worst bouts of his “wrestling with the devil”; he
poured out his heart and conscience to his friend Jonas: If it was
really an apostolic attribute to be “in deaths often” (2 Cor. xi.
23) then indeed he was in this respect a “very Peter or Paul”; but,
unfortunately, he had other less apostolic qualities, “qualities better
fitting robbers, publicans, whores and sinners.”[1367]—Elsewhere he
indeed compares himself with the Apostle Peter, but with Peter while
still weak in the faith and wavering, as he was before the descent of
the Holy Ghost: “Though I feel fairly well in body yet I am weak in the
spirit, and, like Peter’s, my faith is shaky”[1368] (July 31).
When he wrote this he had already consented to take part in the Marburg
Conference with Zwingli. We already know how, outwardly at least, he
triumphed over Zwingli at Marburg; yet, when returning home in good
health and spirits, the “temptations” suddenly came upon him again at
Torgau in Oct., 1529, with such violence, that he admitted he had “only
with difficulty (‘_vix et ægre_’) continued his journey to Wittenberg,
after having given up all hope of again seeing his family.”[1369] Very
likely apprehension of danger from the Turks contributed to this. He
himself says: “It may be that, by this combat (‘_agon_’), I myself am
doing my bit in enduring and conquering the Turk, or at least his god,
viz. the devil.”[1370] Just before this, however, and on this very
journey home, he had composed the so-called Articles of Schwabach,
which contain not a trace of his doubts and self-reproaches, but, on
the contrary, are full of that firm defiance which characterises his
other writings. They insist most strongly on his views as against those
of both Zwinglians and Catholics.
Before reaching Torgau Luther preached several sermons, including one
at Erfurt.
_Outbursts and Relief_
At Erfurt, as though to relieve his fears, Luther stormed against
the Evangelical fanatics, and likewise against the monks and the
holy-by-works. Maybe the sight of the town where he had passed his
youth set him thinking of the zealous and peaceful years he had spent
in the monastery and thus added to his sense of disquiet. Nor was this
the first time that his anger had gushed forth on Erfurt in one of
those outbursts by which he was wont to forestall the reproaches of his
conscience.
One such eruption of an earlier date may serve as an instance of the
fits of rage to which he was liable when battling with his temptations.
The Erfurt Evangelicals had failed to silence the Franciscan preacher,
Dr. Conrad Kling. That this valiant friar, the ablest priest at
Erfurt and a powerful pulpit orator, should continue to attract large
crowds, annoyed Luther exceedingly. In his writing to the “Christians
at Erfurt” of Jan. or Feb., 1527, he invoked “God’s anger and
judgments” upon them and threatened all with Christ’s warnings against
“Capharnaum, Chorozain and Bethsaida” unless at the order of their
Councillors they expelled the preacher and in this way safeguarded the
“great fulness and wealth of the Word” which he himself had proclaimed
to them. Satan, verily, was not asleep in their midst, as they could
very well see from the working of that “doctor of darkness,” the
shameless monk.[1371]
Kling, who was much esteemed by the Catholics, and was seeking to save
the last remnants of the faithful, was pictured by the fanatism of his
furious opponent as a glaring example of that most dreadful of all
sins, viz. the sin against the Holy Ghost. Now that the world, by the
preaching of the Evangel, has been delivered from the lesser sins of
“blindness, error and darkness,” so Luther told the people of Erfurt,
“why do we rage with the other sin against the Holy Ghost and provoke
God’s wrath to destroy us in time and for all eternity? God will not
forgive this sin, nor can He endure it; there is no need to say more.”
“When they start wantonly fighting against the plain, known truth,
then there is no further help or counsel.”[1372]
Such action can only be explained by a quite peculiar mental state.
Boundless irritation, probably not unconnected with his struggles of
conscience, combined with a positive infatuation for his own ideas,
was the cause of the following outbursts, which almost remind us of
the ravings of a maniac.
In 1528, in the preface to a book of Klingenbeyl, he inveighs against
the celibacy of the clergy: “They are devils in human skins and so are
all who knowingly and wilfully hold with them.” “Amongst themselves
they are the worst of all whoremongers, adulterers, women-stealers and
girl-spoilers, so that their shameless record of sins fills the heaven
and the earth.” Their wickedness is matched only by their stupidity.
“The people [the Papists] have become a Pope-Ass, so that they are and
remain donkeys however much we may boil them, roast them, flay them,
turn them over, baste them, or break them; all they can do is abuse
Luther.... And because I have driven them to Scripture and they can
neither understand nor make use of it, God help us what a wild bawling
and outcry I have caused. Here one howls about the sacrament under
one kind, there another bellows against the marriage of the clergy;
one shrieks about the Mass, and another yells about good works.” “The
vermin and the ugly crew I have rounded up understands not a bit even
its own noise and howling.” “Hence you may see how they love justice,
viz. their own tyranny.”
To the measure of their viciousness, stupidity and obstinacy must
be added vulgar impudence of the worst sort: “They shamelessly and
scandalously relieve themselves of their filth in front of all the
world.” “Such rude fellows remind me of a coarse clod-hopper who
would ease himself in the marketplace before everyone, all the while
pointing to a house where a little child is modestly and privily
relieving nature, and who would imagine that he had thereby excused
himself and provoked everybody to laugh at the child.” “Ought not such
rascals to be hunted down with hounds and driven out with rods.... Let
them go, blind leaders of the blind that they are! God’s endless wrath
has come upon them so that now they can no longer see anything.”[1373]
* * * * *
According to recent research it is to this trying time of inward
conflict, after his recovery from his illness in 1527, that Luther’s
famous Hymn “A safe stronghold our God is still” (“Ein’ feste Burg”)
belongs. This “great hymn of the evangelical community,” as Köstlin
termed it, proclaims, in the words of the Psalmist, that God is the
strong bulwark and sure refuge of Luther’s cause.
“The ancient Prince of Hell
Hath risen with purpose fell;
Strong mail of Craft and Power
He weareth in this hour,
On Earth is not his fellow.
* * * * *
And were this world all devils o’er,
And watching to devour us,
We lay it not to heart so sore,
Not they can overpower us.
* * * * *
God’s Word, for all their craft and force,
Shall not one moment linger.”[1374]
“This hymn came from the very bottom of his heart,” says Köstlin,
“being written with a bold faith under stress of temptation.” The
first trace of the hymn is now believed to be found in a recently
discovered Leipzig hymnbook, which is supposed to be a reprint of
the Wittenberg “Gesangbüchlein” of 1528, in which this hymn may have
figured.[1375]
A Protestant researcher, P. Tschackert, has pointed out, that, in that
same year (1528), the Wittenbergers went in fear of an attack on the
Evangelicals by the Catholic Estates. Luther’s attitude towards the
supposed menace, intensified as it was by his inward struggles about
that time, calls for some further remarks.
The alleged disclosures of Otto von Pack to the Landgrave of Hesse
concerning the secret plans of the Catholics to dethrone the Protestant
Princes by force of arms had proved to be a mere fabrication.[1376]
Luther, nevertheless, stormed against the Duke of Saxony who was
supposed to be implicated most deeply in the business. He wrote: “Duke
George is a foe of my doctrine, hence he rages against the Word of God;
I must therefore believe he rages against God Himself and His Christ.
But if he rages against God, then, privily, I must believe him to be
possessed of the devil. If he is possessed of the devil, then in my
heart I must believe that he cherishes the worst of intentions.”[1377]
Thanks to such dialectics, Luther again formulates the charges embodied
in the Pack disclosures. As Tschackert points out, Luther persisted in
crediting his opponents with all that was worst.
In 1528 he preached on John xvii.; in the tone of these sermons,
printed in 1530, we find several remarkable echoes of Luther’s hymn
“Ein’ feste Burg.”[1378]
The preacher speaks to his hearers both of inward temptations and of
outward hardships, and uses words which recall, now his complaints of
his experiences with the devil, now the trustful defiance he voices in
his hymn on the “Safe stronghold.”
“We must know that there is no way of resisting the devil’s
temptations than by holding fast to the plain word of Scripture and
not thinking or speculating further.... Whoever does not do this
will be disappointed, and err, and have a fall.”[1379] If you do not
simply believe in the Word, he repeats to the people, you will “rush
in headlong and be overthrown; for the devil is able to persuade our
heart that he is God, and to disguise himself in great splendour and
majesty”; “in the assumption of prudence, holiness and majesty no one
in the world excels him”; “hence no one can cheat him better than by
tying himself to the tree where God has placed him; otherwise, if he
seizes you, you are lost and he will carry you off as the hawk does
the chick from under the wing of the clucking hen.”[1380]
In the same sermon, however, he also prophesies the shame and
destruction of “our wrathful foes who seek to stifle the Evangel and
to stamp out the Christians, many of whom they have already burned and
murdered; for even prouder kings and lords—in comparison with whom
our princes and lords are the merest beggars[1381]—have come to grief
over the Evangel and been wrecked by it.” Speaking of the Catholic
princes headed by the Emperor Charles V, he exclaims: “Our furious
tyrants, when they abuse the Evangel, and persecute, murder and burn
all our people are termed Christian princes, and defenders of the
Church; this exonerates whatever shameful and wicked practices they
may commit against both God and man.”[1382]
Again he extols the Word, making Christ say: “I have given them the
Word whereby Thy Name has been made known to them” (“Das Wort sie
sollen lassen stahn,” as the original of the hymn runs); “but neither
the Papacy nor any other fanatics will accept it,” i.e. the knowledge
of Christ; “for this reason we are forced unceasingly to wrangle,
grapple and fight with them and the devil.”[1383] Still, “all our
protection, our redemption from sin, death, the world and the devil’s
power is comprised in the Word alone”; holding fast to this we have
all the prophets, martyrs, apostles and the whole of Christendom on
our side. But Christendom is a “powerful lady, Empress of heaven and
earth, at whose feet devil, world, death and hell must fall as soon as
she drops a word.” “For,” so he continues, thinking of himself, “who
can check or harm a man who has so defiant a spirit?” “Whether the
devil attacks singly a weak member of Christendom and fancies he has
gobbled him up [cp. the use of this same word below, p. 347] or even
Christendom as a whole,” he must nevertheless “tremble and fall to the
ground.” “If a sin attacks him [the Christian], and seeks to affright,
gnaw, and oppress his conscience and threaten him with devil, death
and hell, then God and His multitude [the saints and angels] will say:
‘Good sin, let him be; death, do not slay him; hell, do not swallow
him!’”[1384]
“But here faith comes in,” he at once goes on, “for, to the eyes
of the world and to reason, everything seems just the reverse.”
[“And were the world all devils o’er,” sings the hymn on the “Safe
stronghold.”]
The outside menace from the Papists and their princes, and the inward,
“sudden, baneful attacks of the devil in our conscience,” Luther
writes in his interpretation of John xviii. (v. 28), all “this is
written to put to blush our high-priests and elders, viz. the bishops
and princes who go about the world with noses in the air as though
they were pious and holy, whereas they drive out of their land the
pious, God-fearing Christians and preachers. Who in the devil’s name
gave them power to pass judgment on the teaching of the Evangel?”
But the devil, too, persecutes us with his machinations. “When he
finds some poor conscience that would fain be pious, he attacks it
with trifles.... Amongst us Evangelicals there is not one who has
not great, big sins and difficulties, such as doubts, and waverings
in the faith, and other awkward knots. But such big sins and great
difficulties the devil is willing to discard while he attacks us about
some paltry thing ... and torments and plagues our conscience.” But
when thereby we are “upset and become troubled” we ought to “console
ourselves and say: ‘If Our Lord God can have patience with me even
though my faith in Him be not firm, but often wavering and doubtful,
why then do you torment me, you devil, with other petty matters and
sins? I can see through all your artfulness and wicked malice; you
cloak over the great sins and big difficulties so that I may not
heed them, or make any conscience of them, nor seek forgiveness for
them....’ Therefore a Christian must learn not to allow himself to be
too easily troubled with remorse of conscience; but if he believes in
Christ, wishes to be pious, strives against sin as far as he is able
and yet occasionally makes mistakes, stumbles and falters, he must not
allow such stumbling to upset him in conscience, but rather he must
say: Away with this error and this stumbling! Let it join my other
faults and crimes and be included among the other sins of which the
Creed teaches us the forgiveness.”[1385]
The further course of Luther’s inner history will show more clearly
how far the article of the forgiveness of sins served its purpose in
his own case and how he contrived to prop up a faith, which, during
the years 1527 and 1528, was so distressingly inclined to “doubt and
wavering.”
5. The Ten Years from 1528-38. How to win back Peace of Conscience
_The Years Previous to 1537_
During the time when the Diet of Augsburg was in preparation Luther’s
complaints about his inward struggles recede somewhat into the
background, outward events engrossing all his attention.
Matters changed, however, when the Diet actually began its sessions and
he himself took up his residence in the fortress of Coburg. There he
was a prey to overwhelming suffering both of body and of mind.