Chapter XXVI: Luther’s Mode of Controversy a Counterpart of His Soul (3)

“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]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

We have already heard him say plainly: “I have more in me of the rhetorician or the gossip”;[1235] he adds that his only writings which were strictly doctrinal were his commentaries on Galatians and on Deuteronomy and his sermons on four chapters of the Gospel of St. John; all the rest the printers might well pass over, for they merely traced the history of his conflict; the truth being that his doctrine “had not been so clear at first as it is now.” And yet he had formerly written much on doctrine; as he once said in a conversation recorded in Schlaginhaufen’s notes of 1532: “I don’t care for my Psalter, it is long and garrulous. Formerly I was so eloquent that I wanted to talk the whole world to death. Now I can do this no longer, for the thoughts won’t come. Once upon a time I could talk more about a little flower than I now could about a whole meadow. I am not fond of any superfluity of words. Jonas replied: The Psalter [you wrote] is, however, of the Holy Ghost and pleases me well.”[1236]

That he avoided “any superfluity of words” later in life is not apparent. What he says of himself in the Table-Talk, viz. that he resembled an Italian in liveliness and wealth of language, holds good of him equally at a later date; on the other hand, his remark, that Erasmus purveyed “words without content” and he content without words,[1237] is not true of the facts.

An example of his rhetorical ability to enlarge upon a thought is found in the continuation of the sentence already mentioned (p. 331): “Before my day nothing was known.”

“Formerly no one knew what the Gospel was, what Christ, or baptism, or confession, or the Sacrament was, what faith, what spirit, what flesh, what good works, the Ten Commandments, the Our Father, prayer, suffering, consolation, secular authority, matrimony, parents or children were, what master, servant, wife, maid, devils, angels, world, life, death, sin, law, forgiveness, God, bishop, pastor, or Church was, or what was a Christian, or what the cross; in fine, we knew nothing whatever of all a Christian ought to know. Everything was hidden and overborne by the Pope-Ass. For they are donkeys, great, rude, unlettered donkeys in Christian things.... But now, thank God, things are better and male and female, young and old, know the Catechism.... The things mentioned above have again emerged into the light.” The Papists, however, “will not suffer any one of these things.... You must help us [so they say] to prevent anyone from learning the Ten Commandments, the Our Father and Creed; or about baptism, the Sacrament, faith, authority, matrimony or the Gospel.... You must lend us a hand so that, in place of marriage, Christendom may again be filled with fornication, adultery and other unnatural and shameful vices.”[1238]

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

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

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

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

He was not, of course, serious and meant to introduce no new rule for the interpretation of Scripture when he pronounced the words so often brought up against him (“_sic volo, sic iubeo_”) in connection with his interpolation of the term “alone” in Rom. iii. 28;[1241] yet this sentence occupies such a position in a famous passage of his works that it will repay us to give it with its context as a typical instance:

“If your Papist insists on making much needless ado about the word ‘alone,’ tell him smartly: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so and says: Papist and donkey is one and the same. ‘_Sic volo, sic iubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas._’ For we will not be the Papists’ pupils or disciples, but their masters and judges, and, for once in a way, we shall strut, and rap these asses’ heads; and as Paul boasted to his crazy saints, so I too will boast to these my donkeys. They are Doctors? So am I. They are learned? So am I. They are preachers? So am I. They are theologians? So am I. They are disputants? So am I. They are philosophers? So am I. They are dialecticians? So am I. They are lecturers? So am I. They write books? So do I. And I will boast still further: I can expound the Psalms and the Prophets; this they can’t do. I can interpret; they, they can’t.”

He proceeds in the same vein and finally concludes: “And if there is one amongst them who rightly understands a single preface or chapter of Aristotle, then I will allow myself to be tossed. Here I am not too generous with my words.”--And yet there is still more to follow that does not belong to the subject! Having had his say he begins again: “Give no further answer to these donkeys when they idly bray about the word ‘_sola_,’ but merely tell them: ‘Luther will have it so and says he is a Doctor above all the Doctors of the Papacy.’ There it shall remain; in future I will despise them utterly and have them despised, so long as they continue to be such people, I mean, donkeys. For there are unblushing scoundrels amongst them who have never even learnt their own, viz. the sophists’, art, for instance, Dr. Schmidt, Dr. Dirty Spoon [Cochlæus] and their ilk. And yet they dare to stand in my way.”

He nevertheless seeks to give a more satisfactory answer, and admits, “that the word ‘alone’ is not found in either Latin or Greek text, ... at the letters of which our donkeys stare like cows at a new gate. They don’t see that the meaning of the text requires it.”[1242]--The last assertion may be taken for what it is worth. The principal thing, however, is that he introduced the interpolation with a meaning of his own, though he could not have held that his doctrine of a dead faith (for this was what his “faith alone” amounted to) really tallied with the Apostle’s teaching. On this point he is quite silent in his strange answers. He is far more concerned in parrying the blows with his rhetorical artifice. His appeal to the will of Dr. Martin Luther may be termed the feint of a skilful swordsman; his whole treatment of the matter is designed to surprise, to puzzle and amuse, and, as a matter of fact, could impress only the populace. It is not without reason that Adolf Harnack speaks of the “strange logic of his arguments, the faults of his exegesis and the injustice and barbarity of his polemics.”[1243]

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

This veneration went so far that many, in spite of his remonstrances, placed him not only on a level with but even above the Apostles.[1249] His devoted pupils usually called him Elias. He himself was not averse to the thought that he had something in common with the fiery prophet. As early as 1522 Wolfgang Rychard, his zealous assistant at Ulm, greets him in his letters as the risen Elias, and actually dates a new era from his coming. In this the physician Magenbuch imitated him, and the title was as well received by Melanchthon and the other Wittenbergers as it was by outsiders.[1250] In the Preface which Luther wrote in 1530 to a work by the theologian Johann Brenz, he contrasts the comparative calmness of the preacher to his own ways, and remarks that his own uncouth style vomited forth a chaos and torrent of words, and was stormy and fierce, because he was ever battling with countless hordes of monsters; he had received as his share of the fourfold spirit of Elias (4 Kings xix.), the “whirlwind and the fire” which “overthrew mountains and uprooted rocks”; the Heavenly Father had bestowed this upon him to use against the thick heads, and had made him a “strong wedge wherewith to split asunder hard blocks.”[1251]

When, in 1532, his great victory over the Sacramentarians was discussed in the circle of his friends, the words of the Magdeburg Chancellor, Laurentius Zoch, recurred to him: “After reading my books against the Sacramentarians he said of me: ‘Now I see that this man is enlightened by the Holy Ghost; such a thing as this no Papist could ever have achieved,’” and so, Luther adds in corroboration, “he was won over to the Evangel; what I say is, that all the Papists together, with all their strength, would not have been able to refute the Sacramentarians, either by authority [the Fathers] or from Scripture. Yet I get no thanks!”[1252]

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

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