Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The Catholics profess “unbelief in God,” and “put to death those guileless Christians who refuse to countenance such idolatry”; they are “not fit to be compared with oxen or asses,” seeing that they exalt “their self-chosen works,” “far above God’s commandment. For in addition to the idolatry and ungodly teaching whereby they daily outrage and blaspheme God, they do not perform any works of charity towards their neighbour, nay, would rather leave anyone to perish in want than stretch out a hand to help him. Again, they are as careful not to deviate by a hair’s breadth from their man-made ordinances, rules and commands as were the Jews with regard to the Sabbath.... They make no scruple of cheating their neighbour of his money and goods in order to fill their own belly.... Such perverse and crazy saints, more foolish than ever ox or ass, are all those, Mohammedans, Turks or whatever else they be called, who refuse to listen to or receive Christ.”

  It was Luther that Dr. Jonas had heard, on one occasion at table, express the opinion concerning the Papists: “Young fellows, take note of this definition: A Papist is a liar and murderer, nay, the devil himself. Hence they are not to be trusted, for they thirst for our blood.”

  Luther himself assures us that “the blindness of the Papists and the anger of God against the Papacy was terrible.” “Christians, redeemed by the Blood of Christ, put away this blood and worshipped the crib, surely an awful fall! If this had happened amongst the heathen it would have been regarded as monstrous.”

  The Catholics, Luther taught, never pray, in fact, they do not know how to pray but only how to blaspheme. We find other almost incredible allegations born of his fancy and voiced in a sermon in 1524, of which we have a transcript. “They taught the Our Father, but warned us not to use it [by instructing us to get others to pray for us in our stead]. It is true that for many years I shouted [‘bawled,’ he says elsewhere] in the monastery [in choir], but never did I pray. They mock the Lord God with their prayers. Never did they approach God with their hearts so as to pray for anything in faith.”

  Had it been possible for a man to be saved in Popery? He, Luther, replies that this might have happened because “some laymen” may have “held the crucifix in front of the dying man and said: Look up to Jesus, Who died on the cross for you. By this means many a dying man had turned to Christ in spite of having previously believed in the false, miraculous signs [which the devil performs in Popery] and acted as an idolator. Such, however, were lucky.” He admits incidentally that “many of our forefathers” had been saved in this exceptional way, though only such as “had been led astray into error, but had not clung to it.” In any case it was a miracle. “Those pious souls,” “many of whom had by God’s grace been wonderfully preserved in the true faith in the midst of Popery,” had been saved, so he fancies, in much the same way as “Abraham in Ur of the Chaldeans, and Lot in Sodom.”

  Now, however, matters stood differently; thanks to his mission light had dawned again, and the unbelief of the Catholics was therefore all the more reprehensible. In the heat of his polemic Luther goes so far as to accuse the Papists who oppose him of the sin against the Holy Ghost. At any rate they were acting against their conscience, as he had pointed out before. He also hints that theirs is that worst sin, of which Christ declares (Matt. xii. 31), that it can be forgiven neither in this world nor in the next. The greater part of a sermon on this text which he preached at Wittenberg, in 1528 or 1529, deals with this criminal blindness on the part of Catholics, this deliberate turning away from the truth of the Holy Ghost to which Matthew refers. Here, as elsewhere, Luther’s presupposition is: I teach “the bright Evangel with which even they can find no fault”; I preach “nothing but what is plain to all and so clearly grounded on Scripture that they themselves are forced to admit it”; “what is so plainly proved by the Holy Ghost” that it stands out as a “truth known to all.” He proceeds: “When I was a learned Doctor I did not believe there was such a thing on earth as the sin against the Holy Ghost, for I never imagined or believed it was possible to find a heart that could be so wicked.” But “now the Papal horde” has descended to this, for they “blaspheme and lie against their conscience”; they “are unable to refute our Evangel or to advance anything against it,” “yet they knowingly oppose our teaching out of waywardness and hatred of the truth, so that no admonition, counsel, prayer or chastisement is of any avail.” “Thus openly to smite the Holy Ghost on the mouth,” nay, “to spit in His Face,” is to emulate the treachery of Judas in the depth of their “obstinate and venomous hearts”; for such it was “forbidden to pray,” according to 1 John v. 16, because this would be to “insult the spirit of grace and tread under foot the Son of God.” The Papists richly deserve that the “Holy Ghost should forsake them,” and that they should go “wantonly to their destruction according to their desire.” In short, “It is better for people to be sunk in sin, to be prostitutes and utter scamps, for at least they may yet come to a knowledge of the truth; but these devil’s saints who go to Divine worship full of good works, when they hear the Holy Ghost openly testifying against them, strike Him on the mouth and say: it is all heresy and devilry.”

  The tone of hatred and of blind prejudice in favour of his cause which here finds utterance may be explained to some extent by his experience during the sharp struggles of conscience through which he was then going, and which formed the worst crisis of his inner states of terror. (See vol. v., xxxii., 4.) Nor must the connection be overlooked between his apparent confidence here and the attempt which he makes in one passage of the sermon to justify theologically his radical subversion of olden doctrine. The brief argument runs as follows: “From St. Paul everyone can infer that it cannot be achieved by works, otherwise the Blood of Christ is made of no account.” Hence the holiness-by-works of the Catholics was an abomination.

  On another occasion Luther, speaking of the wilful blindness of the Catholics, declared that “God’s untold wrath must sooner or later fall upon such Epicurean pigs and donkeys”; the devil must be a spirit of tremendous power to incite them “deliberately to withstand God.” They say and admit: “‘That is, I know, the Word of God, but even though it is the Word of God I shall not suffer it, listen to it, nor regard it, but shall reprove it and call it heretical, and whoever is determined to obey God in this matter ... him I will put to death or banish.’ I could never have believed there was such a sin.”

  As such declarations of the wilful obstinacy of the Catholics are quite commonly made by him, we are tempted to assume that such was really his opinion; if so, we are here face to face with a remarkable instance of what his self-deception was capable.

  Even at the Wartburg, however, he was already on the road to such an idea, for, while still there, he had declared that the Papists were unworthy to receive the truth which he preached: “Had they been worthy of the truth, they would long ago have been converted by my many writings.” “If I teach them they only revile me; I implore and they merely mock at me; I scold them and they grow angry; I pray for them and they reject my prayer; I forgive them their trespass and they will have none of my forgiveness; I am ready to sacrifice myself for them and yet they only curse me. What more can I do than Christ?”

  It is true that according to him the Papists were ignorant to the last degree, and such ignorance had indeed always prevailed under Popery. “I myself have been a learned Doctor of theology and yet I never understood the Ten Commandments aright. Nay, there have been many celebrated Doctors who were not sure whether there were nine or ten or eleven Commandments; much less did they know anything of the Gospel or of Christ.”

  Still, this appalling ignorance on the part of the Papists did not afford any excuse or ground for charitable treatment. Their malice, particularly that of the Popes, is too great. “The Popes are a pot-boil of the very worst men on earth. They boast of the name of Christ, St. Peter and the Churches and yet are full of the worst devils in hell, full, absolutely full, so full that they drivel, spew and vomit nothing but devils.”

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nbsp; A passage in the “Table-Talk” collected by Mathesius and recently published, shows that Luther considered his frenzied anti-popery as the most suitable method of combating Popish errors; “Philip [Melanchthon] isn’t as yet angry enough with the Pope,” he said some time in the winter of 1542-43; “he is moderate by nature and always acts with moderation, which may possibly be of some use, as he himself hopes. But my storming (impetus) knocks the bottom out of the cask; my way is to fall upon them with clubs ... for the devil can only be vanquished by contempt. Enough has been written and said to the weak, as for the hardened, nothing is of any avail ... I rush in with all my might, but against the devil.”

  His attitude towards scholarly Catholics was very apparent in the later episodes of his controversy with Erasmus.

  After having charged Popes and Cardinals with lack of faith, it can be no matter for surprise that he should have represented Erasmus as an utter infidel and a preacher of Epicureanism. The pretexts upon which Luther based this charge had been triumphantly demolished by Erasmus, and only Luther’s prejudice in favour of his own mission to save Christendom from destruction could have led him to describe Erasmus as a depraved fellow, who personified all the infidelity and corruption of the Papacy.

  “This man learned his infidelity in Rome,” Luther ventured to say of him; hence his wish “to have his Epicureanism praised.” “He is the worst foe of Christ that has arisen for the last thousand years.” In 1519, before Erasmus took the field against him, Luther had written to him, praising him, and, in the hope of securing his co-operation, had said: “You are our ornament and our hope.... Who is there into whose mind Erasmus has not penetrated, who does not see in him a teacher, or over whom he has not established his sway? You are displeasing to many, but therein I discern the gifts of our Gracious God.... With these my words, barbarous as they are, I would fain pay homage to the excellence of your mind to which we, all of us, are indebted.... Please look on me as a little brother in Christ, who is wholly devoted to you and loves you dearly.”

  On another occasion Luther abuses his opponent as follows: “The only foundation of all his teaching is his desire to gain the applause of the world; he weights the scale with ignorance and malice.” “What is the good of reproaching him with being on the same road as Epicurus, Lucian and the sceptics? By doing so I merely succeeded in rousing the viper, and in its fury against me it gave birth to the Viperaspides [i.e. the “Hyperaspistes”]. In Italy and at Rome he sucked in the milk of the Lamiæ and Megæræ and now no medicine is of any avail.” Even in what Erasmus says concerning the Creed, we see the “os et organum Satanæ.” He may be compared with the enemy in the Gospel, who, while men slept, sowed cockel in the field. We can understand now how Sacramentarians, Donatists, Arians, Anabaptists, Epicureans and so forth have again made their appearance. He sowed his seed and then disappeared. And yet he stands in high honour with Pope and Prince. “Who would have believed that the hatred of Luther was so strong? A poor man is made great simply through Luther.”

  This letter Erasmus described in the title of his printed reply as “Epistola non sobria Martini Lutheri.” Others, he says, might well explain it as a mental aberration, or as due to the influence of some evil demon.

  Luther, quite undismayed, continued to deny that Erasmus was in any sense a believer: “He regards the Christian religion and doctrine as a comedy or tragedy”; he is “a perfect counterfeit and image of Epicurus”; to this “incarnate scoundrel, God — the Father, Son and Holy Ghost — is merely ludicrous.” “Whereas I did not take the trouble to read most of the other screeds published against me, but merely put them to the basest use that paper can be put — which indeed was all they were worth — I read through the whole of the ‘Diatribe’ of Erasmus, though I was often tempted to throw it aside.” He, like Democritus, the cynical heathen philosopher, looks on our whole theology as nothing better than a fairy tale.

  We may well be permitted to regard such statements made by Luther in his later years concerning the Catholics more as the result of a delusion than as deliberate falsehoods. It may be that Luther gradually persuaded himself that such was really the case. If this be so, we must, however, admit with Döllinger “the unparalleled perversion and darkening of Luther’s judgment”; this, adds Döllinger, would explain “much in his statements which must otherwise appear enigmatical.” Considerations such as those we have seen him ( ff.) allege concerning the truth of his cause being proved by its success, could scarcely have impressed any save an unsettled mind such as his. He seems to have accustomed himself to explaining the complex and highly questionable movement at the head of which he stood in a light other than the true one, so much so that he could declare: “God knows all this is not my doing, a fact of which the whole world should have been aware long ago.” Brimful of the enthusiasm he had imbibed at the Wartburg he wrote, from Wittenberg, on June 27, 1522, in a similar tone to Staupitz, who was then Benedictine Abbot at Salzburg: “God has undertaken it [the destruction of the abomination of the kingdom of the Pope] without our help and without human aid, merely by the Word. Its end has come before the Lord. The matter is beyond our reason or understanding, hence it is useless to expect all to grasp it. For the sake of God’s power it is meet and just that people’s minds be deeply stirred and that there should be great scandals and great signs. Dear father, do not let this disturb you; I am hopeful. You see God’s plan in these matters and His Mighty Hand. Remember how my cause from the outset seemed to the world doubtful and intolerable, and how, notwithstanding, from day to day it has gained the upper hand more and more. It will also gain the upper hand in what you now anticipate with misplaced apprehension; just you wait and see. Satan feels the smart of the wound inflicted on him, that is why he rages so furiously and throws everything into confusion. But Christ Who began the work will tread him under foot in defiance of all the gates of hell.”

  From the very outset of his career Luther had been paving the way for this delusion as to the true character of his Catholic opponents, his own higher mission and God’s overthrow of all gainsayers.

  In 1518 he declared, as a sort of prelude to the idea of his Divine mission, that the Catholic Doctors who opposed him were sunk in “chaotic darkness,” and that he preached “the one true light, Jesus Christ.” Even in 1517, in publishing his Resolutions, he had said of the setting up of his Indulgence Theses, that the Lord Himself had compelled him to advance all this. “Let Christ see to it whether it be His cause or mine.”

  His pupils and Wittenberg adherents treasured up such assurances of his extraordinary mission in order to excite their own enthusiasm. Even Albert Dürer, who was further removed from the sphere of his influence, spoke of him in the third decade of the century as “a man enlightened by the Holy Ghost and one who has the Spirit of God.” Long after his death the chord which he had struck continued to vibrate among those who were devoted to him. On his tomb at Wittenberg might be read: “Taught by the Divine inspiration and called by God’s Word, he disseminated throughout the world the new light of the Evangel.” Old, orthodox Lutheranism honoured him as God’s own messenger; the Protestant Pietists, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, attributed to Luther, to quote the words of Gottfried Arnold, a truly “apostolic call,” received by means of a “direct inspiration, impulse or Divine apprehension”; this Divine mission, Arnold says, was “generally” admitted, although he himself, as a staunch Pietist, was willing to allow to Luther “the power and illumination of the Spirit” only during the period previous to the dispute with Carlstadt, who was equally enlightened from above. “For a while,” says Arnold, i.e. for about seven years, Luther was “in very truth mightily guided by God and employed as His instrument.”

  Other Lutheran theologians, Gerhard and Calovius, for instance, refused to see in Luther’s case anything more than an indirect call; about the middle of the eighteenth century the editor of Luther’s Works, Consistorialrat Prof. J. G. Walch, of Jena, asserted openly of Luther’s mi
ssion that he “was not called directly by God as had been the case with the Prophets and Apostles”; his call had only in so far been beyond the ordinary in that “God, after decreeing in His Divine plans the Reformation, had chosen Luther as His tool”; hence Luther’s providential mission was only to be inferred from the “divinity of the Reformation,” which, however, was apparent to all who “did not wantonly and maliciously shut their eyes to facts.” Extraordinary gifts had not indeed been bestowed upon him by God, though he had all the “gifts pertaining to his office” in rich measure, and likewise the “sanctifying gifts” and the “spiritual graces”; the latter Walch then proceeds to dissect with painstaking exactitude.

  Such a view marks the transition to the modern conception of Luther so widely prevalent among Protestants to-day, which, while extolling him as the powerful instrument of the Reformation, naturalises him, so to speak, and takes him down from the pedestal of the God-illumined teacher and prophet, who proclaims a Divine interpretation of Scripture binding upon all.

  Apocalyptico-Mystic Vesture.

  Against Catholics Luther also used certain pseudo-mystic elements drawn from his consciousness of a higher mission and based principally on Holy Scripture.

  In this respect his one-sided study of the Bible explains much, and should avail to mitigate our judgment on him. Stories and scenes from the Old Testament, incidents from the heroic times of the prophets, the lives of the patriarchs, to which he had devoted special Commentaries, so engrossed his mind, that, unwittingly, he came to clothe all in the garb of the prominent figures of Bible history. He was fond of imagining himself as one of those privileged heroes living in the same world of miracles as of yore.