As to practical questions, he speaks of the doings of the Electoral marriage courts in certain cases (621); of severity in the up-bringing of children (624); of the choice of godparents for Baptism (620); of the authority of guardians in the marriage of their wards (613); and of what was required of those who dispensed the Supper (618).
On one occasion, when the conversion of the Jews at the end of the world was being discussed, the “Doctoress” (Catherine) intervened in the conversation with a Biblical quotation, but her contribution (John x. 16) was rejected in a friendly way by Luther as mistaken.
In these pages of the Table-Talk unseemly speeches or expressions such as call for censure elsewhere do not occur, though the Pope and the Papacy are repeatedly made the butt of misrepresentation and abuse (610, 616, 619); as was only to be expected, we find here again Luther’s favourite assertion that the Roman doctrine of works is a gross error very harmful to souls (623); in support of his opinion Luther gives a long string of Bible texts.
Apart from the abuse just referred to and some other details these few leaves, taken at haphazard from the Table-Talk, are certainly not discreditable to Luther. Beside these might moreover be placed, as we have already admitted elsewhere, many other pages the contents of which are equally unexceptionable.
It is naturally not the task or duty of Catholic controversialists to fill their works with statements from the Table-Talk such as the above; they would nevertheless do well always to bear in mind that many such favourable utterances occur in Luther’s works with which moreover the Protestants are as a rule perfectly familiar. The latter, indeed, who often are acquainted only with these better excerpts from Luther’s books, sermons, letters or Table-Talk, are not unnaturally disposed to view with suspicion those writers who bestow undue prominence on unfavourable portions of his works, torn from their context.
Unless Catholic polemics contrive to look at things from their opponents’ point of view, their success must always be limited; short of this they run the risk of being accused of being ignorant of what tells in Luther’s favour, or of not giving it due weight. All controversy should in reality be conducted in a friendly spirit, and, in the discussion of Luther, such a spirit joined with a broad-minded appreciation of what is good in the opposite party cannot fail to be productive of happy results. How far Protestants have acted in this spirit is, alas, plain to all who have had dealings with them. There can be no question but that certain excesses perpetrated on the opposite side go far to explain, if not to excuse, the methods adopted by some of the champions of Catholicism.
Kindlier Traits Evinced by Luther.
The great veneration felt for Luther by most of his pupils, particularly by those who were intimate with him, enables us to see the impression his talents made on others. It is, of course, probable that their mental submission to him was in part due to the feeling, that it was an exceptional honour to be accounted friends of a man famous throughout the world and so distinguished by his extraordinary success; yet it is equally certain that it was his own peculiar charm which caused not merely young students, such as those who noted down the Table-Talk, but even mature and experienced men, to look up to him with respect and affection and voluntarily to subject themselves to his mind and his will. The fact is, in Luther a powerful and domineering talent existed side by side with great familiarity in consorting with others and a natural gift of making himself loved. The unshakable confidence in God on which he and his followers seemed to lean in every reverse they met, perhaps impressed people more than anything else.
“His earnestness,” wrote a devoted young follower of his, “is so tempered with gladness and friendliness that one longs to live with him; it seems as though God wished to demonstrate how blissful and joyous his Evangel is, not merely by his teaching, but even by his conduct.” Thus the Swiss student, Johann Kessler, who became acquainted with Luther after his return from the Wartburg. Another voice from the same period enthusiastically extols his friendly ways and his winning speech in his dealings with his pupils, also the power of his words “which cast such a spell over the hearts of his hearers that anyone, who is not made of stone, having once heard him, yearns to hear him again.” Thus his disciple Albert Burrer.
Mathesius, one of his busier pupils, declares: “The man was full of grace and the Holy Ghost. Hence all who sought counsel from him as a prophet of God, found what they desired.” Often, he remarks, difficult questions from Scripture were submitted to him (in conversation at table) which he answered both plainly and concisely. And if anyone contradicted him he took no offence but skilfully put his gainsayer in the wrong. The Doctor knew so well how to bring in his stories and sayings and apply them at the proper juncture that it was a real pleasure and comfort to listen to him. “Amongst his other great virtues he was very easily contented, and also extremely kind.”
Spangenberg, Aurifaber, Cordatus and other pupils were, so to speak, quite under his spell. Hieronymus Weller, whom Luther frequently sought to encourage in his fits of depression, remarked indeed on one occasion that the difference in age, and his reverence for Luther, prevented him from speaking and chatting as confidentially as he would have liked with the great man. On the other hand, the Humanist, Peter Mosellanus, who was at one time much attached to him and never altogether abandoned his cause, says: “In daily life and in his intercourse with others he is polite and friendly; there is nothing stoical or proud about him; he is affable to everyone. In company he converses cheerfully and pleasantly, is lively and gay, always looks merry, cheerful and amiable however hard pressed by his opponents, so that one may well believe he does not act in such weighty matters without God’s assistance.”
Melanchthon, particularly in his early days, as our readers already know, expressed great reverence and devotion for Luther. “You know,” he wrote to Spalatin during his friend’s stay at the Wartburg, “how carefully we must guard this earthen vessel which contains so great a treasure.... The earth holds nothing more divine than him.” After Luther’s death, in spite of the previous misunderstandings, he said of him in a panegyric addressed to the students: “Alas, the chariot of Israel and the horseman thereof, who ruled the Church in these latter years of her existence, has departed.”
Luther was often to prove that the strong impression made by his personality was alone able to gain the day in cases of difficulty, to break down opposition and to ensure the successful carrying out of hardy plans. Seldom indeed did those about him offer any objection, for he possessed that gift, so frequently observed in men of strong character, of exercising, in every matter great or small, a kind of suggestive influence over those who approached him. He possessed an inner, unseen power which seemed to triumph over all, ... even over the claims of truthfulness and logic; besides this, he was gifted with an imposing presence and an uncanny glance. He was by no means curt in his answers, but spoke freely to everyone in a manner calculated to awaken the confidence and unlock the hearts of his hearers. Of his talkativeness he himself once said: “I don’t believe the Emperor [Charles V.] says so much in a year as I do in a day.”
His “disinterestedness which led him to care but little about money and worldly goods” increased the respect felt for him and his work. So little did he care about heaping up riches, that, when scolding the Wittenbergers on account of their avarice, he could say that “though poor, he found more pleasure in what was given him for his needs than the rich and opulent amongst them did in their own possessions.” So entirely was he absorbed in his public controversy that he paid too little attention to his own requirements, particularly in his bachelor days; he even relates how, before he took a wife, he had for a whole year not made his bed, or had it made for him, so that his sweat caused it to rot. “I was so weary, overworked all the day, that I threw myself on the bed and knew nothing about it.” He was never used to excessive comfort or to indulgence in the finer pleasures of the table. In every respect, in conversation and intercourse with others and in domestic life, he was a love
r of simplicity. In this he was ever anxious to set a good example to his fellow-workers.
Although he frequently accepted with gratitude presents from the great, yet on occasion he was not above cautioning givers of the danger such gifts involved, when the “eyes of the whole world are upon us.” In 1542, when there was a prospect of his receiving from his friend Amsdorf, the new “bishop” of Naumburg, presents out of the estates of the bishopric, he twice wrote to him to refrain from sending him anything, even a single hare, because “our courtly centaurs [the selfish and rapacious nobles] must be given no pretext for venting their glowing hate against us on the trumped-up charge that we were desirous of securing gain through you.” “They have gulped down everything without compunction, but still would blame us were we to accept a paltry gift of game. Let them feed in God’s or another’s [the devil’s] name, so long as we are not accused of greed.” Döllinger speaks of Luther as “a sympathetic friend, devoid of avarice and greed of money, and a willing helper of others.”
He was always ready to assist the poor with open-handed and kindly liberality, and his friends especially, when in trouble or distress, could reckon on his charity.
When his own means were insufficient he sought by word of mouth or by letter to enlist the sympathy of others, of friends in the town, or even of the Elector himself, in the cause of the indigent. On more than one occasion his good nature was unfairly taken advantage of. This, however, did not prevent his pleading for the poor who flocked to Wittenberg from all quarters and were wont to address themselves to him. Thus, for instance, in 1539 we have a note in which he appealed to certain “dear gentlemen” to save a “pious and scholarly youth” from the “pangs of hunger” by furnishing him with 30 Gulden; he himself was no longer able to afford the gifts he had daily to bestow, though he would be willing, in case of necessity, to contribute half the sum.
Many of the feeble and oppressed experienced his help in the law. He reminds the lawyers how hard it is for the poor to comply with the legal formalities necessary for their protection. On one occasion, when it was a question of the defence of a poor woman, he says: “You know Dr. Martin is not only a theologian and the champion of the faith, but also an advocate of the poor, who troop to him from every place and corner and demand his aid and his intercession with the authorities, so that he would have enough to do even if no other burden rested on his shoulders. But Dr. Martin loves to serve the poor.”
In 1527, when the plague reached Wittenberg, he stayed on in the town with Bugenhagen in order at least to comfort the people by his presence. The University was transferred for the time being to Jena (and then to Schlieben) and the Elector accordingly urged him to migrate to Jena with his wife and family. Luther however insisted on remaining, above all on account of the urgent need of setting an example to his preachers, who were too much preoccupied with the safety of their own families. It was then that he wrote the tract “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (Whether one may flee from death), answering the question in the negative so far as the ministers were concerned. In such dire trouble the flock were more than ever in need of spiritual help; the preachers were to exhort the people to learn diligently from the Word of God how to live and how to die, also, by Confession, reception of the Supper, reconciliation with their neighbours, etc., to “prepare themselves in advance should the Lord knock speedily.” He displayed the same courage during the epidemic of the so-called “English sweat,” a fever which, in 1529, broke out at Wittenberg, and in other German towns, and carried off many victims. Again in 1538 and in 1539 he braved new outbreaks of the plague at Wittenberg. His wish was, that, in such cases, one or two preachers should be specially appointed to look after those stricken with the malady. “Should the lot fall on me,” he says in 1542, “I should not be afraid. I have now been through three pestilences and mixed with some who suffered from it ... and am none the worse.” “God usually protects the ministers of His Word,” he writes in 1538, “if one does not run in and out of the inns and lie in the beds; confessions there is no need to hear, for we bring the Word of Life.” The fact that he could boast of having braved the plague and remained at his post naturally tended to increase his influence with his congregation.
He had passed through a severe mental struggle previous to the epidemic of 1529. Only by dint of despairing efforts was he able to overcome his terrors of conscience concerning his doctrine and his own personal salvation. This inner combat so hardened him that he was fearless where others were terrified and fled. Of his own qualms of conscience he wrote to a friend in April, 1529: If it be an apostolic gift to fight with devils and to lie frequently at the point of death, then he was indeed in this a very Peter or Paul, however much he might lack the other apostolic characters. Here we have the idea of his Divine calling, always most to the front in times of danger, which both strengthens him and enables him to inspire others with a little of his own confidence. “I and Bugenhagen alone remain here,” he wrote during the days of the plague, “but we are not alone, for Christ is with us and will triumph in us and shelter us from Satan, as we hope and trust.”
We already are acquainted with some of his admissions of his own weakness and acknowledgments of the greater gifts and achievements of others — confessions which have been extolled as a proof of his real humility.
“I have no such foolish humility,” so he says, “as to wish to deny the gifts God has bestowed on me. In myself I have indeed enough and more than enough to humble me and teach me that I am nothing. In God, however, we may well pride ourselves, and rejoice and glory in His gifts and extol them, as I myself do on account of my German Psalter; for I studied the Psalter, thanks be to God, with great fruit; but all to the honour and glory of God to Whom be praise for ever and ever.” This he wrote to Eobanus Hessus, the poet, in a high-flown letter thanking him for translating the German Psalter into excellent Latin. Of his own virtues or sinfulness he preferred to speak humorously, as his manner was. Thus, he says, for instance, in 1526, in his suppressed “Widder den Radschlag der Meintzischen Pfafferey,” that “he had not defiled any man’s wife or child,” “had not robbed anyone of his goods ... nor murdered or assaulted anyone or given help or counsel thereto”; his sin consisted in “not pulling a long face but in insisting on being merry”; also in eating meat on forbidden days. People might defame his life, but he was not going to heed “the dirty hogsnouts.”
His statements belittling his own powers and achievements, coming from a man whose apparently overmastering self-confidence had, from the beginning, prepossessed so many of his followers in his favour, afford a subject for psychological study. He seems the more ready to give full play to his confidence the more he feels his weakness face to face with the menace of danger, and the more he experiences in the depths of his soul the raging of doubts which he attributes to the devil.
In the humble admissions he makes he never conceals how much he stands in need of assistance. He does not hide from himself the fact that he dreads outward troubles, and is deficient in strong and exalted virtue. But side by side with his faults, he is fond of gazing on and extolling God’s gifts in his person. His peculiar form of humility, his prayer and his trust in God find expression in certain utterances and experiences, on which no judgment can be passed until we have before us a larger selection of them, particularly of such as seem to be less premeditated.
Prayer and Confidence in God.
Luther’s strangely undaunted confidence and the personal nature of his reliance on God’s help form part of his mental physiognomy.
He sees around him much distress and corruption and exclaims: “Alas, we are living outwardly under the empire of the devil, hence we can neither see nor hear anything good from without.” And yet, he proceeds in his usual forced tone, “inwardly we are living in the kingdom of Christ, where we behold God’s glory and His grace! For of Christ it is said: ‘Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.’” “Hatred is our reward in this world.” “Our reward is excessive conside
ring the insignificance of the service we render Christ. But what is the world, its anger, or its prince? A smoke that vanishes, a bubble that bursts, such is everything that is opposed to the Lord Whom we serve and Who works in us.” With these words, so expressive of his determination, he directs his trusted pupil, Conrad Cordatus, to enter courageously upon the office of preacher at Stendal in the March.
Again and again he seeks to reanimate his faith and confidence by calling to mind not merely God’s faithfulness to His promises, but also his own personal “sufferings” and “temptations,” the only escape from which, as he believed, lay in the most obstinate and presumptuous belief in his cause, and in the conviction that God was constantly intervening in his favour.
“Not only from Holy Scripture,” he said in a conversation in 1540, “but also from my violent inner combats and temptations have I learnt that Christ is God incarnate, and that there is a Trinity. I now know it even better from experience than by faith that these articles are true. For in our greatest temptations nothing can help us but the assurance that Christ became man and is now our intercessor at the right hand of the Father. There is nothing that excites our confidence to such a degree.... God, too, has championed this article from the beginning of the world against countless heretics, and even to-day defends it against Turk and Pope; He incessantly confirms it by miracles and permits us to call His Son, the Son of God and true God, and grants all that we ask in Christ’s name. For what else has saved us even till the present day in so many perils but prayer to Christ? Whoever says it is Master Philip’s and my doing, lies. It is God Who does it for Christ’s sake.... Therefore we hold fast to these articles in spite of the objections of reason. They have remained and will continue.”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 743