Apart from the doctrine on the Sacrament, the other thing which helped to annoy him stands revealed more plainly in the letter addressed on the same day to the Strasburg preachers: “We dare to boast that Christ was first made known by us, and now Zwingli actually comes and accuses us of denying Christ.” Bossuet was quite right in arguing that such petty jealousy on Luther’s part is scarcely to his credit. He quotes a criticism on Luther’s behaviour by George Calixt, the famous Lutheran professor of theology at Helmstädt: “The sweetness of vainglory is so seductive and human weakness so great, that even those who despise all things and risk their goods, yea life itself, may succumb to inordinate ambition.” Luther, too, had high aims; “we cannot be surprised that, even a man so large-minded as Luther, should have written such things to the people of Strasburg.”
Offended vanity played a part as great and even more obvious in Luther’s furious polemics against the literary defenders of the Church. One cannot help noticing how, especially when they had succeeded in making out a clear case against him, his answer was a torrent of most unsparing abuse.
The eloquence which he had at his command also constituted a temptation. He was well aware of the force with which his impassioned language carried others away. Very little was thus needed to induce him to take up this formidable weapon which at least ensured his success among the masses. He himself revelled in the unquenchable wealth of his vituperative vocabulary, and with it he caught the fancy of thousands who loved nothing more than a quarrel. If it be true that all popular orators are exposed to the temptation to exaggerate, to say things which are striking rather than correct, and, generally, to court the applause of the crowd, this danger was even greater in Luther’s case owing to the whole character of the controversy he had stirred up. In the midst of a stormy sea one does not speak softly. Luther’s abuse was, however, powerful enough to be heard above even the most furious tempest.
For his work Luther required an extraordinary stimulus. He would have succumbed under the countless and burdensome labours which devolved on him had he not constantly aroused himself anew by the exercise of a sort of violence. Vituperation thus became to him a real need. When he had succeeded thereby in working himself up into a passion his mind grew clearer and his imagination more vigorous, so that he found it all the easier to borrow from the lips of the mob that rude language of which he makes such fell use. He kindles his animation by dwelling on the “vermin and running sores of Popery.”
In the same way from time to time he found the need of unburdening himself of his ill-humour. The small success of his labours for the reform of morals and his other annoying experiences gave him many an unhappy hour. His bad humour found an outlet in abuse and vituperation, particularly against the enemies of the Evangel. He himself was unable to conceal the real grounds of the vexation which he vented on the Papacy, for, often enough, after storming against the Papists, he complains bitterly of his own followers’ contempt for the “Word” and of their evil lives.
After the utterance already recorded: “We must curse the Pope and his kingdom,” he goes on to levy charges of the worst character against those of his own party, and pours forth on them, too, all the vials of his wrath and disappointment. It was in this connection that he said, that the Evangelicals were seven times worse than before; for the one devil that had been expelled, seven worse had entered in, so horribly did they lie, cheat, gorge and swill and indulge in every vice; princes, lords, nobles, burghers and peasants alike had lost all fear of God.
Another example, taken this time from the year 1536. Full of anger against the Pope he said to a friend who held a high post: “My dear fellow, do hurl a Paternoster as a curse against the Papacy that it may be smitten with the Dance of St. Vitus.” He adds: “Don’t mind my way of speaking, for indeed you know it well; I am coarse and rough ... so sore beset, oppressed and overwhelmed with business of all kinds, that, to save my poor carcase I must sometimes indulge in a little pleasure, for, after all, man is only human” — an utterance psychologically valuable. The real reason for the depression against which he was struggling is, however, clearer in other letters dating from that time. In them we get a glimpse of his grievous vexation and annoyance with the false teachers within the Evangelical fold: “New prophets are arising one after the other. I almost long to be delivered [by death] so as not to have to go on seeing so much mischief, and to be free at last from this kingdom of the devil. I implore you to pray to God that He would grant me this.”
Lastly, his outbursts against the Papacy served to cover his own anxiety of conscience.
In the same way as others who leave their Church, fling themselves into the turmoil and distractions of the world in order to escape their scruples, Luther too, allayed the reproach of his conscience by precipitating himself into the midst of the storm he had evoked; with this advantage, that the sharp weapons of abuse and scorn he employed could be turned against the enemy both without and within. Accustomed as he was to treat the voice of conscience as the voice of Satan, he willingly clung to the doubtful consolation that the stronger his abuse of his opponents the greater his own encouragement. The evil which he detected in Popery seemed to him to load the scale in his own favour. He even admits this with the most engaging frankness.
“I am quite ready to allow that the Pope’s abomination is, after Christ, my greatest consolation. Hence those are hopeless simpletons who say we should not abuse the Pope. Don’t be slow in abuse, particularly when the devil attacks you on Justification.” He intends “to infuse courage into himself by considering the abomination and horror” of the Pope; and to “hold it up under the devil’s nose.” Döllinger remarks justly: “Here [in these anxieties of conscience] is to be found at least a partial psychological explanation of that wealth of bitter abuse which marks off Luther’s writings from all other literary products, ancient or mediæval.... Not seldom he sought to deaden the interior terrors of a reproving conscience with the noisy clamour of his vituperation.”
We have just heard Luther promise to hold up the Pope’s abomination to the devil’s nose. This saying brings us to the principal explanation of the phenomenon under consideration.
Connection of Luther’s Abusiveness with his Mystic Persuasion of his Special Call.
Luther had brought himself to such a pitch as to see in the existing Church the devil’s kingdom, to overthrow which, with its Antichrist, was his own sublime mission. This theological, anti-diabolical motive for his anger and boundless invective, throws all others into the shade.
“Even were I not carried away by my hot temper and my style of writing,” he says, “I should still be obliged to take the field, as I do, against the enemies of truth” (“children of the devil” he calls them elsewhere). “I am hot-headed enough, nor is my pen blunt.” But these foes “revel in the most horrible crimes not merely against me, but even against God’s Word.” Did not Christ Himself have recourse to abuse, he asks, against the “wicked and adulterous generation of the Jews, against the brood of vipers, the hypocrites and children of the devil”? “Whoever is strong in the consciousness of the truth, can display no patience towards its furious and ferocious enemies.”
The more vividly he persuaded himself of his mission, the blacker were the colours in which he painted the devil of Popery who refused to believe in it, and the more strangely did there surge up from the sombre depths of his soul and permeate his whole being a hatred the like of which no mortal man had ever known before. In such outbursts Luther thinks he is “raving and raging [‘debacchari’] against Satan”; for instance, in a letter to Melanchthon, dated from the fortress of Coburg, “from the stronghold full of devils where Christ yet reigns in the midst of His foes.” Even when unable from bodily weakness to write against the devil, yet he could at least rage against him in thought and prayer; “the Pope’s enormities (‘portenta’) against God and against the common weal” supplied him with material in abundance.
God had appointed him, so we read elsewhere
, “to teach and to instruct,” as “an Apostle and Evangelist in the German lands” (were it his intention to boast); for he knows that he teaches “by the Grace of God, whose name Satan shall not destroy nor deprive me of to all eternity”; therefore I must unsparingly “expose my back parts to the devil ... so as to enrage him still more.” To the wrath of all the devils, bishops, and princes he will pay as little heed as to the rustle of a bat’s wing, nor will he spare the “traitors and murderers.”
As early as 1520 he revealed to an intimate friend the morbidly exaggerated ideas which moved him: As an excuse for his dreadful vituperation he alleges his pseudo-mystic conception of the life and death struggle he was to engage in with the devil, and his sense of the “impetus Spiritus”; this he pleads in extenuation to his friend, who would appear to have reminded him of the dangers of pride. “All condemn my sarcasm,” he admits, but, now that the Spirit has moved him, he may set himself on a line with the “prophets” of the Old Law who “were so harsh in their invective,” nay, with Paul the Apostle, whose severe censures were ever present in his mind. In fact, God Himself, according to Luther, is to some extent present in these utterances by means of His power and action, and, “sure enough, intends in this way to unmask the inventions of man.”
As compared with the interior force with which the idea of his mission inspired him, all his violence, particularly in his polemics with the Catholic theologians and statesmen, appeared to him far too weak. Thus his “Wider Hans Worst” against the Catholic Duke of Brunswick, though reeking of blood and hate, seemed to him to fall short of the mark and to be all too moderate, so at least he told Melanchthon, to all appearance quite seriously. His inability ever to exhaust his indignation goes back to the idea expressed by him in the same letter with such startling candour and conviction as to remind one of the ravings of a man possessed by a fixed delusion: “It is certain that it is God Who is fighting.” “Our cause is directed by the hand of God, not by our own wisdom. The Word makes its way and prayer glows ... hence we might well sleep in peace were we not mere flesh.” His hint at the near approach of the Last Judgment, the many signs of which could not escape notice, more than confirms the pseudo-mystic character both of his confidence and of his hate.
On other occasions traces of his pet superstitions are apparent, and, when we take them together, prove beyond a doubt the unhealthy state of the mind from which they sprang. For instance, Luther professes to know particulars of the approaching end of the world concerning which the Bible says nothing; he also has that curious list of opponents miraculously slain by the Divine hand, and even fancies he can increase it by praying for the death of those who, not sharing his opinions, stood in his way: “This year we must pray Duke Maurice to death; we must slay him by our prayers, for he is likely to prove a wicked man.” On the same occasion he also attributes to himself a sort of prophetic gift: “I am a prophet.” The foretelling of future events and the fulfilment in his own person of olden prophecies and visions, and again the many miracles and expulsions of the devil which accompany the spread of his teaching, confirm his Evangel and impress the stamp of Divine approbation on his hatred of Antichrist. Divine portents, which, however, no one but Luther would have recognised as such, were also exploited: the birth of the monstrous Monk-Calf; the Pope-Ass fished from the Tiber; signs in the heavens and on the earth. The Book of Daniel and St. John’s Apocalypse supplied him when necessary with the wished-for interpretation, though his far-fetched speculations would better become a mystic dreamer than a sober theologian and spiritual guide of thousands. All this was crowned by the diabolical manifestations which he himself experienced, though what he took for apparitions of the devil was merely the outcome of an overwrought mind.
This enables us to seize that second nature of his, made up of superhuman storming and vituperation, and to understand, how, in his hands, wild abuse of the Papacy became quite a system.
“I shall put on my horns,” he wrote to a friend in 1522, “and vex Satan until he lies stretched out on the ground. Don’t be afraid, but neither expect me to spare my gainsayers; should they be hard hit by the new movement, that is not our fault, but a judgment from above on their tyranny.” Shortly after he wrote in a similar strain to reassure some unknown correspondent concerning his unusual methods of controversy: “Hence, my dear friend, do not wonder that many take offence at my writings. For it must be that only a few hold fast to the Gospel [the friend had pointed out to him that many of his followers were being scared away by his abuse].... His Highness my master has admonished me in writing, and many other friends have done the same. But my reply is ever that I neither can nor will refrain from it.”
Abuse becomes almost inseparable from his teaching, or at least seems entailed by it. “Whoever accepts my teaching with a right heart,” he says, “will not be scandalised by my abuse.” Indeed, he adds, emulating Hus, he was ready “to risk his life should persecution or the needs of the time demand it.” Nor have we any reason to doubt that his misguided enthusiasm would have rendered him capable of such a sacrifice.
In 1531 the Elector Johann sent him a reprimand through Chancellor Brück on account of the two violent tracts, “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen” and “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict.” George of Saxony had, it appears, complained to the Elector, that these writings “served in no small measure to incite to rebellion, and also contained much abuse both of high and low.” Hereupon Luther, with the utmost impudence, vindicated his cause to his sovereign: “That certain persons may have informed your Electoral Highness that the two writings were sharp and hasty, this is indeed true; I never meant them to be blunt and kind, and only regret that they were not more severe and violent”; for all he had said of such “lying, blasphemous, asinine” opponents — especially considering the danger in which the Electoral house stood — fell short of the mark; the Prince should bear in mind that he [Luther] had been “far too mild and soft in dealing with such evil knots and boughs.”
But “the knots and boughs” of his literary opponents did not consist entirely in coarse insults, but largely in the well-grounded vindication against his unwarranted attacks of the religion of their fathers, in which they saw the true basis of the common weal. His opponents had necessarily to take the defensive; Luther, with his furious words and actions, was in almost every case the aggressor, and forestalled their writings.
It is plain that, at the very time when he thus explained his position to the Elector Johann, i.e. about the time of the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, he was under the influence of that inner power of which he had said: “I am carried away I know not by what spirit”; “I am not master of myself.” He exclaims: “In God’s name and at His command I will tread upon the lion and adder and trample under foot the lion and dragon [it is thus that he applies the Messianic prophecy in Ps. xc. 13]; this shall commence during my lifetime and be accomplished after my death. St. John Hus prophesied of me,” etc. More than ever he lays stress on the fact that he has a “Divine mission,” and was “called by God to a work,” not commenced “of his own initiative”; for which cause also “God was with him and assisted him.” He means to realise his earlier threat (1521): “If I live I shall never make peace with the Papacy; if you kill me you shall have twice as little peace. Do your worst, you swine and Thomists. Luther will be to you a bear in the road and a lion in the path [as Osee says]. He will meet you everywhere and not leave you in peace until your brazen front and stiff neck be broken, either by gentleness or by force. I have lost enough patience already; if you will not amend you may continue to rage against me and I to despise you, you abandoned monsters.”
He is now determined to carry out his threat of 1527 even at the cost of his life: “My teaching shall cry aloud and smite right and left; may God deny me the gifts of patience and meekness. My cry is: No, No, No, so long as I can move a muscle, let it vex King, Emperor, Princes, the devil, or whom it may.... Bishops, priests, monks, great Johnnies, scholars and the whole world ar
e all thirsting for the gore of Luther, whose executioners they would gladly be, and the devil likewise and his crew.... My teaching is the main thing by which I defy not only princes and kings but even all the devils. I am and remain a mere sheep.... Not following my own conceit, I may have attacked a tyrant or great scholar and given him a cut and made him angry, but let him be ready for thirty more.... Let no one, least of all the tyrants and persecutors of the Evangel, expect any patience or humility from me.... What must not my wrath be with the Papists who are my avowed enemies?... Come on, all together, since you all belong to one batch, devils, Papists, fanatics, fall upon Luther! Papists from the front, fanatics from the rear, devils from every side! Chase him, hunt him down gaily, you have found the right quarry. Once Luther is down you are saved and have won the day. But I see plainly that words are of no avail; no abuse, no teaching, no exhortation, no menaces, no promises, no beseeching serve our purpose.... Well, then, in God’s name, let us try defiance. Whoever relents, let him go; whoever is afraid, let him flee; I have at my back a strong Defender.... I have well served the world and brought Holy Scripture and the Word of God to light in a way unheard of for a thousand years. I have done my part; your blood be upon your own head and not on my hands!”
Nevertheless, at times he appears to have had some slight qualms. Yet after having described the Papists as “Pope-Asses, slaves of the Mass, blasphemers, miscreants and murderers of souls,” he continues: “Should anyone here say that I confine myself to flinging coarse epithets about me and can do nothing but slander and abuse, I would reply, firstly, that such abuse is nothing compared with the unspeakable wickedness. For what is it if I abuse the devil as a murderer, miscreant, traitor, blasphemer and liar? To him all this is but a gentle breeze! But what else are the Pope-Asses but devils incarnate, who know not penance, whose hearts are hardened and who knowingly defend their palpable blasphemy.... Hence my abuse is not abuse at all, but just the same as were I to call a turnip a turnip, an apple an apple, or a pear a pear.”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 748