Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Again, in 1532, we hear him making his own the words: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” (Ps. cxxix. 1). The prophet is not complaining of any mere “worldly temptations,” but of “that anguish of conscience, of those blows and terrors of death such as the heart feels when on the brink of despair and when it fancies itself abandoned by God; when it both sees its sin and how all its good works are condemned by God the angry Judge.… When a man is sunk in such anxiety and trouble he cannot recover unless help is bestowed on him from above.… Nearly all the great saints suffered in this way and were dragged almost to the gates of death by sin and the Law; hence David’s exclamation: ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord!’” — The whole trend of what he says, likewise the counsels he gives on the remedies that may bring consolation, show plainly his attachment to this dark night of the soul and his conviction that he is but treading in the footsteps of the “great Saints” and “Prophets.”

  At any rate there is no room for doubt that this opened out a rich field for delusion; what he says depicts a frame of mind in which hallucinations might well thrive; we shall, however, leave it to others to determine how far pathological elements intervene.

  In the certainty that his cause was inspired he calmly awaits the approach of the fanatics; they can serve only to strengthen in him his sense of confidence. Of them and their “presumptuous certainty” he makes short work in a conversation noted down by Cordatus: Marcus Thomae (Stübner) he requests to perform a miracle in proof of his views, warning him, however, that “My God will assuredly forbid your God to let you work a sign”; he also hurls against him the formula of exorcism: “God rebuke thee, Satan” (Zach. iii. 2). Nicholas Storch and Thomas Münzer, so he assures us, openly show their presumption. A pupil of Stübner was anxious to set himself up as a teacher, but the fellow had only been able to talk fantastic rubbish to him. Of people such as these he had come across quite sixty. Campanus, again, is simply to be numbered among the biggest blasphemers. Carlstadt, who wanted to be esteemed learned, was only distinguished by his arrogant mouthing. Nowhere was there profundity or truth. “Not one of you has endured such anxieties and temptations as I.” “And yet Carlstadt wanted us to bow to his teaching.… Like Christ, however, I say: ‘My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me’ (John vii. 16). I cannot betray it as the world would have me do. The malice of all these ministers of Satan only serves my cause and exercises me in indomitable firmness.” Hence he derives equal benefit from the malice of his opponents within the fold and from the inward apprehensions of which Satan was the cause.

  The manifold errors which had sprung from the seed of his own principles, in any other man would have elicited doubts and scruples; Luther, however, finds in them fresh support for his dominating conviction: My glorious sufferings at the devil’s hands are being multiplied and, thereby, too, the witness on behalf of my doctrine is being strengthened.

  The mystical halo of the “man of suffering” certainly made a great impression on some of his young followers and admirers such as Spangenberg, Mathesius, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. On others of his circle the effect was not so lasting.

  Melanchthon, for instance, was well acquainted with Luther’s fits of mystic terror, yet how severe is the criticism he passes on Luther’s ground-dogmas, particularly after the latter’s death.

  The doctrine of man’s entire unfreedom in doing what is good may serve as an instance.

  This palladium of the new theology had been discovered by Luther when overwhelmed with despair; by it he sought to commit himself entirely into God’s hands and blindly and passively to await salvation from Him; this he regarded as the only way out of inward trials; no man could face the devil with his free will; he himself, so he wrote, “would not wish to have” free-will, even were it offered him (“nollem mihi dari liberum arbitrium”), in order that he might at least be safe from the devil; nay, even were there no devil, free-will would still be to him an abomination, because, with it, his “conscience would never be safe and at rest.” The words occur in the work he declared to be his very best and a lasting heirloom for posterity. This particular doctrine, Melanchthon was, however, so far from regarding as a “revelation,” that he wrote in 1559: “Both during Luther’s lifetime and also later, I withstood that Stoical and Manichæan delusion which led Luther and others to write, that all works whether good or evil, in all men whether good or bad, take place of necessity. Now it is evident that this doctrine is contrary to God’s Word, subversive of all discipline and a blasphemy against God.” Melanchthon did not even scruple to call upon the State to intervene and prohibit such things being said. In his Postils, dealing with the question whether heretics should be put to death, he declares: “By divine command the public authorities must proceed against idolaters and also interdict blasphemous language, as, for instance, when a man teaches that good or evil takes place of necessity and under compulsion.”

  He could not well have said anything more deadly against the foundation on which Luther’s whole edifice was reared.

  In spite of all, Luther always stood by his pseudo-mystic idea of his having received revelations. Without it he could never have ventured to threaten as he did the secular and ecclesiastical authorities who opposed his dogmas, with “extermination” and “great revolts,” or to proclaim so confidently that they would fall, blown over by the breath of Christ’s mouth, or to prophesy that, even beyond the grave, he would be to the impenitent Papists, what, according to the prophet Osee, God threatened to be to Israel, viz. “a bear in the road and a lion in the path.”

  His whole process of thought was, as it were, held captive in the heavy chains of this idea.

  Three Perverted Theories Dominating Luther’s Outlook

  In order to enter even more deeply into Luther’s mentality three categories of ideas by which he determined his life well deserve consideration here. Only at the point we have now reached can some of his statements be judged of aright.

  Among his strange ideas must be reckoned his threefold conviction, first, that he was called to be the opponent of Antichrist, secondly, that Popery was a thing of boundless and utter depravity, thirdly, that in his own personal experiences and gifts he was blessed beyond all other men. Here again we shall have to refer to many passages already quoted and also to some fresh ones of Luther’s which afford a glimpse into his perverted mode of thought and incredible prejudice.

  His obstinate belief in his mission against Antichrist keeps the thought of a mortal combat ever before his mind; a decisive battle at the approaching end of all, between heaven and hell, between Christ and the dragon. This struggle, such as he viewed it, needless to say existed only in his imagination. If, according to him, the devil fights so furiously that at times Christ Himself seems on the point of succumbing, this is only because Luther’s cause does not thrive, or because Luther himself is again the butt of gloomy fears. As early as 1518, as we know, he fancied he had detected the Papal Antichrist, and could read the thoughts of Satan, who was at work behind his opponents. In this idea he subsequently confirmed himself by his reading of the Old-Testament prophecies, on which, till almost the very end of his life, he was wont laboriously to base new calculations. From the dawn of his career it has been borne in on him with ever-growing clearness how Christ, using Luther as His tool, will overthrow, as though in sport, this “man of sin” of which Popery is the embodiment; at the very close of his days, when the sight of the evils rampant in Germany was causing him the utmost anxiety, he seems to hear the trump that heralds the Coming of the Judge.

  Using images that suggest a positive obsession, he depicts the world as full of the traces of Antichrist and the devil his forerunner. Yet all the machinations of the old serpent avail only to strengthen the defiance with which he opposes Satan and all his myrmidons. The signs in the heavens above and on the earth below all point to him, the great, albeit unworthy, champion of God’s cause. Though Antichrist and the powers that are his backers in thi
s world may for the time have the better of the struggle this is but the last flicker of the dying flame which, by prophecy and vision, he had been predestined to extinguish (above, vol. iii., ff., etc.).

  Hence his confidence in unveiling the action of Antichrist as portrayed in the birth of the Monk-Calf; like some seer he hastens to pen a special work for the instruction of the people in the meaning of the Calf’s anatomy. His growing uncanny imagination goes on to describe, in colours more and more glaring, the abominations of that Antichrist from whom he has torn the veil. The fury of the Turk is but child’s play to the horror of the Papal Antichrist. That portion of the Table-Talk which deals with Antichrist, comprising no less than 165 sections brimful of the maddest fancies, begins with the description of Antichrist’s head. “The head is at the same time the Pope and the Turk. A living animal must have both soul and body. The spirit or soul of Antichrist is the Pope, his flesh or body the Turk”; the concluding words on the subject are in the same vein: “The blood of Abel cries for vengeance on them,” viz. on the followers of the Pope-Antichrist. These chapters of the Table-Talk dealing with Antichrist scarcely do credit to the human mind. We can, however, understand them, for to Luther nothing is plainer than that the “nature of his foes is utterly devilish”; all he sees is the claws, paws, horns and poison-fangs of Antichrist.

  Luther revealed the anti-Christian nature of the Pope, in accordance with the prophet Daniel whom he read on the principle: “Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas”; “Nevertheless we attach but little importance to our deliverance and are very ungrateful. This, however, is our consolation, viz. that the Last Day cannot now be long delayed. Daniel’s prophecy is fulfilled to the letter and paints the Papacy as plainly as though it had been written post factum.”

  In spite of Antichrist and “all that is mighty” the Article concerning Holy Scripture and the Cross still holds the field. And, so Luther proceeds in the Table-Talk, “I, a poor monk, had to come,” with “an unfortunate nun” [Catherine Bora who doubtless was present], and “seize upon it and hold it. Thus ‘verbum’ and ‘crux’ are the conquerors; they make us confident.”

  The reason why Luther longed with such ardour for the coming of the Last Day has already been shown to have been his growing pessimism and the depression resulting from the sad experiences with which he had met (above, vol. v., ff.). In his elastic way he, however, manages, when preaching to the people, to give a rather different reason for his prediction of the fall of Antichrist and the coming of the end. In Popery, he declares, we were not allowed to speak of the Last Judgment; “how we dreaded it”; “we pictured Christ to ourselves as a Judge to Whom we had to give account. To that we came, thanks to our works.” But now it is quite otherwise. “Now on the contrary I should be glad if the Last Day were to come, because there is no greater consolation.” Here he speaks as though inspired solely by the purest of intentions when he looked forward to the coming of the vanquisher of Antichrist.

  The wickedness of his opponents and the weapons to be used against them constitute a second group of ideas. Here, once again, the psychological or pathological appreciation of Luther’s strange and morbid train of thought makes imperative a further investigation of certain points already discussed in other connections.

  Often Luther seems unable to stem the torrent of charges and insults that streams from him as soon as adversaries appear in his field of vision. Frequently it almost looks as though some superhuman agency outside himself had opened the sluice-gates of his terrible eloquence. He is determined to rage against them “even to the very grave”; his wrath against them “refreshes his blood.” It is actually when expressing his hatred in the most incredible language that he is most sensible of the “nearness of God.” Do not his Popish foes deserve even worse than he, a mere man, is able to heap on them? Those scoundrels who “only seek a pretext for telling lies against us and misleading simple folk, though quite well aware that they are in the wrong.” Their palpable obstinacy, in spite of their better judgment, was so great, so he argued, that it was only because Luther advocated it that they refused to hear of any moral reform, for instance, of the clergy marrying, etc., otherwise they would have held it “quite all right.” He does not shrink from demanding that such roguery should “be hunted down with hounds,” no less than the wickedness of these “most depraved of brothel-keepers, open adulterers, stealers of women and seducers of maidens.”

  The most curious thing, however, one, too, that must weigh heavily in the balance when judging of his mental state, is that, as shown elsewhere, by dint of repeating this he actually came to believe that his caricature of Catholicism was perfectly true to fact. The calumnies become part of his mental framework, the very frequency and heat of his charges blinding him to all sense of their enormity, and clouding his outlook. What is even worse is, that, even when he occasionally glimpses the truth he yet believes it lawful to deviate from it where this suits his purpose. Thus he came to formulate the dangerous theory of the lie of necessity and the useful lie which we have already described in his own words. He goes so far as to say, that the nature of his foes was utterly devilish (above, , n. 4), and, when assailing the wickedness of Popery, he considers “everything lawful for the salvation of souls” (“omnia nobis licere arbitramur”). Our “tricks, lies and stumblings” may “easily be atoned for, for God’s Mercy watches over us.”

  On other occasions his opponents become “a pack of fools”; they deserve nothing but scorn and no heed should be paid to their objections. Even should the world write against him he will only pity them. All earlier ages and “a thousand Fathers and Councils of the Church” cannot rob him of the golden grains of truth which he alone possesses.

  No sooner does he speak of the Papists and their religion, than, irresistibly, there rises up before his mind the picture of the “tonsures, cowls, frocks and bawling in the choir,” in short the so-called holiness-by-works, on which he seizes to load ridicule on all that is Popish.

  This Luther is apt to do even when treating of subjects quite alien to this sort of polemics.

  In his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539) he has a lengthy dissertation on the marks of the Church; the subject being a wide one he is anxious to get on with it, yet, even so, his pen again and again wanders off into vituperation. He apostrophises himself incidentally as follows: “But how is it that I come again to speak of the infamous, filthy menials of the Pope? Let them begone, and, for ever,” etc. With these words he breaks off a wild outburst in which he had declared that the Pope and his men were persecuting the Word of God, i.e. Luther’s doctrine, “though well aware of its truth; very bad Apostles, Evangelists and Prophets must they be, like the devil and his angels.”

  Yet, on the very next page, the same subject crops up again. A lay figure serves to introduce it. To him Luther says: “There you come again dragging in your Pope with you, though I wanted to have no more to do with you. Well, as you insist on annoying me with your unwelcome presence I shall give you a thoroughly Lutheran reception.” He then proceeds to enlarge in “Lutheran” fashion on the fact, that the Pope “condemns the wedded life of the bishops and priests.” “If a man has seduced a hundred maidens, violated a hundred honourable widows and has besides a hundred prostitutes behind him, he is allowed to be not merely a preacher or parson but even a bishop or Pope, and though he keeps on in his evil ways he would still be tolerated in such an office.” “Are you not mad and foolish? Out on you, you rude fools and donkeys!… Truly Popes and bishops are fine fellows to be the bridegrooms of the Churches. Better suited were they to be the bridegrooms of female keepers of bawdy houses, or of the devil’s own daughter in hell! True bishops are the servants of this bride and she is their wife and mistress.” According to you “matrimony is unclean, and a merdiferous sacrament which cannot please God”; at the same time it is supposed to be right and a sacrament. “See how the devil cheats and befools you when he teaches you such twaddle!” Further on he begins anew: “To vi
olate virgins, widows and married women, to keep many prostitutes and to commit all sorts of hidden sins, this he is free to do, and thereby becomes worthy of the priestly calling; but this is the sum total of it all: The Pope, the devil and his Church are enemies to the married state as Dan. (xi. 37) says, and are determined to abuse it in this way so that the priestly office may not thrive. This amounts to saying that the state of matrimony is adulterous, sinful, impure and abominated of God.”

  Bidding farewell to Popery, Luther gives it a truly “Lutheran” send off: “So for the present let us be done with the Ass-Pope and the Pope-Ass, and all his asinine lawyers. We will now get back to our own affairs.”

  This, however, he only partially succeeds in doing. After discussing the 6th and 7th mark of the Church the “spirit” once more seizes him. The caricature of Popery with which he is wont to pacify his conscience here again figures with the whole of the inevitable paraphernalia: “[Holy] water, salt, herbs, tapers, bells, images, Agnus Dei, pallia, altar, chasubles, tonsures, fingers, hands. Who can enumerate them all? Finally the monks’ cowls,” etc. A page further we again read: “Holy water, Agnus Dei, bulls, briefs, Masses and monks’ cowls.… The devil has decked himself out in them all.”

  Weary as he is at the end of the lengthy work, he is still anxious to “tread under foot the Pope, as Psalm xci. [xc., verse 13] says: ‘Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon’; this we will do with the help and strength of the Seed of the woman that has crushed and still crushes the serpent’s head, albeit we know that he will turn and bite our heel. To the same blessed Seed of the woman be all praise and glory together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, One True God and Lord for ever and ever. Amen.”

  Here, in the few pages we have selected for quotation, the whole psychological Luther-problem unrolls itself.