Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Elsewhere in the Table-Talk we read: “My best friends,” said Dr. Martin, with a deep sigh, “seek to stamp me under foot and to trouble and besmirch the Evangel; hence I am going to hold a disputation.” “Alas, that, in my own lifetime, I should see them strutting about and seeking to rule.” It was with him as with St. Paul to whom God wished to show how much he must suffer for His Name’s sake (Acts ix. 16). Some indeed were trying to persuade him that these foes in his own household were not really against Luther, but only against Cruciger, Rörer, etc. But this was false. “For the Catechism, the Exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Confession of Augsburg are mine, not Cruciger’s or Rörer’s.”

  Of those near him “Mr. Eisleben” (Agricola) seemed to him his chief rival; those abroad troubled him less; for a while Luther was obsessed by the idea that Agricola, “with his cool head, was set on securing the reins and was seeking to become a great lord.”

  Of Carlstadt Luther once said, referring to the rivalry between the pair: “He persuaded himself that there was no more learned man on earth than he; what I write that he imitates and seeks to copy me.” After a profession of personal humility, Luther concludes: “And yet, by God’s Grace, I am more learned than all the Sophists and theologians of the Schools.”

  Though Luther never grows weary of insisting against the heretics at home on the “public, common doctrine,” and of instancing the fell consequences of pride and obstinacy, even going so far as to predict that they will in all likelihood never be converted because founders of sects rarely retrace their steps and recant, yet he never seems to have perceived that the point of all this might equally well have been turned against himself.

  The blindness of such heretics he describes in a tract of 1526 dedicated to Queen Mary of Hungary:

  “Here we may all of us well be afraid, and particularly all heretics and false teachers.… Such a temper [obstinacy in sticking to one’s own opinion] penetrates like water into the inmost recesses and like oil into the very bone, and becomes our daily clothing. Then it comes about that one party curses the other, and the doctrine of one is rank poison and malediction to the other, and his own doctrine nothing but blessing and salvation; this we now see among our fanatics and Papists. Then everything is lost. The masses are not converted; a few, whom God has chosen, come right again, but the others remain under the curse and even regard it as a precious thing.… Nor have I ever read of heresiarchs being converted; they remain obdurate in their own conceit, the oil has gone into the bone … and has become part of their nature. They allow none to find fault with them and brook no opposition. This is the sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”

  In the same writing he describes the heretics’ way of speaking: “The heretics give themselves up to idle talk so that one hears of nothing but their dreams.… They overflow with words; all evildoers tend to become garrulous. As a boiling pot foams and bubbles over, so they too overflow with the talk of which their heart is full.… They stand stiff upon their doctrine about which there is no lack of ranting.”

  The description (which seats so well on Luther himself) proceeds: “Those are heretics and apostates who follow their own ideas rather than the common tradition of Christendom, who transgress the teaching of their fathers and separate themselves from the common ways and usages of the whole of Christendom, who, out of pure wantonness, invent new ways and methods without cause, and contrary to Holy Writ.”— “They misread the Word of God according to their whim and make it mean what they please. In short they undertake something out of the common and invent a belief of their own, regardless of God’s Word.… God must put up with their doctrine and life as being alone holy and Godly.”

  Again and again he brands pride as the cause of all heresy: “This is the reason; they think much of themselves, which, indeed, is the cause and well-spring of all heresies, for, as Augustine also says, ‘Ambition is the mother of all heresies.’ Thus Zwingli and Bucer now put forward a new doctrine.… So dangerous a thing is pride in the clergy.”— “We cannot sufficiently be on our guard against this deadly vice. Vices of the body are gross, and we feel them to be such, but this vice can always deck itself out with the glory of God, as though it had God’s Word on its side. But beneath the outward veil there is nothing but vain glory.”— “Lo, here you have in brief the cause and ground of all idolatry, heresy, hypocrisy and error, what the prophets inveigh against, and what was the cause of their being put to death, and against which the whole of Scripture witnesses. It all comes from obstinacy and conceit and the ideas of natural reason which puffs itself up … and fancies it knows enough, and can find its way for itself, etc.”

  Such statements of Luther’s are of supreme importance for judging of his Divine Mission. In his frame of mind it became at last an impossibility for him to realise that his hostility and intolerance towards “heretics” within his fold could redound on himself, or that he was contradicting himself in continuing to proclaim freedom, or at least in continuing to make the fullest use of it himself. In reality he was living in a world of his own, and his mental state cannot be judged of by the usual standards.

  “Heretics” who cannot be sure of their Cause

  Apart from the “pride of the heretics,” another idea of Luther’s deserves attention, viz. that those teachers who differed from him, in their heart of hearts, knew him to be in the right, or at least neither were nor could be quite certain of their own doctrines. Of any call in their case there could be no question; his call, however, was above doubt, seeing his certainty. Hence, in his dealings with the “sectarians” we once again find the same strange attitude, as he had exhibited towards the “Papists,” who, according to him, likewise were withstanding their own conscience and lacked any real call.

  To a man so full of such fiery enthusiasm for his cause and so dominated by his imagination as Luther, it seems to have been an easy task to persuade himself ever more and more firmly, that all his opponents’ doings were against their own conscience.

  The “teachers of faith,” he says, speaking of the sectarians, ought first of all “to be certain about their mission. Otherwise all is up with them. It was this [argument] that killed Œcolampadius. He could not endure the self-accusation: How if you have taught what is false?” Concerning Œcolampadius Luther professed to know that, even in his prayers, he had been doubtful of his own doctrine. But, so he argues, if a man goes so far as to pray for the spread of his doctrine he must surely first be “quite certain and not doubt thus of the Word and of his doctrine, for doubts and uncertainty have no place in theology, but a man must be certain of his case in the face of God.” Before the world, indeed, he continues, with a strange limitation of his previous assertion, “it behoves one to be humble, to proceed gently and to say: If anyone knows better, let him say so; to God’s Word I will gladly yield when I am better instructed.” Yet, in the same works, where seemingly he professes such willingness to listen to others, he himself proclaims most emphatically his great mission and its exclusive character.

  All heretics, he once remarked, were disarmed by this one question: “My friend, is it the command of our Lord God [that you should teach thus]? At this, one and all are struck dumb.” Only by dint of lying are they able to boast of their inward assurance of their cause. Here we have Campanus for instance: “He boasts that he is as sure as sure can be of his cause and that it is impossible for him to be mistaken.” “But he is an accursed lump of filth whom we ought to despise and not bother our heads about writing against, for this only makes him more bold, proud and brave.… Whereupon Master Philip [Melanchthon] said: his suggestion would be that he should be strung up on the gallows, and this he had written to his lord [the Elector].”

  With his own “certainty” Luther triumphantly confronts his opponents who at heart were uncertain: “Every man who speaks the Word of Christ is free to boast that his mouth is the mouth of Christ”; such a one, confiding in his certainty, may help to “tear Antichrist out of men’
s hearts, so that his cause may no longer avail.”— “But, now, the articles of pure doctrine are proved [by me] from Scripture in the clearest way, and yet it carries no weight with them; never has an article of the faith been preached which has not more than once been attacked and contradicted by heretics, who, nevertheless, read the same Scriptures as we.”— “In short, ‘heretics must needs arise’ (1 Cor. xi. 19), and that cannot be stopped, for it was so even in the Apostles’ time. We are no better off than our fathers; Christ Himself was persecuted.” “No heretic allows himself to be convinced. They neither see nor hear anything, like Master Stiffel [Michael Stiefel]; he saw me not nor heard me.… It is forbidden to curse, swear, etc., far more to cause heresy.” — Then one becomes hardened against God the Holy Ghost; these fanatics “do not even doubt” — which is astonishing— “they stand firm.” He had warned the Anabaptist Marcus (Stübner), so he relates, “to beware lest he err,” to which he answered that “God Himself shall not dissuade me from this.”

  In short, since Luther’s own cause is so clear and certain, those who disagree, particularly the sectarians, must simply have discarded the faith. For instance, “of Master Jeckel [Jacob Schenk] I hold that he believes nothing.” He, Luther, has “at all times taught God’s Word in all simplicity; to this I adhere, and will surrender myself a prisoner to it or else — become a Pope who believes neither in the again-rising of the dead nor in life everlasting.” Thus he sees no middle course between the most frivolous unbelief and the Word of God as he believes and interprets it. Hence, with heretics, whether among the Pope’s men or in his own flock, “he will have nothing to do outside of Scripture — unless indeed they start working miracles.”

  Where are your Miracles?

  The stress Luther lays on miracles as a proof of doctrine is another trait to add to the picture of his psychology. Again and again he repeated anew what he had already, in 1524, said of Münzer and some of the preachers: They must be told to corroborate their mission by signs and wonders, or else be forbidden to preach; for whenever God wills to change the order of things He always works miracles. There is something almost tragic in the courage with which he appealed to miracles in this connection, when we bear in mind his own difficulties, in accounting for their absence in his own case. Here it is enough to recall Hier. Weller’s words: “I still remember right well,” Weller writes, “how he once said that he had never thought of asking God for the gift of raising the dead, or of performing other miracles, though he did not doubt he might have obtained such of God had he wished; he had, however, preferred to be content with the rich gift of Scripture-interpretation; he further said that he had raised two persons from the dead, one of them being Philip Melanchthon and the other a God-fearing man.”

  As against the sects and fanatics, Luther urges that he himself laid no claim to any extraordinary mission; as they, however, did make such a claim, they must vindicate it by miracles. “I have never preached or sought to preach unless I was asked and called for by men, for I cannot boast as they do that God has sent me from heaven without means; they run of their own accord, though no one sends them, as Jeremias writes [xxiii. 21]; for this reason they work no good.” Neither here nor elsewhere does he explicitly state by whom it is necessary to be “asked” or “called.” His account of the source whence he derives his mission also varies, being now the Wittenberg magistrates, now his Doctor’s degree, now the sovereign, now the enthusiastic hearers and readers of his word.

  Such was his confidence that Luther forgot that it was by no means difficult for the “false brethren” within his camp to pick out the weak spots in his doctrine. He refused to recognise that much of their criticism was valid; on the negative side it even took the place of miracles. It was not every Catholic polemic who succeeded in demonstrating so clearly and convincingly the anomalies in Luther’s views, for instance, on the Law and Gospel, as the Antinomian, Johann Agricola.

  On the other hand, Luther could well note with satisfaction the inability of the heretics to bring forward anything positive of importance. They were dwarfs compared with him. With his knowledge of the Bible it was child’s play to him to overthrow the fanatics’ often ludicrous applications of Scripture. Of Zwingli, too, it was easy for him to get the better by dint of sticking to the literal sense of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.” Luther was not slow in pointing out the blemishes of the “fanatics,” their vanity and blind obedience to ambition and self-will, and the impracticability of their fantastic, and often revolutionary, theories. The very truth of his strictures, for all his lack of miracles, raised him in his own eyes, far above these clumsy teachers; this perhaps enables us to understand better the utter contempt he expresses for them.

  His Anger with Lemnius and Others

  One had but to praise those whom he condemned to call forth Luther’s implacable anger.

  This was the experience in 1538 of the humanist, Simon Lemnius (Lemchen) of Wittenberg, a man otherwise kindly disposed to the new teaching. A humanist above all, he had won Melanchthon’s favour on account of his talent.

  Lemnius had thoughtlessly dared to publish two books of epigrams in which he not only attacked with biting sarcasm certain Wittenberg personages, but actually ventured to praise Archbishop Albert of Mayence, Luther’s powerful opponent. The poet, no doubt, was anxious to curry favour with the Archbishop so as to find in him a Mæcenas; he even went so far as to extol him as the man who “had kept alive the olden faith.” The censorship for which Melanchthon as Rector of the University was then responsible, was caught napping. Lemnius was indeed arrested by the University, but he escaped and fled from Wittenberg. On Trinity Sunday, June 16th, Luther read out from the pulpit a Mandate in which he abused Archbishop Albert in disgraceful terms, and scourged as a criminal act the praise bestowed in the “shameful, shocking book of lies” on Bishop Albert, “a devil out of whom it made a saint.” In it he also declared that, “by every code of law, and no matter whither the fugitive knave had fled, his head was forfeit.” Thus Lemnius was as good as outlawed — though no Court of Justice had yet sentenced him. On July 4th Melanchthon formally expelled him from the University on account of “faithlessness, perjury and slander.” The “perjury” consisted in his having fled, in defiance of the obedience he owed to the University, so as to evade the harsh penalties he had reason to apprehend. The whole edition of the Epigrams was destroyed.

  “It is the devil who hatches out such knaves,” remarked Luther, “particularly among the Papists, through whom he attacks and thwarts us.… Because we preach Christ alone he persecutes us in every way he can.” The bishops deserve to be called “lost and godless knaves and foes of God,” hence “those must not be tolerated here who praise them in verse and prose.”

  When Lemnius had a second edition of the Epigrams printed at Wittenberg this also was suppressed. He had added a third book, devoted to abuse of Luther and containing the famous “Merd-Song” on Luther, who was then ailing from diarrhœa. Luther retorted with a “Merd-Song” of his own on Lemnius. His verses he read aloud to his friends and they became public property through being incorporated in Lauterbach’s notes of the Table-Talk.

  Lemnius, whose career had been wrecked by Luther’s anger and revenge, then wrote an “Apologia against the unjust and lying decree” which the Wittenberg University had published against him at the instigation (“imperio et tyrannide”) of Martin Luther and Justus Jonas. He still retained his loose humanistic style after his return in 1538 to his native Switzerland, where he obtained a position as schoolmaster at Coire.

  The above Apologia was printed at Cologne, it would seem in 1539, but very few copies survive owing to the energy shown in their suppression. It is only of recent years that the complete text has become generally known; till then Protestants like Schelhorn and Hausen had only ventured to give fragments of the work. In it the writer complains bitterly that Luther “has published a pamphlet against him [the mandate read aloud in the church] in which, playing
both the judge and the sovereign, Luther had condemned and abused him.” “Such authority in civil matters” does this soul-herd arrogate to himself. He robs the bishops of their secular power, but he himself is a tyrant. The charges against Luther’s private life made in this work are glaring, and they come, moreover, from a man who knew his Wittenberg, but it must not be forgotten that he was now a bitter foe of Luther. He goes so far as to declare that Luther’s shameless attacks on the sovereigns, for instance on the Elector of Mayence, gave grounds for apprehending contempt of all authority and the outbreak of a war that would spell the ruin of Germany.

  Meanwhile “Luther sits like a dictator at Wittenberg and rules; what he says must be taken as law.” He calls his opponent the “Wittenberg Pope” (“Papa Albiacus”), who had been faithless to his Vows.

  In order rightly to appreciate, from their psychological side, Luther’s angry outbursts against the heretics in his party we must above all remember his fears of a coming collapse of theology among his following; that he foresaw something of the sort has already been shown above.

  He was also keenly alive to the harm these dissensions were doing to his reputation. Nor must we forget the threatening and highly insulting behaviour of many of these heretics. Taking all things together, it is easy to understand how a temper such as his was lashed to fury when denouncing the “presumption and foolhardiness” of his foes.

  “A muddled and obstinate head” sits on the neck of the fanatics’ ringleader; “his horns must be blunted.”— “Carlstadt and Zwingli behave with insolence and defiance”; “We must needs decry the fanatics as damned”; “they actually dare to pick holes in our doctrine; ah, the scoundrelly rabble do a great injury to our Evangel even in the outland and enable our foes to scoff at us.”— “Their pride and audacity will bring about their downfall.”

  In truth, he says, “Carlstadt blasphemed himself to death.” — Œcolampadius saw the “curse” of God fulfilled in himself, “and withered away with fear the night after Zwingli had been struck down” (at Cappel). Zwingli himself, like the rest, was urged on merely by “his boundless ambition.” — Egranus (Johann Wildenauer) was a “proud donkey.” — Bucer is a “gossip,” “a miscreant through and through, in every case, inflection and rule of grammar; I trust him not at all, for Paul says [Titus iii. 10] ‘A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.’” — Sebastian Franck is a “wicked, venomous knave and it is a wonder to me that those at Ulm care to keep him.” “He only loved to do harm, is inconstant and boasts of the spirit; but his wife has plenty of spirit and it is she who inspirits him with her spirit.” — Schwenckfeld deserves as little as Franck to be written against. “Agricola is only puffed up with hatred and ambition.”