6. Sharp Encounters with the Fanatics
If, on the one hand, the antagonism which Luther was obliged to display towards the fanatical Anabaptists endangered his work, on the other the struggle was in many respects to his advantage.
His being obliged to withstand the claim constantly made by the fanatics to inspiration by the Holy Ghost served as a warning to him to exercise caution and moderation in appealing to a higher call in the case of his own enterprise; being compelled also to invoke the assistance of the authorities against the fanatics’ subversion of the existing order of things, he was naturally obliged to be more reticent himself and to refrain from preaching revolution in the interests of his own teaching. We even find him at times desisting from his claim to special inspiration and guidance by the “spirit” in the negotiations entered into on account of the Münzer business; this, however, he does with a purpose and in opposition with his well-known and usual view. In place of his real ideas, as expressed by him both before and after this period, he, for a while, prefers to deprecate any use of force or violence, and counsels his sovereign to introduce the innovations gradually, pointing out the most suitable methods with patience and prudence.
At first he was anxious that indulgence should be observed even in dealing with the Anabaptists, but later on he invoked vigorously the aid of the authorities.
In reality he himself was borne along by principles akin to those of the fanatics whose ideas were, as a matter of fact, an outcome of his own undertaking. His own writings exhibit many a trait akin to their pseudo-mysticism. In the end his practical common sense was more than a match for these pestering opponents, who for a time gave him so much trouble. His learning and education raised him far above them and made the religious notions of the Anabaptists abhorrent to him, while his public position at the University, as well as his official and personal relations with the sovereign, ill-disposed him to the demagogism of the fanatics and their efforts to win over the common people to their side.
The fanatical aim of Thomas Münzer, the quondam Catholic priest who had worked as a preacher of the new faith at Allstedt, near Eisleben, since 1523, was the extermination by violence of all impious persons, and the setting up of a Kingdom of God formed of all the righteous here on earth, after the ideal of apostolic times. This tenet, rather than rebaptism, was the mark of his followers. The rebaptism of adults, which was practised by the sect, was merely due to their belief that an active faith was essential for the reception of the sacraments, whilst children of tender years were incapable of any faith at all.
As a beginning of the war against the “idolatry” of the old Church, Münzer caused the Pilgrimage Chapel at Malderbach, near Eisleben, where a miraculous picture of Our Lady was venerated, to be destroyed in April, 1524. He then published a fiery sermon he had recently preached, in which he exhorted the great ones and all friends of the Evangel among the people at once to abolish Divine Worship as it had hitherto been practised. The sermon was sent to the Electoral Court by persons who were troubled about the rising, and who begged that Münzer might be called to account. The sermon was also forwarded to Luther by Spalatin, the Court Chaplain, evidently in order that Luther might take some steps to obviate the danger. In point of fact, Luther’s eagle eye took in the situation at a glance, and he at once decided to intervene with the utmost vigour. With Münzer’s spirit he was already acquainted through personal observation, so he said, and now he realised yet more clearly that its effect would be to let the mob loose, with the consequence that “heavenly spirits” of every sort would soon be claiming to interfere in the direction of his own enterprise.
Luther at once composed a clever and powerful writing entitled “A Circular to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Spirit of Revolt.” This appeared in the last days of July, 1524. To it we shall return later, for it is of great psychological interest.
Münzer was dismissed from his situation, and went to Mühlhausen, where the apostate monk, Heinrich Pfeifer, had already prepared the ground, and thence to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg he brought out, in September, 1524, his “Hochverursachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg” in reply to Luther’s Circular, above mentioned. He then recommenced his restless wanderings through South Germany and Switzerland. He remained for some time with the ex-priest and professor of theology, Balthasar Hubmaier, then pastor of the new faith at Waldshut. On his return to Mühlhausen, in December, he put into execution his fantastic communistic scheme, which lasted until he and the seditious peasants were defeated in the encounter at Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525; his execution for a while put an end to the endeavours of the fanatics. Nevertheless, in other places, more particularly at Münster during the famous Reign of Terror from 1532-1535, the fanaticism of the Anabaptists again broke out under even worse forms.
The short circular, “On the Spirit of Revolt,”[1063] referred to above as a document curiously illustrative of Luther’s psychology, is not important in the sense of furnishing a true picture of his inner thoughts and feelings. Conveying as it does a petition and admonition to the Princes, it is naturally worded politically and with great caution, and was also manifestly intended for the general public. Nevertheless its author, even where he clothes his thoughts in the strange and carefully chosen dress best calculated to serve the purpose he had in view, affords us an interesting glimpse into his mode of action. He also shows throughout the whole circular in what light he wishes to see his own higher mission regarded.
Luther commences his writing with a complaint regarding Satan. It is his habit, he says, when nothing else avails, “to attack the Word of God by means of false spirits and teachers.” Hence, because he now perceives that the Evangel, though assailed by “raging Princes” (the opponents of the Saxon Princes), was nevertheless growing and thriving all the more, he had made a nest at Allstedt and caused his spirits there to proclaim that, “it was a bad thing that faith and charity and the Cross of Christ were being preached at Wittenberg. You must hear God’s voice yourself, they say, and suffer God’s action in you and feel how heavy your load is. It is all nonsense about the Scriptures [so Luther makes them say], all ‘Bible, Bubble, Babble,’” etc.
Secondly, a charge which was likely to weigh as much or even more with the Princes, he proceeds, “the same spirit would not allow the matter to remain one of words, but intended to strike with the fist, to oppose the authorities by force and to bring about an actual revolt.” As against this he points out very skilfully, that, according to God’s ordinance, the Princes are the “rulers of the world,” and that Christ had said: “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John xviii. 36). Hence his urgent exhortation to them is “to prevent such disorders and to anticipate the revolt.”
As to the spirit on which the fanatics pride themselves, it had not yet, so Luther declares, been proved, but “goes about working its own sweet will” without being willing to vindicate itself before two or three witnesses; Münzer, according to Luther’s previous experience of him, had no wish to present himself at Wittenberg (to be examined); “he was afraid of the soup and preferred to stay among his own followers, who say yes to all his excellent speeches.”
“If I, who am so deficient in the spirit and hear no heavenly voices,” so he humbly assures the Princes, “had uttered such words against my Papists, how they would have cried out on me ‘Gewunnen’ and have stopped my mouth! I cannot glorify myself or defy others with such great words; I am a poor, wretched man and far from carrying through my enterprise in a high-handed way, I began it with great fear and trembling, as St. Paul, who surely might have boasted of the heavenly voice, confesses concerning himself (1 Cor. ii.).”[1064]
Luther now comes to the proof that, unlike the fanatics, his cause was from God, that it was very different from Münzer’s enterprise, that he was being unfairly attacked by this rival, and that consequently his sovereign should support his undertaking as he had previously done. Here he undoubtedly meets with greater difficulties than when he made the off-hand statement that Münzer’s spirit was a “lying devil, and an evil devil,” and that “storming and fanaticism” and acts of violence by the rabble “Mr. Omnes” must not be permitted.
From the burden of proof for his own mission from above, consisting in many instances of mere hints and allusions, we may select the following considerations submitted by him to his sovereign.
First: I proceed “without boasting and defiance,” with humility, indeed with “fear.” “How humbly, to begin with, did I attack the Pope, how I implored and besought, as my first writings testify!”—We have seen that Luther’s writings and the steps he took from the outset of the struggle “testify,” as a matter of fact, to something quite different. Here he says never a word of the communications he believed he had received from the Spirit of God and his experience of being carried away by God. We may also add that his appeal to the example of Paul in the passage of Corinthians referred to above, when speaking of the “trembling and fear” he endured, was scarcely in place, since it was no question of actual fear in the case of the Apostle, as Paul, shortly afterwards, in the sublime consciousness of his Divine mission goes on to say: we are God’s coadjutors ... according to the grace of God which is given to me as a wise architect I have laid the foundation (1 Cor. iii. 9, 10). Paul merely states, that he is unable to speak to the Corinthians as to spiritual men, because they were still “babes in Christ,” not as though anything were wanting in him, for the testimony “of the Spirit and of power” never failed him.
A second point upon which Luther lays great stress is, that, though I was of so humble and “poor a spirit” I nevertheless performed “noble and exalted spiritual works,” which Münzer certainly has not done. I stood up for the Evangel, which I preached in an “honourable and manly” fashion; indeed “my very life was in danger”: “I have had to risk life and limb for it and I cannot but glory in it,” he says, again with reference to Paul, “as St. Paul also was obliged to do; though it is foolishness and I should prefer to leave it to the lying spirits.”[1065] What exactly are the instances that he is so unwilling to relate of his noble scorn for death? “I stood up at Leipzig to dispute before a most dangerous assembly. I went to Augsburg without escort to appear before my greatest enemy. And I took my stand at Worms before the Emperor and the whole realm, knowing well beforehand that the pledge of a safe conduct would be broken, and that savage malice and cunning were directed against me. But, poor and weak as I then was, my will was nevertheless so determined that, had I known there were as many devils waiting for me as there were tiles on the roofs of Worms, I should still have ridden thither, and yet I had as yet heard nothing of heavenly voices and ‘God’s burdens and works’” (such as the fanatics pretended they had experienced). He commits his cause to Christ the Lord, so he declares, if He will support him then all will be well, but “before men and any assembly he is ready to answer boldly for himself” (as he had done at Leipzig, Augsburg and Worms).
Münzer, in his “Schutzrede,” was not slow to answer Luther’s “boasting” concerning his three appearances in public. It must be touched upon here for the sake of completeness, although it must be borne in mind that it is the utterance of an opponent. Münzer calls Luther repeatedly, and not merely on account of this boasting, “Dr. Liar” and “Lying Luther.” He says to him: “Why do you throw dust in the eyes of the people? you were very well off indeed at Leipzig. You rode out of the city crowned with gilly-flowers and drank good wine at Melchior Lother’s? Nor were you in any danger at Augsburg [as a matter of fact every precaution had been taken], for Staupitz the oracle stood at your side.... That you appeared before the Empire at Worms at all was thanks to the German nobles whom you had cajoled and honeyed, for they fully expected, that, by your preaching you would obtain for them Bohemian gifts of monasteries and foundations which you are now promising to the Princes. Therefore if you had wavered at Worms, you would have been stabbed by the nobles sooner than allowed to go free, as everyone knows.... You made use of wiles and cunning towards your own followers. You allowed yourself to be taken captive by your own councillors [and brought to the Wartburg] and made out that you were ill-used. Anyone ignorant of your knavery would no doubt swear by all the Saints that you were a pious Martin. Sleep softly, dear lump of flesh. I should prefer to sniff you roasting in your defiance under the anger of God.”[1066] The falsity of Luther’s assertion, that the promise of a safe conduct had not been kept at Worms, has been already pointed out (p. 69). The reason of his appearing at Augsburg without an escort for the journey there and back, was, that the Elector trusted Cardinal Cajetan and did not wish Luther to apply for one.
In proof of his being in the right Luther, in the third place, points emphatically to his learning and his success. His cause was thus based on a much firmer foundation than that of the Allstedt fanatic. “I know and am certain that by the Grace of God I am more learned in the Scripture than all the sophists and Papists, but God has thus far graciously preserved me from pride, and will continue to preserve me.” “I have done more harm to the Pope without the use of fists than a powerful king could have done”; “my words have emptied many a convent.” These fanatics “utilise our victory and enjoy it, take wives and relax papal laws, though it was not they who bore the brunt of the fighting.”
Fourthly: “I know that we who possess and understand the Gospel—though we be but poor sinners—have the right spirit, or as Paul says [Rom. viii: 23] ‘primitias spiritus,’ the first-fruits of the spirit, though we may not have the fulness of the spirit.... We know what faith, charity and the cross are.... Hence we know and can judge whether a doctrine is true or false, just as we are able to discern and judge this lying spirit,” etc.
Fifthly we must consider the fruits of our teaching. These are those mentioned by St. Paul (Gal. v. 22 f., Rom. viii. 13), viz: “charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity and mildness”; Paul also says, “that the deeds of the flesh must be mortified and the old Adam, together with all his works, crucified with Christ. In a word, the fruit of our spirit is the keeping of the ten commandments of God.” The Allstedt spirit, he adds, ought really to bring forth yet higher fruits since it purports to be a higher spirit. If fruits are lacking then surely we also may admit that, “alas, we do not as much as we ought.”—It is notorious enough that Luther might have made still greater admissions of this sort. Nevertheless, he is able to point to “abundant fruit of the spirit produced by God’s Grace among our followers,” and is ready, “if it comes to boasting,” to set his own person, “which is the meanest and most sinful of all, against all the fruits of the Allstedt spirit, however greatly the fanatics may blame my life.” In order, however, the better to safeguard himself on this point, he remarks that, “on account of the life, the doctrine” must not be condemned, as this spirit “takes offence at our feeble life.” It appears that Münzer had spoken very strongly against Luther and the goings on at Wittenberg.
The one sentence in Luther’s writing which must have made the deepest impression on his princely readers, and on their courtiers, was that concerning the appropriation of the churches and convents, which had been surrendered in consequence of the innovations. “Let the Rulers of the land do what they please with them!” This invitation, in the mind of those in power, was quite sufficient to make up for the deficiencies of the other arguments and to be considered as an irrefragable proof of the justice of the cause.
Luther’s higher mission being in his own opinion so firmly established that he had no cause to fear any man, he goes so far in his Circular as to propose that his Anabaptist foes should not be hindered. “Do not scruple to let them preach freely!” He for his part will gird himself for the fight, and we know of how much the force and violence of his eloquence was capable. Confident that no one could stand against his written or spoken word, he cries: “Let the spirits fall upon one another and fight it out.... Where there is a struggle and a battle some must fall and be wounded, but whoever fights manfully receives the crown.” As a matter of fact, however, he was speedily to withdraw this too-confident challenge; indeed, as we shall see, he later went so far as to demand the infliction of the death-penalty upon those who dared to differ in doctrine from himself, viz. the Anabaptists and fanatics, establishing the necessity of this on passages from the Old Testament which speak of the execution of false prophets.[1067]
Münzer’s party too had appealed in defence of their violent work of destruction to the precepts of the Old Testament (Gen. xi. 2; Deut. vii. 12; xii. 2, 3: “Destroy the altars and break down the images,” etc.). Hence Luther deemed it necessary to point out in his Circular against them, that “a certain Divine command then existed for such acts of destruction which is not given to us at the present day.”
It was no uncommon thing for the Bible to furnish such matters of dispute for the warring elements; in the question of the Divine commission it ever occupied the foreground.
Luther solemnly raised the Bible on high and, to the Anabaptists and other teachers of the new faith who differed from him, protested that he and he alone had discovered the Word of God and was the appointed teacher. Yet all those whom he addressed said the selfsame thing and even maintained that they could show better proofs of their mission than Luther. How, then, was the question to be decided?
The Catholic Church has never permitted individual doctors to set up their own as the authentic interpretation of the Bible; she declared herself to be the only divinely appointed supreme authority qualified to determine the true sense of the written Word of God, she herself having received the living Word of God, together with authorisation to guard the whole body of Divine teaching, the written inclusive, in its primitive purity, and to proclaim it with an infallible voice. She appeals to the words of Christ: “Teach all nations,” “He that hears you, hears me,” “You shall be witnesses for me to the ends of the earth,” “I am with you, even to the consummation of the world.”[1068]
Outside this safe rule there is nothing but arbitrary judgment and confusion. Luther and those he called “heretics” accused each other of the most flagrant arbitrariness, and not without cause. They applied to each other in derision the phrase: “Bible, Bubble, Babble,” for indeed it was a confusion of tongues. It was not merely Luther who applied the phrase to Münzer’s party, for, according to Agricola, Münzer mocked the Lutherans with the same words when they ventured to attack him with biblical texts. The Anabaptist Conrad Grebel, of Zürich, writing to Münzer on September 5, 1524, says: “You have on your side the Bible, which Luther derides as ‘Bible, Bubble, Babble, etc.’”[1069]
No one could prevent the fanatics from availing themselves of the freedom of private interpretation which Luther had set up as a principle. Münzer, no less than Luther, respected the Bible as such, and knew how to make use of it skilfully. He also, declared, exactly as Luther had done, that he taught the people “only according to Holy Scripture,” and, “please God, never preached his own conceits.”[1070] According to Luther’s own principles, Münzer’s faction had also a perfect right to make the “outward Word” (the Bible) agree with the “inward Word,” which they believed they heard. When Luther, at a later date, insists so strongly on the need of accepting the outward Word as well as the inner worth, this was really a retreat on his part (see vol. iv., xxviii. 1); moreover, by the outward Word he here means the Bible as he explained it.
To force those who were unwilling to accept the new, purely personal and subjective interpretation, and to do so without the authority of the Church, whose claims had been definitively discarded, was to exercise an intolerable spiritual despotism. We can well understand how Münzer came to complain, in one of his letters, that Luther in his Circular-Letter “ramps in as ferociously and hideously as a mighty tyrant.”[1071] He could well complain in particular of Luther’s demand, that the spirit which spoke in Münzer should submit to an examination before the Lutheran tribunal at Wittenberg previous to being acknowledged as a spirit which had been duly called. This Luther required, assuring his followers that Münzer’s party was execrated even by the Papists, that it had no real commission and could show no miracles on its behalf. He was anxious to retain for himself the “first-fruits of the Spirit.” To this the retort of his foes was that the first-fruits of the Spirit were theirs, belonging to them by virtue of heavenly testimony. This fellow Luther wishes to ascribe the first-fruits of the Spirit to himself, wrote Grebel to Münzer, and yet he composes such a “wicked booklet.” I know his intentions; they are thoroughly tyrannical. “I see he means to give you up to the headsman’s axe and hand you over to the Princes.”[1072]
And yet, in spite of other differences between himself and the Anabaptists, Luther found himself in agreement with them not merely on the principle of free interpretation of the Bible but also in the stress he lays on the inspiration from above supposed to be bestowed on all. Luther did not deny that individual inspiration, the “whisper” from on high, as he termed it, was one of the means by which faith might be arrived at; on the contrary, the only question for him was how far this might go.
Luther was fond of insisting that only a heart tried by temptation was able to arrive at the understanding of the words of Scripture and of religious truths in general. Münzer, too, demands this preliminary on the part of the would-be theologian, though he does so in rather more fantastic language. Study of Tauler’s mysticism had filled his mind, even more than Luther’s, with confused notions. On the appearance of Luther’s Circular-Letter, he offered to submit to an examination of his spirit before the whole of Christendom. Those were to be summoned from all nations who had “endured overwhelming temptations in matters of faith and had arrived at despair of heart.” These words we find in a letter addressed to the Elector of Saxony, August 3, 1524.[1073] Luther, however, considered himself far better acquainted with the abyss of interior sufferings than any other; Münzer must not be allowed to interfere with him here. “We must not be bold in the Word of God,” but “treat Holy Scripture with reverence and great fear; this the rabble and the impudent spirits do not do.” Such things (what Christ says concerning the new birth) “cannot be understood, unless a man has experienced it, and himself undergone a spiritual regeneration.”[1074]
Luther, in point of fact, met the Anabaptists half-way on that doctrine of baptism from which they took their name. Rebaptism he naturally rejected, but he nevertheless advocated the principle for which the Anabaptists stood, namely, that, for the reception of baptism, faith is necessary on the part of the catechumen. To overcome the difficulties which presented themselves in the case of children who had not yet reached the use of reason, he had recourse to some curious explanations. There was no help for it; they also must believe. Probably they are enlightened at the moment of baptism, which, in accordance with the Church’s ancient usage, must be administered to them, and, by some Almighty action, are penetrated with that perception of faith which is essential for the reception of this absolutely necessary sacrament, After all, he argues, why should reason be essential for faith? Is not reason really hostile to faith? Strange indeed were the subterfuges in which he took refuge in order to evade the consequences which Münzer and his party rightly drew from his theses.[1075]
But in spite of all they might have in common, and notwithstanding his being the actual father of the detestable Anabaptist error, he felt himself removed far above the fanatics by a sense of superiority and Divine support which no words could adequately express.
His conviction regarding his own supreme mission and his great gifts and achievements, which increased in strength as he advanced in years, derived further encouragement from the utter madness of the fanatics and his success in overthrowing them.
No sooner had the unhappy Münzer been made prisoner and, after a contrite Catholic confession, been beheaded at Mühlhausen, together with Heinrich Pfeifer, a priest, and twenty-four rebels, than Luther proclaimed the event throughout Germany in a pamphlet as a plain judgment of God, which set a seal on his own Evangel and confirmed him as the teacher of the truth.
In this work, entitled “A frightful story and Divine Judgment,”[1076] he says: Had God spoken through him “this [his fall] would not have occurred. For God does not lie but keeps His Word. Since then Thomas Münzer has fallen, it is plain that he spoke and acted through the devil while pretending to do so in the name of God.... More than five thousand,” he continues, “rushed headlong to destruction of body and soul. Alas! the pity of it all! This was what the devil wanted, and what he is seeking in the case of the seditious peasants.” He protests that, “he feels sorry that the people should thus have perished in body and soul,” but he cannot help endorsing their eternal reprobation, as far as in him lies; “to the end they remained hardened in infidelity, perjury and blasphemy,”[1077] therefore if God has so manifestly punished these “noxious, false prophets,” this must serve to teach us to have a great regard for the “true Word of God.”
“I do not boast of an exalted spirit,” Luther says, comparing himself with the fanatics and their like, but “I do glory in the great gifts and graces of my God and of His Spirit, and I do so rightly, so I think, and not without cause.... Münzer is indeed dead, but his spirit is not yet exterminated.... The devil is not asleep, but continues to send out sparks.... These preachers cannot control themselves, the spirit has blinded them and taken them captive, therefore they are not to be trusted.... Beware and take heed, for Satan has come among the children of God!”[1078]
His self-confidence makes it as clear as daylight to him that he is the true interpreter of the Word of God, whether against the survivors of Münzer’s party or against the fickle phantasies of Carlstadt; this we see particularly in the caustic, eloquent tracts he launched against the latter: “To the Christians of Strasburg against the fanatics” and “Against the heavenly Prophets.”
In the latter, a famous book which will be dealt with later when we have to speak of Carlstadt (vol. iii., xix. 2), Luther attacks the fanatics along the whole line and unconditionally lays claim to a higher authority for his own personal illumination and his Evangel. Yet he does not omit to point out, in view of the fact that so many repudiated this Evangel, that its power can only be felt by those whose consciences have been “humbled and perturbed.”
Never for a moment does he relinquish his claim, that his interpretation of the Bible is the only true one:—
“What else was wanting in Münzer,” he says, “than that he did not rightly expound the Word?... He should have taught the pure Gospel!... It is a great art to be able to distinguish rightly between the Law and the Gospel.... God’s Word is not all of the same sort, but is diverse.... Whoever is able to distinguish rightly between the Law and the Gospel is given a high place and called a Doctor of Holy Scripture, for without the Holy Ghost it is impossible to make this distinction. This I have experienced myself.... No Pope, or false Christian, or fanatic, is able to separate these two [the Law and the Gospel] one from the other.”[1079] But because he had the “Holy Spirit,” Luther was able to make this supremely great discovery, and found thereby the key to the Scriptures, on which alone he builds.
“I, for my part, have, by the grace of God, now effected so much that, thanks be to God, boys and girls of fifteen know more of Christian doctrine than all the Universities and Doctors previously did.” “I have set men’s consciences at rest concerning penance, baptism, prayer, crosses, life, death and the Sacrament of the Altar, and also ordered the question of marriage, of secular authority, of the relations of father and mother, wife and child, father and son, man and maid—in short, every condition of life, so that all know how to live and how to serve God according to one’s state.”[1080]
Given his achievements, Luther was not going too far when he spoke of himself repeatedly as a “great doctor.”[1081] He also showed himself extremely sensitive, as we shall soon see, to the attempts of the sectarians and fanatics to deprive him of the honour of the first place, to discredit his discovery of the Gospel, and either to crown themselves with his laurels and possess themselves of the fruits of his struggles, or, at his expense, to invent novelties and launch them on the world. Seeing that Christ is “destroying the Papacy” through him and is bringing it to its “exspiravit,” i.e. to the last gasp, he is naturally annoyed to learn that there are other spokesmen of the new faith who refuse to follow him without question, and who cause “a great falling away from his preaching and much slanderous talk. There are some, who after having read a page or two or listened to a sermon, without further ado take it on themselves to be overbearing and to reproach others, telling them that their conduct is not that of the followers of the Gospel.” This, he declares, he himself had “never taught anyone,” rather, as St. Paul also had done, he had “strictly forbidden it. They merely act in this way because they are desirous of novelties.... They misapply Holy Scripture to their own conceits.”[1082]
All this he says when actually declaring that he has no wish to set himself above anyone, or to be “any man’s master.”
There was scarcely one among the many teachers of the innovations who dared to differ from him whom Luther did not liken to the devil. “I have had more than thirty doctors of the fanatics opposing me,” he said on one occasion, “all anxious to be my instructors”; all these he had driven before him like chaff and vanquished the “devil” in them.[1083]
“Münzer, Carlstadt, Campanus and such fellows, together with the factious spirits and sects, are merely devils incarnate, for all their efforts are directed to doing harm and avenging themselves.”[1084]
Himself he looks upon as the champion of God against the devil, raised, as it were, to the pinnacle of the temple. It is the devil whom by heavenly power he repels and shames in the fanatics who arise in his camp. “Satan,” he says to them, “cannot conceal himself.”[1085] “Such fellows are beguiled by the devil.”[1086] Johann Agricola, a comrade of his, he delivers over to Satan, because he differed from him in some points of doctrine: “He goes on his way, all devoted to Satan as he is, sowing seeds of enmity against us.”[1087] Luther warns him that he may become a martyr, but like Arius and Satan, whom Christ punishes. “Good God, what utter malice! These heretics say of me what the Manichæans said of Christ, viz. that Christ had indeed the Holy Spirit but only in an imperfect degree, whereas they themselves possessed it in its perfection.”[1088]
Caspar Schwenckfeld, like Agricola, he esteemed an heretical theologian desirous of innovations, “a mad fool possessed by the devil”; “it is the devil who spews and excretes his works.” Luther’s malediction on this heretical devil runs, “May God’s curse light on thee, Satan, thy spirit which called thee forth, be with thee to thy destruction.”[1089] Michael Stiefel, the Lutheran preacher and fanatic, is also no less possessed of the devil. “It is soon over with a man,” Luther laments over this old friend, “when the devil possesses him in this way.”[1090] Even Zwingli and the Zwinglians are also possessed through and through by the devil and are the servants of Satan.[1091] All who do not agree with him, but set up their own ideas, merely show that the devil is at work in the world. “This is how the work of the devil goes on. In twenty years I have met more than fifty sectarians desirous of teaching me, but God has preserved me, He Who said of St. Paul, ‘I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake’” (Acts ix. 16).[1092]
It is these men whom the devil [of pride] carries high up “in the air and sets on the pinnacle of the temple.”[1093]
We must cut short this string of Luther’s utterances and quote some of the words of his opponents. What Thomas Münzer said in reply is the reverse of feeble, but at least it gives us a good idea of the way in which controversies were conducted in those days. Thomas Münzer, in his printed reply to Luther referred to above,[1094] is manifestly angry that Luther should stamp all who contradict him as devils.
“That most ambitious, lying scribe Dr. Luther,” he says, becomes, “the longer he lives, more of an arrogant fool, shields himself behind Holy Scripture and utilises it to his advantage in the most deceitful manner.”[1095]
The greatest of all crimes is that “no attention is paid to the commands of the Pope of Wittenberg,” Münzer remarks sarcastically; Luther was putting himself up “in place of the Pope,” while at the same time “he curried favour with the Princes”; “you, you new Pope, make them presents of convents and churches.” “You have distracted all Christendom with a false religion and now, when it is necessary, are unable to control it” except with the help of the rulers. He was introducing “a new system of logic-chopping with the Word of God”; he is desirous of “managing everything by the Word” and exalts himself as though he had not come into the world in the ordinary way but had “sprung from the brain.” He speaks of “our safeguard and protection” as though he himself were a Prince; with his “fantastic reason” he was working mischief, while making a great display of humility; he makes much of his own “simplicity,” but this resembled that of the fox, or of an onion which has nine skins. All his adversaries he labelled as “devils,” but he himself raved and ranted like a hound of hell, and if he did not raise an open revolt this was merely because, like the serpent, he glided over the rocks.[1096]
Equally remarkable are the words addressed to Luther by Valentine Ickelsamer, one of the leaders of the fanatics. He tells Luther that his preaching only goes half-way, for it proclaims the right of private judgment in things Divine, but not for all men, and “confuses the people” by its want of logic and instability. Ickelsamer himself is determined to speak, “because the Evangel gives us freedom of belief and the power of judging.” Not only does he find numerous “Scriptural utterances which are against Luther’s views,” but he also inveighs strongly against the gigantic pride which leads Luther to “desire that everyone should look to him”; his self-exaltation leads him to commit the gravest “injustice and tyranny.” “Settle yourself comfortably in the Papal Chair” he cries to Luther, “for after all you only want to listen to your own singing.” Your obstinacy is such, he says, that you would have no scruple in contradicting the statement “Christ is God” “were you unfavourably disposed” towards its author. Would it not be a good thing if “Our Lord God were to smash the idols and set you up in their place?”[1097]
In spite of all remonstrances Luther continued, nevertheless, to compare his adversaries to mere devils. The devil beguiles them to employ their reason, to seek the reason (“Quare”) of the articles of faith. Such words are tantamount to an attack on theology in general. “The ‘Quare,’” he says, “leads us into all the unhappiness and heresy by which our first parents were deceived by the devil in Paradise.... Verily we deserve to be crowned with coltsfoot for being so foolish and falling so readily into the snare when the devil comes along with his old ‘Quare.’”[1098]
“They are lost [the fanatics], they are the devil’s own.”[1099]
On the other hand, Luther makes the devil confirm his own mission. “The devil has been dreading this for years and smelt the roast from afar; he also sent forth many prophecies against it, some of which apply to me so that I often marvel at his great malice. He would also have liked,to kill me.”[1100] The devil desired Luther’s death simply in order to rid himself of his fine preaching.
Another familiar thought which seemed to have an irresistible attraction for him frequently intervenes to confirm this theory. My interior sufferings, he says repeatedly, and my struggles with the devil, set the seal of most certain assurance on my teaching, and this seal the fanatics do not possess.
Here comes Campanus, he says of a refractory theologian in his ranks, and “makes himself out to be the only man who is sure of everything”; “he prides himself on being certain upon all matters and of never being at a loss”; Campanus condemns him as a “liar and diabolical man,” and of this he was “as sure as that God is God.” And yet this Campanus has “never passed through any struggle, nor had a tussle with the devil, and actually glories in the fact.”[1101] On the other hand, he himself, he says, had been “tried by the devil” and proved by “temptation”; that is the true test and is essential for every real “student of theology”; “for as soon as God’s Word dawns upon you, the devil is sure to try you, and in this way you become a doctor in very truth.”[1102]
“But those whom the devil takes captive by false doctrine and a factious spirit, he holds tight. He takes possession of their heart, making them deaf and blind, so that they neither see nor hear anything, and do not pay any heed to the plain, clear and manifest testimony of Holy Scripture; for they are so tightly caught in his clutches that they cannot be torn away.”[1103] At first heretics do not see where Satan is taking them. “They put forward the antecedent most devoutly and with a simulated peace of conscience. Thereupon the devil draws a consequence, which they [the factious spirits] had never dreamt of. Johann Agricola, for instance, does not see the consequence. But the devil is a capital dialectician and has already built up the syllogism, antecedent, consequence and all. And yet we still lull ourselves into a false security and think that the devil is not governing the world.”[1104] Luther refers the prejudice of heretics in favour of their errors to a kind of bewitchment by the devil, for if the devil is able to bewitch the bodily senses, as Luther was convinced he could, then he will also be able, “expert and dangerous adept” as he is, to take captive the hearts and consciences of men “with still greater ease.” “What is nothing but a lie, heresy and horrid darkness, they take for plain, pure truth and are not to be moved from their ideas by any exhortations or remonstrance.... They behave like those parents in the legend of St. Macarius, who, owing to a delusion of the devil, took their daughter for a cow, until they were at last set free from the spell.... Thus the devil in such people effects by false doctrine what he is otherwise wont to bring about by means of delusive pictures and fancies.”[1105]
We will here conclude with a family scene. On one occasion, in 1544, Luther, in the presence of Catherine von Bora, poured out his ire against Schwenckfeld for his want of acquiescence in his doctrines: “He is ‘attonitus’ [moonstruck], like all the fanatics,” he says of him. “He spurts the grand name of Christ over the people and wants me to bow low before him. I thank God I am better off, however, for I know my Christ well, and have no need of this man’s filth.” Here Catherine interrupted him: “But, my dear Sir, that is really too rude.” Luther replied: “They are my masters in rudeness. It is necessary to speak so to the devil; he can make an end of this fanaticism,” etc.... “He leads the Churches astray, though from God he has received neither command nor mission! The mad, devil-possessed fool does not even know what he is talking about.... Of the muck the devil spews and excretes through his booklet I have had quite enough.”[1106]