And yet he confesses to a certain nervousness: “At first I trembled and I prayed while burning the Papal books and the Bull. But now I am more rejoiced at this than at any previous act of my life; they [the Romanists] are a worse pestilence than I had thought.” This he writes to his same fatherly friend, Staupitz.[127]
His perturbation, which had become to him almost a life-element, served to dispel his fears and his doubts: “I am battling with the floods and am carried away by them (“fluctibus his rapior et volvor”). “The noise [of strife] rages mightily. Both sides are putting their heart into it.”[128] Catholics discern with grief in this uncanny joy a sad attempt on his part to find encouragement in the preposterous notion he fostered of the “devilishness” of the Papacy. They will also perceive in his outbursts of rage, and in the challenges to violence in which he indulges in unguarded moments, the effect of the excommunication working on a mind already stirred to its innermost depths. When we hear him declare in a popular pamphlet, after the arrival of the Papal Bull, that it would not be surprising were the Princes, the nobility and laity to hit the Pope, the bishops, priests and monks over the head and drive them out of the land,[129] we find that such language agrees only too well with his furious words in his tract written in 1520 against Prierias, where he compares the Pope and his followers to a band of cut-throats.
If murderers are punished with the sword, why then should we not proceed with still greater severity against those “teachers of perdition” who are determined not to repent? “Why do we not attack them with every weapon that comes to hand and wash our hands in their blood, if we thereby save ourselves and ours from the most dangerous of flames? How happy are those Christians who are not obliged like us, the most miserable of men, to live under such an Antichrist.” Recognising the ominous character of the passage “Cur non ... manus nostras in sanguine istorum lavamus,” etc., later Lutherans added certain words which appear first in the Jena edition (German translation) in 1555: “But God Who says (Deut. xxxii. 35, Rom. xii. 19) ‘Vengeance is mine’ will find out these His enemies in good time, who are not worthy of temporal punishment, but whose punishment must be eternal in the abyss of hell.” These words, which are not found in the original edition of 1520, are given in Walch’s edition of Luther, vol. xviii., p. 245. The argument in exoneration of Luther, based upon them by a recent Lutheran, thus falls to the ground. The addition will be sought for in vain in the Weimar edition (6, p. 347 f.), and in that of Erlangen (“Opp. Lat. var.” 2, p. 107). Paulus has proved that the falsification of the text was the work of Nicholas Amsdorf, who was responsible for the Jena edition, though in the Preface he protests that his edition of Luther’s works is free from all correction or addition.[130]
In view of the inflammatory language which he hurled among the crowd, assurances of an entirely different character, which, when it suited his purpose, he occasionally made for the benefit of the Court, really deserve less consideration. In these he is desirous of disclaiming beforehand the responsibility for any precipitate and dangerous measures taken by men like Hutten, and such as Spalatin in his anxiety fancied he foresaw. What Luther wrote on January 16, 1521, was addressed to him and intended for the Elector;[131] here he says that the war for the Gospel ought not to be waged by violence and manslaughter, because Antichrist is to be destroyed by “the Word” alone. On this occasion he expresses the wish that God would restrain the fury of those men who threatened to injure His good cause and who might bring about a general rising against the clergy such as had taken place in Bohemia (i.e. the Husite insurrection).[132]
1911, p. 17. He foresees, however, that the Romanists will bring this misfortune upon themselves through their obstinate resistance to “the Word.” As yet they were holding back (so he wrote when the meeting at Worms had commenced); but, should their fury burst forth, then, it was generally apprehended that it would lead to a regular Bohemian revolt in Germany, in which the clergy would suffer; he himself, however, was certainly not to blame, as he had advised the nobility to proceed against the Romanists with “edicts” and not with the sword.[133]
The menacing attitude of the Knights seemed to Luther sufficiently favourable to his cause without their actually declaring war. We shall return later to Luther’s ideas regarding the use of force in support of the Evangel (vol. iii. xv. 3).
As for the above-mentioned references to Antichrist, we can only assume that he had gradually persuaded himself that the Pope really was the Antichrist of the Bible. According to his opinion the Antichrist of prophecy was not so much a definite person as the Papacy as a whole, at least in its then degenerate form. So thoroughly did he imbue his mind with those biblical images which appealed to him, and so vivid were the pictures conjured up by his imagination of the wickedness of his foes, that we cannot be surprised if the idea he had already given expression to, viz. that the Pope was Antichrist,[134] took more and more possession of him. Owing to the pseudo-mysticism, under the banner of which he carried on his war against the Church of Rome, he was the more prone to indulge in such a view. His lamentations over Babylon and Antichrist, and his intimate persuasion that he had unmasked Antichrist and that therefore the second coming of Christ was imminent (see below), undoubtedly rested on a morbid, pseudo-mystic foundation.
At about that time he set forth his ideas regarding Antichrist in learned theological form, for the benefit of readers of every nation, in a Latin exposition of the prophecies of Daniel, in which, according to him, the Papacy is predicted as Antichrist and described in minutest detail. This strange commentary is found in his reply to the Italian theologian Ambrose Catharinus: “Ad librum Catharini responsio.”[135] Cultured foreign readers can scarcely have gained from these pages a very favourable impression of the imaginative German monk’s method of biblical exposition. This curious tract followed too quickly upon that to which it was a reply. Luther received a copy of the book against him by Catharinus on March 6 or 7, yet, in order to forestall the effect of the work on the Diet of Worms, in the course of the same month he composed the lengthy reply which is all steeped in mystical fanaticism. From that time forward the crazy fiction that the Pope was Antichrist gained more and more hold of him, so that even towards the end of his life, as we shall see, he again set about decking it out with new and more forceful proofs from Holy Scripture.
Luther’s frame of mind again found expression in a tract which he launched among the people not long after, viz. the “Deuttung des Munchkalbes.”[136] Here he actually seeks to show in all seriousness that the horrors of the Papacy, and particularly of the religious state, had been pointed out by heaven through the birth of a misshapen calf, an occurrence which at that time was attracting notice. Passages from the Bible, and likewise Apocalyptic dreams, were pressed in to serve the author of this lamentable literary production.
Yet, in spite of all these repulsive exaggerations with which his writings were crammed, nay, on account of these images of a heated imagination, the attack upon the old Church called forth by Luther served its purpose with all too many. Borne on the wings of a hatred inspired by a long-repressed grudge, his pamphlets were disseminated with lightning speed by discontented Catholics. Language of appalling coarseness, borrowed from the lips of the lowest of the populace, seemed to carry everything before it, and the greater the angry passion it displayed the greater was its success. What one man’s words can achieve under favourable circumstances was never, anywhere in the history of the world, so clearly exemplified as in Germany in those momentous days. Luther’s enthusiastic supporters read his writings aloud and explained them to the people in the squares and market-places, and the stream of eloquence falling on ready ears proved far more effective than the warnings of the clergy, who in many places were regarded with suspicion or animosity.