Seeing that he was looked upon, by both lord and peasant, as the prime instigator of the trouble, he had grave cause to fear for his own safety. About five weeks later, writing from Seeburg, near Mansfeld, after a preaching tour through the rebels’ country, he says: “I, who am also affected by it, for the devil is intent upon my death, know that he is angered because so far he has been unable either by cunning or by force to harm me and is determined to be rid of me even should he be forced to do his worst and set the whole world in an uproar; so that I really believe, and it appears to me, that it is on my account that he does such things in the world in order that God may plague the world. If I reach home safe and sound, I shall, with God’s help, prepare myself for death.”[482]
Whereas he had written not long before, that he was not thinking of marrying because he awaited death, i.e. the death-penalty for heresy,[483] according to his statements after his marriage it was the thought of death which had led him to contract the union; God’s work was unmistakable, God was shaming his adversaries. He repeatedly makes statements to this effect, which we shall gather together with some of his other assertions to form a picture of his mental state then.
In one of the letters of invitation to the public wedding he writes: “The lords, priests and peasants are all against me and threaten me with death; well, as they are so mad and foolish I shall take care to be found at my end in the state [matrimony] ordained by God.”[484] He is forced, however, to brace himself up in order not to lose heart and be vexed at the falling away of the people from him; “to resign favour, honour and followers”[485] caused him grief of heart and an inward struggle.
His conviction that the end of the world was approaching, also did its part in exciting him; “the destruction of the world may be expected any hour,” he writes.[486]
Hence he is determined, as he declares, to marry “in order to defy the devil,”[487] i.e. he defies all his afflictions and anxieties, all the accusations of others as well as of his own conscience, and surrenders himself to the feeling, which, since the Wartburg days, ever stirred the depths of his soul on such occasions and made him hope to recover all the ground lost by means of force and violence. Peace and contentment of soul were not, however, the immediate result, for Melanchthon writes, that, after his marriage, Luther had been “sad and troubled.”[488]
Luther will, however, have it that it was God Who had shown him the road he had taken.
“God is pleased to work wonders in order to mock me and the world and to make fools of us.”[489] “That it is God’s work even the ‘wise ones’ among us are forced to acknowledge, though they are greatly vexed. The picture their fancy paints of me and the girl makes them lose their wits so that they think and speak godlessly. But the Lord liveth and is greater in us than he [the devil] that is in the world (1 John iv. 4).”[490] “God willed it and carried it out” (“Sic Deus voluit et fecit”).[491] “On account of this work of God I have, it is true, to suffer much abuse and many calumnies.”[492] “Thus, so far as I am able, I have [by my marriage] thrown away the last remnant of my former popish life; I am determined to make them [my foes] still madder and more foolish; this is the stirrup-cup and my last good-bye.”[493]
“Were the world not scandalised at us, I should be scandalised at the world, for I should be afraid lest what we undertake is not of God; but as the world is scandalised and withstands me, I am edified and comfort myself in God; do you likewise.”[494]
“The cause of the Evangel has been greatly wronged by Münzer and the peasants,” he declares, therefore he wished to strengthen it by his marriage, in spite of the Papists who were shouting in triumph (“ne videar cessisse”), “and I shall do more still which will grieve them and bring them to the recognition of the Word.”[495]
If, to the motives for his marriage which he enumerates above, we add a further reason, also alleged by him, viz. that he wished to show himself obedient to his father, who desired the marriage, we arrive at the stately number of seven reasons. They may be arranged as follows: 1. Because it was necessary to shut the mouth of those who spoke evil of him on account of his relations with Bora. 2. Because he was obliged to take pity on the forsaken nun. 3. Because his father wished it. 4. Because the Catholics represented matrimony as contrary to the Gospel. 5. Because even his friends laughed at his plan of marrying. 6. Because the peasants and the priests threatened him with death and he must therefore defy the terrors raised by the devil. 7. Because God’s will was plainly apparent in the circumstances. Melanchthon’s reason, viz. that man is impelled to marriage by nature, Luther does not himself bring forward.