Elsewhere Luther again says similar things without noticing, so it would seem, that others might have complained of his “arrogance” just as much as he did of Carlstadt’s. Carlstadt is “full of presumption,” and this “brought about his fall as it did that of Münzer, Zwingli, [Œcolampadius, Stiefel, and Eisleben.” “Such people, weak and untried though they be, are puffed up with self-sufficiency before the victory, whereas I have my daily struggles.” Before this Luther had declared that he was “plagued and vexed by the devil, whose bones are strong until we crack them.”[1293]—“It was impossible to make of Carlstadt a humble man because he had been through no real mental temptations.”[1294]—“He, like Münzer and Zwingli, was rash when good fortune attended him, but an arrant coward in misfortune”;[1295] Luther here was probably recalling how Carlstadt, the unhappy married priest, had been forced to humble himself before him owing to the dire want and danger in which he and his family found themselves.
“Had not Carlstadt come on the scene with the fanatics, Münzer and the Anabaptists, all would have gone well with my undertaking. But though I alone lifted it out of the gutter, they wished to seize upon the prize and poach upon my preserves, though, owing to the way they went about the business, they were really working for the Pope though all the while anxious to destroy him.”[1296]
Luther afterwards held fast to the opinion concerning his enemy which he had expressed long before in a letter to Spalatin: “Carlstadt has now been delivered over to a reprobate spirit so that I despair of his return. He always was, and probably always will be, unmindful of the glory of Christ; his insensate ambition has brought him to this. To me, nay, to us, he is more troublesome than any foe, so that I believe the unhappy man to be possessed by more than one devil. God have mercy on his sin, so far as it is mortal.”[1297]
In 1541 the news of his rival’s death reached him. It was rumoured that he had died impenitent, that the devil had appeared at his death-bed, had fetched him away, and continued to make a great noise in his house.[1298] Luther believed these tales. It was not surprising, so he said, that Carlstadt had at last received his deserts,[1299] though he was sorry he should have died impenitent.[1300]
It only remains to glance at the arguments Luther brought forward and at the theoretical attitude he assumed with regard to Carlstadt and his followers. If we take the book “Widder die hymelischen Propheten” and the writing he addressed to the Strasburg Christians against the fanatics, and consider the answers and objections they drew forth, we shall have a strange picture of Luther’s ways of reasoning and of his crooked lines of thought. Not that his ability and eloquence failed him, but, for clearness and coherence, his doctrine and whole conduct leave everything to be desired. In his book he attacks not Carlstadt alone, but, as he says: “Carlstadt and his spirits,” i.e. all those opponents of his whom he was pleased to dub “fanatics.” “Fanaticism” to him means not merely that fanciful interpretation of the Bible based on special illumination, to which his opponents were attached, but more particularly the threefold error for which they stood, viz. their denial of the Sacrament (i.e. of the Real Presence of Christ in the Supper), their iconoclasm, and, thirdly, their repudiation of infant baptism. As for the various elements of good, which, in spite of all their mistakes, were shared by the earlier Anabaptists, Luther refused categorically to see them or to hearken to the fanatics’ well-grounded remonstrances against certain of his propositions.
To preach, a man must be called by God, so he lays it down. Had your spirit “been the true one, it would have manifested itself by word and sign; but in reality it is a murderous, secret devil.”[1301] Luther demands miracles with as much confidence as though he himself could point to them in plenty.
Those preachers who ventured to differ from him, he invites, at the very least, to point to their ecclesiastical vocation. But what sort of a vocation was this to be, they asked. As Luther recognised no universal Church visible, a call emanating from a congregation of believers had to suffice; Carlstadt, for instance, could appeal to his having been chosen by Orlamünde as its pastor. This Luther would not allow: You must also have the consent of the Elector and of the University of Wittenberg. Carlstadt and those who felt with him were well aware, that, in the final instance, this simply meant Luther’s own consent, for at the University he was all-powerful, whilst the sovereign likewise was wont to be guided by him. Why, Carlstadt might also have asked, should not the degree of Doctor of Divinity suffice in my case, seeing that you yourself have solemnly pleaded your degree as a sufficient justification for assailing the common tradition of Christendom?
Luther’s final answer to such an appeal was as follows:
“My devil, I know you well.”[1302]
He was determined to hound out of his last hiding-place his presumptuous rival, many of whose doctrines, it must be admitted, were both mistaken and dangerous. Hence the measure which he induced the Elector to take in 1524, according to which Carlstadt was to be refused shelter throughout the Electorate; this example was also followed by the magistrates of Rothenburg-on-the-Tauber, who, by an edict of January 27, 1525, commanded all burghers by virtue of their oath and fealty “not to house, shelter, or hide, provide with food and drink, or further on his way the said Dr. Carlstadt,” adding, that a similar prohibition had been published in “other lordships and Imperial cities both near and far.”[1303]