Carlstadt and his fellows were not to be converted by such outpourings as these.
The rebellious fanatics treated the writings directed against them with the greatest contempt. Caspar Glatz, who had replaced Carlstadt as Lutheran pastor at Orlamünde, said in a report to Wittenberg: They use them in the privy, as I myself have seen and heard from others.[1325] Luther, too, indignantly apprises Wenceslaus Link of this: “Rustici nates libello meo purgant, sic Satan furit. Thus doth Satan rage.”[1326]
The most important change called forth in Luther by his encounters with the fanatics was an increasing disinclination to appeal as heretofore to any extraordinary divine illumination or inspiration of his own. At the commencement of the conflict he had been in the habit of telling them: “I also was in the spirit, I also have seen spirits”; now, however, little by little, as we shall see more plainly later (vol. iv., xxviii. 1), such assurances made room for an appeal to the “Word.” The outward Bible-Word, the meaning of which he had himself discovered, was now to count for everything.
Beneath the yoke of the Word he was anxious to compel also his other opponents, such as Agricola, Schenk, and Egranus, to pass.
3. Johann Agricola, Jacob Schenk, and Johann Egranus
Johann Agricola of Eisleben, one of the earliest and most violent of Luther’s assistants, was desirous of carrying his doctrine on good works and the difference between the Law and the Gospel to its logical conclusion. His modifications and criticism of Luther’s doctrine called forth the latter’s vigorous denunciation. Agricola had to thank his own restlessness, and “the burden of Luther’s superiority and hostility,” for what he endured so long as Luther lived.[1327] As the details of the quarrel are reserved for later consideration (vol. v., xxix. 3), we shall here merely indicate Luther’s behaviour by quoting a few of his utterances.
“The foolish fellow was concerned about his honour,” Luther says very characteristically of this quarrel. He was anxious “that the Wittenbergers should be nothing and Eisleben everything.”[1328] “He is hardened,” and nothing can be done for him; “Agricola says, ‘I, too, have a head.’ Well, were that all that God requires, I might say I have one too. Thus they go on in their obstinacy and see not that they are in the wrong.... Our Lord God evidently intends to go on worrying me yet a while so as to defy the Papists.”[1329] Elsewhere he says: “Agricola looks on at these doings with a merry mien, and refuses to humble himself. Yet he has submitted his recantation to me, perhaps in the hope that I would treat him more leniently. But I shall seek the glory of Christ and not his; I shall pillory him and his words, as a cowardly, proud, impious man, who has done much harm to the Church.”[1330]
Another who fell into serious disagreements with Luther over the Antinomian question was Dr. Jacob Schenk, then preacher at Freiberg in Saxony (afterwards Court-preacher at Weimar). At Wittenberg his conduct began to give rise to suspicion at the same time as Agricola’s. He was reported to have said in a sermon: Whoever goes on preaching the law, is possessed of the devil. The eloquence of this man of no mean talents was as great as his aims were strange.